This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!

Part One can be found here.

Part Two can be found here.

So here I was having sex for the first time and loving every minute of it. Literally. I may have lasted 90 seconds, tops. It was the best feeling I’d ever had, being inside Betty, and I didn’t want it to end.

Before I “finished,” however, Betty started crying. Yes, crying. Now, you might think that something like that would put a guy off, maybe make him wonder what the hell was going on. I did ask if she was okay; I’m not that big an asshole. She said she was and I was feeling so good that that was enough for me to keep on going.

Then she said, “Karl, you’re not going to leave me?”

In and out and in and out and in and out oh my God I’m having sex and in and out

“No, I’m not.”

“Promise me you’ll never leave me.”

In and out and holy shit I’m gonna cum and in and out and in and out

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Please! Just promise me!”

oh my god oh my god oh my god this is so fucking good and in and out and in

“I can’t do that, baby.” Even in my state of ecstasy I knew that the words “promise” and “never” were very dangerous when located within the same sentence.

And she’s crying but oh my god I’m cumming and – “Unhhhhh!”

I continued making love to her for a good 25 seconds or so before I stopped and then I was kissing her, but she was still crying. She indicated that I could withdraw and lay down next to her. I was breathing hard and heavy, as was she, and I knew it’d take me at least five more minutes before I’d be ready to try that again. And I DID want to try it again. And again.

We cuddled for a few minutes and then she got up to use the bathroom. When I heard the shower start, I knew she wasn’t coming back for another round. Dammit. I remember the smell of our sex, even to this day. And I remember touching my dick and our juices and bringing my fingers up to my nose to smell her more deeply. Awesome.

Then Betty was standing before me wrapped in a towel and said it was my turn. Huh? You want me to wash this OFF? But apparently that’s what you did after sex – you took a shower. So that’s what I did.

While I showered I ran through those magical 90 seconds over and over again. I had SEX! Yes! No more would I have to wonder what it felt like. It felt fantastic. How could I not have done this before?

I was in a heightened state of bliss, that’s for sure. But I also kept going back to Betty’s request in the heat of passion: Promise me you’ll never leave me. It annoyed me. It seemed in a way like some sort of trick. Trying to get me to promise something like that while I’m near orgasm, when I’ll likely agree to anything?

We kissed more after I got dressed again, told each other “I love you,” and I was out of there because her mother was due home from work. I went back to my trailer, where I was living with my buddy, Fred, and told him all about it. He was happy for me, but shared my concern over her demands for promises. The timing was very suspicious. I don’t think he was a big fan of Betty’s, anyway.

And the truth is, things went downhill really fast from there. Betty became increasingly jealous and insecure, despite my assurances that I loved her. She became incredibly scrutinizing over my friendship with Wendy and I was not about to end that friendship. Nothing had happened with Wendy and I, and nothing was GOING to happen. But that wasn’t satisfactory to Betty. She kept drilling me over and over, sure that something was going on there.

Within a week of our making love, the relationship was over. She hung up on me. TWICE. And I’d specifically told her long before that, that if she ever wanted to piss me off, all she had to do was hang up on me. I HATE that. And because she did it deliberately twice in a row, that was it. I was done.

I was tired of all the questions, of all the ridicule, of all the demands to end my friendship with Wendy. Nothing was worth that bullshit. I refused to answer all of her phone calls, even at the radio station.

We didn’t talk for quite a while after that. She waited several months and then caught me off guard at work, when she called me during a really bad day. We only talked for a few minutes. The NEXT time she called me, she’d somehow gotten my new phone number at my new apartment. And at that point, Wendy and I HAD kissed, but nothing ever came of it.

Years later, I went “home” to Alamogordo for my 10-year high school reunion. I saw Betty in church. I’d heard she was married and had children. She about fainted when she saw me in one of the pews. We hugged and talked after the service and she introduced me to her husband, who said, “So you’re Karl.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. Clearly, she’d talked about me. I was entirely over our breakup 10 years prior, not mad in any way. In fact, I was greatly at peace with it all and I chalked it up to being young and stupid.

When Betty and I met for lunch later that week, she told me she’d never gotten over me. I was the best she’d ever had. Never had a man brought her such pleasure. All of this was very surprising to me, and very flattering. Then she began describing how bad her marriage was, and I knew I needed to get out of there.

I saw her again 10 years later at the NEXT reunion and we hooked up for breakfast. Same story. It made me sad that she was in a loveless marriage. She made it clear that she wanted to go back to my hotel room, but I wasn’t having any of that. If she’d caught me right after my divorce 14 years earlier, it would have been a totally different deal. But I’d since picked up morals and scruples and all those other things that have kept my dick more dry than wet over the years.

Still, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for her. She was my first real love. My first time. I’ll never forget that.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate (and I really hope you will), please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (SecondHand Tryptophan).

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Quick call-out: Shiny needs a roommate for TequilaCon. This is Shiny the guy, just to clarify, because I now know two Shinys. If you’re going to TequilaCon and would like a roommate, please jet over to his blog and let him know. I know it’s really late in the game, but you never know. Thanks.

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!

Part One can be found here.

I spent the next hours with a multitude of confusing feelings. It felt surreal, getting kissed by Betty. I was excited. I was baffled. I was kind of freaked out. We were friends, right? When the hell had it become more than that? Had I done something?

I was far too inexperienced to think about it logically. Looking back now, with 23 years of experience under my belt, I know that women love a man who listens to them. Hell, people in general like to feel that they’re truly being listened to. I just didn’t see that as such a big deal when I was 17, going on 18.

I still didn’t see myself as all that attractive, either. I’d recently broken my glasses and couldn’t afford a new pair, so that was a big switch. And yes, I could see fine…it’s really my left eye that’s the weak one. Add to that the new hair style and I looked like a completely different person. On the inside, though, I still pretty much felt ugly and unkissable…even after getting dumped by my girlfriend not long before.

That night, Betty and I talked on the phone. I can’t remember our conversation. I’m sure it involved the kiss and what it meant, how baffled I was, and what all of this meant for us. Plus, she was three months pregnant with someone else’s baby. I mean, how the hell was I supposed to be romantic under those conditions?

That shit didn’t matter to me, truth be told. I’ve always thought more with my heart than my head. And I liked Betty…a lot. We were talking on the phone every night, many times more than once a day.

And I quickly came to fall head over heels for her. Everything else melted away. I introduced her to my dad at one point, not long before he left New Mexico to go back to New York. My plan was still to head back north at the end of the college semester, but I refused to think that far in advance.

Betty sometimes would drive me home after I finished my shift at the radio station. We’d sit in my dirt driveway, out in the middle of Boles Acres (a dump of a trailer park), making out and heavily petting. My dick would get so hard I thought it’d burst through my closed zipper. And I spent many a night nursing my poor swollen azure balls.

A couple of times, she undid my zipper and handle my guggenheimer and I’d think, “This it it! This is it!” Once she even put me in her mouth and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But no, she’d stop right after that and I’d zip back up, saying it was okay but not really being okay with it. Every time I’d wander back into my trailer, delicately walking because even the fabric of my pants was amazingly painful. Yeah, I’d masturbate like my life depended on it – what else was new? – and used up half a roll of toilet paper wiping up.

A few times we ended up at her place, where she lived with her mother and younger brother. Same thing would happen. Eventually, after maybe a month of this cockteasing, I started getting resentful. I mean, what the hell was it going to take? I loved her, I really did…we said it all the time. Wasn’t I good enough?

Back then I really equated sex with love. Yeah, part of my screwed up programming. I know now that many abuse victims feel that way. But I wasn’t even acknowledging that status in my brain. I’d locked all that away deep in the dark recesses of my brain.

So Betty not having sex with me was not only sexually frustrating, but also a means of rejection that hit me pretty hard.

Now I look back and think that was kind of immature and assholish. After all, Betty had been raped by her own boyfriend not all that far back. I really did try hard to be understanding, and I think I was to a large degree. But I certainly had limits to that patience and I was hitting them like a concrete wall.

Finally, one night when Betty’s mom was away at work, she led me by the hand and took me to her bedroom. Finally, she wasn’t teasing me. She meant business. I was going to get laid! Better yet, with someone I loved.

She peeled off my shirt, and I hers. Off came our pants. Then the underwear. And I was standing there completely naked with a woman, who was also amazingly completely naked. We embraced and kissed some more and she took my hand once again and brought me onto her bed.

Her mouth engulfed my dick and I groaned with pleasure. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Not very long after my 18th birthday, it was actually happening! I didn’t want to cum yet, I wanted to save that for the actual sex. So I gently pushed her off of me and then did something I’d been wanting to do for a long time. All of my experience with porn magazines was coming to fruition and I decided I was going to go down on her.

I moved down and kissed and fondled her breasts. I flicked my tongue over her nipples and did the things I thought I was supposed to do. And when I got down to her pussy I inhaled that musky scent and tentatively raked my tongue up and down her slit. She groaned, so I guess I was doing something right. That turned me on even more.

Encouraged by her signals, I buried my face in her, and hungrily lapped away. After maybe 30 seconds of this, however, she said, “What are you doing?” and she pushed me away. Hell, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just trying to reciprocate, do what I’d seen all these men and women in magazines doing.

“Come up here,” she urged me.

I didn’t want to stop, but she said it again, so up I went. And in I went. And. It. Felt. Fucking. Amazing.

Part Three tomorrow.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (SecondHand Tryptophan).

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--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Don’t forget this afternoon’s SecondHand Radio. Read yesterday’s post for more details.

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!

When I first agreed to participate in the GBBMC for RAINN, I pictured a month of nothing but sex stories. Hell, I’ve got enough of them, I’m sure. But when I actually sat down to map it out, I realized that just because I probably COULD write 30 sex posts, that didn’t mean I should. It’s not like they’re all exciting stories, or even good ones.

I’ve read a lot of stories this month, many of them from people I don’t even know. And those stories run the gamut from cute to amusing to horrifying to hilarious. If you haven’t already looked at some of the other participants in the project, I think you should. Some amazing stuff out there. And you never know, you might discover someone you’d like to add to your feedreader on a permanent basis. After all, it was during the LAST GBBMC two years ago that I met Kevin, Dave, Sandra, Belinda, Brandon, Dariush, Stacey, and many others that I’m now friends with.

And now, whaddya know? We’re near the end of April and this fantastic campaign and I have yet to talk about the Big Moment, when I lost my cherry. Do guys lose cherries? Do we even have cherries? I don’t know, but I’m going to say yes.

As I mentioned in an earlier RAINN post, I was going to NMSU-A (New Mexico State University – Alamogordo branch) up on “the hill.” I was 17 when I started the summer at college, right after I graduated high school. Micro- and macroeconomics…snore. But it was cool because, hell, I was in college! And I was taking a class with one of my best friends, Tom.

I was also hanging out in the student center quite a bit, when I wasn’t working full-time at the radio station. It was just me and my Dad in Alamo at that point, since Mom and my sister and brother booked ass out of Alamogordo and moved back to New York. Abandoning the ship, so to speak, Dad was supposed to stay with me until the end of my first full-time semester in December. He wound up leaving for New York the day before my 18th birthday in September. Yeah, that sucked.

But it was also kind of cool because I was on my own for the first time. And hanging out quite a lot with a new friend…let’s call her Betty. When August came and it was time for full-time school, I spent a lot more time on campus. I also started playing intramural volleyball, even though I totally sucked at sports and had never played before. I picked it up fairly quickly.

I met Betty on campus and she was very nice to me. Sweet and smartassy (I like that), she was a year older than I was and never seemed too busy to chat with me. I was really skinny and a smartass myself, kind of a class clown and still highly inexperienced in the ways of womenly wiles.

It was around this time that I got my first vehicle. Well, my second vehicle, technically. But I never drove my van (another story for another time), so…anyway, I had a badass Honda Elite scooter. Check it!

Come to think of it, I wish I still had that scooter. With gas prices the way they are now? Yeah, I got around for a month on maybe a few bucks. Good times.

Betty and I would hang out on campus a lot, talking and joking around. She had a boyfriend named Alfred. Total asshole, as I’d come to discover later. After some time, Betty kind of disappeared and I didn’t know what had happened to her.

Months later, I’m riding my bicycle along New York Avenue and who should I whiz by, but Betty standing on the sidewalk. I turned around and went back by to say hello and catch up. Alfred, who she’d been dating for three years, had raped her and gotten her pregnant. And left her. Nice. She seemed rather okay with it, but I know she wasn’t. Either was I.

We exchanged phone numbers and wound up talking for hours on end. At this point I should mention that my best new buddy was a girl named Wendy. She was also a year older than me and, as it turns out, mortal enemies with Betty. This wasn’t a big deal at the moment, but it sure would come into play later.

One night Betty and I were talking on the phone about lots of things (including her being three months pregnant) and she mentioned something about me getting embarrassed. I boasted that “I don’t GET embarrassed” and “I don’t get surprised, either.” Famous last words.

The next day I was working at the radio station. I’m typing away on the TRS-80 computer, writing advertising copy for a radio ad, when I hear the front door open. No big deal, people went in and out all the time…coworkers, soda delivery people to fill up the Coke machine, whatever. And Debbie, the receptionist and bookkeeper says, “Karl, you have a visitor.”

I turn around and it’s Betty with a big bouquet of flowers. For me. Yeah, I had mentioned to her on the phone the night before that I’d never been given flowers. I found myself turning red immediately and she had this big ol’ shit-eaten grin on her face because she’d managed to surprise me AND embarrass me all in one shot.

When I walked her out to her car, I thanked her again. She got in her car, window rolled down, and I reached in through the window to give her a hug. Instead, she planted a kiss right on my mouth!

“See you later,” she said.

“Um, yeah. Okay,” I managed.

And as she sped away, I thought, “What the fuck just happened?”

Part Two tomorrow.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (SecondHand Tryptophan).

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--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Welcome to everyone who got here because of the TWO Perfect Post Awards I was given for this post. Many thanks to Shelli and Miss Britt for awarding these to me. I never expected such a response for this post, but I’m glad it stirred up a lot of people. It’s all about awareness as far as I’m concerned.

Thanks so much for coming by! – Karl

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!

I know I promised that my next RAINN story would be about the time I lost my virginity, but that’ll have to wait until next time. With little more than a week left in the GBBMC campaign, I wanted to talk seriously about RAINN and its importance.

That’s right, no jokes today. I’ll bring back the funny later.

Let’s start with some rather alarming statistics.

And by the way, though many of these statistics were gathered using America as the metric, that isn’t to minimize sexual assaults around the world. It’s just that RAINN is based in America.

Did you know that every two minutes another American is sexually assaulted? EVERY TWO MINUTES. Almost half of those people are under the age of 18. Over 80% of all sexual assault victims are under the age of 30.

One out of every six women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. For men, that’s 1 out of every 33.

60% of all sexual assaults are never reported to the police.

That hasn’t freaked you out yet? How about these stats regarding children?

15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.

• 29% are age 12-17.
• 44% are under age 18.
• 80% are under age 30.
• 12-34 are the highest risk years.
• Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

• 7% of girls in grades 5-8 and 12% of girls in grades 9-12 said they had been sexually abused.

• 3% of boys grades 5-8 and 5% of boys in grades 9-12 said they had been sexually abused.

In 1995, local child protection service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse.

• Of these, 75% were girls.
• Nearly 30% of child victims were between the age of 4 and 7.

93% of juvenile sexual assault victims know their attacker.

• 34.2% of attackers were family members.
• 58.7% were acquaintances.
• Only 7% of the perpetrators were strangers to the victim.

You can find all of these and more troubling numbers at the RAINN site. It doesn’t take any digging, they’re all there for you to see.

I understand that the stats are overwhelming. So skip the numbers if you must, but read on.

When I saw Charlie Daniels the other night, one of the things he said that got huge applause (including from me) was that there is NEVER an excuse for sexual abuse on anyone, especially children. And while I personally do not believe in the death penalty (that’s a subject for a different day), I admit that hearing Charlie say abusers should hang from a short rope off a high branch sounded pretty fucking good.

Perhaps you’re fortunate enough to have never experienced sexual abuse or rape in your life. I guarantee, however, that you know someone who has been a victim. Trust me, even if you think you don’t, you do. Like depression, you can’t recognize a sexual assault victim by sight. Cannot be done.

And those victims you know (and honestly, I hate the word “victim” but I’ll use it here in this context because it applies) are very likely never to speak of the atrocities done to them. You’ll probably never hear them speak about it, even if you happen to be their closest friend. Why?

Because there is an unwritten law that says victims of sexual abuse do NOT TALK. Compare it to Fight Club if you will. It’s just not something you do, talking about abuse. It doesn’t even have to be explicitly stated by the abuser, either. It’s implied. And it’s FOLLOWED, no matter what age you are.

This is why organizations like RAINN are crucial to people everywhere. They have a 24-hour hotline and they’ve taken great pains to make sure every call, every visit to their site, remains anonymous. They don’t collect IP addresses, don’t trace any phone lines, don’t even have Caller ID. Because, believe me, if any of those measures were used, the calls would dry up in a heartbeat.

The phone number is 800-656-HOPE. If you have been raped or sexually assaulted in any capacity, I hope you’ll write that number down and use it. And if you know of a child being abused, God forbid, I hope you’ll call the authorities. Not tomorrow. NOW.

I happen to know quite a bit about this topic, though the statistics still shock me (and that’s not easy to do these days). And I know that many of you donate money to a number of charitable organizations and worthy individuals. Granted, I can’t always give. I’ve told you why…I’m on a very limited monthly income. But I still give $5 here and $20 there when I can, whether it’s to the Red Cross or friends of mine or RAINN.

I’m asking you personally if you have anything to give – anything - to please consider making a donation to this amazing organization. They are networked in with many abuse shelters around the country. And if you’re outside the States, that’s cool, too. I hope you’ll consider giving to a similar organization in your country or town.

For those of you that may still be wondering if you actually know anyone who is a victim of sexual abuse…

You’re looking at a survivor of sexual abuse right here.

I’m not admitting this for pity. And please don’t ask me any further questions about my own experiences. What I say here is all I’m willing to say.

I do this to prove a point. You really never know who is a survivor. That’s the word I prefer to use, by the way, survivor. I WAS a victim, as is any child who is violated so cruelly and irrevocably. Yeah, I’m one of those 15% mentioned above.

Now I’m a survivor.

This shit affects me every single day. And I guaranfuckingtee you it affects people that YOU know, too. If you’re not a survivor, then you know some. Really, one out of every six women. Millions and millions of women. 2.7 MILLION men (yes, this is not a gender-specific issue). Millions of children.

It’s weird. It boils my fucking blood when I think of someone else being abused. But when I think about my own stories? I barely feel a damn thing. I’m still working on that, it’s a lifelong struggle. It’s also rather common as a survivor to shut your emotions down so you don’t feel ANYTHING. It’s a safety mechanism.

I’ve heard the word “resilient” used by many therapists over the years, used to describe me. ME. I hate that fucking word, too. Resilient just means you can take a lot of shit and not die. I’ve often wished I were dead. Hell, I tried to do something about it 13 years ago. To just cease existing, to not feel any pain any more? It can be very alluring to survivors.

I won’t ever act on those impulses again.

I talk about this because of the much bigger picture. And because I know for a fact (just based on the numbers) that there are at least a handful of you reading this right now that are survivors. And if you’ve never asked anyone for help, if you’ve never raised your hand to admit these horrors out loud – not to ANYONE, EVER – I hope you’ll do so now.

There IS hope. There IS help.

Most importantly, you are NOT alone. You’re NOT the only one, as much as a freak you might feel like. That’s the abuse talking, trying to make you stay silent.

It doesn’t have to win.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (SecondHand Tryptophan).

Contest Home | RAINN Donation Page | Participants
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--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Thanks to everybody who entered the t-shirt giveaway. I’ll be selecting the winners today and announcing them in tomorrow’s post. If you’re reading this, it’s too late to enter now. You had your shot. Hell, you had two freaking days to enter. And all you had to do was leave a comment! How much easier does it get than that?

This Sunday is another edition of SecondHand Radio on Blog Talk Radio. I hope you’ll tune in. My special guest this week is Jessica, otherwise known as Black Belt Mama. Surely you read her blog. And if you’ve only recently started reading 2HT, you’ll definitely want to check out her guest post here from last year’s “Summer of Love.” Ever since that video, I’ve had incessant crushy feelings toward Jessica, which sucks since she has a husband. What I’m really hoping for is a chance at Jessica’s sister. It is as close as I’ll get to Jessica at this point.

Show Time: 5pm Eastern Standard Time

Call-in Number: 646-716-9370

And there’s also a chat room available so you can jump in and participate while the show is live. If you need a reminder for the show, you can sign up at BTR and set a reminder on my show’s page. That way, it’ll e-mail you just before the show is set to begin. I always set my reminders to e-mail me an hour before my favorite shows.

By the way, if you want to be a guest on SecondHand Radio, just say the word. Here’s the lineup thus far, plenty of room.

April 27 – Vahid from Iron Fist

May 4 – No show due to TequilaCon

May 25 – Dave from Blogography

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. Please donate!

I was (and perhaps still remain) an awkward, nerdy kid all throughout school. My sexual experiences in high school were pretty much nil, aside from the routine masturbatory marathons, where I’d lock myself in the bathroom and use shaving cream or baby oil to wax my Guggenheimer and fantasize about any number of girls in my class. But as far as sex with another person? Yeah, that didn’t happen until after I graduated high school.

I found myself, at 17, booked in some summer college courses “on the hill.” That’s what we called the branch of New Mexico State University, located at the base of the mountains in Alamogordo. Yes, after jumping right into college, I quickly burned out after a couple of semesters. Working full-time and going to school full-time? Craziness.

I really blossomed that first summer at NMSU-A. I got hit in the face with a volleyball, which knocked my glasses off and broke them. On the same day I went and got my hair cut and went with a totally different style, that spikey style that Kevin Bacon made so popular in “Footloose.” Yeah, baby, I was turning it loose.

Within a couple of weeks of this big transformation, my best bud’s ex-girlfriend (let’s call her Skank) called me up one night at work at the radio station. Now, this is the girl who totally screwed over my best friend by cheating on him. They’d been dating for a couple of years, I think. So she calls me at the radio station and said that she couldn’t BELIEVE how hot I was when she saw me at the mall arcade. I’d walked by her in the arcade – her staring at me and following me with her eyes as I walked – and said, “Hey, Skank.”

So here she is on the phone with me, saying how hot I am now. She was in shock once she realized it was me, saying hi to her in the mall. “I was wondering,” she said, “if you’d like to go out with me?”

I spent the next few moments with a whole slew of dichotomous thoughts bouncing around in between my ears. I mean, Skank was a good-looking girl, so it was flattering. Then there was the thought of getting laid because Skank was pretty much a sure thing. This isn’t a rare thing for me; I often think about sleeping with various women, even today. It’s just one of those things. I meet a woman and I immediately start thinking about whether or not she’s a good kisser, what she looks like naked, etc. All in the flash of a microsecond.

So, sure, I was thinking about going out with Skank in those few seconds. But then the anger returned and I said, “No, I don’t think so.”

She was surprised. “Why not?”

“Because I would never do that to my best friend. You fucked him over.”

“So, what? I’m not supposed to date anyone now?”

“Date whoever you want, Skank.”

“But I can’t date anyone who knows Bob (not his real name)!”

“Yeah, that’s a bitch,” I said in a sarcastic tone. She was right, though. When you live in a town of 34,000 people, everyone pretty much knows everyone else. So the dating pool was semi-limited.

“So you won’t go out with me because of Bob?”

“That’s right.” My virgin dick was punching me in the groin, yelling, “You fucking moron! Go out with her, fuck her brains out!” I mean, I’d heard she was really wild in bed. To me, that meant she was doing juggling and fire breathing or something. For sure she was putting one a hell of a show. Hell, I had no idea what “wild in bed” meant. At any rate, I was very proud that my BIG head was making the decisions (for once). Seriously? You don’t screw over your friends like that.

My first girlfriend came (so to speak) a few weeks later. She was gorgeous, and really smart, graduated from high school (a Baptist school, for what it’s worth) at 16 and she, too, was attending the summer session at NMSU-A. She wasn’t the first girl I ever kissed, but she was definitely the best kisser I’d had up to that point.

Not only that, but she was definitely #1 on the Blue Balls Leaderboard. Many a night would we make out and grind, my penis so hard it could carve a bust of George Washington out of diamonds. And my balls, oh Lord, my balls! They were inflated to the size of soccer balls, filled with my manly seed, just waiting to flood the plains of my woman’s love canal.

Yeah, never happened. I had opportunities, to be sure, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And whaddya know? After we broke up she totally gave it up to a buddy of mine.

Story of my life.

Next time I do a RAINN post, it’ll be time to talk about my official deflowering.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (duh, SecondHand Tryptophan).

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--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Don’t forget, SecondHand Radio is on today at 5pm Eastern time. Then it’s the Big Honkin’ Duets Show II on Pointless Drivel Live, and yes, I will be performing a song with Mr. Fabulous. Be there or be a rhomboid.

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the GBBMC page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post.

Another childhood story. This time I’d like to talk about my early days with pornography. Still living on Kay Road, I was probably six or seven years old. And we had this neighborhood kid that was a bit older than me…probably 10 or 11. Sometimes we’d just go traipsing around in The Woods, a huge area of land filled with trees. We’d wander around for hours at a time, sometimes coming out on the other side of The Woods at the Motel down the road.

Well, Johnny (the older kid) somehow got a hold of some girly magazines and hid them out in The Woods. He told us kids that he had something to show us. So we all walk around this meandering path, scuffling up the bed of leaves on the forest floor, until we came to The Tree that marked The Spot.

Johnny pushed a bunch of leaves aside next to the tree and there we saw the magazines. Three of them, all with beautiful women on the covers, one of them totally topless. My hand immediately went to cover my open mouth. “Ohhhhh my Gooooooood!” I said.

Naturally, that wasn’t enough. I had to see more. I opened up one of the magazines. Holy crap! That woman is totally NAKED. Like, all the way naked. She even had hair down THERE. It was short, closely cropped blonde hair. Down THERE.

I looked through all the magazines, feeling as if I’d come across some treasure. A dirty, dirty, secret treasure. Holy shit, how the hell does she get her legs over her head like that? And is that her kidney I can see through there?

The four of us ooh’d and ahh’d for at least half an hour. There were even some shots of women and men going at it, not that I understood what the hell they were doing. There the guy is, his enormous and stiff winky, pointing right at the woman’s dirty bits. Then he was actually putting it IN her dirty bit! Whoa! She looked like she was in agony, her face all contorted and writhing. Why was the guy so set on hurting her? She must have really been mean to him for a punishment like that.

We giggled and laughed and were simply mesmerized by the whole thing. Why the hell would people DO these things to each other? I didn’t get it, and I especially didn’t get why my own proud little winky was starting to feel all funny and hard.

We reburied the magazines when we were sufficiently confused and awed and left The Woods to go home. It was getting to be dinner time. I spent the next months revisiting those magazines in The Woods, wondering just what the poor woman had done to be tortured in that manner. And the guy looked so intense, like he was preparing for an assault with his G.I. Joe with Kung Fu Grip and Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man (with built-in bionic eye!). I mean, he was really thinking hard about something!

Months later, when Mom and Dad were both at work, and we had a babysitter who wasn’t paying attention to me AT ALL, I had Johnny and some of my other neighborhood friends over. I’d discovered my own little secret and had to show them.

See, Daddy had a HUGE collection of porn magazines. Enormous. I’m talking like 4 stacks of 30 magazines each, at least. He kept them on the top shelf in his closet. And you bet your sweet ass I was looking at them every single second I could.

We all go into my parents’ bedroom (I told you, babysitter not. paying. attention.) and close the door. They’re all like “What? What are we going to see? What’s so big about your parents’ room?”

So I turn around to face them, standing in front of my dad’s closet, and put my hands proudly on my hips, boldly declaring, “Gentlemen, we’ve HIT the motherload!” OK, no I didn’t. What I said was, “Wait until you see…THIS!” And with that, I slid open the closet door and pointed to the top shelf that I couldn’t reach unless I stood on a chair.

The magazines glowed with a golden light, illuminated by sunbeams coming through the parting clouds. The heavens parted, angels sang, devils weeped. Someone random somewhere in the world dropped dead instantly.

All five boys stood there with their mouths open and Johnny uttered a forbidden, “Holy shit!”

Damn right “Holy shit!”

One of the other boys said, “There must be 5,000 magazines in there!”

Johnny slapped him on the shoulder. “Idiot. There’s only 2,000 magazines.”

We all nodded in agreement. If anyone knew about porn magazine numbers, it was certainly Johnny.

Johnny grabbed a bunch of the mags and we all got on my parents’ bed to read through them. Yeah, right. Read. heh. The room was filled with gasps and sighs as pages flipped by. There were pictures of women naked. Pictures of women naked with other women, licking each other down THERE (which also looked very painful), pictures of men torturing women (sometimes multiple women). It was really a lot of very bad women, to be sure.

There was that familiar stirring in my pants when, suddenly, a car pulled up in the driveway!

My chest tightened and my balls got sucked up into my body cavity. “Holy smokes! It’s my Dad!”

We all shot up like lightning, each grabbing all the magazines. Johnny took them all and put them back onto the shelf, back onto the stacks. And then…my life flashed before my eyes as I watched all four stacks of porn magazines come crashing down onto the floor of the closet.

“Holy shit!” said Johnny, “We gotta go!”

Holy shit indeed! What the fuck was I to do? I saw Midnight, our black cat, right at my parents’ door. I reached down, grabbed her, threw her into the closet on top of the magazines, and slammed the closet door. Ran out to the hallway, closing the door behind me, and jetted my ass to the living room.

It wasn’t until 1995, at my sister’s wedding, that I told him it was me. Everyone cracked up over that.

“That really was brilliant of you,” said Dad. He was proud of me. Proud of me for looking at porn, I suppose.

Hey man, I don’t just sit around with my 178 I.Q. – I utilize that shit!

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (duh, SecondHand Tryptophan).

Contest Home | Sign Up | RAINN Donation Page | Participants
Prizes | Sponsors | Rules and Regulations

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

This is a post meant for the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008, and is meant to generate donations for The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). You can visit the page for all the information you need about RAINN and the campaign. More links available at the end of the post. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and not just because it’s about sex and sexuality. Bound to be an interesting month.

Sure, you might think that I’m hot and sexy and quite the catch. You might wonder at the marvel of my singlehood, and hey, I’d say you’re right to wonder about that. But I have to tell you – and hopefully this won’t blow your mind too badly – I wasn’t always the hot monkey love machine that I am now. We all start somewhere, baby.

So today I’m going to go back…WAY back…to my first kiss with a girl. It was 35 or 36 years ago. I realize that most of my readers haven’t been around quite that long, but I’m 41, people. My history is now deep into the decades.

When I was five years old, several years before my parents got divorced, we lived in Calverton, New York. That’s on Long Island, if you didn’t know. From kindergarten up on through sixth grade, we lived right there at 8 Kay Road. The place has long since become unrecognizable, but that’s not really the issue here.

It was a much more innocent time in America then. As kids, we ran all over the neighborhood for hours on end. No parents. You just didn’t have to worry about shit like sleazebags kidnapping your kids. You could still go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood – AT NIGHT, EVEN – without Mommy and Daddy coming along. We’d go traipsing off into the woods all day and never worry about a thing, until Mommy did her wolf-whistle thing to signal us for dinner.

One of my neighborhood friends was Sophie. She lived on the same street, just down the little hill in the middle of the street. On occasion her mom would babysit me and my sister (who is four years younger than me), so Sophie and I hung out quite a bit. We’d play all sorts of things: Cowboys & Indians, superheroes, cops & robbers, house…all those typical childhood games that fill your mind with imaginary goodness.

One afternoon, Sophie and I were playing house and she said, “Take off your clothes. We’re going to sleep now.”

What?! Why the hell did we need to take off our clothes to go to sleep? Whatever happened to wearing pajamas? Sure, it was true that I often stripped naked out of my PJ’s in bed (much to my mom’s chagrin). But that was at home in my own bed. I was by myself.

“If we’re going to sleep, shouldn’t we wear pajamas?” I asked.

Sophie shook her head so violently I thought it might pop off. Like a Pez dispenser after I got bored flipping its head open to get at that delicious Pez candy.

“That’s not the way it’s done,” she informed me. “Mommies and Daddies sleep naked.”

“They do?” Wow. Then why the hell were my Mommy and Daddy so dead-set on me wearing clothes all the time?

“Of course they do. Haven’t you ever seen your Mommy and Daddy naked?”

Yes, yes I had. I knew they had some of the same bits and me and my sister, but I also knew they had yucky HAIR down “there.”

“See?” Sophie said. “It’s no big deal.”

“But…but…you’re going to see my winky.” Don’t laugh, that’s what I called it back then. I also occasionally used the word “penis,” but that sounded really funny. This was a serious time, Sophie wanting to see my winky.

“Yes?” she said, as if to say “Big fucking deal. We’re married, dammit. Now show me the love muscle!”

I did the best thing I could think of. I called her bluff. “You go first,” I said, sure she’d back out of this monumental event.

“OK.” And she whipped her pants down right then and there, in the middle of her living room.

Naturally, I bent down and got on my knees to check this thing out. Man, were girls ever different than boys!

“How do you pee out of that thing?” I mean, come on…where’s the hose?

“It’s easy, the pee comes out this hole,” she said, spreading her vaginal lips with her fingers.

Egads! That thing is freaky!

“Wooooooow,” I said, which is pretty much the same thing I say every time a woman strips down in front of me.

“Now you,” Sophie said, pulling her pants back up. So much for going to bed, I thought. She’s just pulling this shit to see my awesome winky.

But a deal is a deal. I slowly undid the top button of my pants, then pulled the zipper down. And in one fell swoop, WHOOSH!, the pants came down and I was swinging in the wind.

She, too, got down close to check it out. In a trance-like state, she said, “Wow, not one single hair.”

“No way! I don’t WANT hair down there.”

She nodded. “Me, either. Can I…touch it?”

Touch it? Well, what the hell. She’s already looking at it. She hasn’t laughed at me.

“OK,” I said. And she did. First she just touched the top of it. Then she grabbed it and lifted it up to see my wee little pea-sized testicles.

“Neat,” she said. “What are THOSE for?” pointing to my balls.

“I don’t know, but don’t squeeze them or they’ll hurt.”

“They don’t hurt when you walk around or sit down?”

“No, only when you squeeze them or get hit in them.”

Then Sophie’s mother came in and saw me with my pants down. “What on EARTH are you DOING?!”

“Nothing!” we both said in stereo, and I pulled up my pants as quickly as I could.

“Why are your pants down?” her mother said.

In the most matter-of-fact tone possible, Sophie said, “We’re playing ‘house.’”

“Well, you leave your clothes ON!”

“Okay,” we both said again.

Dammit. Just when I was about to get laid for the first time. No such luck.

THAT story later on in the month.

Sophie WAS my first kiss, though. Some time after our “house playing,” we went behind a recliner in her living room (always the living room, hmm) and started smooching. It didn’t matter to me that Sophie had this skin condition that made her face and arms molt like a lizard. Even then, I saw past the mere physical and looked at the inside girl. Sure, in Sophie’s case, I had actually SEEN inside her…inside her pee hole, anyway.

We got caught kissing by her mother, too. She was such a buzzkill.

DONATE TO RAINN HERE. When you donate, please make sure you reference “GBBMC2008,” and include my name (Karl Erikson) and blog name (duh, SecondHand Tryptophan).

Contest Home | Sign Up | RAINN Donation Page | Participants
Prizes | Sponsors | Rules and Regulations

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan

Right, so this is the first post on the new 2HT site that I’m writing myself. So far, so good. Love, love, love the new design and can’t thank Karen enough.

There are bound to be some kinks to work out. Some of the posts that were imported from the old 2HT site wound up being all wonky format-wise. Weird line breaks in the middle of sentences, etc. I’m not about to go checking every post, of course. There are other fish to fry, at least on the front burner.

I’m digging Wordpress thus far. As far as the post-writing goes, it’s pretty easy to use. I’m sure there will be some moderate swearing going on as I wonder “how do I do this?” but I’m not all that concerned about it.

And the header with the pipe-smoking? Well, there’s the 2HT history for you. When Hilly came up with my original header graphic, she brilliantly picked the smoking guy, since I told her I wanted to somehow utilize the molecular structure for tryptophan in the graphic. (Thanks to Dave for that idea, btw.) Get it? SecondHand smoke? SecondHand Tryptophan? Yeah, that’s probably not the explanation you were hoping for, but that’s basically the story about that.

Plus, yeah, I currently smoke. I’m quitting (again) but not until my huge social endeavors at TequilaCon. Can’t do it. I know, I know. Shoot me.

The next thing I want to talk about is Lisa (Clusterfook). In case you haven’t heard, Lisa recently announced that she has cancer. Again. I’ve only recently discovered Lisa, yet this is still heartbreaking news for me. She’s beaten cancer twice before and that takes a toll not only on her, but the entire family.

Miss Ann Thrope (another new one for me) has organized a big fundraiser to help send Lisa and her family on a Disneyland vacation. They’re looking to raise thousands of dollars to make this happen. I just talked about all the bloggity goodness out there, how bloggers rally together for each other at a moment’s notice. This is one of those times.

I’m not rolling in dough, that’s for sure, but I do chip in when I can. Hope you will, too.

And there are lots of prizes available, so when you check out Miss Ann Thrope’s page, you can see all the lovely things that people have chipped in.

Finally, it’s April and time for the 2008 Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign, organized by the beloved Kapgar. This month, bloggers everywhere are going to discuss sex in order to promote Carly’s book, “Sexology.”

I signed up immediately, without even knowing what the deal was. I mean, it’s SEX. Come on! Better yet, this entire affair will be helping raise money for RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network). There’s the Sexology graphic in my sidebar and you should click on it to see Kevin’s page about the project.

Here’s a description of RAINN, as seen on Kevin’s project page:

About RAINN:
The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network is the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization. RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline with a nationwide partnership of more than 1,100 local rape treatment hotlines, providing victims of sexual assault with free, confidential services around the clock. The hotline helped 137,039 sexual assault victims in 2005 and has helped more than one million since it began in 1994. RAINN’s goal is to expand its hotline services with the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline, which will be the nation’s first secure web-based hotline that provides live, secure and completely confidential help to victims 24/7 through an interface as intuitive as instant messaging. RAINN educates more than 120 million Americans each year about sexual assault. RAINN also publicizes the hotline’s free, confidential services; educates the public about sexual assault; and leads national efforts to improve services to victims and ensure that rapists are brought to justice. RAINN is the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization and has been ranked as one of America’s 100 Best Charities by Worth Magazine.

There are prizes galore and I think you can sign up thru the 15th of the month. And you can view the list of participants here. Because of all the changes here at 2HT, I plan on making my first GBBMC post tomorrow.

I’m pretty jazzed about this. It was two years ago that 40 or so of us bloggers signed up for the first GBBMC with the Lost Blogs Project. In fact, that’s when I met Kevin and Dave and Sandra and a ton of other bloggers. I’ll be going through the participants page and adding all of them to my feedreader (those that aren’t already in there). Actually, I still have a “Lost Bloggers” folder in the feedreader.

You’ll see donation links for RAINN in every post this month. I’d love it if you’d donate through 2HT, of course, but donate any way you can. (Especially if you mention me when you donate.)

What I DO ask if you donate is that you use the NOTE section on the donation page. Please mention specifically that you’re donating on behalf of the GBBMC2008 project. Also, if you don’t mind, list my name and blog address (secondhandkarl.com) in the note. That way they can more easily keep track of all the money that comes in during the month of April.

Frankly, this is something I feel very strongly about, having my own personal shit experience. But that’s for another day.

Thanks! You all rock to the nth degree.

--- Thanks for reading! SecondHand Tryptophan