Old man take a look at your life...

It seems appropriate to revisit this post from 2017.


When I was a young (26) manager in the radio business we had a Junior Achievement program at the station. I ran some of the sessions with the 12 kids in the program. There was one girl, 17 years old, who was incredibly attractive and sexy beyond her years. A few weeks after the program ended, she showed up at my office one afternoon with a Thank You card and a small gift. She came around the side of my desk while I was looking at the card and the gift and laid a wet kiss with plenty of tongue on me. I didn't return the kiss, I was shocked. Then she said "we should go out sometime," I told her no we shouldn't.

Later in life, I told a woman I knew quite well about the incident, she agreed that I did the right thing and added, "Of course if you had taken advantage of her, you would have never told me about it." At first, I was insulted at her response, but the more I thought about it she was right. Then I told my friend for the longest time I had wondered who was taking advantage of whom. She thought about for a bit and said, "Doesn't matter you were the adult in the room."

I know a guy who lost his wife over an affair with their teenaged neighbor. He was in his 30's, the relationship started when she was 16 and lasted for two years. He cultivated her for a year before the physical stuff started. He seemed to be extremely proud of it. On the surface, he appeared to be completely normal and a bit of a little fuddy-duddy harmless guy. He wasn't.

Another guy told me about being seduced by a mutual friend's wife, they carried on the mutual affair for a year or so. One night while having dinner with the wife and her husband in New York, the husband told the guy how much he enjoyed watching him make love to his wife. The husband had watched through a louvered closet door. He then proposed a threesome. I was stunned. I really couldn't believe it. Did the threesome happen? It did, more than once.

When I was single, living in Boston I used to play wingman for a lipstick lesbian friend. She was a very attractive woman and some of the lines guys used on her made me ashamed to be a man, some were clumsy, some were funny, some were stupid and more than a few were out and out threatening. That was an experience.

Another friend's son came out of the closet when he was a senior in high school. His parents were devastated, then they were mad, then they blamed themselves. When they finally came to their senses, I suggested they have their son talk to a really good man I knew who happened to be gay. Know what the older gay man told the kid? Stay the hell away from older gay men. Find some friends your age, hang out, go to movies, shoot hoops, play pool, arrange flowers, have some fun until you figure out who the hell you are. Just stay away from old guys looking for "chickens". Good advice if you're gay or straight.

I know plenty of men and women who've had affairs, some of them have repaired their relationships, some haven't. The one thing that got them all, in the end, was the lying. Lying to their partners and to themselves. The couples who put it back together stopped lying, the couples who didn't break up.

Life is full of bullshit, when I was in college I was sleeping with a girl who would always say, "we have to stop doing this." Right after she'd say it, she'd start things going again. I hope she has been able to unload that psychological burden after all these years.

What I cannot imagine is what goes on in the mind of a guy who thinks to force a woman to kiss him, or exposing himself or masturbating in front of them or groping them is going to get him. I read somewhere it's not about sex it's about power.

I could write a book about this stuff, but I won't. Thanks to Neil Young for the title.