Chapter 50: Ancient Memories

April 29, 2002, Chicago, Illinois

🎤 Steve

“That was fast!” I said when I answered Becky’s call as I was walking from the dojo to Luisa’s apartment.

“Words I never once uttered with you!” she teased. “Can you be here Thursday evening?”

“Yes. Thursday, 7:00pm at Anthony’s Place in Newport. He should park behind the restaurant and walk up the short alley. Someone will meet him by the side door, and he’ll be able to bypass the lobby.”

“Serious cloak-and-dagger!”

“I don’t want anyone to see us together. And other than me owing you a favor, you forget this conversation happened. I called to arrange breakfast with you on Friday. You pick the place.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Probably with Joyce and Jake,” I said. “I can’t hide being in Cincinnati because I’m going to see my dad, which will be the cover story, along with checking on my investment in a new hotel and speakeasy in Newport.”

“Where do they live?”

“Colerain Township, maybe two miles off Colerain Avenue.”

“And we’re just north of Springdale. There’s a breakfast restaurant on 747, just north of I-275, on the east side of the road. You can’t miss it.”

“Sounds good. How early do you need to meet to make it to school on time?”

“5:30am. They open at 4:00am, so that’s not a problem. Is that time OK for you?”

“I’ll make it work,” I said.

“See you Friday morning.”

“Tell Missy that if her dad needs to change things, to go through her to you.”

“Got it!”

We said ‘goodbye’ and I closed my phone and put it back in my pocket. Friday was Jessica’s birthday, which meant I’d need to leave Ohio as soon as I finished breakfast with Becky, which made seeing anyone other than my dad and Joyce and her family difficult. I’d have lunch with my dad, then stop in briefly to see Deborah, Ben, and Krissy on my way to my meeting with Anthony and my dinner with Volstead. After dinner, I’d go back to Joyce’s house and spend some time with the family, then get to bed so I could be up early to have breakfast with Becky.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and called the restaurant to let them know when I’d be there, then called Joyce, and finally my dad, advising them of my plans, stopping a block from Luisa’s apartment building to finish the calls, then made my way to the correct building and pressed the call button next to 4-A.

“Yes?” a scratchy, distorted voice asked through an obviously poorly maintained intercom system.

“It’s Steve Adams,” I said.

The door buzzed, and I pulled it open, went in, and decided to take the stairs. I pulled open the door to the stairs, went up three flights, pulled open another door, then walked a short distance to 4-A. I knocked, and the door was immediately opened.

“Hi!” Luisa said.

“Hi!” I replied, walking into the studio apartment.

She shut the door behind me, and at her direction, I hung my windbreaker and hat in the small closet in the short foyer. The studio was neat and tastefully decorated, with a pair of screens dividing the space — one shielded the bed, and the other divided the kitchen and dinette table from a sofa in front of a TV. Soft jazz was playing from a small stereo next to the TV.

“Can I get you something to drink? I have diet pop.”

“How about ice water? I try to avoid aspartame and other artificial sweeteners because they can mess up my blood sugar levels.”

“Wait!” she protested. “How?”

“Sweet-tasting drinks, even if they have zero calories, can cause your body to produce insulin in anticipation of needing to control blood sugar levels. In most people, that won’t be a problem, but for someone like me who borders on constant hypoglycemia, it could drive my blood sugar levels down even further.”

“I never heard that. Usually, you hear about high blood sugar — diabetes.”

“In my case, my body does not do a good job of hormone regulation. Ice water would be fine.”

Luisa fixed me a glass of ice water and got a can of diet Coke from the fridge for herself. She was being polite, but I also detected nervousness. The drinks were also a way to delay, though I didn’t feel she’d changed her mind.

“How are classes going?” I asked to break the ice.

“Good. I mostly earn A’s, but I’ve had a few B’s.”

“Mind if I ask which classes?”

“You won’t be happy with me! Introduction to Philosophy and World Religions.”

“You’re a hard science major, right?”

“Yes. Biochemistry.”

“Then I won’t give you too much grief. If I remember right, you plan to earn at least a Master’s, right?”

“Yes. I have an internship this Summer at Abbott, which is where I hope to work.”

“When the time comes, I’ll introduce you to my friend Kurt Jaeger who is a senior research biochemist there.”

“Awesome! I knew you know lots of lawyers and doctors, but didn’t know you knew anyone like that.”

“May I ask what your parents do?”

“My dad is a regional manager for Walmart and my mom is a CPA.”

“Siblings?”

“Two younger brothers. I know you have a younger sister, is that all?”

“No, I have a younger brother as well.”

“What do your parents do?”

“My dad is a retired businessman, though he consults with Federated Department Stores in their collections department. My mom was my dad’s secretary and bookkeeper.”

Luisa nervously drank several sips of Coke from the can.

“Uhm,” she eventually said, “there was one thing we didn’t talk about.”

“What’s that?”

“Birth control.”

“And that’s as much on me as it is on you. I should have raised the topic yesterday when I asked about the STI test. I had a vasectomy about eleven years ago.”

“Does that, er, uhm, mean you don’t, er, ejaculate?” she asked, blushing slightly.

“No. I do, but there is no sperm in the ejaculate. May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t want to discuss birth control until you’re sure you’re going to need it, you should either go on the Pill or keep some condoms in your purse.”

“Me? Buy condoms?”

“Sure. Nobody at CVS or Osco is going to care. But my strong advice is to discuss it far enough in advance so the guy can have an STI test. Rubbers are good, but not perfect. And that’s true both for preventing STI transmission and preventing pregnancy. An experienced couple who use condoms properly and carefully will see a failure rate high enough that I’d consider it too risky. Birth control pills, so long as you take them exactly as directed are very, very low risk for failure, though they do nothing to prevent STIs. And speaking of that, do you have your test results?”

She retrieved an envelope from a small wicker basket next to the phone and handed it to me. It was clean, as I’d expected. I handed the paper back to her and then pulled out my wallet and showed her my card, which I made a mental note that I’d need to update before the end of May.

Luisa downed the rest of her Coke, went to the sink to rinse out the can, then put it into a small recycling container next to her trashcan. She moved back out of the kitchenette, but didn’t say anything, and I concluded she was waiting for me to make the first move. I actually wasn’t sure how to approach it because I’d had limited interactions with Luisa. The best option seemed to be simply taking the bull by the horns, so to speak.

“Are you ready to go to bed?” I asked.

Luisa nodded, walked over to the light switch, and flipped it off, leaving only the dim glow of a night light. She moved past me, and behind the screen, and I heard the rustling of sheets. I moved towards the bed, and in the dim light saw that she’d turned down the bed and was beginning to undress. As she shrugged off her blouse, I suddenly had an odd feeling about the situation. Something was definitely off.

“Luisa,” I said gently. “Are you doing this because you truly want to? Or because you feel you have to, for some reason?”

“You don’t want to?” she asked quietly.

“The real question is whether you want to. And I mean that deep down, you truly want to. I get the feeling that you feel compelled to do this somehow. You don’t have to do this.”

“I told you I wanted to,” she replied. “Nobody is forcing me. And I don’t want to be a tease.”

“First, remember what I said — nobody can irrevocably commit to sex. I won’t be upset. As for forcing you, I believe you might be forcing yourself.”

“Forcing myself?”

I nodded, “Yes. I sense that you feel you have to do this for some reason.”

“You don’t want to, do you?” she asked, her voice quivering with emotion.

That wasn’t true, at least in the way she meant it. My reluctance had to do with what I was sensing from her. The concern I had was that if I left without doing it, without her truly understanding why, it could crush her, which was something I absolutely wanted to avoid. I had a delicate balancing act to perform to try to get her to the right place when I wasn’t exactly sure where the right place was. What I needed to do was allay the fear she had just voiced.

“Luisa,” I said gently, “I promise that if at the end of our conversation you ask me to take you to bed, I will.”

“Didn’t you just say you couldn’t commit irrevocably?”

“I could change my mind, but I won’t, if that’s what you truly want. Let’s go sit on the couch and talk.”

I took her hand and led her to the couch where we sat next to each other, though with a bit of space between us.

“I want to ask a question,” I said, taking her hand, “and that is whether you feel you need to do this, want to do this, or have to do this, or some combination of those things.”

“I’m not sure I understand the nuance of what you’re asking.”

“By ‘need to’ I mean you have a burning desire to have sex, to the point where you feel it in the pit of your stomach and the desire is so great that other considerations don’t matter — what some people would call ‘unbridled lust’ or just being horny. It’s the physical question.

“By ‘want to’ I mean that you believe it’s the right thing to do, at this point in time, with me, and you desire to do it, but it’s not lust that’s driving you. Sure, the desire might be there, but it’s not an overpowering feeling. You’ve decided to do it because you’ve thought it through. It’s the mental question.

“By ‘have to’ I mean that something other than desire is compelling you to do it. It could be anything or anyone, including yourself. Feeling that you are compelled could be a result of wanting to or needing to, or a combination of both, or it could be something else that is driving you to do it, even though you don’t need to or necessarily want to. It’s a complex question involving emotions, desire, and thought process.”

Luisa was quiet for a moment before she responded.

“What you said before makes it seem as if you feel you have to do it. You know that if I want to, you will.”

“And that’s a free choice I’ve made, not a compulsion,” I said. “You’re a pretty girl and you’re friendly, kind, and intelligent. To be blunt, I enjoy deflowering virgins. It’s my kink, if you will. I really get off on teaching girls how to have great sex. I also enjoy variety, which is, as they say, the spice of life. For me, and please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s not a momentous or potentially life-changing decision.”

“But haven’t you said that virginity isn’t a thing of value the way most people see it?”

“It’s a complex concept, and each person has to evaluate it for themselves. You’ve heard Anala, Achara, and I all say that it’s a transition from one state to another. You’ve heard Natalie and Nicole both say that it was a ‘rite of passage’ or a ‘coming of age’ event, something I’ve said as well. Others have given other descriptions.

“My thinking on the topic is not the same as it was when I first had sex at age fourteen. For me, virginity was a thing I wanted to discard as quickly as I could. Not everyone feels that way. Even those who don’t view it as a thing don’t lightly move from one state to the other. But I’m no longer a virgin, so I don’t have to take into that into account for me.”

“But you do have to take it into account for me?” she asked.

“Only insofar as it matters to you. The first question you need to answer, and only for yourself, is which is more important to you right now — to be a virgin or to not be a virgin, or perhaps it doesn’t matter. Once you answer that, then from my perspective, it’s a question of compulsion.”

“Can I ask something about the physical desire?”

“Sure.”

“Is it strange I never felt that way about anyone? Not even boyfriends in High School?”

“May I ask an indelicate question?”

“Well,” Luisa said with a wan smile, “given what I thought we were going to do, I don’t see why not.”

“Do you masturbate?”

“I was raised Roman Catholic.”

“And you were told it was some kind of grave sin?”

“They called it ‘self-abuse’.”

I suppressed a groan.

“Masturbation is not ‘abusing yourself’! On the other hand, telling someone that it’s ‘self-abuse’ IS abusive! And, by the way, the alleged support for that prohibition is based on a very bad interpretation of the incident about Onan described in Genesis. He had a legal obligation to impregnate his brother’s widow to provide an heir for his deceased brother. Instead, he withdrew before he ejaculated, and ‘spilled his seed’.

“Let me be clear — he was NOT masturbating, he was having sex. What he knew, though, was that if there was no heir, he, Onan, would inherit all of his brother’s land and wealth. So he selfishly refused to procreate. The sin, if you will, was failing to fulfill his sacred legal obligation to father an heir for his brother. To draw a conclusion from that incident that all masturbation is wrong is, at best, proof-texting, though I’d call it pure eisegesis.”

“What’s that last word?”

“It means interpreting the text in such a way as to introduce one’s own presuppositions, agendas, or biases. It’s an interpretive error, and VERY common. The correct way to handle any text is exegesis, which is drawing out the text’s meaning in accordance with the author’s context and discoverable meaning. And that’s not an easy thing to do. Let’s just say Rome, Luther, Calvin, et al, got it very, very wrong. But that’s a theology discussion I suspect you aren’t interested in having.”

“You seem to know a lot about a lot of things.”

“And yet, I know very little, because I, like everyone, see through the glass dimly, and am subject to my own biases and my own agenda. If I sound authoritative, it’s usually because I’ve spent time working out my thinking on a topic to my reasonable satisfaction and I’m not aware of any errors or inconsistencies. They’re there, of course, and people point them out. When they do that, I reevaluate and come up with a new working theory. But we’re WAY off-topic.”

“Yes, but what you said is interesting because it’s not what I was taught.”

“I hope you’ve felt that way during Philosophy Club,” I said. “Because that’s the entire point.”

“Some, yes, but probably not enough. Right now you’re trying to make me think in ways I haven’t thought before. Can I ask something that’s going to sound naïve and probably is?”

“Yes.”

“Is it normal to not feel what you described, even when kissing or dancing?”

“First, I need to say that ‘normal’ is a horrible word. It implies anything different is ‘abnormal’. And with regard to anything to do with sex, the best words to use would be ‘typical’ or ‘common’, because those words don’t necessarily have a negative implication. In fact, ‘uncommon’ can mean rare, and rarity is often a good thing — a rare diamond; an uncommon beauty.

“Anyway, to answer your question, I seriously doubt there is anything wrong with you. In my experience, everyone experiences pleasure differently, and for some people, it takes some experimentation to figure out how to experience maximum pleasure. For women, one of the benefits of masturbation is that you can spend time figuring out exactly how your body reacts and responds. And then, you can communicate that to the guy you’re with.

“To set your mind at ease, I’ve been with girls who had difficulty achieving orgasm, but we experimented and discussed it and figured it out. Now, I will admit that there are women who cannot have orgasms, or only have them with extreme difficulty, but in my experience, that is atypical. Almost always it’s down to the guy failing to do what’s necessary or her failure to communicate what she needs.”

“Has any girl ever been disappointed?”

“I suppose that depends on what you mean. Everyone reacts to sex in their own unique way. I’ve had several experiences that were disappointing for me or for the girl.”

“She wasn’t any good?” Luisa asked.

I smiled, “You’ll discover, at some point, that sex is actually pretty simple and straightforward. All it takes is a bit of communication and a bit of enthusiasm, and the rest works itself out. For me, the disappointment was because I felt used. That was a long time ago, and while I’ve had some regrets, I haven’t been disappointed otherwise.

“For the girls, one girl’s experience might be particularly instructive. She basically built up what was going to happen in her mind and it didn’t live up to her expectations. We compared it to the previews making a movie look great, only to be disappointed when you actually saw it. That would be my concern here.”

“You couldn’t make her feel good?”

“I did, but her expectations were that it would be momentous, and it wasn’t. She enjoyed the encounter, but it didn’t live up to her expectations.”

“Is that what has you worried about me?”

“No. Nothing you’ve said has given me that impression.”

“So, what impression do you have?” Luisa asked.

“Remember, it’s an impression only, but it feels to me like you just want to get it over with and if we do it, you’ll just be going through the motions. In fact, contrary to the girl I mentioned, you don’t expect it to be momentous, you expect it to be mundane.”

“And that bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Remember what I said about everyone being unique? Your reasons are yours, and in the end, what matters is the answer to what I called the first question.”

“But you’d be disappointed, wouldn’t you?”

“Good sex can take many forms,” I said, “but going through the motions is not my idea of how to have good sex.”

“Don’t guys always get off?”

“Generally, but to me, sex is more than just getting off. Have you talked about sex with any of the girls at all?”

“No. I didn’t feel right doing that.”

“My number one reason for having sex, and the thing that gives me the most satisfaction, is providing my partner with the maximum possible pleasure. I get off by making sure the girl gets off. Sure, I have an orgasm, but that’s only part of it. What’s fulfilling is a thoroughly sated partner who’s had multiple orgasms. There’s no way to say this without being insensitive, but if you’re passive and just lie there while I screw you, I won’t enjoy it.”