Promiscuity Changed My Life

I want to share one of my Life-Changing Moments inspired by:

THE MOMENT: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure

In my mid-20s I went through a promiscuous phase. It wasn’t quite Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With The Band: Confessions of a Groupie. But it also wasn’t Gidget. 

I’d been raised in a strict Christian religion and was flipping the bird at dogmatic morality.

I was floundering. Letting my hormones take the lead in my interactions with men.

I was either adding a notch to my belt and moving on, or allowing a physical relationship to turn into a long-term affair based on nothing but pheromones.

I was also a struggling actress at the time, auditioning for beer commercials in a bikini with a parrot who kept jumping on my head and pooping in my hair.

Or reading for “Office Temp 1” on L.A. Law.  “Mr. Kuzak, it’s that Forrester woman on the line again! The one who gave you the anal probe!”

I wasn’t having much success. Basically bombing in love and life.

I was in New York visiting friends when I decided to go to the NYU campus one day. I had a notepad and pen with me. I had this idea I should start writing material for myself to perform even though I’d never written a play or dialogue before.

I grabbed a cafeteria tray, got myself milk and chocolate cake, sat down and just wrote the first words that came to mind.  

A voice emerged from my pen that slapped me awake. Her name was Maureen and this is what she said:

Sex … is basically a confusin’ fuckin’ issue. By its very nature. I mean there’s sex for sex, there’s sex for power, for money, for food even … whatever. What it is in its basic primal form is two bodies fittin’ together much like a nut and a bolt.
 
And there’s nothin’ pure about sex. In my experience, there’s never been a purity about it.
 
Let’s say you meet some new guy, eyes lock across the room, verbal foreplay … whatever. You both know you want it, you know, he knows, it’s there.
 
But you, I mean me as the woman in this situation thinks, ‘But do I want more than sex? Do I want him to like me? Do I want to be seen as a human being in this situation? Do I want him to hear the words comin’ outa my mouth and actually grasp the fuckin’ meaning?
 
Or do I just want him in me? Just him … in … me. Sweat, moan, come … good-bye, thank you, please leave ’cause I can’t stand lookin’ in your eyes no more. Can’t stand it ’cause I see nothin’. No, don’t be nice, you hypocrite, just leave so I can wash my sheets and my body and brush my fuckin’ teeth.
 
Okay, I got sidetracked. But me, the female in this horrific unnatural situation is thinkin’ all these things. Let’s say I want him to like me, so I decide I gotta wait. I can’t give myself too soon ’cause it’ll kill it. He won’t like me, he’ll just see me as this object to screw.
 
But then I get pissed off. I mean where does this guy get off thinkin’ I’m some cheap tramp for puttin’ out the first night when he’s takin’ what I’m givin’? I mean, what’s that make him? I’m no women’s libber or nothin’ but it don’t seem fair. It sucks.
 
So I get pissed off thinkin’ all these things and I think, you know, “Fuck him!”
 
… and so … I do.
 
And I’m up on top of him humpin’ away, eyes closed tight, just tryin’ to feel him in me, just tryin’ to get somethin’ from him, some sorta pleasure when all of a sudden … it’s over. All that huge energy just gone like Benedict Arnold nowhere to be found. And there I am bare-assed and lonely.
 
One time, after, when I’m craving that shower, just hot water on my body, him gone please. Well this guy is layin’ on me all spent and everything and I’m thinkin’, “Would he roll off for Chrissakes,” when I feel his fingers real gentle on my eyelids, real soft, just barely touching.
 
And then he kisses each eye, just once and tears slide out onto my cheeks. I couldn’t stop ’em, I didn’t know they were comin’ from me. And he says, “Just be sweet little girl, just gentle down,” like I’m a horse or a creature a nature or somethin’.
 
That was the only time my heart hurt a little, this burning achy pain way down deep, let me know somethin’ was sliding right by me. Somethin’ I couldn’t reach … couldn’t get to. I wanted to … but I just couldn’t get to it ….
 
But that wasn’t sex.

Writing those unexpected words on paper, coming from a voice so different than my own ended my period of promiscuity.

The words opened the door to becoming a writer, a woman, a wife and a mother.

This monologue because a one-act play called, “But That Wasn’t Sex” — which ran to sold-out audiences at The Alliance Theater in the valley. It was followed by two more one-act plays, also produced there to raves. Which finally lead to an acceptance to the UCLA school of Theater, Film and Television, which lead to me selling my first script to Warner Brothers while I was still a student. 

Life can change in THE MOMENT. Invite lots of them.