Making Fire

Staying with my mother has made me regress into a teenager, complete with the frustrations that come from living with someone who thinks they know what is best for you, and not so subtly attempting to control your behavior. It is of course more maddening when you’ve lived on your own across the world, making regrettable decisions which were loads of fun and often captured on video—completely ignoring those same admonitions that come unprovoked every day in my mother’s presence. Some of these frustrations are decidedly sexual, as my mother’s house doesn’t have any doors that close and she’s a light sleeper.

My sexual enlightenment came with the help of a black box, the Adam and Eve channel, and a Berkeley fraternity. Had I have stayed for the frat party, no doubt my sexual life would have taken a distinctly different turn. However, as a thirteen year old, that might not have been good for either the college student or myself. Rather, my frustration was given a name when I discovered my first porn after perusing the many channels on offer where I was house sitting. I cringe upon reflection on the attempts at a story line, the costuming, lighting, and the overall appearance of the “performers,” but I couldn’t keep my hands off of myself after the denouement. I was even able to set aside the massive thoughts of guilt and mental distractions offered by my skewed religious upbringing.


I had some very cobbled together beliefs about the afterlife as a result of having Mormons, Jews, and Catholics in my extended family, not to mention my role as a Presbyterian preacher’s kid. I believed quite literally that my dead relatives looked down on me from heaven. However, that eye that they kept on me was both omniscient and judgmental. Which is why it is quite regrettable that puberty coincided with the death of my maternal grandmother. Every frenzied attempt at getting myself off was distracted by thoughts of my grandmother knowing exactly what I was doing and disapproving. The woman had never liked me while alive, I could only imagine how much her dislike had grown in death. It took a lot of concentration and mental fortitude to continue to seek pleasure in myself, knowing that I was being caught out.

Further bad luck formed itself in a metal daybed that created a telltale squeak every time I found my rhythm. This would have been quite embarrassing as my mother only rarely discussed sex and the subject of masturbation was approached with a whisper as “playing with yourself.”

Thus it is with these memories burning bright that my current sexual frustration is amplified. My surefire nightly sedative is approached with great caution as my mother never seems to sleep, and I am dead certain that she knows exactly what I’m doing.

I need this shirt.