A Tale from the Sexual Revolution - But Things Are Still the Same
I dropped out of college in 1964, ended up in the USAF for four years, and then returned to school to get my useless B.A. in English. When I came back in 1968, things had changed quite a bit. Folks were smoking weed and the sexual revolution was in full swing. I was a little older and somewhat wiser, but life was a little different from what I had experienced just four years before, when dorms were fully segregated by sex and dormies weren't even allowed in rooms of the opposite sex.
Anyhow, I was on the GI bill and had very little money for useless things like housing and food, so I ended up in a loft bed in an old three-story house that had been converted into a sort of "anything goes" communal living space. After a while, I had formed a relationship with a woman who was also an English major and she moved into that house with me, at least most of the time.
It was a little weird, living in a loft bed with a girlfriend, while another couple lived in the same room below. We adapted, though, pretty quickly. But, there were other things going on, too, in a big old house with about 20 people living in it.
There was a lot of very informal sexual activity happening in that house. You never really knew exactly who was living there and who was just there crashing for a night. The place smelled like weed all the time, and it was noisy, with people doing all sorts of things here and there in one room or another. Had it not been for the birth control pill, it would have been a veritable baby factory.
The master bath was on the first floor, with a door opening into the living room, which was a room full of old beat up couches, recliners and other discarded furniture. At one point, a young woman who lived in a downstairs bedroom, started a new trend in the house. She was at least 6'2", blonde and strikingly attractive. She started walking out of the master bath after her shower, stark naked, on her way back to the room she shared with three other women. It was a daily occurrence. Very entertaining, to be sure.
She wasn't doing it to show off or anything. Maybe. Who knew? It was just easier, and nobody in that house really thought anything of it. However, she took a fancy to me at one point and flirted openly with me. Although I was flattered, I was in a relationship and am a monogamous sort of guy. One day, I was sitting in the living room reading, when out she walked after her shower, naked as usual. This time, though, she walked over and sat down on the couch next to me. She said, in the frank way she had, "You wanna go fool around?"
I gulped a little, considered it, and said, "Nope. I'm taken, I'm afraid." "Really?" she asked. "Yup." She continued to sit there and we had a conversation about monogamy and other relationship stuff. Finally, she got up and said, "This has been cool. I hope I find someone like you someday." Off she went. She continued to walk around naked in the house, and continued to be friendly. She still flirted with me, but in a joking way from then on.
Times were different. People weren't. All of that sexual freedom changed some years later, with HIV, Herpes, and other STDs becoming a bar to a lot of casual sex. But, the decisions people had to make have never changed. That incident was one of those decisions, and a very difficult one, indeed. I made the right decision for me. I married that English major and we were married for 17 years. I'm still a monogamous guy.
No matter what the society is like, each person has to make his or her own decisions when it comes to sexuality. That hasn't changed, and probably will never change. We all have to decide where our lines are. We all have to communicate with each other about those lines. It's not that difficult, really, as long as you know your own positions.
= new reply since forum marked as read
