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medical news *
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Stanford Medical Center called Friday. I have an appointment with their chemotherapy and radiology experts on Tuesday at 1 PM. We will go up early Tuesday morning. It is a three to four hour drive through mostly beautiful California hill country of the Salinas Valley.
It's Saturday morning. There is a marine layer today and I can't see the sun. Everything is quiet and peaceful. Very little pain to report. Waiting to see some of the college football. Michigan-Michigan State in particular.
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Reveries *
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Army Bill
Early life memories are different than those of adulthood. For example, if I wanted to remember as much as possible about my life at age 45, I could grab tax returns, check receipts, newspaper archives, etc. and begin to reconstruct that year of my life. Pretty soon, I would begin to see connections between memories and even chronology. As I worked, more and more material could be pulled out and integrated. A timeline will almost certainly emerge.
Early life memories seem more isolated without a neat passage from one to another. They are more like lily-pads on the pond--pretty much individual leafs apparently isolated lying on the surface. The connections between the leaves are too deep to discern.
Just so are my earliest reflections. To attempt to connect them is a distortion. Perhaps the best I can do is to relate them as democratically as possible, giving each a similar voice. If I am able to enumerate and call them them forth, maybe I can begin to construct a picture of my parents and my life at that time, one that is sufficiently complex to hold the ambivalence that remains in my heart.
William Charles Sohr, my father, was born June 12, 1921 in Yonkers, N.Y. He was known as Army Bill to distinguish him from my uncle, William Logan, who I called Navy Bill.
Father William G Sohr and Mother Florence (Kiel) Sohr left school in the 4th grade in order to help support their families. Florence was a binge-drinking alcoholic who occasionally left home for days at a time. The most maternal figure in my father's life was Florence's mother, "Mom" Kiel.
My mother recalls my first meeting with my father as occurring in August 1944 when I was about 16 months old.. She and Bill had been married in Bremerton, Washington in June 1942. Pregnancy was immediate (maybe even "pre-immediate" but my mother ever refused to fess up) and I came along in March of 1943. So, it had been a long time since the couple had time together.
It took Mom four days to get from D.C. to Riverside California. She was constantly being "bumped" from flights. Howard Hughes took pity on her in Denver or Cheyenne and brought the two of us on board his private plane. Mom says that Mr. Hughes was drunk the entire time and only talked about Jane Russell's breasts.
Upon meeting my father in our new dwelling place, a rented out garage in Riverside, I apparently stamped my foot to express my displeasure. My father swatted me on the rear end to express his. Mom said it was the first time I had ever been spanked or hit. It was probably an accurate foreshadowing of our relationship. Upon return to the east coast in the Fall of 1944, Mom was pregnant for the second time with my sister, Suzanne.
I previously described my first recollection of my father.
Shortly after the war in the Pacific ended, the hunters returned, my father Bill from Europe, my uncle Bill from the Pacific. I am unaware that the winds have changed. It is a bright August day and I’m standing on the hood of an automobile parked on Quincy street. I have learned how to start at the running board and crawl forward over the slope of the front fender. From the fender it was an easy step up to the hood of the car and access to those magical sticks that could be controlled from inside an automobile. Fascinated by windshield wipers in general, I am about 30 months old and I’m pulling and twisting the wiper blade.. Without warning my left arm is gripped in a tight hold and I’m lifted in the air and swung in arc above the green lawn bordering the street. My confusion is increased by a rapid series of hurtful jolts to my rear end and the back of my thighs. I am suspended by my left arm and being spanked at the same time. Then I am placed on the sidewalk by a large adult male who has been administering this whipping. I’m really not able to distinguish his features through my tears. My father has just entered my life as a social presence.
**I am rooting around on the floor of the bedroom closet examining large shoes with flat soles. Unlike my mother's shoes, these have strings. I put them on and clomp around the house. How enormous they are. My father is different in dress from other men. He wears a turtle neck sweater and a flannel shirt instead of a winter coat.
**My father has taken me to the zoo and we are in front of the swans and geese. He says that he needs to make a phone call. He says "take these peanuts, I'll be right back." These don't look like peanuts to me. Peanuts are smooth and regularly shaped. The come in packages of cellophane bags. These are much bigger. I put a small one in my mouth and begin to chew it. It tastes terrible and I spit it out and some of it gets on my shirt. When Dad returns, he laughs and explains that peanuts have to be peeled and he shows me how to do it.
**I am walking with my father from Quincy Street to 7th Street to look at the "new apartment" that will soon be our home. I am holding his hand. I know it is before my third birthday because our move to that apartment occurred prior to that time.
**My brother, Geoffrey, has arrived. There is a crib in the little bedroom and I see a very scrawny little creature with whom I will spend hundreds of hours playing chess in lieu of homework.
**It is snowing and I'm trying to go to the store with my father. I am sinking into the snow and having trouble walking. Dad says for me to step into his tracks but it is exhausting trying to stretch from one footprint to another and I start crying.
**My brother, Geoffrey, has arrived. There is a crib in the little bedroom and I see a very scrawny little creature with whom I will spend hundreds of hours playing chess in lieu of homework.
**It is snowing and I'm trying to go to the store with my father. I am sinking into the snow and having trouble walking. Dad says for me to step into his tracks but it is exhausting trying to stretch from one footprint to another and I start crying.
**My father is sitting at the dining room table. He is home from work late and is eating his supper alone. I am three or four. Apparently I have been running around the apartment with one of my shoes off because he asks me, "Where is your other shoe?"
I don't know. He swats me in the face and knocks me down. Now I am sitting on my backside facing him from a few feet away and I'm crying. "Where is your other shoe? " but louder and more demanding. He is getting up to hit me again. I'm so terrified I don't know where my feet are. My mind is frozen by fear and the swats keep coming.
I don't know. He swats me in the face and knocks me down. Now I am sitting on my backside facing him from a few feet away and I'm crying. "Where is your other shoe? " but louder and more demanding. He is getting up to hit me again. I'm so terrified I don't know where my feet are. My mind is frozen by fear and the swats keep coming.
**I am scared. There is a thunder storm. Mom is afraid of them. When they occur, we must not be near any plumbing fixture. Dad takes me out on the screened porch. He is holding my hand and together we see the lightning flashes illuminating the night time scene. In one flash, I clearly see the back door of the apartment across the alley. In other flash, I see the big mulberry tree that I climb every day. We are laughing at some of the biggest flashes.
**There is a big fishbowl full of various types of matchbooks on the windowsill in the living room of the apartment. I am probably four. I have learned to strike matches that are wooden and come with a striker on the box, but none of those are visible in the bowl. I am going to have to learn to strike paper matches. It requires that the pad of the index finger be applied to the head of the match in order to generate the required friction when the match head is pulled along the striker. The first time I am unable to move my finger tip in time and I get a little burn. I am crying for quite a while. My mother puts me in bed for a nap. I see that there is a blister on my finger tip. I cry myself to sleep, but when I awaken, the pain is gone.
*I have fallen while climbing the concrete stairway and struck my face on the edge of a higher step. My front teeth are pushed back into my mouth and I'm crying, bleeding, and scared. My father picks me up and tells me it will be fine. He calls a cab and takes me to the dentist who pulls the teeth. I am dizzy when I walk out of the dental office and I start vomiting everywhere and splash his pants and shoes. He helps me wash out my mouth. He wets a handkerchief and places it on my forehead and holds me tenderly as a cab takes us home.
**In late summer 1945, I had long established relationship with my godparents, Kay and Bus Amidon. I loved being with them and spending time at their house. This came to an end with my father's arrival on the scene. He was jealous of my Uncle Bus. When I was three or four my father asked me how I would choose between Bus and Dad. Of course it was Bus hands down and that was my non-diplomatic final answer.
My inability to come to terms with my relationship with my father drove me to therapy on several occasions in my life, even after his death in 1988. During my psychiatry residency a therapist pointed out that it was much more likely that my father was concerned with a possible relationship between my mother and Uncle Bus than the relationship between me and Uncle Bus. I was fifty-one at the time of this revelation. Blind spots are blind spots.
**The magical fishbowl with matches attracts me again. Still no wooden matches, so I try the match again. This time I am lying in bed with the cat next to me. Somehow I manage to burn the cat's hair creating a very interesting smell. I try again, this time intending to fire up the cat's fur. She declines to stay with me.
My mother catches me and sees the dead matches scattered around the bed. She calls my father who comes home for lunch to punish me. He tells me that he thought about burning my hand to teach me a lesson about fire. Instead, he has decided to spank me, twice...once before lunch and once after lunch. The one before lunch was a memorable spanking with the use of a belt. I lay in my bed crying about the first whipping and terrified of the one that is coming up. However, it turned out to be psychological warfare and the second spanking never came.
From then on, all experiments (and there were many) with fire were conducted out of doors as I learned about the combustibility of materials, like newspapers, writing paper, envelopes, little sticks, etc. My experimentation stopped in its tracks one day in 1949 when I was busily fire-setting behind a cedar bush on 8th Street (I had learned to stay at least one block away from our apartment on 7th Street. Better to be bad in another neighborhood.) At that time in my life, I was very much afraid of uniformed men, particularly policemen and firemen (who also looked like policemen as far as I was concerned.) I glance up from my little fire and there is a very large policeman getting out of his car at the curb, maybe 20 or 30 feet away. Although I am behind a little cedar bush, it is not much cover. He is walking right toward me. It is a moment of terror. But then he walks past me and never looks at what I am up to. He opens the outer door and enters the apartment. My terror subsides but I know that my early experiments in the making of fire have come to an end.
**There is a big fishbowl full of various types of matchbooks on the windowsill in the living room of the apartment. I am probably four. I have learned to strike matches that are wooden and come with a striker on the box, but none of those are visible in the bowl. I am going to have to learn to strike paper matches. It requires that the pad of the index finger be applied to the head of the match in order to generate the required friction when the match head is pulled along the striker. The first time I am unable to move my finger tip in time and I get a little burn. I am crying for quite a while. My mother puts me in bed for a nap. I see that there is a blister on my finger tip. I cry myself to sleep, but when I awaken, the pain is gone.
*I have fallen while climbing the concrete stairway and struck my face on the edge of a higher step. My front teeth are pushed back into my mouth and I'm crying, bleeding, and scared. My father picks me up and tells me it will be fine. He calls a cab and takes me to the dentist who pulls the teeth. I am dizzy when I walk out of the dental office and I start vomiting everywhere and splash his pants and shoes. He helps me wash out my mouth. He wets a handkerchief and places it on my forehead and holds me tenderly as a cab takes us home.
**In late summer 1945, I had long established relationship with my godparents, Kay and Bus Amidon. I loved being with them and spending time at their house. This came to an end with my father's arrival on the scene. He was jealous of my Uncle Bus. When I was three or four my father asked me how I would choose between Bus and Dad. Of course it was Bus hands down and that was my non-diplomatic final answer.
My inability to come to terms with my relationship with my father drove me to therapy on several occasions in my life, even after his death in 1988. During my psychiatry residency a therapist pointed out that it was much more likely that my father was concerned with a possible relationship between my mother and Uncle Bus than the relationship between me and Uncle Bus. I was fifty-one at the time of this revelation. Blind spots are blind spots.
**The magical fishbowl with matches attracts me again. Still no wooden matches, so I try the match again. This time I am lying in bed with the cat next to me. Somehow I manage to burn the cat's hair creating a very interesting smell. I try again, this time intending to fire up the cat's fur. She declines to stay with me.
My mother catches me and sees the dead matches scattered around the bed. She calls my father who comes home for lunch to punish me. He tells me that he thought about burning my hand to teach me a lesson about fire. Instead, he has decided to spank me, twice...once before lunch and once after lunch. The one before lunch was a memorable spanking with the use of a belt. I lay in my bed crying about the first whipping and terrified of the one that is coming up. However, it turned out to be psychological warfare and the second spanking never came.
From then on, all experiments (and there were many) with fire were conducted out of doors as I learned about the combustibility of materials, like newspapers, writing paper, envelopes, little sticks, etc. My experimentation stopped in its tracks one day in 1949 when I was busily fire-setting behind a cedar bush on 8th Street (I had learned to stay at least one block away from our apartment on 7th Street. Better to be bad in another neighborhood.) At that time in my life, I was very much afraid of uniformed men, particularly policemen and firemen (who also looked like policemen as far as I was concerned.) I glance up from my little fire and there is a very large policeman getting out of his car at the curb, maybe 20 or 30 feet away. Although I am behind a little cedar bush, it is not much cover. He is walking right toward me. It is a moment of terror. But then he walks past me and never looks at what I am up to. He opens the outer door and enters the apartment. My terror subsides but I know that my early experiments in the making of fire have come to an end.
**I am sitting on my parent's bed in the living room of the apartment. Their bed is a roll-out from the couch. It is late at night and my mother is very distracted. I can see that she has been crying. She says that she hasn't heard from my father.
**I am in my parent's bed. It is morning and their day has begun. My mother is making breakfast. My father is in the bathroom shaving. On the radio, they are playing Manana, a popular song by Peggy Lee. It is a very happy moment. Most likely this is around the time of my 5th birthday.
**I loved the softness of my father's face and his smell after shaving in the morning. So different than the burning sensation from his scratchy beard if he gave me a hug after work.
**It is Thanksgiving, a strange word that I really don't understand. My mother and my Grandfather, Walter, are in the small dining room with us children as we eat. My father has not been up all day. He has "been sick." Later I will reflect back and realize that it is a hangover. He has missed Thanksgiving Dinner with his father-in-law.
**It is Christmas Eve and my mother is decorating the tree by herself. My father has been drinking and has gone to sleep. She is tired and sad and has nothing much to say.
**I have tried twice to creep into my parents' bed. I think that I am four and sleeping in the top bunk. Both times my father called me out and told me to go back to bed and get to sleep.
I wait for what seems like a long time. I manage to get down to the floor quietly. I am slowly, slowly creeping across the bedroom, then through the doorway and into the dining room. I go even slower. I am pretty confident this time.
All of a sudden the light comes on. My father grabs me and swings me upward so that I'm draped over his left shoulder. Down come the pajama bottoms. My backside is being peppered with volleys of hard slaps. My rear end is on fire as he drops me into my top bunk. I am crying and I'm hurting.
However, as the burning subsides, I am feeling better. Whatever the internal aching that seemed to push me to seek out their bed has been displaced. I am tired from crying and ready to go to sleep. I wonder if there are such things as good spankings.
** I am about three and I'm sitting on the toilet in our little bathroom. There is no window, only a ventilation shaft that permits the transmission of sounds from the apartment downstairs where the Peblinski sisters are chattering away. I am looking at the wheel of a stroller and mouthing a phrase, "Maybe we will do it on the weekend." "Maybe we will do it on the weekend." Time is an incomplete concept to me and I have no idea of the meaning of 'weekend. ' But the word itself...'weekend' ...is indelibly linked in my memory with a stroller wheel. In a similar fashion, the word 'yesterday' is associated with top door latch of the back door of the apartment. The way that the human brain organizes memories is fascinating.
I wait for what seems like a long time. I manage to get down to the floor quietly. I am slowly, slowly creeping across the bedroom, then through the doorway and into the dining room. I go even slower. I am pretty confident this time.
All of a sudden the light comes on. My father grabs me and swings me upward so that I'm draped over his left shoulder. Down come the pajama bottoms. My backside is being peppered with volleys of hard slaps. My rear end is on fire as he drops me into my top bunk. I am crying and I'm hurting.
However, as the burning subsides, I am feeling better. Whatever the internal aching that seemed to push me to seek out their bed has been displaced. I am tired from crying and ready to go to sleep. I wonder if there are such things as good spankings.
** I am about three and I'm sitting on the toilet in our little bathroom. There is no window, only a ventilation shaft that permits the transmission of sounds from the apartment downstairs where the Peblinski sisters are chattering away. I am looking at the wheel of a stroller and mouthing a phrase, "Maybe we will do it on the weekend." "Maybe we will do it on the weekend." Time is an incomplete concept to me and I have no idea of the meaning of 'weekend. ' But the word itself...'weekend' ...is indelibly linked in my memory with a stroller wheel. In a similar fashion, the word 'yesterday' is associated with top door latch of the back door of the apartment. The way that the human brain organizes memories is fascinating.
**I am three and my mother is in the bathroom. I am sure that she is sitting on the toilet. However, the water in the sink is running noisily at the same time. When she leaves the bathroom, I asked her why she ran the water. She tells me that she didn't want anyone to hear the noise she is making.
**I am about five. There is a birthday party for a little girl in the apartment next door. My mother dresses me and hands me a wrapped gift and sends me out to walk over to the party. I am too shy. I take the present and I leave it at the little girl's door. Then I hide behind a large bush on the grounds of the apartment. I will stay until I see the other kids leave, then I'll go home. I am sitting there, lost in my thoughts, when my Dad appears. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't appear to be angry. He lifts me up and carries me to the party. He then hands me to another adult who hands me to another adult, all the while keeping me lifted above the crowd of children below. I am deposited on the floor as far away from the door as possible at which time the adults ignore me. I get over my fears and even have a good time. There is something there called bubble gum and I try it for the first time.
**I am about five. There is a birthday party for a little girl in the apartment next door. My mother dresses me and hands me a wrapped gift and sends me out to walk over to the party. I am too shy. I take the present and I leave it at the little girl's door. Then I hide behind a large bush on the grounds of the apartment. I will stay until I see the other kids leave, then I'll go home. I am sitting there, lost in my thoughts, when my Dad appears. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't appear to be angry. He lifts me up and carries me to the party. He then hands me to another adult who hands me to another adult, all the while keeping me lifted above the crowd of children below. I am deposited on the floor as far away from the door as possible at which time the adults ignore me. I get over my fears and even have a good time. There is something there called bubble gum and I try it for the first time.
**I wake up vomiting. My father finds me quickly and takes me into the bathroom. He cradles my forehead and holds it over the commode. He supports my stomach with the other hand as I retch and retch. I am exhausted. He stands me up on a little stool by the sink. He cups his hands to form a vessel that he fills with cool water. He tells me to rinse my mouth out first and spit it out. He fills his hands again and I drink some more. The water from his hands tastes different and better than any other.
**I am four and my mother is wearing a hearing aide because of her advancing otosclerosis. The electric amplifier and transmitter use D Cell batteries and are worn on the inside of the leg. I see that she has some discoloration from the battery burns.
**I am to get my tonsils out. I go to the hospital the day before the surgery. I am sad that my father is going to stay with me instead of my mother. However, the night goes well. The next day I am wheeled into a cold room and a mask is placed over my face. The mask has a sweet, sickening smell. I fight as best I can but then I am bombarded by the high pitched shriek of what must have been the suction machine and I dream of bright windmills. I awaken with a sore throat. My father has promised me ice cream, as much as I want, but there is none and my father is no where to be found. I go home and listen to my mother's complaint about my father acting like a "big shot." She is angry that he bought a round of ice cream for a large number of patients.
**My mother is cooking dinner. She is getting ready to put a cake in the oven. The mix is distributed equally between two round cake pans. The bowl is turned over to me with the rubber spatula. I get to "lick out the bowl." She is now rolling out the biscuit dough. When she is done, I take the jelly glass and turn it upside down so that I can use the rim to cut circles of dough. This is a repetitive memory. I can't recall individual occasions but I am certain that it happened very frequently.
**Again my mother is making dinner. She has served ham and cabbage for two previous meals. Now she is trimming the remainder of the meat from the ham bone. She is has assembled a hand-crank grinder at the edge of the kitchen table and is grinding the meat for a casserole. The grinder is sort of like the undertaker for our cuts of meat.
**I am eight years old. My father has started drinking. The first signs is a brightening of his mood and a change in his speech. Jackie Gleason had a character called Reginald Van Gleason the third, an aristocrat who spoke with a certain degree of "fanciness."
That Gleason character's speech reminds me of the changes that occurred in my father. The initiation of drinking would cause a rift between my parents within a few hours. She would invariably argue with him and things would escalate. On this occasion she leaves to go to her sister Kay's house.
Then Suzanne, Geoff, and I are left alone with him. He loads us into the Studebaker. The little ones are in the back. I'm sitting in front. Dad is driving and he has a bottle of whiskey on the front seat between him and me. We are heading East toward Annapolis and beach roads. At times I see the speedometer--I think we are going 80 miles an hour at times. I'm so scared. I don't recall the end of the memory.
**This is a familiar scene. My father is going to work on Saturday and he is taking me. First we stop at a bar somewhere on 12th St where he has a draft beer and I have a coke. Then we take the streetcar to the Veterans Administration offices. I get to work the stapler.
**I am at a parade. In order to help me see, Dad lets me sit on top of his shoulders. I ask about the old men in the parade and he tells me they are soldiers from an older war. I ask about the sign. I must know my numbers because the sign says 40 + 8. My Dad explains that these men fought in a war where railroad cars were used instead of Jeeps. The railroad cars could hold 40 men or 8 horses.
**I am 7 years old, in first grade. The past two days have been strange. Yesterday I saw a large pile of vomitus on the ground to the left of the doorway upon entering our apartment. (More than sixty years later I can still describe some of the contents.) I ask my mother about it and she explains that "your father was sick when he came home last night."
Tonight, I am awakened by my mother and father fighting. All the children are awake. Geoff and Suzanne are crying. Mom is being struck. She cries out "Eric, get up and call the police." This is followed by a gruff threat from my father. "You stay in bed. If you get up I'll kill you." Now I'm crying too, listening to the abuse and being too small and too scared to intervene.
Suddenly my uncle Phil has arrived. He gets us out of bed. My mother packs some clothing for us and Phil puts us out in his car. My father has a healthy respect for Phil who uses gentle speech to all including my father.There is no question about who is now in charge of the situation. I awaken the next day at my Uncle's house and there is a terrible sensation in my stomach. It is so heavy.
My father sends my mother a fur coat by way of making amends. She returns the coat and returns to him as well. We reenter the apartment after a three day absence. It is very messy. There is a pile of pots and pans in the sink. I know that I am trapped in my life. There is no escape until adulthood. This sensation in my stomach will remain close by for many years.
**I have started Kindergarten at Brookland Elementary School The teacher sends home a note stating that I had trouble taking care of myself, that when bullied by others, I came to complain to the teacher rather than taking some action to defend myself. This my father could not stand to hear. Within 24 hours, I have boxing gloves, a punching bag, and I'm receiving daily instructions on the jab and the right cross. My dad is highly invested in my ability to defend myself. I'm never sure if he just wants me to be able to confront bullies or to be the biggest, toughest bully of all.
A Search For Self Comfort
Thumb-sucking is the first form of self-comforting that I can recall. It had to be my right thumb and I had to curl the remaining fingers of my right hand over the bridge of my nose. A night's sojourn in the mouth does strange things to the thumb. It is paler reflecting the absorption of fluid that has occurred. The skin is wrinkled in the same fashion. There is also a very peculiar, sour smell to the thumb that disappears slowly over many hours. I have always been drawn to smells. I'll leave to your own imagination the origin of some of the smells that little children in our neighborhood might typically offer one another as they stretched out their index fingers in an eagerness to share the bounty.
A concerted effort was made by my parents to discourage my thumb-sucking. Their first maneuver was to coat my thumb with a thick, ill-smelling and foul-tasting brownish yellow material. I later figured out that it must have been benzoin, the material that was often applied before the adhesive tape to get greater stickiness.
Benzoin was a failure. I learned to accept sucking the benzoin off of the thumb as the necessary price for getting down to the pleasure of the thumb itself. Benzoin was merely a "luxury tax."
The next maneuver was "the cage." A wire guard was placed over my right thumb and tied securely to the wrist. My thumb had been put in jail. My first defense was an attempt to substitute my left thumb for a few nights. It just didn't do the trick. Then I began working on the attachment straps that connected the thumb cage to my wrist. Here I was successful. I could pull the thumb out of jail for the night and insert it back in the cage before dawn. Unfortunately, my parents were no fools. They could spot a thumb that had been sucked whether it was currently in jail or not.
It was time to find other ways to soothe myself. I began a sensitivity analysis of the rest of my body. The anus was very sensitive and had a kinky smell to boot, but it really didn't make it for me. The glans penis seemed much more promising as a substitute for my thumb. I had been aware of the property of super-sensitivity of peripheral skin receptors from an early age. My mother used to rub my head as a way to comfort me. Sometimes, she lightly scratched me with her fingernails over the same area of scalp. Occasionally after a few minutes of gentle scratching, there was a sudden change in sensitivity of the stroked area such that further touching was overwhelming. I discovered that the glans penis was particularly endowed with this property of super-sensitvity and that thrust of the pelvis and driving the erect penis at my pillow would produce this much desired sensation within a few minutes.
This activity became the preferred form of self-gratification at about age 4 or 5. Masturbation had much to recommend it. Thumb-sucking is more like an opium den. You lay there with your thumb in your mouth for hours or until you pass into sleep. Masturbation is more like a heroin shooing gallery. There is a burst of physical activity, followed by orgasm, followed by an overall sense of calm. It becomes easier to fall asleep. Much more efficient.
According to Kinsey, women are less likely to fantasize while masturbating. Generally, men do fantasize, usually about sexual activity. The first masturbation fantasies that I recall are from age 6. While masturbating, I imagine myself on a magic carpet that is suspended just beneath the ceiling of my first grade class room. I am naked and am able to peek over the edge of the carpet and see what classmates are doing. They are unable to see me in my nudity.
In first grade I walked to school along 12th Street. If I were lucky, I would meet Nora, a towhead whose front teeth were missing. Nora's mother was a widow. Her father had been killed in action during the war. Nora was a very cheerful person and I looked forward to running into her--my first "love" or attachment to a female outside of my family--but I was too shy to actually make a point to stop by her house and knock on the door. I remember wanting to hold her hand but was too afraid to try to do so.
At some point Nora became incorporated into my masturbation fantasies. Now it was two of us, both naked, lying on our tummies on a magic carpet and peeping over the edge to see our classmates slaving away in class down below.
Here is a visual record of the moral decline in my formative years.
In the picture. On the left I am a thumb-sucker shown with my mother in 1944 or 1945. On the right I have am beginning to experience genital Eros.
This final picture completes the history of degradation. Eric has now reached the age where he has begun to use fantasy during masturbation and has included the very sexy Nora on his magic carpet. He will soon learn that God has prepared a very special place in Hell for him. You can see the regression of his chin has already begun.
And so begins a love-hate relationship with my sexuality that will twist me around for several years. Born into and brainwashed by a religion that sees coital sexual expression as only permissible when there is possibility of conception, I was never exposed to the earthy spirituality that also exists in parts of Christendom. One evening in 1983, I was doing medical clinic on Smith Island. My patient was a 70 year-old waterman. The visit was over and he about to leave the exam room which opened directly into the waiting room. There would be several women sitting there.
I pointed out to him that he had left his fly open. As he zipped it up he turned to me, smiled, and said "Oh Father! There is no telling what kind of damage he could do if he were to get out right now." He left the office on his way to Wednesday prayers, a devout Methodist to the day of his death.
It was also on Smith Island where I heard the following joke.
A beautiful young woman is married off by her family to a much older, grumpy, miser. She lives with him for several years before his death from natural causes. She has him cremated and places the urn on a bookshelf in her living room.
A few weeks later, she dresses up and prepares to leave the home. She turns around and addresses the urn. "You old sonofabitch, I have a date tonight." With that she left.
The following week, she dresses up again and prepares to leave. This time she says to the urn. "You miserable creature, tonight I'm getting laid." With this she leaves.
Another week passes. She dresses again and prepares to go out. This time she goes up to the urn and opens it and sprinkles some of the ashes onto her gloved hand. She takes a deep breath and huffs the ashes out of her palm. "You nasty son of a bitch, that's the blow job you always wanted."
In 2003 I am on a plane from Las Vegas to my daughter's bedside in Washington, D.C. I know that she is going to die. Somehow, during that grief-filled ride it occurs to me with the suddenness and certainty of a mystical experience that my penis, this bane of my existence, was an essential part in the creation of this wonderful daughter whom I am about to lose.
I also thought that I owed it to Kristin to write about some of this--that there were many tortured souls whose concept of self and sexuality had been distorted by early childhood experiences. Since that plane ride, I have collected a certain amount of literature, gone back and looked at some Kinsey data, and read some more about genetics. I came to realize that this struggle with sexuality was also ultimately responsible for my choice of a profession, that of physician. It is such an essential component in the definition of my life.
The title of the book came immediately to mind: "The Search for John Dillinger's Penis."
**I am eight years old. My father has started drinking. The first signs is a brightening of his mood and a change in his speech. Jackie Gleason had a character called Reginald Van Gleason the third, an aristocrat who spoke with a certain degree of "fanciness."
That Gleason character's speech reminds me of the changes that occurred in my father. The initiation of drinking would cause a rift between my parents within a few hours. She would invariably argue with him and things would escalate. On this occasion she leaves to go to her sister Kay's house.
Then Suzanne, Geoff, and I are left alone with him. He loads us into the Studebaker. The little ones are in the back. I'm sitting in front. Dad is driving and he has a bottle of whiskey on the front seat between him and me. We are heading East toward Annapolis and beach roads. At times I see the speedometer--I think we are going 80 miles an hour at times. I'm so scared. I don't recall the end of the memory.
**This is a familiar scene. My father is going to work on Saturday and he is taking me. First we stop at a bar somewhere on 12th St where he has a draft beer and I have a coke. Then we take the streetcar to the Veterans Administration offices. I get to work the stapler.
**I am at a parade. In order to help me see, Dad lets me sit on top of his shoulders. I ask about the old men in the parade and he tells me they are soldiers from an older war. I ask about the sign. I must know my numbers because the sign says 40 + 8. My Dad explains that these men fought in a war where railroad cars were used instead of Jeeps. The railroad cars could hold 40 men or 8 horses.
**I am 7 years old, in first grade. The past two days have been strange. Yesterday I saw a large pile of vomitus on the ground to the left of the doorway upon entering our apartment. (More than sixty years later I can still describe some of the contents.) I ask my mother about it and she explains that "your father was sick when he came home last night."
Tonight, I am awakened by my mother and father fighting. All the children are awake. Geoff and Suzanne are crying. Mom is being struck. She cries out "Eric, get up and call the police." This is followed by a gruff threat from my father. "You stay in bed. If you get up I'll kill you." Now I'm crying too, listening to the abuse and being too small and too scared to intervene.
Suddenly my uncle Phil has arrived. He gets us out of bed. My mother packs some clothing for us and Phil puts us out in his car. My father has a healthy respect for Phil who uses gentle speech to all including my father.There is no question about who is now in charge of the situation. I awaken the next day at my Uncle's house and there is a terrible sensation in my stomach. It is so heavy.
My father sends my mother a fur coat by way of making amends. She returns the coat and returns to him as well. We reenter the apartment after a three day absence. It is very messy. There is a pile of pots and pans in the sink. I know that I am trapped in my life. There is no escape until adulthood. This sensation in my stomach will remain close by for many years.
**I have started Kindergarten at Brookland Elementary School The teacher sends home a note stating that I had trouble taking care of myself, that when bullied by others, I came to complain to the teacher rather than taking some action to defend myself. This my father could not stand to hear. Within 24 hours, I have boxing gloves, a punching bag, and I'm receiving daily instructions on the jab and the right cross. My dad is highly invested in my ability to defend myself. I'm never sure if he just wants me to be able to confront bullies or to be the biggest, toughest bully of all.
A Search For Self Comfort
Thumb-sucking is the first form of self-comforting that I can recall. It had to be my right thumb and I had to curl the remaining fingers of my right hand over the bridge of my nose. A night's sojourn in the mouth does strange things to the thumb. It is paler reflecting the absorption of fluid that has occurred. The skin is wrinkled in the same fashion. There is also a very peculiar, sour smell to the thumb that disappears slowly over many hours. I have always been drawn to smells. I'll leave to your own imagination the origin of some of the smells that little children in our neighborhood might typically offer one another as they stretched out their index fingers in an eagerness to share the bounty.
A concerted effort was made by my parents to discourage my thumb-sucking. Their first maneuver was to coat my thumb with a thick, ill-smelling and foul-tasting brownish yellow material. I later figured out that it must have been benzoin, the material that was often applied before the adhesive tape to get greater stickiness.
Benzoin was a failure. I learned to accept sucking the benzoin off of the thumb as the necessary price for getting down to the pleasure of the thumb itself. Benzoin was merely a "luxury tax."
The next maneuver was "the cage." A wire guard was placed over my right thumb and tied securely to the wrist. My thumb had been put in jail. My first defense was an attempt to substitute my left thumb for a few nights. It just didn't do the trick. Then I began working on the attachment straps that connected the thumb cage to my wrist. Here I was successful. I could pull the thumb out of jail for the night and insert it back in the cage before dawn. Unfortunately, my parents were no fools. They could spot a thumb that had been sucked whether it was currently in jail or not.
It was time to find other ways to soothe myself. I began a sensitivity analysis of the rest of my body. The anus was very sensitive and had a kinky smell to boot, but it really didn't make it for me. The glans penis seemed much more promising as a substitute for my thumb. I had been aware of the property of super-sensitivity of peripheral skin receptors from an early age. My mother used to rub my head as a way to comfort me. Sometimes, she lightly scratched me with her fingernails over the same area of scalp. Occasionally after a few minutes of gentle scratching, there was a sudden change in sensitivity of the stroked area such that further touching was overwhelming. I discovered that the glans penis was particularly endowed with this property of super-sensitvity and that thrust of the pelvis and driving the erect penis at my pillow would produce this much desired sensation within a few minutes.
This activity became the preferred form of self-gratification at about age 4 or 5. Masturbation had much to recommend it. Thumb-sucking is more like an opium den. You lay there with your thumb in your mouth for hours or until you pass into sleep. Masturbation is more like a heroin shooing gallery. There is a burst of physical activity, followed by orgasm, followed by an overall sense of calm. It becomes easier to fall asleep. Much more efficient.
According to Kinsey, women are less likely to fantasize while masturbating. Generally, men do fantasize, usually about sexual activity. The first masturbation fantasies that I recall are from age 6. While masturbating, I imagine myself on a magic carpet that is suspended just beneath the ceiling of my first grade class room. I am naked and am able to peek over the edge of the carpet and see what classmates are doing. They are unable to see me in my nudity.
In first grade I walked to school along 12th Street. If I were lucky, I would meet Nora, a towhead whose front teeth were missing. Nora's mother was a widow. Her father had been killed in action during the war. Nora was a very cheerful person and I looked forward to running into her--my first "love" or attachment to a female outside of my family--but I was too shy to actually make a point to stop by her house and knock on the door. I remember wanting to hold her hand but was too afraid to try to do so.
At some point Nora became incorporated into my masturbation fantasies. Now it was two of us, both naked, lying on our tummies on a magic carpet and peeping over the edge to see our classmates slaving away in class down below.
Here is a visual record of the moral decline in my formative years.
In the picture. On the left I am a thumb-sucker shown with my mother in 1944 or 1945. On the right I have am beginning to experience genital Eros.
This final picture completes the history of degradation. Eric has now reached the age where he has begun to use fantasy during masturbation and has included the very sexy Nora on his magic carpet. He will soon learn that God has prepared a very special place in Hell for him. You can see the regression of his chin has already begun.
And so begins a love-hate relationship with my sexuality that will twist me around for several years. Born into and brainwashed by a religion that sees coital sexual expression as only permissible when there is possibility of conception, I was never exposed to the earthy spirituality that also exists in parts of Christendom. One evening in 1983, I was doing medical clinic on Smith Island. My patient was a 70 year-old waterman. The visit was over and he about to leave the exam room which opened directly into the waiting room. There would be several women sitting there.
I pointed out to him that he had left his fly open. As he zipped it up he turned to me, smiled, and said "Oh Father! There is no telling what kind of damage he could do if he were to get out right now." He left the office on his way to Wednesday prayers, a devout Methodist to the day of his death.
It was also on Smith Island where I heard the following joke.
A beautiful young woman is married off by her family to a much older, grumpy, miser. She lives with him for several years before his death from natural causes. She has him cremated and places the urn on a bookshelf in her living room.
A few weeks later, she dresses up and prepares to leave the home. She turns around and addresses the urn. "You old sonofabitch, I have a date tonight." With that she left.
The following week, she dresses up again and prepares to leave. This time she says to the urn. "You miserable creature, tonight I'm getting laid." With this she leaves.
Another week passes. She dresses again and prepares to go out. This time she goes up to the urn and opens it and sprinkles some of the ashes onto her gloved hand. She takes a deep breath and huffs the ashes out of her palm. "You nasty son of a bitch, that's the blow job you always wanted."
In 2003 I am on a plane from Las Vegas to my daughter's bedside in Washington, D.C. I know that she is going to die. Somehow, during that grief-filled ride it occurs to me with the suddenness and certainty of a mystical experience that my penis, this bane of my existence, was an essential part in the creation of this wonderful daughter whom I am about to lose.
I also thought that I owed it to Kristin to write about some of this--that there were many tortured souls whose concept of self and sexuality had been distorted by early childhood experiences. Since that plane ride, I have collected a certain amount of literature, gone back and looked at some Kinsey data, and read some more about genetics. I came to realize that this struggle with sexuality was also ultimately responsible for my choice of a profession, that of physician. It is such an essential component in the definition of my life.
The title of the book came immediately to mind: "The Search for John Dillinger's Penis."
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