I got my first sex education (little did I know) from my father's tales of wartime England. "Another night I was on guard duty down at this motor pool on the outskirts of Swindon. About six o'clock at night I see all these G.I.s coming down with girls on their arms. Everybody's got a couple of blankets with them.
"They come up to me, and they said, 'When do you go off?'
"I said, 'Another hour.' They said, 'We're going to use the ambulances.'
We had about twenty-five ambulances.
"I said, 'Go ahead. I don't care.'
"So in they went. They said, 'What time do you come on in the morning?'
"I said, 'Six o'clock.' 'Well,' they said, 'when you come on, wake us up.'
"I said, 'I better wake you up. The officer of the guard will be here at seven. And you boys better be out of here before that.'
"So the next morning I walk around the ambulances, pounding on them with the gun. 'Come on, get out of there.' They all trooped out, and off they went."
------
What this boy-child learned: men hung out with women in ambulances.
And Dad woke everybody up in the morning. To avoid shame and blame.
I couldn't imagine at my young age what was going on behind those closed doors painted olive drab with a big red cross in a white circle so you could see it clearly.
I couldn't imagine the thumps and the clumsiness in the dark. Shared cigarettes. A bottle. Two sipping mouths, wet and ready. Cloth moving from decency, moving north and south of the waist. Becoming a curtain. And a hand through the curtain. I didn't know anything about hands. Not consciously. Not with a sense of shame.
My entire sex life until the third grade was with my mother.
Review by Boston University Professor of Humanities, Robert Wexelblatt: "One of the most extraordinary autobiographies I've ever encountered. It is unimpeachably honest, insightful, intimate, touching.... An exceptional book."