John Holmes - Porn King

Once school started in the fall, I purposely left the house earlier than necessary so that our paths would not cross. For safe measure I took short cuts, racing through the woods and across cornfields and meadows. In the classroom, Mary Kay sat behind me, several rows away. By getting to my seat first, and leaving last, I could go for days without seeing her.

Sundays were a horror, as our families made it a ritual to attend church together. There were so many of us that we usually took two cars, but Mary Kay and I, whom our well-meaning mothers regarded as “the two chums,” were often paired. That meant riding with her to church in the same car, sliding into the same pew next to her, and joining her in the fun and games between services and Sunday school. The only time we spoke was on the playground, where Mary Kay liked to ride the swings. Before the incident under the bridge, she didn’t mind where I’d put my hands to shove her back and forth. I like pushing on her soft bottom rather than her trim, little waist, and so did she. Then it was harmless; now it was dirty. “Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried, setting the rules for months to come.

“I won’t, don’t worry,” I replied. From then on I was careful to make contact only with the swing board.

Sunday was the day the smothering black cloud was at its worst, and it wasn’t all due to Mary Kay’s presence. Listening to the minister had a devastating effect on me. For some reason, his sermons always focused on sex, or some aspect of it. He preached about lust, and condemned people who “go’ a whoring” and commit ‘whoredom.’” He talked endlessly (or so it seemed) about wickedness and nakedness and immorality. I heard about incest and adultery, of men who “waste their seeds,” and of wicked, sinful places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Every time he opened his mouth I squirmed in my seat. When he gestured with his hands, as he often did, his finger seemed to point directly at me. It didn’t, really, but it took me many years to figure that out. His sermons were pure vaudeville, and he was playing to his audience. Where else could the people of this little of this little farming community hear sex discussed openly (it was the only x-rated show in town), and with the blessing of the church? Topics conserved forbidden not only kept the parishioners awake, but also had then returning every Sunday and filling the collection plate to overflowing.

The passing months did little to ease my conscience, or dim my memories of that steamy afternoon with Mary Kay. Winters in the Ohio Valley can be fierce, raw and blustery. But no matter how numbing the cold was, thoughts of our time together never failed to generate heat between my legs. One freezing January day, as I was returning from setting trap lines in the snow-covered woods, I spotted Mary Kay walking along the road. She was bundled from head to toe, but the sight of her fascinated me. I crouched low, not wanting her to see me, then began following her, careful to keep a safe distance between us. She turned into her driveway, bypassed her house, and then disappeared inside the barn-like tool shed in the back yard. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there, and I really didn’t care, but I suddenly found myself at the shed door, pushing it open. Mary Kay was sitting on an old crate, huddled next to a frost-caked window. She turned away from me and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, closing the door.

“Well, you’d better go.”

“I want to stay,” I said, stubbornly. The admission surprised me. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to be with her.

“Well, you can’t.”

“Why?” I moved closer to Mary Kay, stepping cautiously over scattered nails and bits of broken wood. “You haven’t really spoken to me since we were underneath the bridge.”

She raised her mitten to the frosty pane and ran her fingers in small circles, creating a blurred pattern. “You haven’t spoken to me either,” she said, finally.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she sighed, her breath clearly visible in the cold air. “We’re not supposed to talk to each other.”

“Why? Who said that? Did you tell your mother?”

She turned slowly to look at me. Her face, the small portion that peeked through the furry trim on the hood of her parka, showed no sign of anger. “No, I didn’t tell anyone,” she answered calmly, “but what we did was wrong.”

“I think it was wrong, too.”

“You do?” she said quickly. She actually sounded relieved that we were talking.

“Yes—and I don’t think we should ever do it again.”

Mary Kay signed once more, sending a shaft of white air across my cheeks. “I don’t either,” she agreed.

I smiled and so did she. Then I sat beside her and we talked about our guilt, and unhappiness, and all the things we’d missed by avoiding each other the past months. We were completely open and honest, especially about sex. Somehow, the subject always came back to that. “Being with you was one of the best things that has ever happened to me,” I admitted. “Except Christmas mornings, nothing has ever made me feel so good.” Looking into Mary Kay’s eyes, I knew I wanted to feel good again. The pleasure she gave me, no matter how fleeting, made all the guilt seem worthwhile.

My hand found its way to Mary Kay’s thigh, and I began stroking it very gently. A moment later we were standing, unzipping our jeans, and pressing our warm bodies together. We didn’t even notice the icy cold that surrounded us.

I saw Mary Kay many times after that.

And Gloria!

There were other young girls as well.

In the four years since I began straying to escape Harold’s tirades, I learned that home was not the place for me. Home stood for pain and violence; fighting and bickering, anger and hiding out. In its place, I discovered a worthy substitute in sex. Sex brought a closeness of one-on-one comfort. It allowed me to be warm and caring, to kiss and touch and experience pleasure. It was, I felt, the perfect intimacy between the love and feeling that I should have been receiving at home. As such, any strange girl became more close to me than my own family.

As I entered my teen years, I turned more and more to sex. It was the only family I needed. I knew, too, that I had just about all of Harold that I could take for one lifetime. I needed to get away, but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about that. My young mind finally came up with a plan, and that was to join the army. There was only one hitch. Because of my age, I needed the approval of a parent. My mother didn’t argue. She signed the papers and I was gone.

Believe it or not, the army was good for me. I can’t honestly say that it taught me any morals or sense of responsibility; I had been raised with those qualities. I can’t even say that it taught me to be an excellent sharp shooter since hunting in the woods all those years had made me a good shot. But I did learn something, and it wasn’t in any manual. What the army taught me was that there was a whole world of sex I had yet to discover.

While stationed in Germany, I heard about a cathouse filled with voluptuous women of various ages and sizes. But just hearing about it wasn’t good enough for me; I had to check out for myself. It didn’t take long for the madam, a woman edging into her forties, to learn of my “talent,” and once she did she refused to allow any of her girls to be alone with me. I was hers and that was final; she made that clear to everyone under her roof. Being the young man that I was, I didn’t argue considering the nature of the place. Besides, I didn’t have to pay for any of the services as the other customers did. It was a great arrangement.