The Great Plains

The great plains of our West are much like my journey through them. They are monotonous and distinctly undistinctive. The people who pioneered our country and crossed them 150 years ago must have found them very disturbing. They are like an ocean, low rolling hills as far as the eye could see. Once again I could have never dreamed that I would someday live in that country for four years.

What can I say. The drive was long and tedious and nothing exciting happened, at least nothing worth remembering. At the end of the third day I stayed in a mtel at the outskirts of Chicago. The next day I began driving east again. I should have driven only 500 to 600 miles and stopped, but I ended up driving all the way to New Haven. My right hand was swollen fro gripping the wheel so hard with it. That is a rather long ride. As I remember it was about 1000 miles. A long way to go in one day. Whhen I arived in New Haven I was in a sense a different person than the one who left. I left a confused and fragile person who had just tried to kill himself. I had little maleness about me and I left in search of it. When I returned i believed that I had found the male me. My confidence was renewed. I had long hair and was tan. At six foot tall I weighed 160 lbs. I wore sandals, a leather vest and beads. I looked like a flower child and was happy.

My friend and his lovely bride were married several days after I returned. At the wedding I met the daughter of one of the professors who was living in New Jersey. It was an uneventful meeting and I didn't think a thing of it. After Paul and Kath were married and gone on their honeymoon the opportunity came up to go to a big rock festival. It was to be held in a farmers field in New York State. The buzz was all around about it and the predictions were that a lot of people would be there. A friend of mine wanted me to go with him. I had the memories of the violence at the festival in Califirnia and decided not to go. I was also still beat ffom all the driving. My frind went and I didn't and I missed Woodstock! I have kicked myself frequently since then.

A month later there was an event that would take me back on the road again. A special convention of our church was being held in South Bend, Indiana. With a car full of students we set off to go to it. It was history and we went with the blessing of the whole school. We were there a week and returned. From that point on I had some new status at school. In October there was a party, I can't reember the excuse (we hardly ever needed one.) There was liberal booze and there was music and some dancing. I didn't do much drinking, but the daughter of one of the Professors who I will call "D" was there. She had come up from New Jersey to see her parents. On a whim I asked her to dance. I don't really know what happened or why it happpened but as we danced we clicked. Relationships with women had always been difficult, but this was so easy. We danced and later we kissed and i walked her to her parents house. As we kissed good night she said she wanted me to know she had a boy friend in New Jersey. Two weeks later she was back and we went out to dinner and the movies. We saw Easy Rider. We came back and we went to my room. We spent the night together. The next day she went back to New Jersey and broke up with her former boyfriend and moved in with her parents. We became inseparable from that point on and we nightly had sex in my dorm room. Her parents became worried that there would be a scandal in the school so I moved into their house. D and I live in the attic. She was an incredibly sexual person and we both had sexual appetites that matched. Not only did we make love nightly, but mutiple times nightly. I look back on that time and it is alost as if someone else was there and I wasn't. I was there though. D got a job in New Haven and we settled in to life together. It was an incredibly sexual time. One weekend we started on Friday evening and we made love until 4 pm the next day. I climaxed at least 6 times. At the end we were both raw. That was extreme, but for nine months we carried on together. As it became Spring we moved our activities outdoors. We went to Cape Cod and made love in the dunes. Her parents bought a farm in Maine and we went up there and made love in the fields. I am not going to make a list of every place we had sex, but we did it frequently. I am told that it is rather unusual for women to climax at the same time as the man, but it was the rule for us. I had found my manhood and I was happy.

For every bright thing in life some darkness must fall. Next time we will see that darkness.

Shel