Page 17 - Asheville NC Revised2

intensely that we’d taken off all but our underpants. By some unspoken agreement they stayed effortlessly on. We began rubbing and touching from toes to tongues, though performing nothing classified as oral sex. It was just graduate-level smooching: pelvic pressings, chest crushings, thigh squeezings and every odd combination in between — all adding up to the basic fact of fabulous friction.
It was the beginning of what would be months of this mature making out. There would be no penetration, no mixing of body fluids other than saliva. Believe it or not I don’t recall whether semen was produced that day. I’m sure that we made baby brew during future sessiona, but it’s impossible to pinpoint when. And as far as her climax status — unknown. The only certainty was that somehow, perhaps by our restraint, we were able to sustain aroused concupiscence for hours, far longer than any of my previous, all-the-way loves.
Way later I staggered to the car, tucking in everything and trying to beat down wildly splaying hair. I was in ecstasy, yet there was a tinge of sadness. I was now involved with a woman from work who voted for Ross Perot for crying out loud, and who loved the Episcopal Church. From the evidence of her grandfolk’s house, she also wanted absurd amounts of beautiful stuff.
I thought of ending it all before things got too complicated. Then I remembered the amazing arousal. “Come what may I’ll do what she say,” I howled at the moon.
Grace gave me gobs of id energy to spend on something. To save civilization whether it needed it or not. The next day I went to the Board of Elections and became a candidate for City Council. It took just ten minutes to sign the papers. Next stop, the Asheville Patriot, the local daily newspaper, to explain my platform. I handed them four pictures taken in the photo closet of K-Mart and voila!, my baseball hat was in the political ring.
It was true that I’d been contemplating candidacy, but I might not have actually run unless I had the catalyst of a new love. Grace escalated my ego to alpha male gale force. Enough to easily handle the public scrutiny that a supremely self-conscious guy could rarely have stood.
That could be the real question about whether serial monogamy is a worthwhile form of mating or not — the issue of energy generation. If semonogs have as much or more energy as the monogamous, the monogs, then it is a socially useful form of loving.
But I can hear the preachers warning: “We can’t have a stable society without life-long monogamy as the rule.” And “Who’s going to raise the children?”
I think these tried-and-true beliefs may be only partial truths now. To the extent that they are still true, they have received a severe blow. The health of society