Testimony Part II: It's All Downhill for a Ways

Politics

Two themes govern the next part of my life: politics and sex. There was quite a bit of drug use but it was never really a key to my development. I graduated from high school in 1970. My senior year I had won a debate taking the pro-war side of the Vietnam War. By late April 1971, I was in Washington, DC as part of the Mayday Demonstrations. I had rolled far past being a "peacenik" - by this time I was very radical; and was there to "shut down the government" by blocking traffic in Washington after all the nice people had gone home.

By August of 1972, I was demonstrating from the left against both the Republican and Democratic Partys at their conventions in Miami. Of course, I got a floor pass to the Democratic to watch the show; and was part of the group getting tear gassed outside the Republican so that the gas got sucked into the ventilation system and emptied the hall. I put a paper bag over my head and voted for McGovern that year; after demonstrating outside his hotel in Miami because he blocked a gay rights plank in the Democratic Party platform (plus a few other things). It would be a long time until I voted for a person again.

By this time I was becoming a Marxist (Chinese version). I worked in a radical bookstore in California (so I got to read a lot of theory). I left California heading north in spring of 1973; and lodged in Oregon after getting arrested for violating the H. Rap Brown Act for attempting to get to the AIM siege at Wounded Knee, SD. I became active in a group whose primary radical role was running a very left print shop. People in the group had come together from the Black Panthers, Revolutionary Union, and the Patriot Party. My spiritual slide was complete - at least the philosophical part of it. I never called myself an atheist. When asked I said I felt that made God too important still - I called myself an agnostic not because I didn't know, but because I didn't care and thought it an unimportant question to even pursue or think about.

By 1978, for a variety of reasons my political activism was over - but not because of any real disagreement with Marxism. My first marriage, and the responsibilities of four step-children, and the dismal sectarian state of radical political organizations all put an end to it (the left has always been self-destructive: might have something to say about the validity of the politics).

Sex

I was the nerd in school: glasses, "98 lb weakling", good grades, asthma - so no sports. Most of my friends were jocks. I admired guys that had "the pretty women". It was my goal to be able to do that too; and of course I thought they all were "scoring". I dated the same girl on and off from the summer before my sophmore year in high school until the summer before my senior year in high school. She moved to Ohio.

We lost our virginity together in honor of that event. I went off to church conference in Florida; expecting to be able to see her for about a month before her family left for good. Undying love spoken, she had my ring. After I got to Florida, I found out that her parents found out we had sex - and that she had missed her period and might be pregnant. The mature young man I was, ready for a serious relationship, and wanting to be there to support my girlfriend - I cashed in my ticket home and flew to Ohio to "visit" a friend of mine there and to stay close to a girl I met a conference that I was "in love' with now. I hid there about two weeks until the mother on that end called mine - and they escorted me to a bus. Susan wasn't pregnant.

The summer after my senior year showed the transition. I went to church conference for the last time to see the girl I had met the previous summer. The situation with Roland happened that summer. I would head to college that fall and flunk out by Christmas - much too much time drinking to study. Then, I ran into the guy I won the Vietnam War debate against the year before. Let the politics begin. By April I was at Mayday

Growing my hair long improved my looks. I had a string of sexual relationships in Missouri and beyond. There were any number of bad endings. I met my first wife in the movement in Oregon; and we lived together for about a year before we got married. She was Chicana - freaked my mom out a bit but not bad. She was 11 years older, she had four children. We stayed together for 11 years.

I blew that marriage apart by adultery. I became a sexual addict for nude dancers, massage parlors, and prostitution. I got caught, I got divorced. Within six months of the divorce, I met my second wife. In that six months I had had two more sexual relationships. The plunge was complete.

Next Post: The Road Back to God