Reluctantly I Learn About ‘The Birds and The Bees

      Within a month of my first sexual experience, I was having supper with my family enjoying a good meal. Somehow we got to talk about our relatives in North Carolina. We talked about those cute baby pigs that my uncle raised, and somehow certain questions came to mind that I never thought of before. I never questioned that males and females of every species needed to get together to have babies. But, before this moment it never occurred to me to wonder why it was that males and females needed to be together.

I never knew what the female’s end of it was or what the male had to bring to the table. When I asked certain questions, my brother and sister would snicker.

      All of a sudden Jake said to my mother, “Faye, I think it’s time to tell Lazarus about the facts of life!”

Judging by the serious tone of Jake’s voice I knew that I was about to be initiated into the serious world of adulthood and it scared the hell out of me! I started backpedaling and all of a sudden I didn’t want to know.

      Fearful, I pleaded, “That’s okay, I don’t want to know.”

I wanted to run back, and settle with the devil that I knew. I wanted to go back to the blissful ignorance and known safety of childhood.

Jake would not have any of it. I think he would have dragged me kicking and screaming into adulthood.

      Jake commanded, “Sit down.”

      My mother looked at my siblings and said, “James… Lynn, go outside and play.”

      They both said, "Aw come on, we want to stay and hear what you are going to say." 

      Jake said sternly, “Go out and play.”

      They begrudgingly left, griping on the way out. Well, Jake and my mother asked me what questions I had on my mind, and they proceeded to tell me all of the mechanics of procreation between men and women.

      I was stammering, “You’re making this up.” I said. (I felt like the character Neo when he first learned of the matrix). “The longer we wait to free the mind, the more a person has trouble adjusting”. – Morpheus

      I thought that for some bizarre and inexplicable reason my mother and Jake had found the perverse need to mess with my world. They gave me clinical names for both the sex act and the sex organs. Now I knew that Carlita’s Pee-Pee hole was really called a vagina. Vagina sounded like an intimidating name, but now the only alternative I knew, Pee-pee hole sounded childish. Strange… a few weeks prior, it did not. By the end of the lecture on the “facts of life” I went for another reality check and demanded that my parents tell me if they were just messing with me or not. They assured me that was the way it was in the world between men and women.

      Once I was able to get use to the fact that what I had done was not sinful. I had really woken up sexually. Now I looked at everything differently. My perspective on everything in life changed. My parents from then on felt freer to talk about sexual matters that us kids wanted to know. You know…all of the mechanics and such. The only time we had to talk about such matters was at the supper table. To this day I often get a chubby when I am sitting at the supper table…especially if there is Italian or Southern food is being served.