Bill

She was teaching me how to, basically, love a woman.

I grew up on the farm. During World War II, it was impossible to get a hired man. So at seven years old, my dad wired 4x4s on the tractor pedals and I became a driver. I drove the tractor, wagon, hay loader. Before long, I could run the farm.

Dad also led me to the Lord when I was seven. He was reading to me from the Book of Revelation and I got scared. He said, “Do you want to get to know the Lord and settle things now?” “Okay.” I said. So we knelt down by the chair and prayed.

As I got older, I had many questions. Like about Genesis, Chapter 6, which says, “And the sons of God saw the daughters of man.” Who were these sons of God? My brother, Curt, said they were the sons of Seth, but the words in Hebrew meant “higher than man.” They’re angels! So I wanted to know, if there were angels there, why aren’t there angels here? I remember the pastor telling me, “Don’t ask.”

I saw the cows and other critters having sex, so I knew what it was about, the mechanics of it. But I didn’t know anything else, the things I later learned from Tracie.

I was probably ten or twelve when Curt brought Tracie out to visit from college. Later, after they were married, they came on and off. Even at twelve, I thought she was a good lookin’ gal. We palled around together, joking with each other. We just had good camaraderie. But still, I recognized she was a good looker.

I was never one that liked to masturbate. Very, very seldom. First, I didn’t know if it was right or not. And second, I didn’t have much need because I found that sometimes, at the end of urinating, semen would flow out. I did not stroke at all, but I could feel it oozing into the urinary track. I could see it was not urine, but looked more like frog eggs. I figured I was blessed that way so that I didn’t need to masturbate.

I couldn’t get my questions answered by the clergy in our area, so I wanted to go to the big city. Curt told our folks, “Well, he can come out here.” So in the summer after ninth grade, I went to live with Curt and Tracie.

Curt was a grad student and a Hoover salesman. He had all the irons in the fire and was burning the candle at both ends, trying to light it in the middle. He didn’t have any time for Tracie and he didn’t realize it was a problem. He thought that once you’re married, that’s the end of that. Our relationship was cordial, but that was it.

It was summertime and, like before, Tracie and I spent a lot of time together. I was building rabbit hutches for Curt and she would be out there working with me. I don’t remember thinking at that point about how attractive she was, like I’d done earlier. And at first, I didn’t recognize anything at all out of the ordinary. One day, after maybe two, three weeks, we’re just lying on the carpet, resting, and she says, “Would you rub my back?” And I said, “Sure.” So, I rubbed her back and when I got through she reached over and gave me a big old smackeroo right on the lips, like I never had before. And I thought, “Wow!” I was 15. She was about 23 or 24.

She started crying and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” I said, “No. Don’t be sorry. That was good.”

After that, I think we just kept working together every day, but we realized there was tremendous attraction. We would hug and so forth without doing too much and it was a good platonic friendship. At the end of the day, we might go up on the roof and watch the sunset, sitting very close.

Dad had sold the farm, and after me raving in letters about the big city, he and Mom just packed up the station wagon with my younger brother and followed me out there. They got a place, and after two months with Curt and Tracie, I went to live with my folks again in September. And then school started.

The house my parents got was about 20, 30 miles from Curt’s. And there were no freeways. You had to stop for a traffic light every few miles. I didn’t see much of Tracie while I was there, except for one chance encounter. I was still 15.

She was in college and she dropped in to study. She didn’t know I was there, but I was sick that day and stayed home from school. My mom went out to go shopping and next thing I knew, Tracie was studying with me.

She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and was sitting on the floor with a book. She got up and went to the bathroom and when she came back, I could see she had taken off her panties. She came back bare crotch! I can remember that sight. She let me look and touch and feel. But she wouldn’t let me kiss it. She wouldn’t let me put my mouth on it. She closed her legs when I tried. I played with her there for an hour or two. I can remember fondling her and playing with her hair but she wouldn’t let my head go between her legs.

Well, the folks only stayed there a year and then moved back to the countryside. After that, I got a place of my own. I rented a room from a family at church for the next two or three years. I had an outside entrance.

Tracie would visit once in a while. She would visit on my birthday. She would bring me a birthday cake and stay a while. We would lay on each other, whatever. But we wouldn’t do anything. Heavy cuddling.

I remember Curt and Tracie and I going up to Canada. He was driving. Cars in those days had a bench seat. I was over next to the door, with Tracie in the middle. She said she was cold, so she got under a blanket and the next thing I know, she’s all over me.

Sometimes she had orgasms just from my touching her, even though we were both fully dressed. All of a sudden, she’d begin to squirm. She would tense up and tighten up and hold me, squeeze me tight, and “Ohhhh!”

Eventually, I moved to the little town my folks had gone back to and finished high school there. My interest was in law, medicine, theology, but I didn’t have money to go to college. I took English, history, math, physics and I got the highest grade in the state’s exit exams.

Curt and Tracie came to visit for a week. I was probably 18 at that point, maybe 19. I gave them my bedroom and put a sleeping bag down on the cushions on the living room floor, next to the sofa. Tracie would make sure she was the last one to go to bed. Then she would come down in the dark and rouse me and get all cuddly. We’d spend ten minutes or so together in my sleeping bag and then she’d go up and wake up Curt and practically rape him. So he liked that. But he didn’t know what was going on in the living room.

I convinced Tracie that we should have intercourse. So at the end of the week, her last night there, she came out of the bathroom and said, “Okay, we’re going to do it.” So, we did.

It was, for me, a let down, in a way. Because it was obvious that I was the wrong man. Men and women are different shapes and different sizes, and I didn’t fit. She was larger. It was obvious that she had had a larger man than me. And I had seen my brother and I knew darn well he was larger than me. We did with what we had to deal with, but it was an anticlimax. It was like, this belongs to somebody else and I was not that person.

We didn’t see each other for years and years after that night. And before long, she told Curt what had transpired.

His next time around, he came alone and took me for a ride and gave me a what-for. I didn’t say a word, just sat there the whole time. He was driving down the road, so I couldn’t jump out. But it was 40 years later that he showed up at Dad’s house and I happened to be there, and he said, “You know, I chewed your butt out for having a relationship with my wife, but I never bothered to thank you for saving my marriage. I know that if she hadn’t had you, I would have lost her. I didn’t know how to love a woman. I didn’t realize that I should spend that kind of time with her. And, as she explained what she got from you, I realized that that was what was missing from me.”

And he went on, “What I learned from the experience, gave me much to counsel others. I could say, ’Look, my wife had an affair, but we overcame it and we forgave each other and went on. That’s what marriage is all about.’”

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I could have been called a victim. I don’t agree with the law in this case because it was my choice. I’ve always been one to take responsibility for my choice, whatever it is.

Tracie didn’t know what she was doing, but she was teaching me how to, basically, love a woman. It didn’t dawn on me that fast. But once it did, it clicked. And from teaching me, she then was able to teach her husband.

Tracie and I were lovers without sex for a long, long time. What we expressed was real. It was genuine. Still is. I still appreciate what she gave me back there. She gave me love. She gave me care. She gave me a hope and a confidence in myself that I didn’t have before. Starting from that first kiss on the floor. It was a relationship that lasted for years and years and continues to this day, almost 60 years later. There was a sexual part, but that wasn’t the most important part.

Tracie loved Curt. She was in love with two men. She didn’t hold back, except for sex with me. She gave my brother the best that she could and she showered me with love too. It was great to be a part of somebody in a way that I’ve never been.

Tracie was a compliment to me. She was what I needed at the time that I didn’t know where else to get.

What we did is not condoned by the Bible, but I am at peace with it because of how restrained our relationship was. We both exercised restraint. And I think that I needed the education, for whatever reason.

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I’ve had four wives and five kids. I’ve come to reckon that I’m not God’s answer to every woman. One of my kids, his mama took him with her and I haven’t seen him since he was 13 months old. But the other four are very close.

I also had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old when I was 25. She invited me to visit the place she was staying one night, and when I walked in, she was in a negligee. We were lovers for seven years.

I’m 73 now. Fit as a fiddle. I take very good care of myself with what I eat. I fought cancer seven times and beat it.

As a rule of thumb, I try to call Tracie at least once a week. We have a good time, talk for sometimes ten minutes, sometimes an hour. Depends on what’s going on. Our relationship is very loving. It’s based on yesterday, yesteryear. She’s a wonderful person.

I’ve had a remarkable life in a lot of ways. I appreciate every bit of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the whatever.