On Sexuality...

I hope to have enough time to discuss my life-long sufferings and some of the pleasures from this source. I suspect that my boys are cringing at the thought of seeing some of these things in print. Sorry for the embarrassment, fellows. Remember that you don't have to take responsibility for thoughts and actions of your family members. You can merely point to me and say "You see what we have had to put up with!"

We clearly live in a society that is very confused about sex. Remember that our Puritanical roots made it impossible to teach birth control or to distribute condoms in many places until the 1960s.

Maryland was one of the first states that legalized abortions in the late 60's but there were several strings attached, including interviews and reports from a psychiatrist and a clergy member or spiritual advisor.

I can see the rationale for using beautiful young women in the advertising of automobiles. (Sorry ladies, but I went to high school in this country and I saw for myself the beneficial effects of nice cars on the social lives of the guys who had them.)

However, shouldn't we draw the line with beer? Why would a fat middle-aged male believe that he will  be more attractive to scantily clad women after slugging down the suds?

So much of advertising tries to make the association between physical beauty and the purchase of product.

For me, the forced ingestion of a prudish kind of Catholicism and the discomfort of my parents with their own physical bodies combined to skew my sense of personal sexuality. It severely affected my early opportunities for a deeper spiritual development and left me with an overwhelming physical desire for a sexual outlet and the certainty that this outlet condemned me to hell...no joke. This unshakable belief in my own moral depravity from the age of 8 stunted me in many ways.

I have talked about this swallowing of religious doctrine hook, line, and sinker, with my friend, Healy. We both realized that there was something about us that predisposed us to buying this load of bullshit and incorporating it into our mental lives. We came to the conclusion that many of our friends had a more deeply rooted belief in themselves, a much more practical and useful moral compass that allowed them to ignore many of the teachings of the Church and to go on to find an abridged version of Catholic doctrine that allowed them to sail through some of these waters unscathed.

My instruction in Catholicism that began with a close association with my mother, the games that focused on the importance of the crucifixion and the special standing of clergy, 12 years of religious instruction beginning at age 6, and the side-to-side easy-to-discern differences between my Catholic mother and my atheist father were crushing forces that provided highly effective brainwashing.

I have been working a life-time trying to discard these beliefs but many are still hidden around corners in my thoughts.  Witness: A couple of days ago I had the thought that maybe I would want to hedge my bets about this afterlife business. Perhaps I could find a local priest and do a confession and take communion and hope that I might gain admission to the promised land.

If there is a God, I don't think that such an action on my part would be considered moral behavior..."For Christ's sake, Sohr, at least have the courage of your convictions!"

As a child I worried about eternal damnation. I thought about poor St Martin roasting over that fire but never having the chance to die, just living with that pain for billions of years. I thought that I had invented masturbation. (Kinsey, one of my special heroes, reported that only 24% of males discovered masturbation on their own whereas a larger percentage of females did so. I am proud to be included in the 24%.) At age 8, after a few years of using my sexual outlet for self-comfort, I was informed that all sins of impurity were "mortal sins" and that I would be doomed to hell if I died before confessing any mortal sin. I lived with this "certainty" for the next several years and thought I was alone in the world.

I didn't realize that I had compatriots until I was 13. I had gone to confession on a Saturday afternoon and was walking home with my friend, Richard. I know that memory is a very tricky thing and I hope that I have not invented this but Richard turned to me and said, "You know, Eric, the only way that I can get to heaven is if I get run over by a bus between Confession on Saturday afternoon and suppertime."

By high school I had become aware that many of my classmates were confessing exactly the same sin as we looked at one another sheepishly on the way back from confession.  One might inquire of another the "penance" administered by the priest and gain some rough idea of the other's sexual proclivities.

I'll have more to say about this subject....

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Right now I'm hydrating up. I have to go without food or water for 8 hours before my CT/PET scan of the chest at 4PM today. I'll know that I'm fully hydrated when I begin urinating and the color is clear or very pale yellow. That's doctor Sohr's rule of thumb for patients.

Our trip to Stanford today will begin at 9. I have to be there at 3 PM. We are allowing for a flat or a traffic problem. We expect to get back around 9 tonight. We are unable to kennel  our dog, Archie. He continually paces and when he is on a cement floor, he wears away the skin covering his paw pads and they begin bleeding. We tried to get someone to come in for today but no luck. I'm feeding him now and we'll try some Valium to see if we can make his day a little less stressful.

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The Japanese Explain Cleavage to Me.

It's hard to believe that Japanese Kamikaze pilots were responsible for teaching me about the female breast.

This is a picture of the USS Intrepid on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1944 as seen from a nearby vessel. If you look above the flight deck, you see an airplane that is streaming smoke. It is the aircraft of Japanese Kamikaze pilot, Suehiro Ikeda, who is diving into the wooden flight deck of the Intrepid.


A few minutes later, another plane piloted by Kohichi Nunoda will make a similar strike.


This turn of events set off a chain of consequences for the Carter family, Navy Bill and Virginia. Navy Bill is on that ship at that moment. He will be involved in the two initial explosions and the several subsequent fires occurring in various other parts of the ship. The Intrepid reported the deaths of 69 Americans in this attack. It was severely damaged to the extent that it could not be repaired in theater and required a return to San Francisco for refitting that took several weeks. My analysis of subsequent events, while presented in a humorous fashion is not meant to diminish the sacrifices of those killed and the subsequent pain and suffering of their families as a result of these losses to the Kamikazes.


Aboard the Intrepid was a crew of 3300 red-blooded, American men--most no doubt with high testosterone levels. When the ship arrived in San Francisco leave was granted for most. Assuming that more than 90% of them were heterosexual, we have 3000 horny sailors at large. Assuming that 50% of them had wives, sweet hearts, or available partners for sex--and assuming a frequency of copulation of at least once a day for the first week and three times a week thereafter, we can conservatively estimate an excess of 22,000 instances of coitus during the six to eight weeks the ship was in port.


The rule of thumb risk of pregnancy from unprotected intercourse is about 2.5%. Let's simplify it and assume that many acts of coitus were protected, etc...and come up with the figure of 1%.


This leads us to the estimate of 220 pregnancies resulting from the Kamikaze attacks on the Intrepid on November 25, 1944.


Closer to home, the refitting in San Francisco allowed Chief Petty Officer William Logan (Navy Bill) to travel to the East Coast to marry Virginia Carter. I don't have permission from my Aunt Ginny to provide details of their marriage day and the need to break into the apartment at 912 Quincy Street. There was very little time for them to remain in D.C. and by the end of the day, they were on a train back to the West Coast.


Virginia (Ginny) returned to the East Coast pregnant and enters into my earliest memories. Ginny was an accomplished singer and appeared on radio shows in the D.C. area. I loved hearing the songs, but I didn't understand the "la la la la la   la la da da da da dee dee dee." I asked my mother why Ginny didn't sing songs. My mother told me that "Ginny is singing scales." I could never figure that out...scales were what we put bananas on at the store...how could you sing them. Welcome to the mysteries of the English language.


In October 1945, Ginny's son, Joseph was born. If we backtrack from this date we see that conception must have occurred during the several weeks of refitting of the Intrepid following its damage on November 25, 1944. 


At this time of cousin Joe's birth the war was over and the men were back home. Aunt Shirley had left the apartment and was finishing high school at Anacostia (I loved hearing and saying that word when I was a child) and living with Uncle Phil and Aunt Ann. Granny had been gone for more than a year. However, there were now 4 adults, two infants, and me in a small one bedroom apartment. The cribs for sister, Suzanne, and cousin, Joe, were side by side in the single bedroom. I'm not sure what the other sleeping arrangements were. 


My earliest memory at that time was waking my parents up and forcefully repeating the latest phrase picked up from the men. "Goddamn it! Goddamn it! Goddamn!" Of course a child's pleasure in repetition far exceeds that of adults and I soon received a whack on my fanny for the trouble.


The most significant memory was awakening one morning and being the only one awake. Wandering around the apartment I came into the front room. My Aunt Ginny had fallen asleep while breast feeding cousin Joe who was still awake and actively suckling. The breast was fully exposed. Suddenly I understood cleavage, courtesy of Suehiro Ikeda and Kohichi Nunoda.