Chapter 1

As my sixteenth birthday approached, I was besieged by uncontrollable desires brought on by puberty. Urges I didn’t understand. It was a traumatic time for a young girl like me, especially since it was in the 1950s when sex was a taboo subject and there was no Sex Ed taught in school and no internet. The physical changes to my body were visible, but puberty brought other changes that had no outward signs. Hormones produced sexual urges and thoughts that were confusing to an innocent and clueless girl like me. Frustrating. Frightening. Even enjoyable in ways not understood. And those hormonal changes were more traumatic for me than the typical girl because I was saddled with hypersexuality, today’s medical term for obsessive-compulsive disorder or addiction to sex. In the 1950s, it was simply called nymphomania. After all this time, I can still vividly recall those rollercoaster years of heart-wrenching torment and heart-warming thrills as if it was only yesterday.

Where shall I begin?

I guess June 5, 1956, is as good a place to start as any. My family had recently purchased our first television set, a massive wooden cabinet with a small black and white tube screen in the middle. That night Elvis Presley was a guest on the Milton Berle Show. I had listened to Elvis on the radio and loved his voice, and the songs got me bopping to the beat, but up until then I had never seen him. And now, there he was on the little screen in my own living room three feet from my eyes as I lay on my belly too close to the TV. My chin was propped up in my hands and my feet raised behind me, crossed at the ankles.

I knew Elvis would be old. Not ancient like my father, but he was a grown-up. All the singers were. I mean, gosh, he was twenty-one. That’s old to a fifteen-year-old girl. But my eyes were locked on him. The way he moved gave me shivers. And when he sang “Hound Dog,” the way he shook his body gave me butterflies in my belly, especially at the end of the song when he extended it with a lot of slow-motion bumps and grinds. I knew nothing about sex back then, but I knew boys and girls were different and my eyes were fixated on his hips and the area humping below his waist. I could hardly breathe. And those butterflies in my tummy made my skin tingle and made me squeeze my thighs together. I think I was even rocking, driving my pubes into the carpet I was lying on. Not that I realized it. Later that night when I took off my panties, I thought I had an accident and had peed a little in them.

Many years have passed since that momentous day. Of course, I have a lot more knowledge now than back then, but I can recall that naïve fifteen-year-old girl in 1956. My memories are swamped with her confusion, her curiosity, and her budding passion.

The next day I took all the birthday money my grandmother had given me, along with money I had earned doing chores, and rushed to the nearest record store where I bought all of Elvis’s 45s. When I got home, I stacked the little records onto my record player’s spindle and sat cross-legged on my bed listening to them. When “Hound Dog” played, I jumped off the bed and mimicked Elvis’s hip-shaking bumps and grinds I had seen him do on television. At the time I had never even danced so, thinking back on it, I probably looked like a spastic stripper. But without even knowing it, it was the first time I used my pelvis in a fucking motion.

A few days later, I returned to the record store to buy a poster of Elvis. He was wearing a white suit with the collar turned up in the back and a guitar slung over one shoulder, legs spread and knees bent, and his hips thrust forward with his heels off the floor. His black hair dangled in his eyes. Eyes that were ice blue which surprised me since the television was black and white. I hung the poster on the wall at the foot of my bed so that I could gaze at it while lying on my pillows. I would stare at those ice-blue eyes for hours. I had to take down the poster of James Dean to hang the Elvis one, but found another wall for the other sexy man.

The same day I hung the Elvis poster, my mother came into my bedroom. She looked at the clothing strewn on the floor and draped over the back of a chair.

“Julie, what did I tell you about keeping your room clean?” she said with the tone reserved for a question that didn’t expect a reply. “Get this mess cleaned up right away.”

I had been lying on my bed gazing at Elvis so I swung my legs over the side and stood. My mother turned to leave when she spotted the James Dean poster. “Why’d you move—?” she began but stopped when her eyes darted to where it had been on the wall at the foot of my bed.

“Julie Marino, take that sinful trash down!”

“But, Mommy, I like it.”

“He’s the devil. I heard what he did on the Milton Berle show. If I hadn’t been in the toilet I would have turned that damn TV off. If that’s what they’re going to show on TV we don’t need one.”

“I love his music. He’s hip.”

“He’s the devil. The way he moved was sinful. Everyone says so.”

That stunned me. He was singing and moving to the music. Why was that sinful?

“But, Mommy, I paid for it with my own money.”

“I don’t care! Take it down right now!”

My father stuck his head into my bedroom. “What’s all the yelling about?”

My mother’s hand was actually shaking as she pointed to the Elvis poster. “Look what she hung on the wall.”

My father came all the way into the bedroom and looked at the poster. “So what? All the girls like him.”

“He’s the devil!” my mother shouted.

“Look, he’s no Frank Sinatra, but that’s the kind of music the kids like today. I think it’s loud, but my parents didn’t like Sinatra when I was young.”

“I want it down!”

I had never seen my mother so mad. Her face was red and the veins on the sides of her temples were bulging. She even had her fists clenched.

“Rose, honey, let’s talk about it.”