Life, Living and Loving: Mrs. Feve’s Memoir Project – Out

Three AM… and I’m looking for Mrs. Feve’s next prompt… and there’s nothing. Did she decide to stop the project or something? I started to ask her then said, “No, wait, wait…”

I’m still wondering if she thinks of these prompts and says to herself, “Oh… I’d love to see the look on KDaddy’s face when he see this one!”

The word covers a lot of things in my memories, including the way I pronounce it with a more… French pronunciation but not as out there as Canadians pronounce it and, yes, I blame high school French for getting me to pronounce “ou” like “ooh” and not “ow.” The funny part is it gets people asking me where I’m from and I sometimes get the stink eye because they don’t believe I was born and raised right here in the United States.

Of course, there’s the ongoing drama about bisexuals coming out but, okay, I’ve been out for decades now and so long that I no longer remember the exact moment I said to myself, “I don’t give a fuck who doesn’t like the fact that I go both ways!” Keeping my mind in the gutter for a moment, when thinking about what I was going to write this time, the Certified Dirty Old Man in my head said, “Well, you know, when you put it in, you gotta pull it out, too…”

No kidding? Wow… didn’t know that…

“Out” is such a common word that, at least for me, it doesn’t spark any one particular moment when this three-letter word had a memorable impact outside of the fact that my sexuality got me out of the box that most people are locked into.

Out of time. Out of luck. Being assed-out. Left out. Going out. On the outs. In some ways, out signifies a sort of finality or ending; it’s another word for being excluded, like being the odd-man out or it’s a transition – you were inside and then you went out… but you, at least temporarily, quit being inside.

The Certified Dirty Old Man reminds me that being out in a sexuality context meets that last part I wrote… and like I wasn’t sitting here when I typed it.

Being out in left field – what an odd phrase that is and one that has a connection to baseball. Three outs in an inning, three strikes and you’re out and, yeah, the odd twist of being out can put you into quite a mess. Being out of your mind, just another way to denote craziness and/or insanity and taking the word one step further to thinking out of the box.

There’s being out there and being out of bounds which, depending on the person, can be both a good and bad thing and, of course, there are quite a few sports where going out of bounds is definitely not a good thing, well, unless you’re a wide receiver and you voluntarily step out of bounds to avoid that 200-pound freight train that’s looking to put some hurt on you.

There’s those out of body experiences where one feels detached from their physical self; being on the outside looking in comes to mind as well. Even as I write this, that little three-letter word is bouncing around in my mind and trying to stick to something but I think it’s such a common and well-used word in our vocabulary that there are probably a gazillion things where the word “out” was involved.

Being in love… then falling out of love; an object in motion remains in motion until acted upon by an outside force. Running out of gas, both literally and being very, very tired after exerting one’s self. Then, of course, there’s being outside, outdoors, in the great outdoors.

The Certified Dirty Old Man, who owns the gutter, is whispering to me about some more… intimate outs and I’m trying not to pay attention to him but, okay, we’ll go there for a moment so I can finish with this.

When I was nine – and just before my 10th birthday – I’d got hit by a car and knocked silly and from my perspective, the car came out of nowhere and, despite my parents saying otherwise, I did look both ways before dashing across the street. I was on the move – then heard someone say, “Look out!” – and the next thing I knew I way lying against a telephone pole with a lot of people standing over me. The people who hit me took me to the closest hospital and my father arrived and me and him had it out about whether or not I really did look both ways; then, later, the doctor who stitched my head and chin – and the only injuries I suffered – telling me when to come see him again to get the stitches out.

A few days later (and quite a few Mr. Softee root bear floats), I was with my “girlfriend,” Shirley, who had come to see me and, um, ah, ahem, she wanted me to do it to her and I was more than happy to since I was officially grounded so I could heal up and not allowed to go out.

I was so in love with Shirley and once our bodies were joined, oh, yeah – loved her even more. Now, this wasn’t the first time we did it so it wasn’t like this was unfamiliar to us. Dick going in and out of her, we’re kissing – and with lots of tongue – and the world couldn’t get any better. I felt that… good but funny feeling wash over me but I barely paid any attention to it; I’d felt it numerous times before and knew it would pass in a moment, I’d take a nice deep breath, and keep going… but this time, it was different.

Very different.

My heart started beating really fast and my whole body started to shake and tremble; I was having a really hard time breathing, and Shirley’s lovely face was blurred and out of focus… and the feeling wasn’t getting better – it was getting worse. Much worse. I was losing control of my body and like it couldn’t make up its mind whether to keep moving in and out of Shirley or to just stop moving; all the while, my brain is trying to figure out what the is going on: Am I dying? Is this my punishment for being disobedient and having sex when I wasn’t supposed to or, really, um, the punishment was finally catching up with me for all the sex I’d been having with both boys and girls?

It was like something exploded inside my head and I panicked because now I couldn’t see and I knew – or thought I knew – that my eyes were open. Heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears and I had no idea what my body was doing other than shaking and shivering like I was really cold and had stuck my finger in a socket. I was dying… and I was sure of it.

Then everything started feeling better, well, kinda better. I don’t remember pulling out of Shirley but I did, sitting next to her and breathing like I’d been outside running like the wind; I was so… confused that I didn’t know she was talking to me until she shook me to get my attention.

“Huh?” I said – why was my mouth so dry?

“You did it! You did it!” she exclaimed and I remember her smile so very well.

“What did I do?” I asked, deepening my confusion.

“You shot the baby-making stuff in me!” she said and as happy as if she’d found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. “It came out of you and went into me! Do it again!”

Yep – the first time I busted a nut and that white, gooey, stuff came out of my dick and, um, yep, inside Shirley who made it a point to have me look between her legs to see it starting to ooze out of her and I dimly remember thinking that there was a whole lot of the stuff that came out. It wasn’t that I didn’t know about the dreaded baby-making stuff but I thought it was some shit adults made up to scare us into not messing around with sex but, wow… it was for real and my mind quickly put together that now, when I put my dick into… um someone, that white baby-making stuff was gonna come out.

Hot damn! And we did do it again… and even more of the stuff came out and Shirley and I were over the moon and, yeah, out of our minds about it but, okay, when she said, “One more time!” there wasn’t as much of it that came out in the end but, yeah: I was in the big time now and as I found out a few days later, I was the first among us to have the baby-making stuff come out.

Eventually, I’d learn what happened. I even remember, many years later, talking to a doctor about when I became sexually active and he had asked if I remember the first time I ejaculated; when I told him I did remember it (vividly) and that I was nine when it happened, he looked puzzled and mumbled something about that shouldn’t have happened at that age. But I had told him that I’d been hit by a car a couple of days before that moment and all he said was, “Okay… that kind of explains a few things…”

Like getting hit by a car and getting my noggin rattled shook something loose before it was supposed to? If there was a huge, gigantic “out” for me, well, that was it and while I’ve forgotten a lot of things over the years, that moment is one I can’t forget but, like they say, you always remember your first time.

The Certified Dirty Old Man is happy that I got this out and I think he’s looking around for a cigarette… but I’m back to ignoring him and thinking about that out moment compared to the moment that got me out of the straight box and into the bisexual one.

Out. The opposite of in. Many connotations. So common in its usage that one rarely ever thinks about it even when they get to the moment when they run out of words…

And just as I have just done. Back to you, Mrs. Feve!