the good old days

Scary but good…how far we’ve come since “the good old days.”

Back then they were the good old days, now…as an adult looking back…how the fuck am I not completely fucked up and locked away somewhere?

My parents got divorce when I was in first grade and we (the kids) spent the school year with our mom and the summers with our father. I remember loving the summer. When asked what my fondest and happiest childhood memory is…it is from one of those summers. NOW, my emotions are very conflicted. Within the same summer…I had my fondest as well as my most devastating childhood experiences.

We were living at the house overlooking the ocean in Maine. I look back and can see how I would have loved it as a kid…but now, as an adult…who the fuck were these people?

It was my step-grandmother’s house and my sister and I lived there with my father, step-mother, her brother and sister and their mother. WTF right there.

I would go out to my uncle’s (the detached guest house) and hang with him for a few hours. Not only would he let me rummage through his endless stacks of Playboys, but he also taught me how to smoke marijuana. I thought I was the coolest kid on the block. Porn, weed, hanging with a guy 15 years older than me…Life was good.

Now looking back on that…a 12 year old boy sitting around smoking pot and looking at porno mags with a 30 year old guy…not so good. Kind of creepy and …shit just not right.

Also that infamous summer…I, on more than one occasion, proceeded to go into my aunt’s (my step-mother’s sister) room when she was in the bath tub. This family was very open, free-loving and…not shy.

She told me that it was ok to come in, which I did. She started by asking what I wanted her for. I was at a loss – especially after watching her soapy boobs bobbing around in the water. I tried to act like I was unaffected but I think that my inability to avert my eyes from the first set of real boobs. My aunt humorously assured me that naked bodies are normal, natural and nothing to be ashamed of and it was ok to look. I have to say that although I felt a bit weird…I took her up on the offer – I was a 12 year old boy you know.

After the second ‘bath conversation’ (yes…there were …a few) I was becoming more comfortable just sitting and talking to her and less and less just staring at her boobs. At one point during one of our chats, she asked me to rub soap on her back. I obliged, without even thinking about it. It was not until my increasingly confused mind started wondering what would happen if I touched the sides of her boos while I was rubbing soap on her back….what the fuck is wrong with me? That is my aunt! Wait a minute…What the fuck is wrong with her?!

Anyway…I think you get the gist of what I am saying and how a 12 year old boy could have seen these times as the times of his life. But, at the same time…How fucked was all of that? If anything like that happened these days…everyone would be locked up and under psychiatric care.