Where the Body Meets Memory

I've been reading a lot of books lately, and I just finished David Mura's Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity. It's about the author David Mura and his sexual escapades throughout the years. He and his wife had an open relationship for several years, and he writes about his sexual addiction and how his early experiences and issues with race and identity contributed to his addiction to white women.

As I was reading his book,  I thought to myself:

1) How the hell did he get his wife to tolerate his bullshit and all his extramarital affairs?

2) Boy is she one patient and forgiving woman to allow him to publish his sexcapades and expose their marital problems.

The first half of the book is a bit tedious. He goes over the experiences of his grandparents and parents before, during and after internment. But even though the first half of the book was boring, it showed how historical trauma of a group can leave its impact on a individual and his or her sexuality.

While reading the book, I couldn't help but think of all of the things I experienced and what my friends dealt with in regards to love, sex and relationships.  With that said, I thought I'd give some unsolicited advice on the topic. The thing about being my age is that I can not only draw upon my own experiences, but the experiences of all the other old fogies I know.


1) Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. Now this is easier said than done, because sometimes crazy people start off perfectly normal. You're also blind to the fact that she's nutty, because the sex is phenomenal, because it's like her: wild and crazy.

But somewhere shortly down the road of your relationship, red flags start popping up and you discover that the woman you are with is nutso up the buttso. One woman I knew took all of the letters and cards (this was before email) that I received from my ex-girlfriends and burned them. Then she sent the ashes to my exes.

COO-COO!


2) If you've cheated, then get over it and don't disclose it. In past relationships, I've cheated before, but I grew out of it. I don't know what it is, but you just grow out of being an asshole. Something clicks and a moral switch gets turned on.

Whatever you do though, don't share your cheating history with your significant other or with a woman you are just getting to know. Because she'll always be fearful of you cheating on her, that you will do to her what you did in a previous relationship, no matter how much you reassure her that she's the one and you've changed your ways.

Now this also goes for advances and flirtations that you receive from women, even if they are unsolicited and you don't respond to them. So if you get topless photos from a client, don't brag about it to your wife. She will go nutso up your buttso.


3) College is the best time. College is the best time for you to meet and date around (responsibly and ethically, of course). So if you're in college right now, then take advantage of this time, because you won't get a second chance to meet and interact with so many women of the same age as you in one place.

Sure, you will meet women when you get out of college and go to work, but you won't meet as many women, because the population that you're now working with is much smaller and the women vary greatly in age. Plus dating coworkers is always tricky.

You could always hang out at college campuses after you graduate, but that would be creepy, YOU PERVERT!


4) Don't marry your high school sweetheart. At least not right away.  Every person that I know who married his or her high school sweetheart or college sweetheart has had marital problems, fidelity issues and/or regrets.  They got married way too young, and they didn't date anybody else prior to getting married.  I'm not saying all marriages of high school sweethearts end up in divorce, but from what I can tell, people who married early and have only been with one person always think to themselves, "If only..."

The ones who do get divorced get crazy trying to make up for lost time.  They do a Jon Gosselin, and they sort of regress emotionally and psychologically. 

I ran into a old high school classmate that I had not seen in 20 years (yes, you read that right: 20 years).  Her high school sweetheart divorced her a few years prior, and now she was doing the Match.com, EHarmony thing.  She was seeing 2 guys, and I asked her if either was a good prospect.  She said one had potential and the other was a nice guy, but not that great in bed.

I asked her why she was still seeing this other guy if he was not so good in bed and the other guy was a better match.  She responded, "I had only been with one other guy.  I want to know what it's like to be with another man.  I figure I can learn to like him the way I learned to love my ex-husband."

Bottom line: Don't marry your high school sweetheart right away.  At least wait a few years, and see other people.


5) It's not the quantity of relationships, but the quality of them.  I was having drinks with a woman who asked me, "How many kills have you had?"

Kills?!  I had no idea what she was talking about.  I thought she was pretending to be a CIA agent, but she meant how many women I had slept with.

So I told her, "It's not the number of cars you've taken for a spin around the block, it's the number of miles on the road."

One night stands might sound great, but people have far more sex in their lifetimes when their relationships last longer than a few months.