Foreplay

By Mike Taylor

Based on the author's own experiences as a youth, this quirky and hilarious treatment of sexual awakening will keep you in stitches and raise your eyebrows through the roof. It is 1959/1960 and eleven/twelve year old Mathew Tyler's mixed up world revolves around rock'n roll and making out. But his quest for the treasures that young girls keep hidden beneath their clothes is constantly being thwarted by his youthful inexperience, personal demons, and the ever-present threat of intervention by the Old Ones. You know, those wrinkled-up meanies (ADULTS!) who just can't stand to let a kid have some fun. But underlying this ribald and irreverent look at childhood sexuality is a sobering message: the need for sex education for our youth in an era of Aids, sexually transmitted diseases, and untimely pregnancies. The naked reality is that twelve year old girls can and do become pregnant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 10, 2003
• ISBN: 9781412252515

Mike Taylor

Mike Taylor's cartoons have appeared in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and the books Buddha Laughing and The Buddhist Guide to New York.

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© Copyright 2003 Mike Taylor. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Co-Published with Karma Publishing P.O. Box 64029, Clarke Rd Coquitlam, BC V3J 7V6 1-604-469-0186 email: [e-mail]

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Taylor, Michael, 1947-

      Foreplay / Michael Taylor.

ISBN 1-55395-605-2 I. Title.

ISBN 978-1-4122-5251-5

      PS8589.A946F67 2003 C813’.6 C2003-900236-5 PR9199.3.T356F67 2003

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This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing.

On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

In memory of Glenn

wherever he is …

Based on actual life experiences. Any characters resembling persons living or dead are entirely intentional. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, and to prevent any lawsuits (if you recognize yourself in these pages, I don’t want to hear about it!). Knock on wood and fingers crossed. Oh yeah, and AMEN!

Prologue

This story is an offbeat account of some wild shenanigans and childhood sexcapades—as poignant as they were comedic—that happened to me and some of my friends in 1959 and 1960, at the delicate threshold of puberty. Those zany, pre-adolescent years between eleven and twelve when I bounced from one experience and erotic adventure to the next with no predictability or control, like being shot into a pinball machine.

Why am I telling it? Because it happened. And I believe anything that happens in life is worth knowing about, because it is part of life. But you won’t read about it in any library book or hear about it from any teacher, preacher, or parent.

They lie, all of them. The lies are for your own good they say, but that’s what all despots of goodwill say. The

Old Ones, those wrinkled-up meanies, those robotic programmers of Adulthood, just want to keep all the fun for themselves.

That much is clear.

Their hypocritical morals and authoritarian ways are designed to keep kids in fear and ignorance, fighting against the feelings that surge through their bodies naturally by instinct. Sex must be suppressed, at least until kids, those lovable almost-people, are trained to perform their predetermined roles in society—as producers, consumers, taxpayers, and parents.

The message is clear. First finish school, then find a job so you can support your own brats (don’t stick US! with the bills), THEN you can have sex!

The relentless male sperm that penetrates the female egg can throw the whole upbringing process into chaos, an Old One’s worst nightmare. That’s the problem. But grownups know full well there are plenty of ways to outfox the predatory army of sperm, they just want to keep that knowledge to themselves.

So sex is reserved for ADULTS ONLY! For children it is taboo. In fact, many Old Ones think that childhood sexuality is an oxymoron, so why talk about it at all? But of course, thinking it so doesn’t make it so.

Kids aren’t stupid. Neither is nature. Eleven year old boys aren’t the innocents they appear, sitting primly at their school desks wearing angelic faces, or watching TV at home munching on mom’s cookies, or daydreaming in church (neither are eleven year old girls, for that matter). If you could see into their mischievous minds, or look deeply into their devious eyes, you would know.

Little boys are just midget pirates in search of the treasure chests that little girls keep hidden beneath their

clothes. Oh yeah, I know what you’re thinking, tacky-tacky, but you know exactly what I mean!

But on another level, this story is about more than childhood sexperiences or a fun trip down nostalgia lane, visiting friends come and gone. It is also a journey of self-discovery, offering insights into closet skeletons (forgive me, but it is my book!). The more I think about it the more I’m convinced, and maybe you’ll agree, that the past is the place to begin if you have any knots that need unraveling. It is the sum of what you are and will tell more about yourself than reading any tarot cards, palms, stars, or chromosomes.

But where do I begin?

These events took place over forty years ago. I’m old now, and the mind plays tricks. Since time does not stamp a date on memories, all I can do is dig down and try to unearth the highlights one at a time and, like faded snapshots in a dusty photo album, try to keep them in some sort of order. To be truthful, I don’t really know where to start other than to just begin.

Chapter One

Glenn was a friend of mine. What happened to him was shameful and painful, a real shocker, but I’m getting way ahead of myself, as usual.

I met Glenn walking home from Windsor Elementary School one day and we began hanging out the way kids do, joined by time and place and circumstance. We lived in Burnaby, a small bedroom community outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. You know, in Canada. I was eleven, he was twelve, and we were both in Grade six. He was a year older because my parents started me in grade school a year younger, at age five. So the kids I hung out with were generally a year ahead of me in life, and a year at that age can make a big difference.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Glenn sprang from a large family, his parents as keen

as rabbits to do their part in replacing the population. His mother, always with the round tummy, pumped out eleven kids before her ordeal with childbirthing ended. She was a soft-spoken, smiling sort of woman with brown skin like whole-wheat bread, and a cliff-high wave of coal-black hair, combed forties style. His father was pale-skinned and blue-eyed and worked sometimes, doing something, somewhere, mostly under the table I think.

My mother used to say that Glenn’s parents probably made more on welfare with their giant brood than my old man did driving a truck, that is, when he worked at all.

One of Glenn’s sisters was a slender stick-of-a-girl named Sally. I first saw her the day I met Glenn. Not quite eleven years old, she was scrawny but feisty, with chocolate brown eyes and an allusion of beauty even then. She was cavorting on their dirt driveway shouting at her brother Joel, going crazy about something. He was teasing her, calling her nasty names, enjoying the anguish. Maybe that was it.

I hate that kind of thing. Bullying.

What’s he doing? I asked Glenn.

I don’t know.

"Who is he?"

He’s my brother, Joel.

This was none of my business but I couldn’t just stand there and let him torment a little kid, even if that kid was his sister.

Hey! Leave her alone! I barked. Not shouting-mad, but loud enough to be heard over the hollering.

Joel and Sally stopped cold like when a director yells cut, and stared at me. They looked amazed, you know, like maybe I was this super hero who had jumped out of an action comic book onto their stage. Or Maybe Not.

Anyways, Sally looked surprised that someone would actually stick up for her, let alone me, a strange kid from another block.

Joel was stocky, unlike Glenn who was lean and wiry. He also looked miffed, as if to say, "Who the heck are you?" But he quickly softened and broke into an inquisitive smile when he saw that I was being chummy with Glenn. He ambled over and, without saying it, his whole expression summed it up as, Hey, we were just goofing around. Lighten up.

* * *

Joel was a year younger than Glenn, not as tuned-in but more mature and focused for his age. But there was a moodiness and a broodiness about him, even then. You could tell he was wound-up, always suspicious and trying to get a bead on people, always looking for the angle. He could also be a deep thinker at times, like the night the three of us were laying on my garage roof on Bryant Street gazing at the stars. We weren’t up to much, lost in our lustful thoughts mostly, when all of a sudden Joel piped up with, How is it possible?

Glenn and I shot a glance at each other, then at Joel. He was in one of his intense moods, all right. You could see it in his squinting eyes. All you could do was play along.

"How is what possible?" I asked, curious to know.

They say the universe has no beginning and no end. How can that be?

Glenn and I said nothing, content to let the drama unfold. Joel was not your talkative type, so when he spoke you were apt to listen.

Maybe it’s like life, Joel mused. "Everything’s

connected. The earth, the moon, the sun, even people. Everything is patterns and connections, you know what I mean? I came from my mother through my father, my father came from his mother through his father, and so on—it’s never-ending. And eventually I will—"

Well, that did it for Glenn! He started laughing so hard he began to sputter, almost rolling off the roof. And if there was one unique thing about Glenn it was his sputtering laugh. There was nothing quite like it, funnier than a Roadrunner cartoon, a barrel full of monkeys, and a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie rolled into one.

Ooohhh-arggghhh-ha-ha!

Outrageous and contagious, it almost never failed to break me up. So I began laughing too.

What’s so funny!? Joel challenged, raising up on his elbows.

Joel just didn’t get it, he rarely did. Up until then we had been talking about normal stuff, like the size of Rachel’s breasts or whether Donna would go all the way, that sort of thing. We didn’t need the ravings of a starry-eyed eleven year old babbling off at the mouth, destroying the mood.

Glenn turned serious. "Look! What difference does it make? Who cares? The universe is what it is and no amount of thinking or talking about it will change it. Besides, we’ve got more important things to think about—like how to get Rachel and Donna naked—right, Mat?"

Ha ha.

The problem with you Glenn, is you’re stupid, Joel sneered. He stood up and briskly jumped down from the roof, landing squarely on his feet in the dewy grass. We watched him saunter off home with his head bowed down and his hands stuffed inside his scruffy pockets.

Glenn turned to me. What do you think?

I’m not sure. It’s got to begin and end somewhere, I guess, everything does. Just because they don’t know where doesn’t mean anything—

Nawhhh! Glenn groaned, rolling his eyes. He sounded disappointed, even disgusted. Shaking his head, he climbed carefully down onto the picket fence and hopped onto the lawn, rambling off home himself. He only glimpsed back at me once. For one parting shot.

You’re as braindead as he is! he spat.

Glenn could be cryptic at times. It was one of his little oddities, you just had to live with it. I laid back with my hands clasped behind my head and my eyes peeled for shooting stars, singing Little Star by The Elegants to myself. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder where you are, high above the clouds somewhere, send me down a love to share, oh oh oh ohohoh oh oh ratta tatta do oo oo.

Where would the mysterious hand of fate lead me tomorrow, and the next day, and the next? I had no idea. But it was getting chilly out, no shooting stars around, and being up on the roof alone in the dark of night was no fun. Climbing down would be a lot safer I thought, but I figured if Joel could do it, well, so could I. So after a fleeting, chicken-hearted moment of hesitation, I jumped too.

* * *

One day Glenn and I went to visit one of his cousins in Vancouver, riding our bikes all the way. Not familiar with the neighborhood, we approached his house cautiously. As we wheeled up we could hear this strange rock’n roll music blasting out of the windows and doors. It didn’t sound like Ricky Nelson or Buddy Holly or Dion and the Belmonts, or even Elvis. It sounded angry and desperate, mournful and melancholy, like from another country. It was Little Richard singing Lucille and it was cranked up to the rafters.

Glenn’s cousin wore Cowboy King jeans with the cuffs rolled up, a plain white tee-shirt with a pack of Export ‘A’ folded into one of the sleeves, and enough grease in his hair to create an oil slick in the bathtub. He had a friend over, an exact double, and two girlfriends. The guys were about fifteen, the girls a year or two younger. The girls were pretty and dressed in the usual cuffed jeans, white shirttails, and saddle shoes. Sad to say, I don’t remember their names.

After watching them giggle and wiggle to the screeching music for a while, Glenn and I went outside in the back yard to play with some of his younger cousins and their friends. One of the kids was shooting at a crow with a BB-gun. It was perched on top of a cottonwood tree, poking at its feathers and minding its own business.

Lucky for the crow the kid was a lousy shot. The pellets zipped through the leaves hitting everything in sight but the poor bird, which flew off to a safer tree up the street, squawking its indignity at us.

And then it happened. Someone called to someone else, who called to someone else, like a valley of echoes until all the kids were over at the side of the house peeking through the curtain of a basement window.

Take a look, I heard one kid say.

"Oh, wowww!"

Shssh! another whispered. Be quiet. They’ll hear us.

Did you see that!?

Yeahhhh.

"Let me see," someone else said.

"What is she doing?"

Shush! Don’t talk so loud. They’ll hear us.

The guys were shoving each other, jostling for position, bonking heads. All the hushing and shushing sounded like so many bursts of air from a tire. I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about but I couldn’t squirm my way through the mob. They let Glenn in, but he was a relative. They knew him, I was just a nobody.

"Hey,