My mother and I had too much of an age gap to have sexual talks. I think she knew something was up in regards to my sexual blooming, but she never pried. Mostly she stayed in her sewing room and listened to Nat King Cole as I wrestled with my puberty (and penis) in the next room. I’m sure that some of my family thought I was gay. The Scotch-taped photo of Ralph Macchio on my wall could have been cause for alarm.
Big K was possibly my best bet for sex advice from an older, more experienced person.
“Gotta grow yourself one of these first,” he pontificated, sticking his mustache out as far as the tip of his nose. I decided to cut my losses and not explore his wisdom further.
After work that day, Debra cornered me in the back room. “You want me to just tell you how to do it and save ya some time?”
I tried to think of something funny to say, but settled for: “Sure, if you want to.”
She explained several things: the taste, the labia, the clit, the secret button, the canal. She mapped out certain methods: the vibrator, the fingers, the tongue, lips, teeth, etc. And finally, she soberly gave me a few warnings: yeast infections, periods, pubic hair in the teeth, gagging on excess pubic hair, pubic hair that seems to be either absent or shaved.
I didn’t ask her about how the cop did it to her. Actually, oral sex may have been against state law for all I knew. I made a note to be careful in case it was.
The results were: I loved it!
Even despite close calls with yeasty girls and others who looked like they had Jimmie Walker’s head sticking out of their groin, the giving of oral pleasure was high on my priorities list on every date. It was indeed one of the most valuable things anyone has ever taught me. Thanks, Debra!
Soon after these lessons, I was preparing to quit my job and move to Spokane, where I would go to broadcasting school. It was time to hang up my apron and retire from the taternut biz. My last day of work was a tearjerker. “You were a legend in the fry zone, Sedale,” reflected Big K on my eighteen months of fabulous frying.
I was glazing up a batch and doing my best Dick Vitale, “It’s SHOW TIME, baby!”
Big K splashed water on his face and wiped faux tears from under his eyes. “We’re gonna retire your apron, man. It’ll hang from the rafters.”
I looked at my early-morning work companion with respect.
Murphy rattled through the door. “It’s the Armeeeenian,” I announced.
Murphy stopped for a moment and asked over the sneeze guard, “This is your last day, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, off to the medium city, old man.”
“Well, you make one heck of a taternut, kid,” he said. Then he paused to let me prepare for some wisdom. “Just remember,” he started, “when you get there and get settled, you can’t come home again.”
Interruption
Before I moved to Spokane, Pam came over to my parents’ house to see me one last time. She said she saw my car in the driveway and wanted to say hi before I moved. We went to my old bedroom and I tried to figure out what it was she wanted. She said she heard that her little brother had beaten me up at the mall and that she was sorry.
I got angry and defensive and told her that he didn’t beat me up. In fact, I forgot it even happened that summer. He saw me at Columbia Center and stopped me outside the Bon Marche. A few of his friends were with him and he was obviously putting on a show for them, acting cool and tough. He said something about “fucking over” his sister and then threw a wild punch at my neck, which I barely felt. There was an angry surge of heat in my head, but I chose to walk away. He and his friends stood there laughing.
Pam sat on my bed and started to cry. I said it was no big deal. “Don’t you want to kiss me?” she said, and then she started kissing me. I kissed her back but didn’t say anything. It had been almost two years since that night she sat in someone else’s car and saw me waiting for her on her porch.
It was dark in my room and even though my parents were home, I locked my door and let Pam get under the covers with me and we took our shorts off. She was on top of me like a wrestler. She had me pinned. She put me inside her and I felt a sad regret. The last thing I ever wanted to do was accept any form of apology that she offered. She would probably feel like we were even now.
The bed was thumping, but I was trying to be quiet. The one thing that would make me feel worse about this whole scenario would be for Mom and Dad to think Pam and I had made up. My doorknob jiggled and then Dad said from the other side of the door, “Does Pam want to stay for dinner?”
“Hold on a minute,” I said.
Then the door opened and Dad stuck his head in, his eyes adjusting to the dark. “You shouldn’t lock your door,” he said. He lingered a moment as Pam and I lay there frozen. I waited for the door to close, but it didn’t. I waited to hear the sound of his feet move back down the hall, but they didn’t.
Broadcast School
The first time I lived in Spokane (1988) was pretty brief. I found a cheap apartment next to an old office store that specialized in staplers. It was exciting to live by myself for the first time, but the place got depressing quick. The tiny kitchen had a warped floor and there was a permanent smell of old hamburger. There was a small dirt lot behind the apartment where people from the other seven apartments parked their cars. No matter where I parked, one guy from down the hall would always leave me aggressive notes of complaint.
The radio class that I signed up for at the Ron Bailey School of Broadcasting was only a nine-month course, but it cost about $8,000. I thought it was only a matter of time before I’d be starting a long and interesting career in radio. I dreamed of the day when I could play whatever songs I wanted and everyone would understand how great my taste in music was, like my days as a kid cranking 45s out my bedroom window.
It was the first time I really tried hard in a school setting. I had perfect attendance and my efforts soared above those of the dozen other students. The instructor was a fifty-something guy with the kind of body language that suggested thousands of hours of overnight DJ shifts and a few divorces in his past. No matter how many cups of coffee he slurped, he still seemed in need of a nap. He wore jeans and denim shirts, like the Marlboro Man. I’m guessing that his bushy mustache hid many frowning wrinkles. But he was kind to me and had a smoky smooth voice. After just a couple of weeks, he pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to start working weekends at the local AM country station.
I was the first one in class to get a job, though it was mostly pushing buttons and reading the weather and call letters once an hour. During the week, I worked as a parking lot attendant.
My old high school friend Maurice called me one day and asked if he could come up and stay with me for a couple of weeks. Ever since graduation, things had been weird with Maurice and me. After being so antidrug, antidrinking during our high school years, Maurice had somehow become a total souse, drinking cheap beer all the time and always passing out or getting sick. I felt like I had to let him stay with me. Maybe it would help to mend our relationship.
Maurice mostly stayed on my couch those two weeks, drinking Stroh’s, his cheap brew of choice. He would stack the empty cans on the windowsill and never clean up. I drank with him a few times but he always drank faster. As he got more drunk, he got more mean. Even though he had little experience with girls, he would say the worst things about my old girlfriends, especially Holly, who he called a fat cow.
One night, INXS was playing at the Coliseum. It was the height of their popularity and Darren came up from the Tri-Cities to go with me to the show. I had an extra ticket for Maurice, hoping that a nice gesture would make his stay more tolerable. I almost begged him to go with us, even just to get him out of my apartment. “No,” he said. “I just bought some beer. I’m going to enjoy myself just fine.” He stretched out the last two words sarcastically.
Darren and I walked down to the show, barely speaking a word. I looked at the extra ticket in my hand and
