We are where we are, we cannot
be better than our best in the moment
we act.

Looking back, we wish we did better, have
power only to tell the truth about it
and Apologize.

Many people despise looking back, get
offended at my wanting to do it, but they
are not in A.A.

We have twelve steps, all written with
past tense verbs, showing the spiritual
program used

by the first members of the program.  They
went back and made amends for the past to
make a better

Future.

***

Before there was sex, there was sexual feeling
and attraction.  We stripped the Barbie Doll
down and got aroused.

I looked in a mirror, and marveled at parts
of my body that intrigued me; I thought I was
amazing!

My first favorite person was Dad.  Mom “divorced”
him, a long-term separation of bodies, but Jesus
spoke truth,

Said “Man cannot separate what God has bound
together.”  Divorced people fail lie detector tests
when they

say they are not married.

Marriage is for life.

Who’s the Wife of Your Youth?

I thought mine was my third grade crush,
Anne Devereux, but she has moved on so where
does that leave me?

Life is cool, Jesus changing water to wine, a
metaphor at least for moving mountains with
faith and hope—

a newborn baby making it all new again, anything
possible under the sun!  God bless the child, the daughter
and the son!

There she was in third grade.  So pretty.  So cute.
And I, I had no clue what to do, no one to help me;
I let a huge moment pass;

I died a bit, then kept dying until I sipped my
first wine, stole into parent liquor cabinets to
douse depression.

“Everybody does it!”  We’re so adult here, getting
drunk and escaping.  Now we’re really disobeying some
commandments and law—

God is watching.  Counts every hair on our heads.

You will wish you were dead.  Better to get up, follow
God instead of the devil no matter the short-term pain.

There is a rainbow after the rain!

No joy without the pain, this is life!!

***

I was going to talk about sexual mistakes; impossible
without sex.

I was a virgin until 33—seven years short of a
crazy movie comedy.

It really wasn’t funny to me.

A lot of my mistakes, looking back, come from
fear and pride—fear of rejection, and being
too proud to gush for another person, a wife.

So you run and run, oh and then you masturbate—
because no one with authority told you “no.”

No one talked to you at all about deep, intimate or
sexual stuff—adults, like children, lost and not
knowing what to do!

****

I declare, and in the new light of new revelations
of sexual abuse in America—that Masturbation
could very well be a very bad thing—as the Puritans
would say… Maybe they were right!

Give your will and life to God.

Then honor a Sabbath and your parents.  Kill not,
ah! Then:

Marry, honor and rejoice with the Wife of your
Youth!!  Do not stray or treat her treacherously!!

Consult Solomon and Malachi and see!

***

Well, where did my fear, pride and masturbation go?

It went where it could, was thirsty without a well,
a desire creeping up, temptation un-resisted—it went
online, it found lonely women who liked it too.

Once, I got an eighteen-year old to engage with
me on Facebook, used a friendship to corner her
into a sex act.

Not illegal, not the worst thing ever, but if I could
go back, I’d rather have kept the friendship, let
something bloom, keep in touch with a beautiful
young woman who had dreams and ambitions like me—
was an artist and a writer like me.

In a moment, I reduced her to a sexual object, and
no longer are we in touch…

***

I quit “sex” two and half months ago, but mostly
that meant I quit abusing myself to get a sexual high
every or every other day.

No more jacking off.

And now I have female friends.  More contacts and
options.  Intimacy without vulgarity.

I still want sex.  Dream of it!!  Need it!!

But it is under the thumb of my prayers and
higher desire to please God and the Wife of my
Youth.

Anne?

I am available to her, unless God gives me some other
convertible water—something to change to non-
alcoholic wine,

A woman to honor, a love to shine.