MY SEXUAL ADVENTURES WITH JOHN AND YOKO

Mother told me I was a 'pleasant surprise', but I've always
considered myself a mistake. There is a considerable age gap between
myself
and my two sisters. Susan, the eldest, and I were born a decade
apart and  there is an 8 years difference between myself and Christine. Both my parents are from strict Catholic upbringings, and the idea of a
piece of  synthetic stopping the miracle of conception had always been
considered a sacrilege.

Soon after Father's death, Mother was forced to embark on a career  to support her brood. Consequently, most of my upbringing was left to my
sisters and various aunts. My youth is a blur. Most of my childhood history
is not compiled from memory but from family stories. My favourites are not
about myself, but rather those of my sister's reckless teenage years in the
60's and 70's. My own adolescent years pale in comparison.

I've tried to search for an incident or object that would connect  their youth with my own. In that way, my boyhood would seem more interesting to me. The closest that I've been able to find is a piece of  scratched vinyl: John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Wedding Album. It touched all  our lives, but held different significance for each. For my sisters, it was  an expression of rebellion and independence. For me, it was sexual   awareness.

My family's first exposure to Wedding Album, according to legend, occurred in 1969 when the album was first released. Susan, in her goal to
be the first girl at Woodrow Wilson Junior High to own a copy, had taken a
bus to Passaic to buy it.

My sisters, knowing only too well how strict Mother was, listened to the album only when they knew she wouldn't be home. On any given day in
the early 70s, you could walk into my home and find my sisters in their
psychedelic bedroom, ironing each other's hair and taking tokes off a fat
joint, while I, under their care, created a perfect world with Legos in the
living room. Wedding Album played in the background.

It was on one of those given days that Mother had come home unexpectedly. I was the first to hear her Duster pull into the driveway. I
walked into my sister's room and was assaulted by the pungent smell
of marijuana mixed with spiced incense.
"Get outta here, you roach", Christine spat while passing a joint
the size of my underdeveloped thumb to Susan. "Didn't anyone teach
you how to knock?"
"Mommys home", I said with an innocent grin. Both sisters stared at me with glazed eyes. It took a moment for them to realize their doomed situation.
"OH SHIT!", they simultaneously screamed. They hopped around the room like stoned rabbits, lighting matches and extinguishing the flames at  birth. I ran to the living room to greet Mother.

"What's going on here?", Mother screamed ignoring me as I tugged at
her hairdresser smock. Both my sisters prepared to dart from the room at
the first sign of punishment. "I leave your brother with you and this is the garbage that you make him listen to?", she scolded, acknowledging my presence by cupping my face in her hand and protectively pulling me to her polyestered thigh. With all the mayhem involved in covering up the smell of pot, my sisters had forgotten about Wedding Album playing on their peace sign and daisy decaled record player.
"What's this trash?", she asked my dumbfounded sisters. "It's John and
Yoko", Susan replied with an air of salvation realizing that it wasn't the drugs she was being confronted with.
"It belongs to that Mary Ellen, doesn't it?", Mother asked refusing to believe that her own girls could listen to such pornography.
"No I bought it at Grants."
"Well, I hope you kept the receipt, because you're returning it! I don't want to hear this filth in my house again!" Mother spoke. A new commandment was etched in stone.

That was the last time I heard Wedding Album until years later when I found it hidden in the back of Susan's closet. By this time, I was an   inquisitive 12 year old and the questions of sex plagued my thoughts.
Wedding Album supplied me with a soundtrack. I wasn't too clear on
the meaning, but I knew it was taboo. For me, it represented sex in it's purest form. It wasn't until years later that I discovered John and Yoko had
recorded this for peace. As my sisters had done before, I would listen to
the album only when I knew Mother wasn't around.

I thought that Yoko's screaming was attributed to some sort of  physical pain inflicted by John. As I grew older, that pain became cries of  passion. The child's heartbeat in the background became headboards being  slammed against walls. I imagined Yoko on her knees in front of John. Yoko on top of John. John on top of Yoko. To a hormone infected adolescent, the possibilities were endless.

There was a skip on the record in the middle of Yoko's moans. It sounded remarkably like a small animal caught in a snare. At times, I would leave the player's arm stuck on this groove and listen to her repeated, distorted moan while I stared at her apathetic face on the album's cover. I saw it as something unnatural. I'd torture myself by listening to it until I couldn't stop myself from freeing the player's arm and letting the recording take it's natural course.

Eventually my infatuation with Wedding Album ended, due largely to  pornography and a more mature realization of sex. The last time I thought of it was on the night of my high school prom. I had previously decided  that this would be the night where all my uncertainties about sex would end.

I was parked on Garrett Mountain with Wendy, my girlfriend at the time. We both had quite a bit of alcohol racing through our illegal veins.   Eventually our intimacy progressed. It was Wendy who suggested that I fuck her. I performed as expected. Somewhere between her moaning and
repeating my name, I was reminded of Yoko. Her uninterested face clouded my vision. Her repetitive moan sabotaged my mind. It felt unnatural.

I pulled out.