Sep 4, 2021, 4:20 PM
For Linda D
Counseling Meeting:
Journal excerpt
Linda:
I wrote my journal for you as a fictional story to hide the reality in case my journal was read by someone else; I could have deniability. I'll have to admit this journal it is a bit over the top with adverbs and adjectives...But Linda, every word is true. So here it goes.
This all happened in upstate New York during a late July weekend in Utica, in 1981 when my mom moved out of my dad's safe suburban house and into her own apartment in a sketchy part of Utica. It started on a Friday night on a humid, scorching summer evening and ended by Sunday afternoon on August 2nd.
By a consensus of all the hormonal thirteen-year-old guys in my neighborhood my mom had the hottest figure. If there were a beauty contest the boys living around our house would easily choose her as the sexiest. Mom was a 1970 version of a MILF which my friends constantly reminded of every time we camped out.
By camping you must understand that meant going to a backyard tent lit by flashlights while we would consume bags of Lays potato chips. We bought and drank cheap wine and perused my dad's Sixties and early Seventies Playboys which I had snuck out his closet.
According to these same intoxicated friends my mom was a mix of a flirty Donna Reed and a shapely Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island. She had shoulder length blond hair feathered to with a barely perceptible part on the right side allowing her hair to carefully fall across her forehead. Her sky-blue German-eyes sparkled with bits of green flecks in her iris when she smiled. She had wonderful white teeth set against pink-red lipstick on her lips. She possessed a voluptuous chest; when she wore a sweater everyone noticed her, everyone. She had shapely, petite legs that completed her sexy, persona with a whispery voice that could make all the boy's dicks get hard. Her eyebrows were trimmed to align with the contours of her nose so that when she smiled your vision would initially be drawn first to her eyes then down her lips then finally, her shapely body.
Every dude that knew fantasized about her jerking off to her at night in their beds. It was a tidal wave of lust that I joined in on crashing onto her beach
That fateful Friday night I was calling my mom to see if I could come over since my dad had told me she was scared after reading in Utica's Observer-Dispatch newspaper that a double murder had occurred just two apartment buildings away from her new place. So, to "protect" her I drove over to her East Cherry Street apartment... went upstairs, was greeted with a kiss and a hug from a relieved mom and enjoyed a great dinner with her talking about my running and college courses.
She had been an incredibly young mom when she got pregnant with me, and my dad was not a supporter of the women's lib movement of the Seventies; she had three kids by the time she was 23. When she earned a nursing degree back when we lived on Long Island in 1970 my dad was upset. She was supposed to stay home and take care of the kids. She was a rebel and the Women's lib movement had a significant impact on her and indirectly met life as well: She wanted her own career.
Meanwhile, my dad had lost a political battle with his boss within the New York State Psychiatric State Hospital system and transferred to a new job in Rome, NY. My dad's new position forced us to uproot ourselves from our decades-long Long Island roots forcing a reluctant migration for the family in the summer of 1977. I was 19 that year. My mom got a job at the same Psych Center as my dad who was still unhappy with her working. They even started driving separate cars to the same job!
My mom started "exercise" classes in the winter of 1979 and my dad's response was to start going on "long walks "through the idyllic upstate village of Clinton each evening. I had just read Jim Fixx's book Running and cautiously joined the jogging revolution. I lost 30 pounds in the next year and within a few more years could run very fast; often finishing long road races in the top ten percent! I added a very typical 1980's fashion look to my daily wardrobe: short bright orange running shorts and muscle shirts, which were revealing but amazingly comfortable for daytime runs, errands and activities or as comfy as skimpy pajamas, especially in Utica's hot-muggy, summer days and nights.
I had developed a lean-muscular runner's body and loved showing it off. While I ran my speedy 6:10 training miles I wore the old-fashioned pillow-style earphones over my ears and plugged my Walkman into the local rock stations, especially WOUR, the rock of central New York. Listening to those tunes could motivate you to run fast and faster!
I was a good looking, young runner who had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life and added to my stress levels, my family was disintegrating.
So, I was 22 and she was 39 when she got divorced and I was between girlfriends and broke living at our Clinton family home. I was going to SUNY tech college for a business degree, but I had dropped out. I didn't want to pursue it. I got a job at Sears and earned money for future college courses. My parents' divorce would drag out for three years and I would start Utica College of Syracuse University the next semester. But as of that late July summer night I was adrift and lonely and a bit scared about my future. I gotta confess that seeing my mom and having a spaghetti meal with her made me feel useful and made her feel safe.
Now, unbeknownst to me at the time as of this Friday night dinner and weekend "sleep over" with my mom, she had been "seeing" various men and having affairs since 1978.
My dad's long walks? He visited suburban house-wife hookers who operated out of the stereotypical white, two-story homes tucked together on tree-lined streets in the sleepy upstate village of Clinton. This small upstate village is down the hill from toney Hamilton College. I bumped into my dad during a warm summer's night jog under the village streetlights. I found myself running towards a couple walking together from the village square towards a nicely kept house. I adjusted my jogging path to-move towards the center of the street so I could pass by these two lovebirds. I suddenly locked eyes on the man, "Dad?" I came to a quick stop and blurted out to my father, "Hey dad!" "Hi son." Then I cut to the chase and rudely asked, "Um, dad who's this?" "Oh, she's a college student and I'm heading over to her house to help her study." The young lady was dressed to get laid since she was wearing the tightest jeans possible and a very tight Blouse with an exceptionally low cut that showed off her ample cleavage. She had no shame whatsoever looking me over as if she were expecting me to join them! "Yea, right." I thought to myself. Disgusted, I restarted my run and as I looked back over my right shoulder at sight of my dad with a busty 21-year-old hooker I knew my parent's marriage was doomed. I cranked up the volume on my Walkman and ran with angry energy back to my family home.
Wondering about my mom's exercise classes? Well, they were later to be revealed, during the divorce proceedings, to entail exercising with a string of men whom my mom would rendezvous with in motels all over the Mohawk Valley. Linda, it's painfully obvious that I've inherited quite a set of libidinous genes from these two parents
Okay Linda, back to Friday night. The dinner was fine, and mom explained that the divorce would take a while and that dad was upset and contesting it. She planned to buy her own house away from Clinton, but instead, in the more affordable area of South Utica. But, for now she was temporarily staying in a quickly decaying part of Utica, Corn Hill.
The post dinner discussion turned to my school choices and her concern that I was no longer a kid, and she was worried about me? How would I survive after she and dad had sold the house? I told her I planned to start going to Utica College of Syracuse University part-time, year-round. I would have a bachelor's degree in five years and work a retail job to pay the tuition and use Pell Grants. That's indeed what happened. The lawyers sucked so much money from both my parents that neither could help much with my college expenses. Part-time retail jobs barely paid for my UC tuition bill let alone buy life's necessities.
I gave my mom a kiss and headed off to her bedroom which for the weekend was now the guest bedroom since she preferred falling asleep watching TV; she had gallantly volunteered to sleep on the fold-out couch in her living room where the TV just happened to be. I put on my favorite PJs: my skimpy orange running shorts and nothing else... she had a rickety stand-up fan in the living room to keep cool with but there was no AC in the apartment, so the back bedroom was toasty.