The Great Seal
Año Nuevo State Park on the San Mateo County coast is the site of the largest mainland breeding colony in the world for the northern elephant seal. Randy and I decided that taking acid and going to see the seals was the perfect way to waste the afternoon on a sunny day in 1969. People aren't really allowed to get very close to them, which is smart, because these elephant seals are true monsters. Since it was mating season, the bull seals were in constant battles for the pretty seal chicks. Messy, violent stuff.
Randy was fairly bullish about his pretty chicks too. I often wondered if he was trying to date a woman of every racial type in the world. He liked women to be exotic and mysterious, but once he adjusted to them, they became ordinary. That was problem one. Randy's endearing qualities could also turn irritating after a while and that was problem two. Things would rarely get to problem three.
Randy and I never had to fight over women. Not only were we attracted to a very different type of woman, but I often preferred the company of men. I found men to be dreamers about what they hoped their life would be. Women were only starting to become liberated, and many still seemed more motivated to find a husband than anything else. Marriage and children seemed like a curse to me. Instead of spending my day with musical orgasms, I would have to work somewhere just to keep the children from starving.
I knew what a real job was like. I had briefly worked for a bank in my late twenties when I needed some money. The Chartered Bank of London. I was in charge of safety deposit boxes. I would take the customers into the vault and use my key with their key to unlock a box. It took two to tango. Only one customer was allowed in the vault at a time. Lucinda was a woman who needed me to open her box more often than one would expect. She was plain in style and unfocused in attitude. Her safety deposit box only contained "magic sticks" that looked remarkably like the un-magical variety. She would always insist I admire her sticks and as I stood next to her she would grope me through my pants. I implied permission by not resisting. There was something surreal about the rows of stainless steel safety deposit boxes that lined both sides of the room, and the general coolness of the vault that made me instantly hard.
Only once did she unzip my pants and introduce my penis to the cool air. She held it gently in her warm damp hand and mumbled that she was reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead, only she called it the "Tie-baa-ton" Book of the Dead. She stopped coming to the bank after that day. I don't know what became of her magic sticks.
All relationships live and die based on their own often unspoken rules.
All relationships are precious and honor who we are as individuals.