Going Dark, Seeking Light

In looking back over this blog, I am struck by the disproportionately high share of negative entries, which doesn't represent what I believe to be my true feelings about my marriage or my religion. It seems that this has begun to serve less and less as a forum for me to work through thoughts, and more and more as a driver of what I'm thinking: "Oh, I've got to hold onto that idea / image / attitude / criticism / cynicism for the blog..." etc. These things have slanted heavily negative because, well, "If it bleeds, it leads," and I fear that the net effect has been that the blog has become a circular meta-driver of sentiment, if that makes sense. (No, I'm not blaming all of my problems on a blog.)

It's not what my family (while I am still clinging to one), my spirit or I need, so I'm shuttering the shop indefinitely.

Adios.

Out

I'm writing this from the computer in my parents' basement, where I've been spending the last several nights. (They, conveniently, are out of town.) The route to my arrival here is somewhat

Sundance/big Sister
Next morning BofM/JS question, No - can't say I believe.

Next several days, systematically standardized my message to four key people: wife, parents (discuss in depth - pleasantly surprised at their responses), closest sister, boss.

CPS - rallying point
Sunday: Bishop (legs more of a symbol now; used to think territorial denial quid pro quo, now I suspect more likely the spiritual expectation was so high, I didn't want to fail so I didn't enter the race)

Fight: Cuddling, trip to Denver, then...Baby burial sermon? Segullah Good Girl Syndrome? Ed wk (brain) & babysitter cost (finance)

Yesterday: morning, sis: Why does she hate you? 1 not pillar of priesthood power; 2 don't admire her intellectually; 3 don't like her legs, i.e., 2 & 3 are symbols of I don't accept her as she is
Day - contrasts - "wish I could" @ Rack; heart leapt @ her message "good for us"


Today - Sandberg - Attachment Injuries (what do people fear that keeps them in? reputation, how it will look, loneliness, finances, etc? me: kids); saved seat, walked past glanced @ me; in-class scoping "who injured you? I won't! let me make it better..." Fireproof fight scene, "That's violence - she felt unsafe physically, that's violence."




As I was gathering a little food from the fridge, my father in law asked tonight how work's going, then how things are going at home.

Girls in Geo tracker - as I rounded corner in front of parents' home, it was swerving in front of me. By the time I parked and was unloading the car, they were going by for another loop, shout-singing in unison "California Girlz." Wondered 18?

Old Unfaithful and the Growing, Continental Divide

Our first couple of days back together were very pleasant. Not ecstatic. But pleasant. Not in a Pleasantville way. More in a "it makes sense that we're together" way.

Things started downhill when I became overly ambitious for our itinerary over the long weekend. But to my credit, I slashed and burned massive chunks of activities/scenic routes/must-sees when it became apparent that they just didn't make sense, for reasons of timing, children, or other. Things really when downhill when I emerged from a grocery store with dry ice for the cooler and Sun Chips.


Continental divide.


Pic


Then the night after we got home, on the heels of our learning that:
a) The house in Kaysville she'd really wanted had sold (have I mentioned this one, the half-million dollar pad?); and,
b) My colleague had been given a position that might, with a stretch of the imagination, have been given to me (it would have been a lateral move organizationally but to a spot of greater concentration of corporate power),
She told me --and this is a dramatic distillation of the conversation-- in a nutshell that:
a) I needed to make more money (she'd started off saying she was worried that I wasn't "ambitious" enough, but I eventually got her to cough up that what she was euphemizing was her desire that I "make more money"), so that
b) We could buy a house she really wants without buy be more ambitious professionally

I'm still astonished by the conversation. I'm not angry at her. I'm just...maybe nonplussed, everybody's favorite ACT word? Nonplussed, because my YTD income for the first half of this year would be enough to put us into the top 30% of all U.S. households...even if I didn't make another dime for the rest of the year. So I'll let you extrapolate from that where I'd be

Hate feeling this way, love card tonight about kids

Dreck

I'm sure my most recent post was a pleasant read. This one is a few more turns downhill from there, and definitely not for little lambs or the faint of heart. Be forewarned.

So...that last post took us from innocence to experience. Incidentally, I was so wigged out with guilt or what-not that despite our “relationship” continuing another several months, the most we ever did after that was one brief breast fondling. We were in the bedroom of the little brother of one of our very good mutual friends. It was completely black. I remember when her shirt came off and her bra sprang up over them. She moaned a bit—presumably because that's what she thought she was supposed to do—and I glided my right hand over them. They were small. But her nipples were rock hard. After a couple of passes, she whispered something (I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't a reminder to Return With Honor), and I took my mouth from hers and moved my face downward, wanting to put her nipples in my mouth. But I couldn't do it. I hovered over them briefly, close enough to feel the heat of my breath reflecting off of them and back on my lips. I kissed her again, moved back down to her breasts, hovered again without touching down, and went back to her mouth. She seemed disappointed, as her kissing became more perfunctory when it became clear that I wasn't going in for the suckle. I don't recall whether we just faded out the make-out section on our own or were interrupted by a noise. But that was the last “reportable incident” of that relationship. Which is good, because I'm starting to write like Harold Robbins. (Yes, I've read one of his books – it was on the pre-stocked bookshelf at a rental property I was living at—with my roommate, Kate's guy—and I had lots of free time. It was nearly 15 years ago but I think it was Goodbye, Janette. Although from the looks of the cover, perhaps that time would have been better spent with The Adventurers.)

To wrap things up: One day when I went to school with her (we attended different schools, which, in those days, made the little affair that much more of a big one), she'd written a note to a friend in French class that she was feeling down because her period was starting. I'm not sure I even read the note, but somehow it ended up in my coat pocket. My dad borrowed my coat some time later and then took me on a drive for a sequestered discussion in a remote corner of our neighborhood. Shortly thereafter, following a conversation or two between him and her father (a prominent physician, who, according to her, allegedly responded to the call by asking her, “Why on earth is this guy's dad calling me about your period?”) I was forbidden to see her anymore. Things were done within a few weeks – the thrill of defiance wasn't worth the hassle.

But, my hands at least having “known” a woman's body, I was now among the initiated and decidedly into the world of Experience. So that's where we'll pick things up here.

Aside from what we'd call non-aberrant porn usage (and the accompanying M, which people in the church generally don't mention along with it, but they invariably go, uh, hand-in-hand) of which there has been plenty and which has been and/or will continue to be addressed elsewhere in this blog, what follows below is a chronicle of sorts of everything “bad” I've done, from Original Sin until marriage. I provide it simply for further perspective.

You may understandably assume that I was an adolescent rake...a walking contagen. While I did have a reputation of sorts later the upper-class years of high school, it was just for nicmo, not for anything more than that. No drugs, no booze, no bishopworthy hanky panky, no nothing. Just nicmo. And the fact that I was a bit of a BMOC during my senior year helped to ensure that there was no lack of nicmo:

In the huge, back bench seat of my old Chrysler.

On my waterbed, which wasn't as fun as I'd imagined it would have been.

On the floor of her living room. Her mom walked in on us. I never looked up at her mom, but she did, in shock. Based on the smile that I saw on her face when she moved back down toward me as her mom turned the lights back off, I suspect that mom was pleased. I learned later that I was her first kiss. She was a junior in high school and I was her first kiss. And she was a remarkable natural beauty, kind, and very, very smart. And a phenomenal natural talent – one of my Top Five Kisses of All Time.

In the back of a truck on St. George Boulevard during spring break. To clarify: The girl was in the back of the truck; I wasn't. I was hanging out with my buddies on the corner, trying to be spring-breakish, but having no luck. Then a truck with half a dozen girls in the back stopped at the red light in front of us. In a flash, I assessed the opportunity. In surveying the ladies, I saw that the five I could see were all very cute. The one closest to me, sitting on the sidewall right over the rear right tire, had her back toward me. All I new is she was blond and not fat. And based on her comely company, I figured the odds were outstanding that she was above average at the very least. So I sprang unto action. Tapped one of my buddies on the shoulder. Stepped over the curb. Approached her slightly to her left. Could tell that I'd caught the eyes of her friends, who started to gesture to one another. Reached up and tapped her on her right shoulder. When she looked over it (i.e., to the opposite side of where I was standing...you know the old trick), I grabbed her right shoulder with my right hand, put my left hand up over her waist, and dipped her out of the back of the truck (her butt and legs remained on the sidewall and in the back, respectively) and down into a low “Fred Astaire” kiss...kind of like this, but under slightly different circumstances. It was a full, mutually-engaged, tonsil-tickling kiss that lasted at least five seconds, maybe ten. As soon I heard the engines of the stopped traffic start to rev indicating that the light had changed, we unlocked, I pushed her upright, and walked back toward my buddies, my clenched fists pumping overhead in triumph. The guys roared, joined by maybe a hundred or more who were crowded on that section of the block. And I heard the girls clapping and squealing behind me as the truck headed back down the Boulevard. I never turned around to look at her. Never saw her face. I should mention that this was just a few days after the encounter with First Kiss/Top Five, mentioned above. The morning of the first day back at school after spring break, First Kiss stopped me in the hall, looked at me with a combination of sadness and anger in her eyes that I'd never encountered before (nor since then, although some of my wife's have been in that realm – but my wife's, when they happen,, have more of an emotional detachment to them, as if she's protectively already distanced herself to some degree from the hurt before encountering me), and said, “I heard what you did, and I will never forgive you.” And walked away. I don't think we ever spoke again. My friend mentioned having seen her while shopping right before she left on her mission (some Pacific island), and that she walked into the store in a white linen sundress, with glowing cheeks and a radiance that overtook the place. I just looked her up on Facebook. Found her. Her profile links to her blog. Four kids. Looks like she's gotten granola-y and zenny, not surprising. Short crop cut. Not as glowy. Features a little more severe...angular than they were. But distinctive. Even elegant. Seems happy. Good girl. I'm happy for her.

In the dark room in photo class.

On the set of a forthcoming play on the stage of the school auditorium, while sluffing photo class.

On my cousin's doorstep (again, St. George) with one of my cousin's friends, whom I'd met just that afternoon on the tennis court and with whom and whose two other friends I'd driven aimlessly around town all night joking about, among other things, how a mop handle dipped in axle grease is a girl's best friend. (Where I'd picked up that genteel concept, I honestly don't know.)

On the couch in the foyer of a place where a big group of us were staying in Europe. (Actually, this wasn't nicmo per se. It was more of a weird PG-rated sex game, in which I'd playfully take something away from the girl –several years my senior-- and in order for her to get it back, she'd have to give me hickeys anywhere I wanted that was a) concealed, but b) not around the verboten nether-regions. I don't recall how this delightful quid pro quo developed, but it happened intermittently over the course of a few months, as I recall. She had braces, which gave the whole thing a little more bite. We never actually kissed. W-e-i-r-d.)

In the indoor hot tub of one of my best friends (when accepting my invitation, the stunningly beautiful girl –who had been the girlfriend of one of my other best friends...but that's high school for you-- said, “Sounds great! I've got a new two-piece I've been wanting to try out!” Ba-boinnnng!), who tried unsuccessfully to covertly film us from his basement stairwell, while we watched the Holiday Bowl. Or at least had it running in the background. Oh wait - this must have been after high school because for some reason that remains utterly incomprehensible to me to this day, within a couple of weeks I was over at her house mumbling through some garbage about, "I'm in college now [she was still a senior...speaking of which, I may not have mentioned yet that it wasn't until my own senior year that I dated, kissed, etc. a girl who was younger than I was; not sure how that plays into the whole mess] and won't have time for a serious relationship..."

On the stage at the stake center while a rousing basketball tournament was happening on the other side of the curtain. We were rolling all over that hardwood and having a blast. She later married a guy from my mission. I never mentioned it to him.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

In today's environment, those probably would have been hook-ups involving at least oral sex. [in today's environment would have been oral sex as the starting point...the gateway drug. boys will face, girls these days, media, my space, blogs (errrrr), amateur web 2.0 exhib; no se como yo lo habria sopravissuto; NoticiasWoche Oct 08 Bennett pnification “duo argue that”; medlar hljsingles aggro divs 2 ninos demanding petit mort] But all-in-all,I wasn't out to get as far as possible with the girls. This was aided by the fact that I ran with a pretty decent crowd of which I certainly dropped the weighted average morality score substantially as it was. (As I recall, my only act of real impropriety with a girl from my high school was during my sophomore year when I went on a double date to the Halloween Dance with reasonably cute junior whom the older guys had nicknamed, as I later learned, Snatch. Still not sure how we ended up together. I look at that picture and look like I was fresh from the crib – a real baby's crib, not a Snoop Dog crib. Although I really like the sportcoat I was wearing. Anyway, the evening went OK, nothing particularly memorable. But as things wound down and my buddy pointed his Bronco toward the part of town where our dates lived—the opposite side of town from where we lived—Snatch turned toward me (we were in the back seat) and started biting, licking and breathing in my ear. Then after a minute she hoisted her legs over mine, so that the napes of her knees were both over the outer side of my right thigh. She kept going on the ear thing. So I started sliding my right hand up her leg. And kept going. And she went harder at the ear. So I kept going. Then I got to where I, uh, couldn't go any farther, and started rubbing her crotch through her nylons. She kept at the ear and started making little noises. She was an inferno down there. So I moved my thumb up to hook the top of her nylons, stretched the waistband away from her, moved my hand inside of her nylons and laid it flat against her abdomen. I then started moving my fingers down, under the top of her panties, and when I started to feel the transition from smooth skin to rough hair, she quickly pulled away and swung her legs back to the floor in front of her. A few minutes later we were at her doorstep, where she said, “Sorry about stopping in the car. It just felt a little weird because we hadn't even kissed yet.” I don't remember whether we then kissed at the door. We only spoke a couple of times after that. She knew my brother-in-law, who knew we'd gone on a date, and told him a while later, “Yeah, we see each other in the hall and there's kind of a look like, 'Maybe next year,' you know?” But she disappeared the next year – rumor was she went somewhere like Hawaii to have a baby or an abortion. I don't know. I never saw her again.)

So that's the tale of nicmo. With the exception of Snatch, it was all for the most part fairly vanilla, all things considered, although I remember that back in the day The Brether'n preached against that as well, as being anything but “vanilla” – in fact, the very embodiment of justifying “a little sin.” (Today they seem to be too busy worrying about triples and homers to focus on the walks and bunts.)

But that doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of (mostly) regrettable activities.

A short time after the breakup with New Year's Day girlfriend, I got my first real job, which was washing dishes and prep-cooking for $2.55/hr at a fairly upscale restaurant. I have no idea how I came up with this idea, but I figured that if I went through the ceiling panel to access the attic above the supply room, I could access the upper portion of the wall and the ceiling of the women's small, single-occupancy restroom. The entire room was enclosed in sheetrock (ceiling tiles and/or recessed lighting fixtures would have made things more convenient), so I made a little hole, no bigger than a pencil, up in the very corner, which looked down directly from the front angle on the toilet. Even though it was well above the line of sight of the occupant, I pseudo-camouflaged it, as I recall, with something like a little bit of loose speaker wire and a piece of masking tape, so that from the inside it might have looked like someone was installing or removing a speaker and getting ready to patch and mud it, or something. This happened no more than a dozen times as I recall, but during lulls, I'd steal away to the storage room, crouch up there and wait for five, maybe ten minutes at a time, for someone to come in. It was a small restaurant, so there wasn't a lot of restroom traffic, especially during lulls. But then the door opened, my pulse went into frenzy, and one of the waitresses (the cutest one, Kris – she had spiky, frost-tipped hair like one of the Go-Go's...I have no idea which one, as I only know Belinda Carlisle and the other one who did the goofy flop video when she's swimming with dolphins. Wait, OK she actually resembled BC here. While we're at it, here's a glimpse of Ms. Carlisle's legs from "We got the beat" live, evidently before she got chunky - not bad! On that subject, I remember the effect it had on me when I first read about how crazy those girls were at the peak of their fame. I'd associated them for so long with a relatively innocent time of my life, the calm before the storm, and then to learn that they basically took the pick of the guys from their shows to backstage drunken orgies, etc. was all a bit sobering. And also made part of me wish I'd been a few years older and at one of their shows...) came in, pulled down her pants, and sat on the toilet. My view was from such a vertical angle that everything but the front portion of her thighs was covered by her upper body leaning over. While I had been titilated by the prospect of orchestrating such a violation of someone's privacy, I was disgusted that it had actually happened, even though I hadn't really “seen” anything after all. During my next shift, when I went in early to prep for the evening and was sure the owner was gone, I stuffed the hole with wet toilet paper, as flush as I could with the wall, and was never interested in that particular endeavor again. Curiously, I'd told the head chef (from my ward, coincidentally, and his parents and older siblings good friends with mine; he and I became friends as well) about this during the planning stages, and he'd been supportive, even covering for me when I was away from the kitchen and at my “post.”

I found a copy of The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality in my parents' room (surprising, because doesn't one generally envision one's parents as being celibate, if not altogether asexual? Or is that just a Mormon hang-up thing?) sometime during the early teacher years, and had it virtually memorized before I was a priest teacher. I remember not being as interested in the portions about intercourse (I didn't really want detailed descriptions of anything involving other guy's bodies) as I was about M and lesbianism, a preference that remained consistent when I eventually started using porn – nothing killed the mood more quickly than a guy entering the scene. I remember being fascinated, and even a bit jealous maybe, by women's reports that they could M to orgasm by crossing their legs and bouncing the raised calf while flexing their PC, or something in that general vicinity. (One woman reported that she could do this while driving, and that whenever she'd see a lone woman looking pleasantly but intensely relaxed in a car next to her at a stoplight, she'd think, “I know what you're doing!” I remember another description of a woman's ability to orgasm by bunching a pillow between her legs and flexing. Regrettably, I remember telling my best friend about this book and letting him read it occasionally.

I usually M'd with the massager (as mentioned previously) but didn't limit it to that. It (d)evolved into some weird stuff involving...who knows, let's see: A variety of lubricants (Warning: Icy Hot is not a good idea.), tampons on a few occasions, odd positions in the bathtub, etc. In pre-marriage adulthood, weird locations became a bit of a turn on – alone on a mountain peak in Colorado (I remember thinking that I was communing with nature, mixing my seed with the virginal earth, or something goofy like that), looking out from my partially-open hotel window over a busy intersection in downtown Rome, etc.

HB – one of just a few ongoing "affairs" - Sweden (after train bathroom once there were just 3 of us, bra up "I love you too much to do this with you" very sobered "most guys say they can't do it because they don't want to get in trouble"), subsequent, train, room; face not beautiful but not unattractive, generally slender, decent legs and a small butt; deep scar from I believe appendectomy...she liked it when I licked it, maybe it indicated that I was accepting of her "flaws" or something...too accepting; she had large D cup breasts that I could barely get my hands around, talked about how they got her a lot of attention on Bourbon Street when she and TX friends (incl LDS) would go over there for Mardi Gras; once for some reason I couldn't get hard while lying on top of her and she said that made her sad because she'd never had that happen with a guy before; said sometimes she had a sore jaw from giving head; the last couple of months while we were covertly fooling around she was dating an Austrian guy...he drove one of those old Citroens a la Griswold; my parents were rightly concerned even though I denied everything and they tried to force separation (heat from students; when I admitted to sister #2 years later that stuff had happened she was so angry she cried and pounded on my chest), bra M “sick of clothes that don’t fit!” & “near reciprocation,” even on plane ride home I lay in her lap and with one arm hidden under, cried when we split @ JFK and she flew to Texas, traumatic...but I was aware, told her once that I was like a little puppy she could kick and I'd keep coming back to her; remember when she got back to BYU I jogged to her apartment in the snow to see her because she was "lonely" but it was clear there would be no continuation; had her room key back at BYU, stole bra. Later got “Oh, officer!” visit. Married. Ended up going out once or twice with her little sister who was my age, weird.

A couple of girls actively levi lovin' my thigh (both times to its rightful concusion) – one in her garage, one in my parents' basement “I'm not very good at controlling myself"

LP - candles & mystery pube, Celica - Santiago sqeaky wheel

DV8 (told stake pres within a week, “we've got to get you into the Elders' Quorum”); a week after that met the woman who got me onto my mission.

Several saves from the precipice: Hafen EQ>LMH; SB>Ogden>8’Gem (post after 8’); met Wife...gretchen coat tails, my damnation and my salvation
Gretchen http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Faust.html

As I approached my mission, largely because of the influence of the amazing girl I was dating (I've mentioned her briefly but she deserves and will probably end up getting a whole chapter worth of posts before my entire history is plunked out here), I went cold turkey on M-ing, and well in advance of my mission, i.e., not a few months before I went into the MTC, etc. Which makes the following kind of funny: In those last few months before my mission, for some reason I got in the habit of just sitting around and air-drying in the bathroom after showering. So I'd just sit in there, after the water stopped running, for...I don't know, three minutes? Five? I don't know why, but I just liked it. Maybe it was relaxing or refreshing or rejuvenating, who knows? Anyway, so for whatever reason I was oblivious as to how this may appear to those outside the bathroom: 18-year old boy...just took a shower...now everything's gone dead silent in there for several minutes...Can only mean one thing, right? So one morning (that included an air-drying) I jumped—five minutes after the designated departure time, as I am chronically tardy—into the car with my dad. About halfway to our destination, he (who, it occurs to me, despite having been my bishop for a couple of those late-teen years, had no hard evidence that I had M'd at any time during my youth), he broke the cold silence by opening this dialogue:

Him: You know, your habit is going to have to stop before you go on your mission.

Me: Huh?

Him: Your habit. Your problem. It's going to have to stop.

Me: Why?

Him: As your bishop, I can't in good conscience let you go into the MTC unless you take care of it first.

Me: Uhh... I'm not sure I'm going to be able to 'take care of it' in the next couple of months.

Him: Well, work on it!

Me: But it doesn't even really matter!

Him: Doesn't matter?!

Me: Well, it's something I've been doing for as long as I can remember. It's not like I can just flip a switch and it's magically gone.

Him: Then you'll need to figure something out, won't you?!

Me: But it's how I am, dad, and I can pretty much guarantee you that it's not going to change before I get into the MTC!

Him (slamming on breaks): Get out of this car with that insolence and...and...disgusting fatalism!!

(click of latch, squeak of door, slam of door, screech of tires as car disappears down the road and around a corner)

It took me just a block or two by foot to realize that while he had been drawing conclusions from my air-drying, I'd been talking about my habitual hardiness. I laughed so hard, I hurt. I went to his office during lunch, shared my revelation, and we had a good laugh over it. And my tardiness neither keep me out of the MTC, nor from having a productive mission – fortunately I went Latin American, where being late by my standards was almost obsessive Swiss precision by theirs.

Speaking of my mission, there was no lack of titilation all around, but I fared remarkably well. The women in the downtown area of where I served were (are), to put it bluntly and with zero exaggeration, some of the most beautiful on the face of the planet. And while it wasn't Times Square back-in-the-day at every turn, there were plenty of more overt distractions. I remember, for example, the exact location of the newsstand where I saw that “the” Stephanie Seymour Playboy had come out. I remember exactly how she was posed on that cover, her mane of hair, how her arms covered her perfect breasts but not her cleavage, the warm sunset-glow lighting, and the look on her face. (At the risk of entering a minefield, I'm going to try to do a laser-targeted google for it... [we now pause for technical assistance] Hey – I did it without including the word “playboy” in the query, thereby avoiding a certain opening of pandora's box! Well that was a nifty trick.) And the newsstand was on the same block as our apartment building, which means that I could easily have slipped out while my companion showered, slept or otherwise, snagged the mag, and been back in three minutes. The instant I saw that cover, I wanted so very badly to see her body, all of her body, that it almost suffocated me. It's all I could think about for...for about ten seconds. You see, of all the beautiful supermodels who reigned over mankind at the time (namely Cindy, Linda, Christy, Claudia, Naomi and Tatjana), Stephanie was for me the cat's meow. Almost. One woman was more exquisite to me, and that was my girlfriend. So at Second #11, I struck a deal with God: “If I banish Stephanie from my mind...don't even think about her, much less think about getting my hands on that magazine, I want you to promise that I will be with [my girlfriend] someday.” And Poof! that was the end of Stephanie. But this is a circuitous route to reporting, with no little sense of accomplishment, that, despite leggy Latina temptation swirling all around, I went my entire mission without M-ing once. Not a single time. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. Ironically, the one time on my mission that I came close to it was when I was sick and left alone in the apartment and took out my stash of a few prohibited pics I had of my girlfriend from Lake Powell and elsewhere. (This wasn't the only time that I was, for one reason or other, alone on my mission; it was just the only time that there was a convergence of enough aloneness, self-doubt, frustration and temptation for me to get into the Danger Onanzone.) I don't remember what exactly tripped the trap—a combination of feeling like what I was now doing (“selfish school”) paled in comparison to the big-pic importance what I'd done on my mission, frustration and confusion about what to do about my girlfriend, and feeling like I'd made a great effort on my mission but that God was now leaving me to fend for myself—but within a few months of my return home, I M'd, and I was devastated. In fact I called my second-oldest sister, with whom I've always had the closest relationship, and sobbed to her, “I...I mastu...mastu...I hadn't since way before my mission, but last night I...I....bwaaaaaaaaahhhh!!” I was apoplectic. She was so kind. She just said, “Hey, so you goofed it a bit. Don't worry about it. You're a great guy. The Lord knows that. Don't worry about it. You're gonna be OK.”

Not surprisingly, in later years I ended up amassing all the shots of Stephanie from that Playboy. As amazing a body as I'd expected, although the knowledge that grimy Axl had been on, around and in it lessened the luster a bit, much like learning about Marilyn and the lovely little Ditta.

3x peep LMH, Heidi Keith, DJK's date (actually not absolutely positive I wouldn't do it again)

LMH - death throes of relationship while still @ byu; black g-string– light of alarm clock, (so sad from where that relationship had fallen, then scared) expulsion from BYU

2 clubs my kind of town, "don't look so sad"

Penthouse/pearls/VS lace teddy and knee-highs

Riddle - Bathroom vent behind fridge; hole in wall to couple room. Brandi.

A watershed moment in understanding my own attitudes etc. had nothing to do with an actual physical transgression. Anglesy handrub realization - korean

Landlord's partner Unterhosen im Ohio keller

Amber's friend Kate - nicmo, on couch "scared"; Opportunities - erotiblanket - wonder if we'd had a "friends with benefits", although our 3rd roomate (also a dear friend) was nosy and gay

Lisa – longest ongoing this was not long; kissing on washer; roomate "don't stop!"; piano keyboard practice room; most openly sexual relationship. One time thought I'd gone inside of her (hadn't - we did what "splitting the warrior") and was very somber. "I've been going to mass" -- thinking, you don't understand that what I'm doing manifests my waning interest in my beliefs/traditions. Met wife within a few months. Told bishop everything. Came over to my house. Probably thought it was worse than it was.

A watershed moment in understanding my own attitudes etc. had nothing to do with an actual physical transgression. Anglesy handrub realization - heawon

11/3/10
Got squeegee? Is this the sendero que sigo? Is this where it goes - start w Wolford, graz train door guy, col. russell wms "eventually, his compulsion turned violent" canada luftwaffe

Earliest recollections of sex, etc.

These are in a rough chronological order to the best of my recollection. I won't speculate the extent to which one may have influenced or was influenced by another, if at all; which are causes and which are effects; which have left the most lingering marks; or which reflect the natural curiosity of little boys and which might have been telltale signs of an inevitable pathology. But here they are, a grab bag of mostly prepubescent delights that I don't think I've mentioned elsewhere. (One recollection, however, I'll reserve for its own post, some other time.)

I'm 99% positive that my first memory relating to the whole motley crew of women, nudity and sex was when a couple of my sisters took me to the BYU Richards Pool to swim. Since I was a pre-schooler (is it possible that I may have been only three?), I got changed with them in the women's locker room. I remember standing and looking at two coeds in all their glory no more than 15 feet away from us. Both were brunettes. One sat on a white towel on the wooden bench. I saw only her backside, and can still see her cheeks, her crack, and her long white back leading up to her hair in a sloppy bun. The other was standing, facing me, her breasts bouncing as she toweled off her hair. The small locker was open at about her eye level. Her abdomen and crotch were mostly blocked by the head and shoulders of her friend, but I think I saw the curious, triangular patch of hair. Apparently I was gawking, and one of them gave a look in our direction that caused my eldest sister to protest apologetically, "Oh, it's OK. He doesn't know." To which I responded --and I remember how indignant I felt at her assertion-- "Yes I DO know! I DO! Know what?!" (Oddly, I don't remember having seen my sisters naked at that time.)

When I was very young, maybe still preschool-aged but no later than first grade, I would lie on my side, wedge my head as far under our big Magnavox console TV as it would go, and crane my neck in an effort to look up the skirts of women on the screen.

There was a book about art history in the living room bookshelves. I remember (probably around the same time I was upskirting the Lennon Sisters and Carol Brady) having found in it "a nude," translation: painting of a neked womin. I remember that she was neither thin nor Rubenesque, just average; that the background was dark green, maybe a forest scene; and that she had long, frizzy blond hair. I used to stealth into the living room and touch the tip of my tongue to one of her nipples -- just enough to make contact, not enough to slop up the page. In thinking about the style, it may have been a late Renaissance piece, although probably not (sorry, E. Buzz Miller) by Titian.

One night my sister, acting on my parents' orders, drained the bathtub while I was still in it, just lying still on my back. I remember watching my penis emerge first from the plane of the water and, thinking that the tip reminded me of a great, classical domed structure, exclaimed, "Look! My temple's floating!" My sister ran straight to my parents, and I got in trouble, maybe a reprimand or even a spanking, so confused as to why.

We had several house guests when I was growing up -- some stayed for a few days, some for entire semesters or more. We had a cute foreign exchange student from Japan. Short jaw-length bob hairdo and a big smile. She was the daughter of a friend of my father. She was in her early teens. I was no older than five or six. I remember once sneaking into her room, finding a pair of her panties and smelling the crotch. I remember there was something beige/yellowish (not liquid, but creamy) on the little cotton patch. A short time later, we had another guest -- this time a college student, a brunette. A little heavy but very pretty. She wore blue jeans and a red sweatshirt a lot. Somehow I managed to see her getting out of the shower once, although I don't remember whether it was through the crack in an open bathroom door, or by acrobatically peering down the laundry chute and at the shower's reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite.

My sisters usually had at least a Vogue or two around. I think this was in the days before Elle (I saw my first Elle in fifth or sixth grade, in the living room of the duplex my parents owned and rented to college-aged and young professional girls.) and before Cosmo really took off. I'd peruse their Vogues from time to time in search of the occasional goodie--oddly, I don't remember ever rifling through National Geographic with similar intent, although we had a subscription--and remember a very strong impression of something at seeing the famous photo of the woman sitting on the couch, knees apart, blouse unbuttoned down a ways, a man's shadow on the wall behind her and an aggressive come-hither-or-I'll-kick-your-ass look on her face. I can't remember the campaign (Halston?), the model, or the photographer (Ritts? Newton? von Unwerth?) so I can't easily find the photo, but you'd recognize it.

I saw my first "girlie" magazine at age 8 or 9, probably 9, in the "hut" built among the tall shrubs in the backyard of my friends' (twins) house. It was Harvey Magazine. I believe they'd gotten it from their older brother. It wasn't intact, but was instead torn at the spine/fold into several multi-page sections, which made it easier for several of us to, uh, read the fascinating articles at once. All I remember of its contents was that one of the neked ledies looked like the blond ABBA girl.

I saw my first Playboy at age 10, at a news stand at LAX. I just saw the cover, but remember exactly where it was in the room, in a stack at about knee height. I don't remember anything else about it, except that I'd sneaked away to go get a closer look, my parents had no idea where I was, I almost caused them in their panic to miss an international flight, and my dad hauled me all the way to the gate by my ear. A few months later, I refused to make even a three-hour, high-interest loan to my then-cashless friends (I was with three of them, brothers, ages 11, 13 and 15) so the eldest could buy an American Playboy that caught his attention at a Central European bus station. Around that same time, I was sleeping in the same room as my sisters in a Scotish B&B. I went to bed first on a cot in the corner, pulled the blanket over my head but left a little peephole through which I saw for the first time the pubic hair of one of them. On that same trip, I paused in an empty but usually-busy hallway to look through the keyhole (this was a "classic" keyhole with simply an open hole) into the room of some college girls who were traveling with us, and at that moment, bingo! one of them was just getting out of her jeans. I watched only long enough to idiotically tell her the next day, "Nice purple panties." She looked at me confusedly and probably thought she'd had a wedgie or something.

Back home, the youngest of my older sisters (i.e., the one nearest me in age, albeit several years my senior) showed me a photo in her high school biology book of sperm trying to penetrate an egg. I remember it looking like a solid marble covered in alfalfa sprouts. She also pointed out to me the fallopian tubes and ovaries of a little piglet cadaver she'd brought home to work on. Not long after that, she had me watch her while she changed a tampon, and explained what was going on. Fortunately, all I remember from that was how awkwardly she sat on the toilet, and I didn't understand a thing she explained.

When I was about 12, I was in a small bookstore with my mom. We got separated, and I stumbled upon a book (again, I remember what the cover looked like and where it was on the shelf) called "The Female..." then a word I didn't quite recognize. As we were headed to the car, I asked her, "Mom, what's a female organism? Or orgasnism?" She shuddered, stopped in her tracks, and scolded me, "You do NOT need to know what that means!!!" So of course the first place I went when we got home was to the dictionary, and thus began a more or less lifelong endeavor to expertize myself about The Female Orgasm. (Incidentally, I shared this story --with certain key vocabulary terms left out-- several years ago in one of those combined "Fifth Sunday" meetings in which the R.S. and Priesthood meet together. The topic was porn, and people were throwing out all kinds of the usual suspect problems and remedies. I got so tired of it that I finally stood up and said many things, the distillation of which is, "When our own hang-ups about sex keep us from discussing it openly with our children, they will soon learn that they will learn nothing from us, and will absolutely, positively seek that learning elsewhere. When you tell a deacon in horror, 'You do NOT need to know what that means!!' what's the first thing he's going to go do? And how long until his buddies are on board, as well? My friends and I spent the next several years trying to familiarize ourselves with the concept, and, while it's not certain this is causal, all of us have had struggles of some kind or other with porn.")

In seventh grade, my best friend asked me as a joke, "Have you ever been caught M-ing in the closet?" "Uh...(pause, while I still processed that long M-word in the middle and tried to make sense of it)...no?" "It's a good hiding place, huh! Ha, ha ha..." The family dictionary later enlightened me, and within a few weeks, I believe, mom's hand-held neck massager, I experienced my first O. (My body was not yet ready to E, so the first few dozen instances were actually nothing more than a weirdly pleasant surge of warmness.) A year or two later was the first and only time that I've ever been caught M-ing; it was by my just-older sister. I'd heard her footsteps approaching down the hallway in time to stop before she actually entered the room, plus it was dark, so she didn't really see anything (hellloooo, trauma narrowly averted!!), but she knew. The image in my mind at the instant of interruptus was an animated variation of this Madonna poster, which I had on the back of my door at the time. (Although this was for me the most titillating Madonna pic from the Boy Toy era.)

Speaking of Madonna, the summer before 9th grade I visited my eldest sister and her husband in New York. This was before Giuliani Did Broadway, so the successors of Debbie Does Dallas were still out in force. I remember going out on quick solo jaunts to Times Square and 42nd Street, gazing at the strategically-blacked-out window displays that nevertheless left nothing to the imagination as to what was behind the darkened door. I remember seeing vendors hawking posterboard-mounted nude pics of a very young, brunette, almost-breastless and then-unknown (i.e., at the time of the sessions) Madonna that had recently run in Penthouse to so much fanfare. I remember buying some nudie playing cards while shopping with my brother in law on the street somewhere in Lower Manhattan, and being surprised that he didn't seem to mind. Later that day, when I disappeared with them for evidently a suspiciously long time into the men's restroom at his law firm (although, surprisingly, I was not M-ing with them), he entered and, presumably seeing my feet beneath the stall and knowing I was alone, said, "Wow, you must really like those cards!" I remember finding (I don't think I was snooping) a "Today" sponge in the bathroom, telling my sister obtusely and out of the blue, "Well, I kind of want to be an uncle someday," not because I did but to show that I was sophisticated enough to know what it knew what it was, and then later that night having my brother in law tell me that I may be on the verge of wearing out my welcome. I remember being followed home by a middle-aged man as I walked from the Port Authority Terminal (I don't remember why I'd been there; maybe to look at the big pool ball clock they have, or used to have?) up to their apartment around 50th. Once I realized what was going on I ducked into a store; I watched as he passed back and forth two or three times, squinting through the glass with each pass, after which I started crying and explained to the early-30s guy behind the counter what was going on, to which he responded, "Yeah, a lot of weirdos out there. You can hang out here for a while. You'll be OK." I remember perching with binoculars (and not covertly; they knew I was there and what I was doing) on the big chair beneath their window that overlooked 8th Avenue, directly across which was the Ramada (I think), which I scanned intently for guests who'd forgotten (or not) to close the curtains and/or the remarkable visibility of an even dimly-lit room when viewed from a completely dark outside. I remember M-ing so much during that visit that my sister wondered aloud why her Vitabath gel was disappearing so quickly.

Although I'd kissed a couple of girls between 5th grade and middle school (only one, in 6th grade, on the lips -- when a buddy and I went with our respective "girlfriends" --his was my ex from the year before-- to my girlfriend's house during lunch and practiced kissing; my friend and ex would make out on the Lay-Z-Boy for a minute or two, "See? Just like that!" after which my girlfriend and I would perform a few cold pucker pecks that wouldn't have earned us a second glance from the chaperones at a stake dance), it was in 9th grade that I officially lost my innocence. She went to a different school. Her previous boyfriend had been a junior or senior jock with a reputation. I used to sneak my sister's moped across town to see her. We'd been "going together" about a month and hadn't kissed. On New Year's Eve of our 9th grade year, we left the big multi-stake dance at the Wilk after "New Year's Day" played (great song, but aside from the title, why the hell did they always play that song?), stood cold and alone in the middle of the bridge to the law building.

Me: Uh, Happy New Year's, [name].

Her: Thanks, you too. (pause) So are you gonna kiss me?

It was a little sloppy and abrupt at first, but within a few minutes I was a labialingual all-star. Within a few weeks, I felt her soft, wet insides, my hand having wended its way up her denim miniskirt and down the front of her panties, while her friends in the adjacent kitchen blasted Sly Fox's "Let's go all the way" through the door. A few minutes later, I rejoined my best friend (who had been tending our 10-speeds in the driveway) and told him, "Hey, smell my finger!" as I thrust my hand toward his face. He recoiled, then sniffed, then we pedaled home in the darkness.

That was the watershed evening and event of my transition from childhood to adolescence.

Lustlog

I sent this to my wife this morning: On my ride this morning I semi-ogled 1 biker, 3 runners, and 4 tennis players. I assume the tennis players were [area high school] students, since they were youngish and playing on that court, which makes it not only lusty but kind of creepy. If it's any consolation, all 8 exercisers were women. I think I will start keeping a running log of carnal crimes I've committed while you're gone, just for the sake of full disclosure. So you've got those 8 this morning (or do they count as "one instance" ?), the gal at the Rack the other day, 2 pairs of calves (note the objectification there) @ [an acquaintance]'s funeral the other day (yes, not even an event like that keeps the eyes from wandering...I'd probably have to poke them out with a stick)... I'm sure I'm missing some.

###

"I'm sure I'm missing some" was a true statement -- I was definitely, without a doubt missing some.

Carnal crimes committed prior to that message, and not already blogged previously, include:

M'd 3x (If it's any consolation, I was thinking strictly about my wife --seriously!-- and a certain baby blue ensemble of hers each time.)

Three edgy George Michael videos, one of which I'd never seen (but like the song; yes, I realize it's not a song I should like...can't say I liked the video, though), one of which I hadn't seen in a long time, and the third of which everybody's seen. Plus a couple of quasi-edgy videos (weren't they all?) to some dancetastic old Depeche Mode tunes. (Right now, perhaps appropriately, I'm listening to The Human League's "Human." So often, it feels like I'm a ticking time bomb and an affair of some kind is almost inevitable. Sigh.)

A short clip from a La Perla fashion show. (It's amazing what you can "accidentally" stumble upon when you've convinced yourself that you're, uh, researching a purchase for your wife.)

Multiple heart-lusting offenses today involving the little Aztec goddess at work, and I imagine that there will be several more to come, so I won't register each offense. Maybe I can get a bulk discount on this one.

But wait, there's more!

I to pick up some groceries tonight. First stop was Costco, where I fixed my gaze on Katelyn (or Katelynn, Katelinn, Katelin, Caitlynn, Caitlin, Caitlyn, Caitlinn, Kaytlynne, Kaytlin, Caytelynn, Kaytelyn, Kaitelinne or Caitlynne) who was the check-out assistant --we used to call them "baggers"-- at the register next to me, with her unhealthily-skinny model's body, uniquely engaging face, and telltale sunken eyes and visibly swollen lymph nodes suggesting an eating disorder. The next stop was Walmart (their "World Table" house brand of salsa is the best bottled salsa I've ever had, and I've tried just about everything from the generic to the exotic), where an 18-22ish 5'6" gothy girl with jet black hair, short black shorts and, of course, great legs stepped in front of me as I neared the entrance, which meant, well, that I had no choice but to follow her in. Except that after a few paces I realized I'd left my wallet in my car so I u-turned back out. I did my shopping while scoping around every aisle, hoping she'd appear, and even did an extra lap over to the electronics section in the hope of casting a wider net on my way to the checkout. Alas, no luck. So I paid and lingered a few minutes before heading out. And there she came, at register 2. I pushed my cart out to the sidewalk and paused there nonchalantly until I knew she was coming through the doors. Being in my work duds I was feeling a little alpha-ish, so I timed it and turned to face her directly as she walked by. We made brief eye contact. Not gorgeous, but exotic attractive. When she passed, I watched her for a moment and then headed to my car, remaining aware of where she was headed. And then I realized how absurd it all was, put my goods in my trunk and took off. For most of the drive home, I thought about how I might have seduced her -- not the payoff part, but the process: Ask her if she'd like a ride. Persuade her to leave her car and we'd get it later. Convince her that I was just a decent Mormon guy in a mood and that she was perfect for the mood. Take her to Nordstrom or Trolley Square or a boutique at Gateway and tell her I'd buy anything she wanted to wear to dinner, and after dinner. Take her to Cucina Toscana or Fleming's or, better yet, somewhere attached to a nice hotel...Bambara or Grand America maybe? Park City would be too much of a schlep, as would Sugarhouse or Holladay, for that matter. Keep it downtown and keep it efficient.

And then I thought about my wife and was ashamed, and then about my precious little children, and how confused and sad they'd be when daddy disappeared from their lives, "All because of...huh?! More important than US?!?!"

I'll continue to update this lustlog (or lustlist?) for the remainder of their vacation. Maybe I'll send them the link someday so they know the full story. I wish blogger had a "download blog as PDF" option, and I'd archive this somewhere in a granite cave up Little Cottonwood Canyon. So let it be written.

###

Next day.

In the wake of my spectacular failure of fidelity yesterday, I tried to avoid any and all reportable incidents today. I'm proud to report that, aside from looking twice--and for a nearly immeasurable miniscule fraction of a second--on separate occasions at the profile of one of the cuter administrative assistants in our company as she walked past my office, I have nothing to report. Ok I did also notice briefly the strong, Nordic jawline of the driver of an oncoming car as I turned through the intersection at the base of an onramp. But other than that, nada. Not even bad thoughts that lingered longer than the time it took me to exorcise them, generally in the millisecond range.

And it was e-x-h-a-u-s-t-i-n-g.

I physically jerked my head in the other direction if I knew that someone gazeworthy was encroaching into my field of vision.

Whenever I heard the tick-tack of heels coming down the corridor outside my office, I focused with maniacal intensity on my monitor or a document on my desk, like a fresh BYU RM burning a laser scorch mark on the bridge of the nose of his date whose blouse buttons have buckled slightly open at such an angle so as to reveal a glimpse of her bra.

I knew that the Lime Ricki and ModBod billboards were there (the latter featuring the wistful Swedish-type with her perfectly proportioned c-cups emphasizing the tailored fit of her green ModBod tee... Curses! My first indulged bad thought of the day!!) but I kept my hands at 9 and 3, and my eyes at 12.

I saw the slender, cute-ish librarian (the girl whose odd nose is probably the only reason why she's a librarian and not out making bank in sales, or making babies with some rich guy; she should consider rhinoplasty, but who's going to tell her?) in my peripheral at the circulation desk, and hurtled myself into charming conversation with the fifty-something lady who was helping me check out a few audiobooks.

I sorted through the mail tonight and, without seeing more than the address label and logo protruding from beneath the Val-u-Pak envelope, ensconced the Athleta catalog at the bottom of the pile of stuff for my wife to review when she gets home.

Oh wait, it was Title Nine.

Excruciating. But I sure feel better than I did this time last night.

I just wrote my wife this:

[Her neighbor, friend and upline (hereinafter, "Upline")] and I picked raspberries tonight (which I gave to [some friends in the ward]) while [Upline's kids, also two of #2's closest friends] complained about the mosquitos, and she mentioned how miserable [my wife's younger sister, who just had her second child and is on the verge of divorce] is, that [Upline] saw [sister] the other day at [nearby grocery store], asked how she was, and [sister] broke down into sobs. I told her that I started "admonishing/warning/etc." [sister] a dozen years ago, vicariously through you, that, despite being a cool, mellow, smart, beautiful, kind, interesting woman, her height [6'1"-ish] eliminated 90% of male prospects but could be a tremendous asset IF it were not for her weight [30-40lbs on the husky side], which eliminated 98% of the remaining 10%, and she'd end up dating...well, you know the rest of the story. Anyway, so that was much of the conversation (that, and [some mutual friends in the ward who are in the midst of a tragedy], and the life of [husbands of avid MLMing women], and how so many of [Upline]'s friends who have divorced and remarried have said they should have stuck out the first one since you invariably just "exchange one set of problems and incompatibilities for another," and [Upline's son], and how amazing you are, and [an MLM product], and [Upline]'s niece's dog that got bitten by a rattlesnake in the hills above Draper and survived) and I wondered whether you've had "that talk" [about how a few extra pounds at certain ages, especially for Mormon girls wanting to marry Mormon boys, can dramatically alter the trajectory of the rest of ever -- a theory I've long held (don't blame the messenger), but was reminded of recently when hearing the findings in Freakonomics that their research of some major dating sites showed that women whose photos or descriptions showed even above-average weight had like an 80% less chance of being inquired after than women of substantially similar attributes but "average" weight or less; indeed, they said that above-average weight is "poison" for a woman on dating sites (again, don't blame the messengers)] with [my wife's other, younger sister, who's about 6' and 20-30lbs overweight, in her mid-20s, living in SLC, cool, cute enough, no prospects] yet [as I suggested she do during a safe, quiet moment while they're all vacationing together]. Also, FWIW - In case you are wondering or ever wondered, I'm not attracted to [Upline], for whatever reason. I know you may understandably have the impression that I'm attracted to any female between 18 & 45 who is not morbidly obese, showers occasionally and has most of her teeth, but I'm not. Not sure why I thought to mention that to you -- it's not out of defensiveness; it's true.

###

Next day.

Except for two joggers for two seconds at about 200 yards, and the face (4x, about 5 seconds each, while at lunch at Red Iguana) of a Latina who bore a slight resemblance to Aishwarya Rai, I didn't look at anyone or anything today I wasn't supposed to look at. The fleshy FHM cover that I know is hanging inside the door at Caputo's where I picked up a few things today for a porcini gnocchi dinner I made for my sister and her kids tonight? It was nothing more than a peachy blur as I walked by, both coming and going. The 7 women in above-knee skirts who walked past my office while I was talking with my boss (his back to the 3/4-wall window that separates my office from the corridor) this afternoon? I was focused so intently and intensely on the bridge of his nose, I couldn't even tell you who they were.

So I'd call it a moderate success, no easier than yesterday's effort, if a tad less athletic and whiplashy.

10 minutes later: Dangit, before shutting down and heading to bed I clicked on a video I'd never seen to a J-Lo song I really like; a remix of it is on my biking playlist. Watched the whole thing. You know me & Latinas. Ay...

###

Next day.

Damn, as I was heading out the front door to lunch with my boss and some guests, in walked his son's ex-girlfriend (who still works at our company) and her friend, the little Aztec goddess. Seeing the two of them together brought to my mind the same kind of thought that men-not-a-few would have as well, thoughts which I entertained for about 3 seconds -- long enough to spur my pulse a bit, but not long enough to do affect my circulation in any other way. Other than that, I was darned near perfect. Well, except for intentionally looking at the superb calves of a woman with whom I associate in a church-related capacity (no, I don't home teach her). But looking very quickly. Five or six times. And noticing the pleasant and curvaceous profile of her full C-ish cup right breast as I walked a pace or two behind her, a few feet to her right. AAAAARRRGGH! She was wearing a thin cotton, form-fitting, purple t-shirt dress that barely reached her knees! Purple looks ghastly on everyone except with her jet-black hair (she's half Chinese), it looked great! She's gorgeous! How was I realistically expected NOT to look?!?

As I stewed over my relapse this evening, I thought, "I'm really not a happy guy. [as you might have noticed] I think I used to be happy. Let's see, what's changed... I don't think it's fatherhood that's changed me. I don't think it's having a full-time career and the attendant stress and pressure that's changed me. I don't think it's even marriage in and of itself that's changed me. I think that my vim and vigor used to be so tied up in women --chasing them, wooing them, etc.-- that now I either indulge those tendencies to an 'inappropriate' extent and then suffer calamitous guilt as a result, or snuff out my spark by fighting to resist them. Neither one is a winner. And my frequent and strong, negative feelings toward my wife may not be so much about her as a person and how she and I jibe (or don't), but just about what she represents. Poor thing. Not fair to her. She's a phenomenal woman who just got hooked up with the wrong guy."

###

Next day.

M'd--for no reason in particular, simply because I could, and not seeing any compelling, incremental benefit in not doing so--this morning and again tonight, both times "with my wife," and one time playing with something lacy of my wife's plus this, which was interesting. En route to work the eyes camped out for a few on a woman who was working in jeans and a tight pink tee on the roof of Olive Garden, and for as long as they could without me careening off the road (because she was well worth the sin and the failure) at a ripped, tan, blonde jogger who paused to stretch at the intersection while the light was red. Today as I walked with my boss and some colleagues back through the Grand America lobby toward the elevator, a pair of legs in heels and a short skirt (as short as it could get without becoming distasteful or unprofessional) strutted by with such grandeur that I'm pretty sure I went harelip and drooly on whatever I was saying to my boss at the time. Granted, anyone would have been sexier than all the governors who were lurking around, but she would have turned heads in any crowd. On my bike ride this evening, my eyes paused on two young and slender mothers pushing their kids in strollers on a walk. As I neared home (and was trying to organize my thoughts in preparation for this post...more on that in a minute), I passed an Asian early-twentysomething (although she could have been 48, since Asian women tend to look 87+ years their junior) who stood at a curb waiting for a chance to jaywalk. I was going about 20 and had only the streetlight working for me, but her striking face struck me with such force that a nearly panicked with thoughts of, "Wait, I have to go say something!" 200 yards later, I turned around in the street and headed back. After a few pedals, I saw she was crossing the street, which broke the spell just long enough for reality to slip back in, and I shook my head, laughed in resignation, and turned back toward home.

One downside of the daily Lustlog is that unless I want to carry around a notepad or dictaphone (OK, I guess I could text myself), part of my brain is constantly occupied by logging and remembering the day's growing list of infractions until I download here at night, which means that I have to keep the thoughts fresh and organized, reliving and reprioritizing them dozens of times throughout the day. Seems counterproductive. Maybe I'll modify my approach.

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Next day, Saturday.

With the exception of lunch at my parents' house, I spent the day here working through my long list of to-dos in the home and yard. The day ended with a bike ride, along a route that regular readers will recognize. I issued myself a personal challenge as I clicked into my pedals, which was to not look at any woman, period, during the ride. So the basic approach was once I could discern from a distance that the person on the road/path ahead of me (whether coming toward me or going in the same direction) was female, I'd drop my head down and stare at the asphalt 5-10 feet directly in front of my wheel. (at one point past bridal veil I realized that i was singing 'choose the right' to myself) Then when she entered my peripheral view, I'd turn my head in the opposite direction and look at whatever else was whizzing by. No joke, there were a lot of people out on the route evening so this probably happened 70, maybe 100 times during my ride, and generally worked well, although it became a bit dicey in the spots where the roots push up the asphalt because I didn't have enough time to avoid those. The biggest test of my willpower came, perhaps appropriately, about a quarter mile from my turnaround point, when I rounded a blind bend and VOILA! three or four tan blondes in short shorts and coordinated tanks/jogbras were jogging side by side, hogging up the whole path, about 20 yards in front of me. So I had to brake hard to about 5 mph and drone "on your left...on your left...on your left" as I putted past them, eyes looking almost straight down at my pedals. It reminded fondly me of walking around on my mission. But anyway, I made it. I looked at one late-40ish woman once in the face as she passed me because I had to tell her that her kids were riding in the wrong lane. But other than her, there were no exceptions -- whether solo or ensemble, granny or toddler, gruesomely obese or sveltishly nubile, rollerblades or wheelchair, NO WOMAN escaped Operation Askance. I'd love to say that as I pulled into the driveway, I felt a lift of affirmation, a "well done, thou good and faithful servant" pat on the back. The truth is that it was 21 miserable miles. But I did feel, pathetically enough, somewhat proud of myself for having come, not seen, and conquered. In sum, if you don't count my having perused my dad's Sierra Club magazine (it was just sitting right there on their table, beckoning. I mean, check out this cover -- how could I NOT look!??) or having watched the entirety of the asinine Friends With Benefits trailer (while looking for some ideas for a show with a buddy) when I knew 4 seconds into it that it wasn't a good use of my time, today was probably as perfectly lustless a day as it's gonna get, until my insurance approves that castration procedure.

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Next day, Sunday.

Dangit! It has been a virtually perfect day until 3 minutes ago when I clicked on an intriguingly-titled article about Jimmer's showing at a Tahoe celebrity golf event, and found myself staring...and staring...and staring at the brunette on the left. Crud.
BTW I saw this vid for the first time and thought it was well done. I can certainly relate to much of what it portrays. That was an excellent talk by Holland -- I was there when he gave it. Just clicked over to this one, "Moments that matter most." I'm hypersensitive to weepy, overtly-manipulative church materials (Exhibit A: The Death Vignette in Together Forever, which we used to view as the Nuclear Option in the field...boy, if we thought we could get a family to sit down and watch that thing, they were as good as in the font; one famous musician said something like, "Not all tears attest to equally deep wells of spirituality"), but wow, I really like it!

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Next day, Monday.

Wow, just when I thought it couldn't get any more near-perfecter... Today at work I walked out of the restroom and directly in front of me was a slender, 5'9" colleague (not a guy) in culottes (or something like them) and platform clogs. The double whammy of my be-ye-therefore efforts and my knowledge that she's a smoker (in addition to being hot) made it a cinch to turn immediately toward my office without further ado. Four yards later, as I rounded the corner a few paces from my office, I found the corridor vacant except for the little Aztec goddess, who was prancing in the other direction, 30 feet ahead of me. I dropped my eyes to the floor and bee-lined it into my office, where I laughed aloud that the ridiculousness of it all -- the ridiculousness that I am clearly obsessed, and that this might matter to anyone or anything out there in the cosmos for any reason beyond how it makes me feel about my chosen mate. I think I get an exemption for looking on my way home at the well-defined, partially-covered calf that was serving as the kickstand for its owner's Ninja at a stoplight. It was a strong, androgynous enough calf that I didn't realize until looking up and seeing the rider that I realized it was indeed a woman's. So that hardly counts. And I topped off the evening with a really nice conversation with my wife, who had been off the grid for several days. It was good to talk with her.

Whaddaya know -- though strategic strolling and amazing self-discipline, I was able to complete this entire post without once looking at the brunette.

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Next day, Tuesday.

I was a page right out of the Marriage Manual today. OK so I averted about half a second too slowly from the gal in the Daisy Dukes getting out of her Honda Pilot in our parking lot. But I made up for it by:

a) while giving some guests a tour of our facility and walking through a door and almost stumbling over the bosom buddies (my boss's son's ex-girlfriend and the little Aztec goddess) just saying, "Greetings, ladies," and moving right ahead; and,

b) on my bike ride this evening, not looking at even ONE woman (including the taut one in the short runners, jogging her terrier, who appeared suddenly as I rounded a corner) but instead looking at the brilliant orange sunset burning in the post-monsoon sky over the Oquirrhs. At about the 4.2 mile mark I thanked God in my heart for the beautiful panorama. Who knows? Maybe the thought was received somewhere out there.

This afternoon I spoke with #3 -- it's his birthday and I miss the little guy.

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Next day, Wednesday.

Today was an unqualified triumph of überpiety. Nothing to mention from work. On my bike ride this evening, I passed 24 walking/biking/jogging women, at whom I looked no longer than was necessary to recognize them as females, and to recognize that three of them really deserved longer looks, but I denied them, even--brace yourselves--without reliance on the distraction of a sunset, even though a pleasant-enough one was there to be relied upon if needed. Two girls in an old Montero cat-called me, which was an extra bonus. I turned to look, but I think it was more to confirm that I could swing across the lane to make a left turn than to see whether the girls were of legal age. I think.

Tonight I spoke with my wife and told her I loved her. I felt like it. I think.

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Next day, and last day, Thursday.

I might as well have been a medieval ascetic today. It was awesome. I "saw" women (including my boss's son's ex-girlfriend in a delightful sun dress) but "looked" at none. Yea, verily, I returned with honor.

Interestingly, I exchanged brief, cordial words with Florence/Isabella/Debbie/Helena, and realized that as I've gotten to know her a little better (within the context of our callings), learn about her kids, family, etc., the exponentially less I've been inclined to think of her sexually. Perhaps this corresponds to what they say about porn (especially the more sophisticated, quasi-interactive forms of it that are supposedly emerging) being narcissism and egotism, in that the object of lust is a passive extension of the objectifier, completely subject to his will. But once you begin to know and understand the woman, the less inclined you are to objectify her.

The self-imposed discipline of these last several, experimental days have been exhausting, and my eye muscles are sore from looking at the ground so frequently and intensely. I'm going to see my wife and kids tomorrow, and am really looking forward to it.

Ginger Grant is pregnant

I noted recently that Tina Louise-alike is with child. When she was within our view and the tummy was obvious, I commented quietly to a guy with whom I work/serve closely in my calling, to which he responded (with no intended irony, double entendre, etc.) that he was "really happy for them. After all, they've been trying so hard for so long." Which of course could mean IVF therapy. Or it to could mean what it would to 99.98% of the Earth's male population and what I immediately envisioned, i.e., working Ginger so hard, for so long.

In related news, boot gal is also pregnant. My understanding is that she's having a difficult go of it; she's not around much. Did I ever mention that she married a guy 10+ years her junior and right off of his mission?

Kate

A few days ago, I was surprised to see on the cover of a publication that arrived in my mailbox the face of a woman who I knew when I was in grad school. She was in her mid '20s at the time, confident and even a bit sassy (but not sassiness that served as a cover for lack of confidence), with a slightly tomboyish, even defiant demeanor and striking "classic" good looks: wide-set almond eyes (and a slightly lazy lefty, which can be a tad sexy a la Paris Hilton & Heidi Klum), strong jaw, high cheekbones, narrow nose, great smile, etc., sort of a Shana Zadrick look, with maybe 60% of the glam factor and without the wind-tunnel eyebrows. Her usual attire was a spaghetti strap top, jean shorts and sandals, she was generally slender but just slightly on the soft side (in an alluring kind of way) and I was mildly attracted to her. She had a little thing going on with my roommate, but, to make a long story short, had I pursued her, especially with conviction, it seems more likely than not that something romantic would have resulted.

Anyway, this publication made it clear that she'd reached the pinnacle of the profession for which we (she, my roommate, I) were preparing ourselves at the time. I looked her up online. Unlike those "facebook disillusionments" I've mentioned, I found Kate still as lovely and confident as ever. It made me generally nostalgic for...for that time of opportunity. It made me think through the diverging paths that our careers took. And it made me wonder, oddly, how I would be feeling right now had she and I become involved.

Incidentally, the last time I saw Kate was one week before I met my wife.

The Rack

A dozen or steps into the Nordstrom Rack this afternoon to return some sandals that were too small for #4, I started noticing calves, everywhere. There are always calves at the Rack. But it's high summer and the ladies are fighting the heat, so today there were more than usual. I instinctively twitched toward my phone to snap a candid or two, then realized that I'd left it in the car. Then, with some satisfaction, remembered that I'd left it there because of a microdecision driven by my knowledge that there are always calves in the Rack, and that I'd best intentionally deny myself the ability to "memorialize" any of them, as I've come to call that sick click of the shutter. And, newly-empowered and blinders on, I continued on my way toward women's shoes. (My wife has trouble finding shoes, so I always do a fly-by. Besides, I enjoy browsing for shoes for her. Which shouldn't surprise you. I read somewhere that one of those "jobs that every man should have once" is salesperson of high-end women's shoes.)

I was looking for some brown, wedge-heeled boots (which she wants and which would probably be a good deal in the opposite of their season) and some just-so sandals like my wife would wear, when, in my peripheral vision, I saw Them. They were wedged into some faux snakeskin stilettos, culminating in peek-a-boo painted toenails. And They were fantastic. They were standing right next to me. I couldn't turn and look straight at them, or their 5'11"-ish owner would see me. So I moved away. Probably, having already succumbed, not to flee, but to get a less obvious view. They moved the other way, disappearing down another aisle, which was good. Phew.

Then They reappeared in some black stilettos. I felt the pull of my dormant Pleasantry Policy tugging away and I felt like I had to say at least something like, "Those are very flattering." Or something. Preferably something uncreepy.

I still hadn't looked at her, more than to know that she was tall and blondish. But now I did. Her behind and torso were average. And her face suggested that she'd been pretty--maybe cheerleader cute, not Vogue beautiful--in her day, which was long past. But They, her calves, were fantastic.

Then I remembered that I'd just seen two identical pairs of black Via Spiga stiletto ankle boots, marked down from $260 to $37.50. I'd wanted achingly to buy them for my wife, but she refuses to wear any heel that doesn't make a clunking noise. (In fact, I'd bought her --OK, me-- virtually the exact same Via Spiga in a knee-high version a few Christmases ago, and had to hide them in a Bosch bread machine box so that when she took off the wrapper she wouldn't immediately glower and throw the box onto the For-The-Fireplace pile. They gathered dust in her closet for about six months before I gave up hope and put them on ebay.) But since this woman apparently wore the same size as my wife, I saw my opportunity. I went and grabbed both pairs.

Me: (handing her one of the boxes) These are a great deal. I'm getting a pair for my wife and thought you might like the other one.

Her: (looking at me, puzzled, then at the boots, then at the price tag, then, smiling big, back at me) Wow! These are beautiful. Thank you!

Me: I know how hard it is to find great stuff in this size. Enjoy!

Her: I will! Thanks! (then turned to her friend to chatter about something as I walked away)

I resumed my search for sandals. She emerged from one of the aisles with the boots on, then disappeared. She returned again, this time in heels, a moment later, as my eyes fell on some Juicy Couture heels. I grabbed them.

Me: (gesturing toward the pair she had on) Those are flattering. Better than the rattlesnake ones.

Her: Yeah, I think I like them more. Me: (handing her the Juicies) Maybe these would work.

Her: Ooooh... these look fun. I just need to be able to dance in them.

Me: Well, they have a little thicker heel, that might help.

Her: Whenever my friend takes me to Vegas, we always go out dancing. But for some reason, my foot has grown a whole size since we went last year, so I need some new shoes. Can you believe it, a whole size? And I didn't even have a baby or anything!

Me: Your foot grew a whole size? What, are you 18 or something?

Her: (smiling) Oh, that's very sweet. I'm [one year older than my wife, which shocked me]!

Me: Well, enjoy the boots and have fun in Vegas. Her: Definitely!

My wife has the kids at her grandparents' place in the Midwest. They've been there for about a week and will be there for most of the rest of the month. I called her on the way home from work. We'd spoken earlier in the afternoon without connecting -- an empty, arid call. So this evening I felt a waxing chasm and needed to get grounded. Ring, ring.

Me: Hi. Here I am. Again.

Her: (distractedly) Hi. What's up?

Me: I just wanted to chat. (#4 cries in the background on her end of the line) It sounds like this might not be a great time.

Her: I'm trying to feed [#4] with one hand and hold the phone with the other. Always a fun challenge. Always juggling.

Me: Maybe we can talk later.

Her: (sarcastically and exhaustedly) Yeah, I'll call you when I have all kinds of free time and not four kids pulling me in four directions.

Me: Right, OK, bye. Her: Bye.

So, after making a couple of visits in our ward this evening, I wrote her an email that included the following:

I called you again on the way home tonight tonight because, between our tense/frustrated last few calls [for example, we had a big argument a couple of days ago about a house she wanted me to go see, which was listed for almost exactly $150,000,000 more than what we'd discussed as being our comfort zone] and the noteworthy calves on the otherwise-not-unusually-fit-or-attractive woman (she's just 1 year older than you and looks 10+ years older...long story) who was shopping for shoes (heels) next to me @ the Rack this afternoon, I was feeling a bit disconnected and just wanted to chat. Not necessarily about anything in particular. Although today was a bit of a frustrating day at work. No biggie. . . . I stopped by [our former bishop's house] tonight. I talked about [plans for an upcoming event]. I stopped by [a family who has experienced a cataclysmic tragedy recently]. I spoke with [the mother] for a little while and shared a few thoughts with her. I think she appreciated it. Then I left and on the way home felt like a scuzz for having "noticed" Rack woman's legs earlier today within the context of The Big Picture. So I thought I'd write you. Here I am. Writing. . . .

After hit send, I went to YouTube to turn on some music while I washed the dishes. I saw that a new song by Beyoncé, "Best thing I never had," was trending. I like some of her music--doesn't hurt of course that she's easy on the eyes--so I clicked on the icon, a picture of her in a wedding veil. What I got was Ms. Knowles (or is it Mrs.-Z?) in a white merry widow. I figured that scene would be brief (get it, brief?) so I kept watching. Then I realized it wouldn't be brief, and really kept watching. Watching that healthy body and radiant face. Watching to see if the lace was transparent or if it had been opaqued for the shoot. (Opaqued.) Paying just enough attention to the music to know that it was uninteresting and enough to the lyrics to know that they were insipid.

After the jubilant denouement of that video, I needed to purge my ears and clicked over for a playlist of one of my favorite bands, Everything but the Girl. (Everybody knows their mega hit, Missing; nobody knows that they have an astonishingly rich discography dating back to the early '80s, and it's all great stuff.) The first track in the playlist, Single, had the static visual shown here -- surprisingly inconsistent with EBTG's benignly androgynous, almost asexual persona. But definitely leggy, blindsiding me like a drop from a Predator drone. I managed to tear myself away from a thorough study of the image (Is she in a South Beach-style home, or a private nook at an upscale retro restaurant? Is that a bathrobe next to her or a tidy-up towel? Is this before or after?) and went to wash wash the dishes.

When the dishes were done, I came back and found a reply from my wife, which opened as follows:

Hi Honey, I'm not wrinkled that you notice other women's legs. You are still a great man to me, and I love you for many things.

Argh. Surely it would have been better for her if I'd been the best thing she never had.

BTW, I bought the boots. A man's gotta dream.