WHEN I was fifteen, the most direct impact of my experience with the fatman was a deep fear that I was secretly gay. The answer to that was obvious—find a girl who’d let me have sex with her—but I couldn’t get dates, let alone sex. Before my father shut down his insurance agency, he’d accidentally given his secretary a porn manuscript to type. Rumor and gossip about my father’s writing spread through the county. Though tame by pornographic standards, his SF novels contained descriptions of sex that offended local people. As a result, concerned parents refused to let their daughters go out with me.
Dad never talked about his work overtly; the formal subject was forbidden, but I knew about it and sought the porn when my parents were away. I was as afraid of the material as I was intrigued. That it was secret made it “bad,” which increased its appeal. I wondered if my mother knew about it, then realized she had to—she did his typing.
Spanking figured prominently in most of the books. It was appealing in the abstract, since it seemed to induce sex, but being beaten by grade school teachers had left me with a disregard for pain and punishment.
The books were detailed and graphic but lacked warmth. Sex took place for its own sake, often part of a fierce power dynamic. Porn supplied me with an understanding of the mechanics of sex—anatomy, technique, timing, and aftermath—but no sense of intimacy. Women were fiercely resistant until forced into accepting their buried desire, whereupon they became compliant and willing. On the other hand, my experience with the fatman made me absolutely determined never to coerce another person into a vulnerable situation. These two attitudes conflicted. The result was extreme trepidation, beneath which lay the burning curiosity of all teenagers.
It never occurred to me that young women were just as interested in sex as I was. My assumption, based on porn and the conservative culture of the hills, was that females were essentially asexual. They had to be tricked into sex, or married. I didn’t want to participate in either scenario. Boys were prone to bragging about their sexual prowess, and I naively believed the lies I heard at school. It seemed as if everyone except me was having secret fun. Like most teenagers, I felt I had nowhere to turn, no one to trust.
I began spying on a hippie commune in a narrow holler, occasionally glimpsing a woman with no shirt. The hills offered free clay for potters, cheap rent in general, a gorgeous landscape, and soil that was highly suitable to the cultivation of marijuana. The current wave of visitors came from northern cities and spoke with heavy accents. Many were rich kids slumming, as if visiting Appalachia was a tour of duty necessary to acquire their countercultural bona fides back home. They arrived for brief periods and left. The old folks called them “hemorrhoids,” saying the good ones came down and went back up, but the bad ones came down and stayed. People left them alone.
After weeks of clandestinely watching the commune, I decided to steal their marijuana, then trade it back to them for sex. A buddy and I made a night mission, moving furtively along a ridge behind the hippie house and down through the woods. We used our pocketknives to cut the plant at the base and escaped into the shadows. The marijuana was more of a bush, and we didn’t know what to do with it.
In an abandoned smokehouse, we built a small fire and heated some leaves, which ignited. We began inhaling the acrid smoke and lay around pretending to be high, not really knowing the effects but making lofty claims—we could fly, see through walls, become invisible. Finally we admitted that the only results were seared throats and throbbing headaches. We concluded it had to be cured like tobacco, and I hatched a plan even more absurd than trading dope for sex.
We carefully stripped the leaves and packed them in four bread sacks, tied off the ends, and pressed them flat. We slid them under our clothes, hitchhiked to town, and went to a Laundromat. During a lull when it was empty, we dumped the marijuana into a dryer, cranked the heat to the highest setting, and stood guard. Within ten minutes the pungent scent of marijuana filled the Laundromat. We monitored the load, but the leaves hadn’t changed colors to indicate a quickened rate of curing. The next time we checked, half the leaves blew into the room and scattered across the floor. My buddy and I fled.
That summer our family attended MidwestCon, which turned out to be my last con. Dad said he’d driven the Mercedes into the Ohio River, to collect insurance money, and bought a VW squareback. My youngest sister rode in the back, tucked into a small space among the luggage. The minute we arrived at the hotel, Dad began operating in full John Cleve mode, refusing to acknowledge his children. The only other teenager at the con was the fourteen-year-old daughter of a minor SF writer who also wrote porn. We talked the first night. Tessa had run away to New Orleans for a while but now lived with her father, whom she hated. He ignored her and he drank and had too many rules. I told her I knew exactly what she meant. We agreed on everything—fans were the biggest weirdos in the world, cons were boring, and our parents didn’t care.
The next day I suggested we swim in the motel pool, mainly for an opportunity to see her in a bathing suit. She refused on the grounds that cons were full of old perverts, then crooked her finger in a “follow me” motion. We rode the elevator to the fifth floor, the walls of which were painted a deep shade of blue. She led me to a door with a sign that said “Housekeeping.” Inside was a wall of shelves that held sheets, towels, toilet paper, plastic cups, and tiny packages of soap. Tessa unfolded a roll-away bed. The only illumination came from a wide crack beneath the door.
Prior to this, I had kissed three girls from other counties and believed I could acquit myself well, but Tessa explored my mouth like she was planning a topographical map. Her body pressed against mine, her hands were on me, and I became lost in a delirium of desire. She took off her shirt, then her pants, the dim light outlining her body. I could not believe I was actually seeing a naked girl. Tessa quickly removed my shoes, then dragged off my pants and pushed me back on the bed. I could feel the softness of her chest, the smoothness of her skin. She put her arms around me. We rolled over and I held her as tightly as possible. I frankly thought I was going to die. Nothing had ever felt better, and I wanted to prolong it until I did die.
I bucked my hips and squirmed like a salamander, trying to stay on my knees and elbows so as not to mash Tessa too much. I mainly just hoped for the best. She put one arm across my back and the other on my hip and began to assist my maneuvering. After a while, during which I lost all sense of time, our activity slowed.
Enduring the fatman’s touch had instilled in me the habit of ignoring all sensation and withholding any reaction. As a result, I was unable to climax with Tessa. However, my father’s books had taught me about female anatomy to the point that I could provide her with ample pleasure several times. She started putting on her clothes, and I did, too. When we were fully dressed, she said, “You’re better than guys three times your age.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She opened the door and we stepped into the hall, blinking against the sudden light. At the elevator I heard the sound of an opening door. Down the hall, my father stepped from a room. He said something low and a woman responded with laughter. Dad closed the door behind him and straightened his hair.
I pushed the elevator button repeatedly, fearful of getting caught. Tessa and I descended to the lobby without talking. Dazed and happy, I wanted to remain in her company, but she avoided me for the rest of the con. I didn’t mind. I’d finally had sex.