Sexual Milestones in the Life of Samuel Soul: The Heart is Autonomous

By Gideon Samid

This is a book about a lifelong search for meaning in the emotional grip of intimacy and sexuality. Chasing a sexual mirage, lost in a labyrinth of passion, Sam moves along a destructive path that unravels page after page. Faithful to his philosophical instinct he never climbs down from his search for meaning and a noble cause. An upstanding successful engineer, wife, two kids, Sam remains committed to his unresolved yearning for constructive intimacy until circumstances undermine his wish. Deflated, he resigns to a quiet unassuming life as a hard-working engineer. It is then when Sam is picked up by a most gentle woman – a perfect fit for his ability to project and receive intimacy. Hidden gates are opened. So much inside him was waiting for the woman with the key. And so in his older years Sam flares up with creativity that had never bloomed before. His instinct to invest himself in cross gender excitement pans out.

This book describes Sam as a mishandled boy: a vain woman takes advantage of his innocence. The story then draws the picture of a young man growing up, as old taboos fall down. Newfound sexual freedom carries away young minds.

Sam joins the army, a brave soldier. He is wounded. A bazooka flare hits his eyes. Terrified of blindness, he is emotionally overwhelmed by the caring touch of the nurse that washes his trembling body.

Sam is talented, he earns his engineering degrees and shines professionally. His yearning for meaning, for a cause, for emotional wholesomeness keeps Samuel on the sexual track, allowing his marriage to fall apart.

Samuel Soul represents the modern man growing in the post-religion world, in a society where the inner self is the ultimate guide, and satisfying arising passions is what it is all about. Sam is impressed by how he moves under the sexual force, and believes this to be the route for the profound answers to the ultimate questions of life and reality. The sexual drive looks like a ready horse to ride on to the alluring beyond.

Always in touch with himself and his sensations, Samuel Soul struggles and explores. He fails, licks his wounds and tries again. The lure always proves to be a mirage. Nothing sticks. His original premise that the pulsating secrets of life are concealed within the thrilling tension between a man and a woman, has proven false. The unrelenting search costs him his marriage, and now Sam is left with his professional work to fill his day.

Downcast, disappointed, Sam slides into a routine and shallow life. Strong and confident as a professional engineer, he is hopelessly naïve as to how short a lifetime is in the universal search for meaning.

Then she shows up. Nirvana, a foreigner, an Iranian woman raised in a distant culture. She picks Sam from his resigned state, and awakens in him what was there all the time: dormant and unseen. Herself a victim of an abusive sexuality, Nirvana emerged refined, mature and balanced. She is patient, calm, committed, and loving. Nirvana holds fast onto Sam, lifts him up, and breathes a gale of hope into his broken soul. The two build a shinning togetherness, which surprises them both with its power and light. So much was in him, packed and folded. Nirvana unpacked it all, unfolded and sent loose.

Sam, older, weaker in body, becomes a spiritual lion, creative like the wind, inspired like a lightning, a stream of remarkable technology flows from his design notes.

A power beyond got Samuel Soul and Nirvana together. They were reaching their furthest milestone of cross-gender intimate embrace and the fruit it bears. It was a long string of missteps, painful milestones to pass through. A flag of triumph is held by the original instinct to light the candles within, with a match held by a profoundly intimate sexual partner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667868806

Gideon Samid

Gideon's writing is like a prayer, a sacred exploration of what breathes and hums below the math, under the technology, deeper than the engineering that occupy most of his waking hours. During the day Professor Gideon Samid (PhD, PE) is a front line engineer, building and designing stuff, planning: facilities, constructions, tools. With technology one creates comfort -- comfort to do what? With engineering one builds tools of convenience -- convenience to support a life lived for what purpose? These are questions that Gideon raises with the written word, with his unbridled literary pen, not shying from sharp, explicit, word pictures. Alas, this book is not a list of answers, but a tally of a succession of struggles, a list of frequent enigmas, a story of unreasonable hope, a sequence of persistent illusions. This book is a roadmap of trying and trying again. This is Part I of the series "Consequential Milestones in the Life of Samuel Soul". Here, the story points to milestones of sexual intimacy, and the emotional volcano that comes with it. Gideon was born in Jerusalem, was raised and served in Israel, and then developed his engineering career in the US (NASA, Exxon, The Pentagon, University of Maryland, Case Western Reserve University) where he presently lives. Gideon's grown children and grandchildren are spread out in Israel and in the US. His wife left him after 27 years of marriage, yet a gentle soul lifted him up from his misery into a most beautiful togetherness. Dolores' love and commitment unleashes a dormant creativity. Momentum builds, light shines. Gracias!

Book preview

This short novel is a work of fiction, all characters are a product of the author’s imagination, and any similarity with real people is coincidental.

Praise for Sexual Milestones in the Life of Samuel Soul

"I enjoyed reading this book. And getting into the life of another person as they go through their own journey in life. Thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

Ron Efron, Director at BluOcean Security"

Praise for other Titles by Gideon Samid

A thoroughly enjoyable thriller on a relevant current topic. I highly recommend it.

Steven Bernstein

I read Gideon Samid’s book The Cipher Who Came in from the Cold with much interest. This fictional national security story is more than fictional. It is what the future of security would be like in the new world of cyber-attacks and cyber security.

Mansour Aaron Karimzadeh

This book by Samid is timely and impressive

Sal Kolli and R. Parsaei

Insightful discussions unearth the mysteries of complex technological concepts, such as cryptanalysis and multi-layer cryptography,

Avivah Litan

His experience as a cryptographer is displayed by the detailed story in this thriller. I have to read this two or three more times!

Robert Torres

Gideon’s The Cipher Who Came In From The Cold was intriguing from the first page. Hard to believe that he could file the plot with such a realistic insight of NSA operations and management without having been part of that system himself.

Helmut Scherzer

This is an amazing novel full of interest and surprises - it will keep you uptight till the last sentence. Imagination, drama and a lot of action.  Highly recommended!

Dr. Joseph Kramer

The Cipher Who Came in from the Cold creates a genre of its own as a cryptographic spy novel with vivid characters and context."

Dr. Jamar Montgomery, Esq

Other Titles by Gideon Samid

The Unending Cyber War

Fair Moon

Tethered Money

Unbound Ignorance

The Cipher Who Came in from the Cold

A Line with a Pulse

Acknowledgments

This book, as all my work, is happening by the persistent flow of love and support coming from the woman next to me, Dolores. ¡Gracias!

Copyright © Gideon Samid, 2022

BitMint * P.O.Box 1022, McLean VA 22101-1022

Second Edition

ISBN: 978-1-66-786880-6

Dedicated to the men and women, young and old, who seek clues to the deepest questions of life and meaning within the intimacy of the sexual experience.

Table of Contents

Bouquet

Heidi

Bazooka

A Dutch Bride

An Eastern Poet

Vera

The Swiss Architect’s Wife

Celestial Lift

Wife

Matilda

Nirvana

About the Author

Bouquet

Now that this youthful experience is committed to paper, many years after the events, it’s hard for Sam to remember his exact age: thirteen, maybe fourteen. It was spring vacation; that much is certain. The word around the busy neighborhood was that the best way to make some jingles is to deliver flowers for the flower shop. The shopkeeper pays, the recipient tips, and if you get lucky, you meet a nice and interesting beauty that may be home alone when the flowers are delivered, and bound by that old-world etiquette, she invites you in for a cold drink, a chocolate, some gifts maybe. Now, this was the above-board version. Moussi, who was a year older, experienced and cosmopolitan, has let it be known that his good fortune led him to some unspeakable encounters. The eager young lady that once opened the door for him was scantily dressed, and rather adventuresome. Moussi’s story got better and better as it was retold and re-elaborated, and Sam believed every word of every version, sensing that puberty-turbined excitement in his loins. Eagerness produced daring; his shyness stepped back.

The first day, Sam, who traveled by bus to the listed addresses, had come home very tired, and very disappointed. On one delivery some archaeological old lady opened the door, and barely tipped him. Next, a gruff, rumbling man barked at him from behind the shut entrance, instructing Sam to leave the bouquet by the door, and get lost. A family with half a dozen noisy, sticky kids was the third encounter: not good.

The second day was as bad, and so was the third. Sam’s spirit of anticipation had diffused away, a sense of unluckiness crept into his chest, and so he quit, and took a job at the local library, helping with rebinding torn and abused books, and lugging them about. Thursday evening, everyone who lived between the park and the rock assembled near the old bench. Moussi again. He mesmerized the gathering with his believe-it-or-not tale. That morning, on his very first round, Moussi was invited in by a housewife, so he said, who was dressed so loosely that he could see her brownish nipples, and he was apparently still so unmanageably excited from this experience that he did not know what to do with himself. That was enough to impress upon young Sam to give the flower shop another try.

The first two days were disappointing, like the previous week. And then came the last day of the school vacation. It was the third delivery of the day; seven huge roses, all red, to one Mr Abramson. When he rang, the door was opened, definitely not by Mr Abramson. The impeccably dressed middle-aged lady smiled at him invitingly: My, my, what do we have here? Come in, young man, don’t just stay there, come in! Sam walked in, feeling queasy.

Glass of soda, would be okay?

Sure, thank you, madam, and he followed her to the kitchen.

This very pleasant lady handed Sam a fizzling glass of soda, checked the note that came with the flowers and stepped out of the kitchen with the glowing flowers clamped to her breast. Sam was left with this huge glass of soda, staring at the utensils in the kitchen; they struck him as expensive.

The host lady returned without much delay, and Sam felt that she took a close measure of his person. This felt odd. She offered him a seat, and insisted he take it. Then came the questions. Inconsequential and mundane. Her staring, though, made Sam uncomfortable. It took too long; so, Sam rose and excused himself. He planned to rush back to the flower shop to pick up another bouquet before the day was over.

Thank you again for the flowers!

You are welcome!

And he wondered, is Mr Abramson her husband?

I am Nora, his thoughts were interrupted, and you are —?

Sam, Sam Soul, answered the boy.

How old are you, Sam?

Fourteen and a half.

And a half, my, my. Where do you live?

Sam told her.

I bet you have never seen a jacuzzi, have you?

No, madam, I don’t even know what a jacuzzi is.

Come, then, she motioned, and Sam followed. There it was, a bathroom larger than anything Sam had ever seen, dominated by what looked like a large round bathtub, with some water openings that have now been spewing jets of water, Nora having just opened the jacuzzi pump. Would you like to try it? she said.

Try it…? A sudden sense of bewilderment washed young Sam.

Yes, hop in and enjoy! When you are done, here is a towel, come right out. I will wait for you outside. And so saying, Nora stepped out and closed the door behind her.

She wants me to undress in her house? There was a whoosh of vanishing innocence; a pleasing tickle brewed in the dark basement of his young boy’s heart, a surprise gush of percolation, not yet identified as manifest sexuality. Sam was about to be iron-branded by one random stranger, very much a woman. His psyche was about to be etched, stamped and marked in the ‘forever’ category. Pleasure got its definition that ordinary afternoon of the last day of that spring vacation.

Now, it must be told that by the time this adventure happened, Sam was not clueless. He first lost his innocence as a teenager. But that was too early, too ugly, and with much less traction. The perpetrator was the old shriveled lady who was employed as his house cleaner. Dad was at work as usual. Mom went for a doctor’s appointment with Sam’s little brother. How did the old cleaning lady know that Sam was getting into his pants, that was always a mystery, but as it was, the door to Sam’s room was burst open as if by mistake, a voice uttering: Oh, sorry… Hey, look at you, so sweet, what cute underwear you are wearing… and so saying, she was there by his underwear which was instantly stretched as a hot, curious, blood rush boiled in his groin. Before Sam could offer any reaction, verbal or otherwise, he was introduced to the delightful sensation of well-versed feminine fingers pulling him through a rip tide of gripping sensations of a totally new kind. The stir was magnetic, and that old maidservant right there owned the boy. Exploiting every interval of aloneness, she imposed her desire on the thrill-arrested youth. She was old, old; her intimacy wrinkled, and when unfolded and spread, it smelled embarrassingly private, and offensively dirty. Sam was lamb-led, curiously excited, and dimly disgusted, all in the mix. It did not last long. A few days after the initial assault, there was a big argument behind closed doors. Sam heard the cleaning lady and his mother arguing, but he could not make out what they were saying. The door finally flew open, and the old cleaning lady darted out, red faced, seething with anger. She left the apartment, never to return. Sam did not find out what that row was about, but he somehow suspected that it all had to do with that shameful, ticklish, secret pleasure he experienced with the maid.

Not the same now, Sam concluded. Here in the elegant, even plush apartment of this sophisticated up and up — not old — lady, it was going to be different; Sam knew that much. He also knew it would be shameful. The door was closed, and the water was bubbling noisily into the jacuzzi. Sam debated with himself for a few seconds, but his sense of compulsive adventure took precedence. Well aware that he should not be doing this, he undressed butt naked and jumped into the water. Watching his tight erection, Sam was still wondering what happens when he gets so tight, why is this so exciting, so fulfilling, so forbidden?

No sooner did Sam seat himself in the bottom of the jacuzzi than he heard Nora’s voice behind the door: How are we doing out there?

Fine, fine… Sam answered.

Do you want me to rub your back?

Sam was frozen with goosebumps by this question. Interpreting his silence as affirmation, Nora opened the door and walked in, standing before young Sam, examining his body inside the water. She leaned over and held his face. You are a cute little boy, Sam, a cute little boy! Sam lost it, right there. He felt like a trapped animal led to the altar. A total shameful surrender, soaked in the sense of exit-of-life pleasure. Death drama, eternal submission; a shake-up of every stress of his imagination, so extreme that whatever would excite him from that moment on would be faintly compared to this sensation of having been trapped and condemned. Sam was so thoroughly victimized, but it would take many years for him to realize it.

Nora knew her hunting trip was successful, and she squeezed from this forlorn boy everything that her unbridled imagination guided her to. And what she did to him paled in comparison to what she made him do to her. Sam had no sense of time, but he knew when she finished with him and pushed him out the door like a used-up tissue.

At the time Sam had no expectation that he would end up replaying this very scene in his mind’s eye, taxing his imagination and memory until it was rusty and then some. The scene, the excitement, the shame, the mystery would be his trigger for sexual excitement for decades to come. What was it about this early experience that took hold of Sam’s sexuality? How can you do it? Sam would be asked as a young adult and especially as an older one. Sam never shared his virility secret, his mind’s eye replay of a very early choking experience. It took quite some ripening of years for Sam to realize that that early childhood scene, while giving him the sizzle, denied him the chance to properly focus on who he was with. But that life-long sentence was totally unsuspected that adventurous afternoon.

That evening Sam’s mother was absolutely convinced that her little Sam fell ill. He lost his appetite, abandoned all interest in anything, and just lay in bed, with dreamy eyes. Sam could not think of any school matters in the coming days, and in the coming nights. He was like a victim of a war, shell shocked. His mother was worried, but Sam refused to go to the doctor, or to admit that something was wrong with him.

In the middle of the next week, homework barely touched, getting by with lame excuses, Sam was drawn to an act. Leaving home early in the afternoon, Sam took the bus, retracing his trip that fateful day. Mindlessly, as if commanded by a chip implanted in his brain, Sam made his way up the street, and climbed the stairs. He spotted her door, and repeated exactly what he did the week before: he knocked on Nora’s door. A big burly man answered. Behind him slouched two girls, one about Sam’s age, and one younger. A toddler was there too, curious who was knocking. Way behind the front pack, far away, in the kitchen, Sam saw Nora, drying up some plates, and looking at him with a sealed look. I am sorry, wrong door — said Sam, and turned down the stairs. She is married, she is a mother. She has a daughter my age, she is my mother’s age — I am a bad boy, a bad boy I am!

Sam didn’t know it then, but a stubborn heat of shame, and a demeaning grip of sin had taken residence in his young sense of self.

Heidi

Heidi touched Sam so briefly that no love could have been kindled, and the water was too cold for lustful thoughts to mature. But the etched memory was left as a benchmark for years to come. A hint of something other than what he was used to.

They were four, teen, and broke, and hiking through Europe for the first time. Old friends in search of wild adventures. Sexual fantasies abound. It was a joint financial effort to scratch the necessary cash to purchase a coughing, dilapidated automobile, sold to them by a desperate drug addict as he was vomiting into a gray canal in Amsterdam. They managed to cross Holland with their prize vehicle, but in Germany they were harassed by the local police, got pulled to some police parking lot, and the car did not start when they were finally released. A nearby mechanic agreed to come over, fixed it, and charged them almost as much as they paid for the entire vehicle in the first place. Driving south of Aachen, the car died again. This time a passer-by kindly offered to labor on it, promising to get it to move again in ten minutes, he said. Nobody mentioned money. As they all crowded in wonder around the stranger lying there under their car, they failed to notice a couple of gypsy girls sneaking to the side of the car, from the nearby bushes, quickly trying to open the side door. Fortunately for the four friends the door was permanently jammed; only the driver side could be opened. The squeaking noise caught the attention of the owners, scrambling from under the car. The gypsy girls darted back to the bushes, but Danny, Sam’s friend, quite a sport, gave chase, and the three of them vanished in the roadside green. It was strange, but right away, the volunteer car fixer got out from under the car, excused himself and took off. Sam and the other two waited and waited for Dan to return, and idly tried the car again. It started! But where is Danny? They kept the car idling until Danny came back, face fallen. As they were riding on, Danny was telling them that the two gypsy girls were fast as fire. He, Dan, the famous record holder for sixty meters dash, was no match for these two fourteen- or fifteen-years old maids.

What would you have done with them, had you caught up with them? asked Sam.

I don’t know, strip them, rape them, something…. They were so exotic!

They were babies, little girls! toughened up Sam.

No, they were women, full blown, fucked through and through, I could tell, I could smell!

So how come you could not catch either of them?

How come, how come — they were fast like an arrow. Never seen girls run like that. One of them was barefoot. I could see the full length of their legs, running like an impala, galloping through the underbrush, getting not tired, leaving a wake of rebounding twigs behind them. I was turned on, I tell you!

The four arrived haltingly at a small village with a twenty letters-long name they did not even try to pronounce, and immediately looked for a buyer for the car. No such luck. The local car mechanic (the only one in the village) laughed at them. Nobody in that neighborhood would buy such a piece of junk. And if they abandoned it on the road, the entire Deutsche Polizei would be on their tail. Italy, the toothless mechanic shared with them. Get the car to Italy, there people buy anything, — or so they understood from his broken English.

After a heated discussion Sam took it upon himself to drive the car to Italy while the other three rode a train to Milano — or a bus, whatever is cheaper. Would go through the Black Forest, Sam schemed, a magnificent place to sightsee, and easy to hide the car there, should it die on the road again. It would be easier for Sam to hitchhike to Milano on his own. Yes! Danny burst with poorly disguised envy, You are Mr. Handsome — some horny German housewife would pick you up and turn you into her sex slave. Sam hoped nobody noticed his blushing.

And so it happened, that Sam found himself driving a falling apart old Chevy, alone, through the winding roads of the Black Forest. On his first day Sam made good mileage. He parked the vehicle in an ad hoc clearing and went to sleep on the torn back seat. He was awoken in about an hour by a patrolling policeman who shouted at Sam in German, while Sam moaned: English, please! Nonetheless, the hand motions were quite clear. Sam realized that he was not allowed to sleep in the clearing and had to move on. So he did. Before that, the policeman took Sam’s passport and radioed its details to some headquarters. The wireless conversation took a great deal of time and left Sam very nervous. It hit him that he was in Germany and was stopped by a German policeman. He looked at him: well-built, towering, really an impressive officer; and his mind placed him in Auschwitz, 1944, where his family was summarily murdered — accounts of which he heard at home, time and time again. He envisioned his uncles and aunt mortally frightened, powerless, death bound, and compared them to the clean, starched officer now holding his passport, wearing no smile, but beaming with pride. A German projecting power and authority. A heretic thought invaded his psyche: Why am I not a German? It’s so glorious to be wearing a sparkling uniform, high boots, carry a pistol… He immediately, in his heart, asked for forgiveness for his contrarian thoughts. By then the policeman concluded his radio conversation and gave Sam his passport back, and motioned: Go! Sam was quite relieved, and his adrenaline kept him going the whole night long. The sun rose, and Sam kept driving. He stopped briefly for a country egg omelet, and two cups of hot dark coffee, and kept on southward.

By about 5 o’clock in the afternoon Sam was feeling the hours, and craved for a bed. Within a mile or two he spotted a sign: ‘Zimmer’. Oh, that does not look expensive. He pulled in, and knocked on the old wooden door. What he saw when the door opened was the largest mustache he ever spotted on a man’s face in his entire life. The thick eyebrows were a perfect match. The deeply carved face completed the intimidation, and the garbled voice did not steer away from that image.

Zimmer, you have a room?

Yes, we have a room, the German said, in thick English. For how many nights?

Oh, just one, one night.

When?

When?

When do you want to book the room?

Oh, tonight, if possible.

Tonight is possible, but not tomorrow.

I don’t need tomorrow. Tonight is fine.

The price was reasonable, but the introduction to the rules of the house was too Germanic for Sam’s taste. He remained polite throughout the drill. He was shown the toilet, the showers, the kitchen, and he was even notified that breakfast was between 6:15 and 7:15 in the morning. No earlier and no later.

Finally, laden with some heavily starched towels, Sam was shown his own room, and was left alone — for a brief moment, that is. The room was the size of a closet, the bed as narrow as a cot, and the table was the size of an American coffee table. An old repaired chair occupied all the space left between the table and the bed. The room had no key, and the door was ill-aligned, drifting open on its own. Sam sensed an observing eye, turned around, and found himself matching stares with a perfect Heidi.

She fit the exact image that was drawn in his childhood book telling about Heidi of the Alps. Her two braids were tied each with a glowing red strip; her sky-blue eyes were so big, and so innocent that Sam was unable to spot anything else about her.

Guten Tag.

Guten Tag, Sam answered. She giggled.

Why are you laughing? What’s your name?

My name is Gretchen. What’s yours?

I am Samuel, but everyone calls me Sam. Do you know that you look very much like Heidi? Do you know Heidi, the story?

Sure, I know Heidi. That’s very nice of you to call me Heidi. And at that, she turned around and called, Vater, Vater, the guest said that I am Heidi, Heidi of the Alps. Sam did not hear the paternal reply, and simply processed the fresh beauty he had just encountered.

Despite his mounting fatigue, Sam experienced a mental firestorm, with the uniformed police officer who stopped him swelling up in front of him. The day wore thin, and Sam stepped outside to take a measure of the surroundings before they blurred into darkness. From the backyard of the house, Sam examined well-groomed agricultural fields stretching over wavy hills, a large clearing in the forest, and outlines of some picturesque barns. Gray turned into black. The breeze whooshed gently by, arousing a pleasant pastoral sensation. Approaching undetected, Heidi suddenly placed herself abreast of Sam. Do you like the view?

It’s too gray to appreciate, but I like what I see. Sam noticed that Heidi stood invasively close to him,