So many thoughts as I move into thinking about all the things I couldn’t finish saying. All the questions I couldn't ask or didn’t know how. I wanted to feel excited and electrified when I told stories. The ability to really know all the implications of what I was saying in my story didn’t always take hold. I was a woman without reins steeped in excitement tempered by fear. I said I slept with a Porn Star. In the 70’s free love was everywhere. Is that an excuse? What did that mean? The unknown pron star introduced himself as Herb Striker. I know he and I drank and danced and as we went back to his friend's house I was cornered into sleeping with him, there was nowhere else except the floor. I found no way to say “NO”! He told my girlfriend and her long time friend with benefits. “He likes his tomatoes ripe.” He took me off to his bedroom.
The house rested on the side of a mountain and was an old converted apple factory into a home and movie stage. After a quick bit of sexuality or whatever it might be called, he got out of bed and showed me a naked photo of himself in a magazine. He was one of the first men to be in Playboy naked. Full frontal. This was unheard of at the time. It was alright to be naked in Playboy if you were a woman. He wanted me to be impressed when he confessed he was the Porno star Harry Reems and he made the movie Devil and Miss Jones and it was filmed there where we slept. I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep and get the night over. His ego was bruised for sure. I had never seen the movie. I would never watch hard porn before or after. Somewhere the good girl had its hold on me in my confusion. He told his friend at Breakfast when asked if we had fun, he said; “He didn’t cut the mustard.” An archaic phrase is what he said. He didn’t cut anything with or for me! No one could have at that point in my life.
My trauma as a young woman was steeped and tattooed on my spirit. I left any thought of Harry Reems mostly behind. I say mostly in my moments of boredom I would bring him to mind. I then remembered my first real thrill instead and an impression fixed on lust I also didn’t understand or pursue. A boy from high school after I came home from England and I were in the back seat of his car kissing, necking in a wild embrace. As he held me my whole body shook inside and I pushed him on the floor of his old late model car. A vivid experience where I felt or thought God had struck me with a fire,I could not relax into. How could I move from the tales of the Good girl with a religious upbringing so laced in fear into free love and free feeling sex. Here I was with a porn star who was naked in Playboy magazine. All I could think about was Herb/Harry was a movie star and a high school friend long after school ended gave me an unforgettable thrill. That alone was enough to settle my thoughts. Thoughts about love existing. How could I have been so ignorant/stupid before. So numb. Lost in searching for the warmth of being held and kissed. Confusion won over making sense in what I was doing, what I had participated in.
