My Last Will and Testicle

So, let's fast forward a few years after my first divorce, to my fourth legacy:

To my next wife, I leave what I have owed you for decades: a sincere apology.

Not what you wanted from me, I know, but it's the best I can do under the circumstances. We should never have gotten married, honey, but you weren't to know that.

Look, I know you wanted children... Hell! You talked of little else, both before and after we got married. And to begin with, I enjoyed trying and - predictably - failing to get you pregnant. Every month you discovered a new position, or a new diet, or a new homeopathic remedy to try out. You monitored your ovulation, you read your horoscope, you even hung yourself upside down after we'd had sex - the whole nine yards! (I seem to like that phrase, don't I?)

But that tenth yard - the missing piece of the puzzle that you never knew about (because I was too scared to tell you) - was that when my first marriage ended, I had a vasectomy. There - I've said it! I'm sorry, honey. I really cared for you until it all turned sour, but I'm sure that the twin boys you had with your second husband did you credit and brought you great joy. Are they both still in jail?

***

Which brings me on to children... I suppose I should talk about children.

The terms 'child' and 'children' as used in this my Will include the two clueless ne'er-do-wells listed below and any other children of mine that are subsequently born...

That would be a miracle! Given the vasectomy an' all.

... or legally adopted...

Dementia can do funny things to a person...

... or proven by these new-fangled DNA methods to have been the result of fornicating my way through my early life, spreading my sperm around as widely as I possibly could.

I used to imagine them - my sperms (before the vasectomy, I mean) - setting forth on their epic journeys up the Orinoco, racing to conquer brave new worlds and establish colonies in far-flung corners of that darkest continent.

But I digress... So, what else is new? Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been one long digression. What was it John Lennon said?

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

Oh, how I miss him! Growing old would have been so much more fun if he'd been around to do it with.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes - disposing of my children... if you know what I mean. There are only two (that I know of), both from my first marriage, and I'm not 100% sure of them, come to think of it. What father is?

So, legacy number five:

To my elder child, my dear misguided daughter, who first wanted to be a nun but then married - not Christ, but a priest, for God's sake! - I leave your mother's extensive collection of vibrators.

I don't know how they ended up with me after the divorce, sweetie. She always kept them on a high shelf in her closet so that you and your brother wouldn't find them, and in her rush to get away from me, she must have forgotten they were there. Never mind... Her loss is your gain, and I can tell that you need them. That look of quiet desperation in your eyes gives you away, sweetheart. Doesn't he ever screw your brains out any more? Did he ever? Somehow, I doubt it (but thanks for all the grandchildren, by the way. How many are there now?).

I know you'd never go in for an affair, so all that's left to you is either total abstinence (get real!) or masturbation... right? And, knowing you, I bet you feel compelled to fess up every Sunday. Am I right?

How does that go, anyway?

"Father, forgive me for I have sinned."

(What, again?) "Tell me about it, my child." (And please make it something different this week! I get so bored with the same old same old.)

"I was lying in bed with my husband, but he was asleep..."

(Oh, here we go again... This woman's a sex maniac!) "Yes, my child?"

"...and my hand found its way in between my legs."

(Surprise, surprise!) "Found its own way, my child?"

"No, Father; you are right... I guided it there, down over my smooth belly and my hairy bush, seeking my swollen clitoris while my other hand was rubbing my big, brown nipples."

(Jeez! Must you do this to me every sainted Sunday?) "Way too much information, my child."

"I couldn't help myself, Father."

(But that's precisely what you did!) "Temptations such as these are sent to try us, my child. And at the end of the day, woe unto him... er... unto her who shall be found wanting."

"Tell me about it! At the end of every single day I find myself wanting... desperately!"

"And your husband?"

"I find him wanting, too. Completely! Hence the woe. Oh, I knew I should have become a nun! Then I'd be married to Christ, right?"

(Uh-oh! I don't like where this is headed...) "In a sense... yes, my child."

"Then, would He fu..."

"NO! my child. Not in that sense."

"Maybe He'd ea..."

"NO! Not that either!"

"Then what's the point? He'd be no better than my sorry husband!"

Come on, my dearest daughter! Do you really think God cares what you do with your clit? Or that every pleasure must be paid for with a double dose of guilt? Or - the worst possibility of all - have you become a guilt addict, my child? A guilt junkie. There's a lot of it about. Whoever might have taught you that, I wonder? Neither of your parents - that's for sure! I know whom I suspect, but you won't want to hear it from me... So, take your legacy, lock up your guilt (and your bedroom door) and enjoy, for God's sake, as best you can.

(Life Lesson Number Four: Never, ever, let anyone else live your life for you (unless you really want to, of course)).

***

Now, I mustn't forget my son, although I often do, sometimes for weeks on end, I'm (mildly) ashamed to say.

From the moment you were born, son, you were a complete stranger to me: an enigma, wrapped - not in swaddling clothes (whatever they are) - but in a conundrum. I always thought that fathers and sons were meant to share things: you know... jokes, confidences, baseball, crude male behavior; and later maybe alcohol, cars, and even occasional women. But all you and I ever shared was mutual disdain and antipathy. I know you'll be glad to see the back of me... No, don't protest! You never were any good at lying.

So, to you, my son, I leave... Period. I give you my death. May it set us both free at last.

Whoa! Heavy! Sorry, but life's like that, sometimes.

(Life Lesson Number Five: You can't win 'em all. But if you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same, then you're doing a lot better than I ever did, and Rudyard Kipling would be proud of you!)

***

We all have our own ways of getting from cradle to grave, don't we? Want to hear mine? That's legacy number seven:

To the twin stars that have guided my behavior for my entire life: Procrastination and Denial (It's not just a river in Egypt, you know). Together, you have led me faithfully through the twists and turns of this mortal coil, so in recognition of your gallant service, I leave you... what? I know! I leave you all the things I avoided doing; all the realities that I never acknowledged; all my sins of omission.

I have certainly left undone those things that I ought to have done, but if you think any of them would have been better for the doing, then... you do them! Go ahead! Be my guest! Given the miserable success-rate of the things that I actually did in my life, the things I left undone were probably my greater gift to humanity. Go figure.

Wow! That's a load off my mind - the slate wiped clean. (Don't you just love the way old phrases refuse to die? When was the last time you - or anyone else for that matter - wrote anything on a slate, or wiped it clean? Maybe I should endow a Home for Old Phrases, too. Somehow, 'the delete key pressed' just doesn't cut the mustard, does it? And who cuts mustard, anyway? And why would they?)

***

Now, are you ready for my next legacy? No? What, then? Oh, you'd rather hear some more about my sex life? You astonish me! What do you think this is? Literotica or something? Oh, all right...

After my second divorce, I gave up on marriage. As you'll see, there wasn't - still isn't! - a version of it that fitted the way I chose to live the rest of my life.

It was during that blesséd interlude after the advent of the Pill and before the spread of HIV (Related? Why would you think that?). Sex was cheap and plentiful, and at the heart of that magical period, there was Woodstock!

Remember Woodstock? No? Me neither, but wasn't it great? In my head I can still hear Jimi Hendrix's guitar writhing in agony: the death rattle of a generation that had dared to hope for a better world.

It was my niece's idea that we go, I remember that much.

"Come on, Nunc! It'll be a blast! Wake up and smell the roses!"

"I'm too busy dead-heading them to have any time to smell them. Besides, I'm too old."

"You're not old. You're barely even ripe yet! No sweat - I'll make all the arrangements. Pick you up Friday morning... 'kay?" And she hung up, refusing - as usual - to take 'no' for an answer.

I guess I should tell you a bit about my niece: the only human being I have ever truly loved, and that includes myself. (There were also a couple of dogs, but that's not quite the same, is it?) I had watched her being born nineteen years earlier, and that sort of creates a bond, you know? (Incidentally, my first wife had asked me to leave the country - or at least the state - when she had our two children. You think that might have been the problem between me and my son?)

I wasn't gate-crashing my niece's birth, if that's what you're thinking. My sister had asked me to be there, because her no-good husband had walked out on her a few months into her pregnancy; and although I wasn't really into that sort of thing, family is family, so there I was - mask, gown, disposable bootees - feeling like a real dork, terrified I was going to pass out.

It's messy, childbirth! They don't tell you that. There's all this blood and piss and shit! It's no place for modesty, that's for sure. And it's hard work... for the mother, too! It's not called labor for nothing.

And then amidst the blood, sweat and tears, suddenly there's this perfect new human being, looking rather startled: pale blue at first, but rapidly turning pink before your very eyes, coughing and spluttering, objecting violently to being wrenched from the nice warm uterus that it... sorry!... that she has called home for the last nine months. It's a wonder we ever get over it... being born, I mean. Maybe we don't.

And then there's the mother: the center of attention until the moment of birth, and then, suddenly:

'Where'd everyone go? Hey guys! I'm still here! Come on, let me see... please? Did I make that? Really? Wow! Isn't she just gorgeous?!'

And she was. I fell in love with you in the delivery room, my dearest niece: pink, wrinkled and utterly beautiful. Oh, how I'll miss you when I'm gone! You won't believe this, but you made me into a better person, and in that moment I vowed to do my best to keep you safe from harm. As you squinted up at me, I'd swear I could see you thinking:

'Hmm... you're not my Dad, but if you're the best that's on offer, then I guess you'll have to do.'

To tell you the truth, I'd been hoping she'd have twins, my sister - a boy and a girl - because I had names already picked out for them: Denise, for the girl. And for the boy? D'nephew, of course! (We'll send that one to the Old Jokes Home, that's for sure!)

***

Fast forward nineteen years, to August 15^th, 1969.

"Do you know where we're going, sweetheart?"

"Upstate New York somewhere. I figure we'll just follow the crowd."

(The month before, Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, but the earth was still twenty-four satellites short of a GPS system.)

"How many people d'you think there'll be?"

"Oh, a couple... and Julie said she'd try to make it. You remember Julie..."

"Your friend with the big, beautiful..."

"...eyes? Were you going to say 'eyes'?"

"Them too!"

"Yes, that's her, lucky bitch!"

"Oh, good! I've always fancied Julie. So where are we staying?"

"Staying? We're camping, like everyone else."

"But you know I can't sleep in a tent!"

"Who's sleeping? Come on, Nunc. Get with the program here!"

"What if it rains?"

"Then we'll dance naked and won't need to shower! Not that we'll be able to, anyway... shower, that is."

"I'm not going to enjoy this..."

But I did... hugely (as far as I can remember). It was impossible, even for a dyspeptic curmudgeon like myself, to avoid getting swept up in the tidal wave of humanity that assembled on that New York dairy farm, of all the unlikely places. It wasn't really about the music. That was just the glue that held us all together; the excuse for nearly half a million refugees from reality to throng together in the rain for four days. It was all about freedom; about liberation from... well, from everything! Perfectly captured by some wit on the wall of a stinking Porta-John: 'Do not adjust your mind! There is a fault with reality'.

I felt I was looking through an open window into an alternate Universe: one where hatred, intolerance, hypocrisy, duplicity, willful ignorance, and all the other mean, nasty, ugly, human traits (as Arlo might have said) - all the faults with reality - had simply been washed away by the rain; a window onto the Garden of Eden, maybe. Amidst the mud and the piss and the shit, I felt born again. Messy, just like the first time.

It didn't last, of course, but to this day I don't know whether that's because it was all an illusion, brought on by too many mind-bending substances perhaps, or because in middle-age I lost my nerve... what little of that I had to begin with. Monday mornings keep coming around with relentless monotony, don't they? And eventually they wear you down.

But for four glorious days in August 1969, there were no Monday mornings. Well, actually there was one, because the festival got extended into the following week - we were all having such fun in the mud - but in our alternate Universe, that Monday became an honorary Sunday.

***

We pitched our pup tent in the midst of a kaleidoscope of canvas, barbecued some hamburgers for dinner, broke open the case of wine I'd had the foresight to bring with me - I'd moved on from naïve domestic burgundies by then - and made instant friends with some spacey neighbors:

"Hey, dude!... Wassup? How's it hanging?"

'Straight and true', I thought, but I wasn't about to tell him that!

After dinner, she went looking for Julie (how did we even survive before cell phones?), while I cleared up, drank some more wine, listened to the distant music, and inhaled the general air of excitement, anticipation, and pot. At about 10.30 pm, during Ravi Shankar's set, it began to rain. I had just crawled into my sleeping bag when she returned:

"Nunc... I got lost! There must be a zillion people here; I couldn't get anywhere near the stage. It's amazing! "

"Find Julie?"

"No, but I found a guy who'd seen her. He said she was looking for somewhere to sleep."

"Shouldn't have too much trouble..."

"Don't be snarky, now!"

She sat in the door of the dark tent, silhouetted against the dim light outside; then stripped off her damp T-shirt and reached behind her back to unhook her bra. Over the years, I've watched countless women undress, but that moment when their breasts swing free never fails to delight me. And this was a girl I'd loved for nineteen precious years. She turned to reach for a T-shirt to sleep in and noticed me watching her.

She hesitated momentarily... To cover or not to cover? That is the question! Not, was the answer, she decided. Naked to the waist, she lay back beside me, undid her jeans, raised her hips, and with one fluid movement slid jeans and panties down to her ankles. Another moment of sheer delight.

I think I may have whimpered right about then, because she turned her head and gently kissed me. We'd often kissed before - the way uncles and nieces do, you know? - but this kiss wasn't quite like that, was it? Her lips lingered ambiguously on mine, and was that the tip of her tongue I felt? For a moment, I thought she might squeeze her naked and beautiful self into my sleeping bag, which would have created a real dilemma for me, but instead she sat up, pulled her T-shirt on over her head and wriggled into her own sleeping bag beside me.

"G'night, g'nuncle."

"G'night, g'niece; sleep well."

Dilemma postponed. But a little later, in the darkness...

"Nunc... are you awake?"

"I am now."

"Are you really as wicked as everyone says you are?"

"Who's 'everyone'? No, never mind... Yes, probably."

"Oh, good."

"Good?"

"Yes... Will you be wicked with me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Would you... you know... seduce me? Please?"

"Absolutely not!"

"Why not? Don't you fancy me?"

"Honey, I absolutely adore you! I've loved you since the moment you were born."

"Well, then... Here I am. What are you waiting for? I'm not a virgin, if that's what's worrying you. The summer of love took care of that."

"But I made a promise never to touch you like that, you see..."

"To Mom?"

"No, to myself."

"Oh, bummer. They're the worst sort."

Someone had taught her well.

(Life Lesson Number... whatever (Sorry, I've lost count): Be very, very, careful what you promise, particularly to yourself.)

"Then I guess I'll just have to..."

"What?"

"Never mind..."

I listened to the unmistakable cadence of her breathing beside me in the darkness: slower and deeper at first, then shallower and faster, leading up to a series of stifled gasps, followed by - Ahhhh! - that glorious moment of release and resolution that we all know so well.

"G'night, g'niece; sleep well."

"Mmm... I will, g'now."

And then it was my turn...

As Mae West said:

'Sex is like Bridge: if you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.'

Hall of Fame, you think?

***

"Hey, Julie! You remember my wicked uncle. He was just saying yesterday how much he liked your big, beautiful... eyes."

"Of course I do! Every girl should have one. Hello again, wicked uncle!"

"Hi Julie. Glad we met up at last. Did you find somewhere to sleep last night?"

"Well, Joan Baez didn't quit until after two, despite being six months pregnant! And then the two guys who were letting me share wanted to mess around; and then their tent leaked... Anyway, you get the picture!"

Suddenly I saw the solution to my dilemma.

"You can share with us tonight if you like. That's okay isn't it, sweetheart? It'll be a bit cozy..."

"Oh yes, Julie! Do, please! Nunc doesn't snore all the time... Only when he's asleep!"