What Was Happening to Me

What Was Happening to Me?

I threw up all night. My body covered with red, angry blotches. I didn’t sleep much. When I dozed off, I had one of those disturbing dreams. The ones filled with “dancing girls of Sears.” A few “muscle men of Sears” thrown in. I wasn’t sure what was scarier. Throwing up so violently. The livid hives. Having another one of those eerily decadent dreams. Ending up with my PJs covered in sticky white “stuff.” I was too sick to even think about Victoria. What was happening to me?

My parents let me stay home sick from school by myself that day for the first time. I was not quite 11. October, 1962. I had control of the TV! Even with only 4 channels, I could surely find something to watch.

My stomach had never hurt so badly. I retched and retched until it was empty. Then I had dry heaves over the toilet. The hives itched incessantly. When I scratched them, they throbbed. And some of them bled.

I was “sick as a dog.” I just didn’t yet know that expression. I’d never really seen a dog get sick to its stomach. Many years later, I took Sugar to get spayed. When I picked her up, the vet said, “She’s still ‘drunk’ from the anesthesia. She’ll either be a happy drunk, a mean drunk or a throwing up drunk.” My wife and I were cursed. Why couldn’t Sugar have been a happy drunk? We spent the whole night cleaning up. Except for how sick I was in 1962…I have never seen a creature throw up that much!

I had so excitedly flipped on the TV. But I couldn’t even stay on the couch long enough for the TV to warm up and the picture to come on, before the next wave of nausea hit me.

As I heaved in the bathroom for what seemed like the 100th time, I heard Walter Cronkite say in a frighteningly calm voice that there was some sort of crisis. I raced back from the bathroom to the couch. Changed the channels. But nothing was on except for the situation which Cronkite was reporting. My parents trusted Walter. So, I stuck with him.

Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev hated us. The Soviets had put nuclear missiles in Cuba only 90 miles away. Our young President, John F. Kennedy, and his cabinet, were meeting even as Cronkite spoke. A reporter from Miami cut in. People there were frightened, panicked. Preparing for war. The President wasn’t much older than my parents. Did he know what he was doing? They didn’t always seem like they knew what they were doing! For one thing, my parents hadn’t warned me in advance about those dreams. How could the President do any better?

I was a worrier. I immediately leapt to the conclusion that I would soon die. From throwing up. From the hives. Or the coming nuclear war.

Or maybe the dreams would kill me. They seemed guilty, dangerous. But, pleasurable and exciting. When I wasn’t frightened about them, the parts of me that they ”affected” the most wanted them to come back. Now I’d die in a holocaust before I even “figured them out.”

Staying home alone with the TV was no longer fun. Maybe when I felt better I’d look at the Sears Christmas Catalog. We all waited anxiously for it every fall. It had just arrived. My sister and I spent hours poring over it. Making lists of what we wanted for Christmas. Dreaming of things we couldn’t have or afford. As I got older, I had “wishes” beyond toys. A primitive color TV. A new stereo. Transistor radios. A power lawn mower. Every Saturday, Daddy made me mow the lawn. With an old-fashioned, reel-type push mower. Powered only by preteen muscles. It was so hot and humid in a small-town Oklahoma summer. Mowing was a nasty sweat bath. I complained incessantly. Maybe if I started believing in Santa again, he’d bring me a power mower!

But then there was that other “thing” about the Sears catalog. When I looked at the young women ”barely” covered by underwear, lingerie and swimsuits, something started happening to me. I felt electric and alive. I wanted to touch myself but hadn’t yet allowed myself to do it. A drop or two of that “white goo” would stain my underwear. I spent more time poring over the skimpy “women of Sears” and less time looking at the lawnmowers and TVs.

And sometimes I looked at the athletic “men of Sears” in their underwear and swimsuits. I was a pudgy, overweight, scholarly nerd. Worse, I wore glasses. How I wanted to look like those guys! Something about the thought, or the hope, of looking like “that,” also made me excited ”down there.” The men of Sears made guest appearances in the dreams. Hugging and kissing the scantily clad women.

I noticed that the girl across the street, Victoria, was getting pretty. Her mom operated a beauty salon in their remodeled garage. Mother and the other women on our block went over there to “get their hair fixed.” She kissed me under a tree when we were 6. Back then, I was skinny and cute. I thought she wouldn’t “like” me any longer if I stayed fat and dumpy. And I was afraid she wouldn’t like the glasses which I’d recently started wearing. I concluded that “liking” Victoria in the “different” way that I liked her now was somehow connected to the women of Sears, and to the dreams.

The crisis continued. The news didn’t improve. Mother came home to check on me at lunch. I couldn’t keep down food. She was strict, conservative and religious. Sometimes I was afraid to even talk to her. But what was happening to me? I screwed up my courage.

“Um…uh…um,” I stammered. “Sometimes at night, after a dream, I wake up covered in white stuff…” That was the only part of it that I felt comfortable with saying. She’d just “die” if I told her the rest of it.

“Oh, Adam. That’s normal for boys. Don’t worry about it.”

Whew. I continued with my other concerns. “I’m really worried about this mess in Cuba. It’s all over the TV. There might be war.”

“Don’t worry about that either, Adam. God will take care of it and us and our country.”

Well, it didn’t seem like God was doing much today. Or we wouldn’t be close to a nuclear war. I wouldn’t be so sick. The hives wouldn’t itch. And the Bible would have explained the dreams in advance and told me exactly what was happening to me.

The dreams and the white goo seemed easy to discuss with her…in hind sight. Maybe she could “fix” the hives and retching.

“I’ve never been so sick; I can’t stop throwing up. The itching is driving me mad.”

“If you’re not better by tomorrow, I’ll get Dr. Clayton to make a house call. Got to run to work. Walker will check on you this afternoon. I’ll be home late.”

Walker was our grandmotherly neighbor and babysitter who lived across the street in the house next to Victoria’s. It was “okay” with me if she “checked” on me. But if she stayed with me all day, I’d feel like a “baby.” Even though I’d only spent one morning alone by myself—I was already feeling “grown up.” What would Victoria think if Walker spent the whole afternoon with me?

The next day, I was still home by myself. Gagging and throwing up nothing. And scratching the hives non-stop. I looked longingly out the window as Victoria walked off to school. I hoped some other guy didn’t walk her to school. And wanted to get thinner so I could feel okay walking her there.

Cronkite said the President had ordered a naval blockade. Would the war start when one of our ships stopped a Russian ship? Sunk one? Or maybe when the Air Force bombed Cuba?

I didn’t have a dream the night before. And now I had permission to enjoy them. I wanted to have one. Two. Fifteen. But my naps were “fruitless.”

The doc stopped by. “I’m giving you a shot of adrenaline. It’s a new treatment for hives. Supposed to get rid of them. I think the reason you are so sick is that you have hives on your stomach and intestinal linings.”

He gave me the shot. My heart pounded out of my chest. The veins pulsed in my head. I was having a heart attack or a stroke. But the hives were gone! My heart calmed down. The doc backed out of the driveway. The hives returned.

Over the passing days, the crisis continued but the inexperienced President was as calm as Cronkite. It didn’t seem like war was quite so close. Every morning, I wished I was walking Victoria to school. But I just felt that I needed to be skinnier to do that.

I could keep a bit of crackers and 7Up down. Walker made me some toast.

It was midafternoon. I wasn’t going to die. I could see the “end” of the hives. I felt like all the throwing up had already started making my body a bit leaner and tighter. I turned off the dreadful news. Curled up on the couch with the Sears catalog open to the women’s lingerie. Before you knew it, I was doing things to myself that I couldn’t have imagined only a few months ago.

And then in walked Mother. Thank God it wasn’t Walker who wasn’t even a member of my family!

“Adam, that’s nasty, and disgusting. Don’t ever do that again! Go take a shower and put on clean PJs.”

She didn’t tell me I was going to hell. But I figured I was.

Shit…this was the “answer” I thought I’d get about the dreams. How could anything that “felt” so good be “evil” or “wrong?”

I searched my mind for a Bible verse that condemned having “fun” with yourself. Luckily, I didn’t know how to find the one where the guy’s wife pounded a stake through his chest, killing him. As punishment for the fact that his semen had ended up on the ground and not “inside her” making a baby. Of course, that afternoon, I didn’t yet know what was happening to me. I didn’t know the word “semen.” All I knew was that I got in trouble…but not terribly in trouble…but still might go to hell…just for doing something that felt good.

Those Bible guys at least had the sense to find cute wives. Ones like Victoria.

A few days after Mother caught me “in the act,” Daddy came in and sat down on my bed. I never really graduated to calling him “Dad.” He was always more of a “Daddy” than a “Dad.” He handed me a book. What’s Happening to Me?

The book was honest and straightforward. It was published by the Methodist publishing house. It was religious but not condemning. Realistic drawings explained what was happening to me. And to Victoria and the other girls in the 5th and 6th grades. It preached abstinence. But explained birth control. As to masturbation and the dreams, it said they were a normal part of being a teenaged boy.

Whew again!

The world didn’t end. I wasn’t going to die. Or go to hell. I went back to school. Football season was over. I sat on the bench the whole time in the 5th grade. Never played. But shortly after the Missile Crisis, I started getting taller, and stronger, and no longer pudgy. In wrestling season, I started winning most of my matches. I could hit homeruns in baseball. My voice got too deep for the kiddie choir at church. Victoria and I both got moved up into the Junior High choir even though we were still in Grade School. In the 6th grade, I ran over guys in football.

I talked Daddy into buying the power lawn mower. No more complaints about mowing our lawn. I looked good enough now that I started mowing it without a shirt. Pretty soon, I was earning money mowing the neighbors’ lawns.

Then in that summer before the 7th grade, I accidentally discovered a lifelong pleasure. My bedroom was stifling. The room AC—far away in the living room--wasn’t cooling my room very well. I shut the bedroom door and opened the window. There was a wonderful, cooling breeze. Distant sounds of a drive-in movie wafted through the refreshing air. I took off my PJs and lay naked on my bed. Just for the purpose of cooling off. I wasn’t even planning to “fool around” with myself. But before long, without ever touching myself, the wind made love to me in ways my fingers had never done. After that, I slept naked nearly every night. Just because it felt incredible. Not because I was necessarily always planning to pleasure myself. Luckily my conservative parents never found out I slept that way.

I wondered…could I ever tell Victoria I slept like that. Well, to do that, I’d need to be talking to her first!

Nobody showered together in grade school football. But it was a different matter when I showed up in the 7th grade at Smalltown Junior High. The locker room was a nudist colony. A lot of the 7th grade guys weren’t very far along. The worst of them made fun of me for my pubic hair and other changes. Then when their bodies started changing, they had to find someone else to make fun of. So, they made fun of the guys who hadn’t changed yet. And the big, older guys…they were scary without clothes.

Lots of cool changes were happening to the girls. Especially Victoria. The “new” Adam noticed. I quit dreading Sunday School and started hoping I could find a seat by her.

In Junior High, in 1964, we wrestled shirtless in a pair of tights. In Grade School, we had worn shorts and tee shirts. The high school guys, and even college wrestlers, wore tank tops and tights. Because pro wrestlers are stupid and fake, none of us paid any attention to the ridiculous shit they wore. In 2025, we’d all be aghast if middle school boys wrestled shirtless. I started looking around the gym. Hoping Victoria was in the stands to see me wrestling shirtless. Praying that I’d win and be a hero. And glad I didn’t wrestle in my glasses.

One afternoon, I gathered my courage and waited an hour after school until she finished band practice. Usually, I just walked home alone after my last class if I didn’t have sports. I was “lucky” because wrestling practice was before school. I was so glad I didn’t have to stay after school for practice. I hoped she was noticing what a great wrestler I’d become. And I wanted to walk her home so badly that I didn’t even worry about whether she’d say no. Soon, we were walking home together nearly every afternoon. There was a simple, old-time store on the way back to our neighborhood. You could stop off there and buy cokes and snacks. I started buying Victoria a coke every afternoon with my lawnmowing money.

Confiding in her became comfortable. She had no concerns about my appearance or the glasses. Didn’t ask about wrestling. I soon forgot that she was pretty. Our parents had given us the same book: What’s Happening to Me?”. We commiserated about the jerks who made fun of my body hair. The girls who said her breasts were too big. I blushed. Declared they were perfect. She assured me that the big guys erections weren’t as large as they claimed. Whew! I almost told her I slept in my birthday suit.

We kept talking on a bench in her backyard most evenings, until we had to go inside for dinner.

Mother called them “sick headaches.” Neither of us yet knew the word, “migraine.” My eyes blurred over. My head hurt so badly. And then, I’d throw up. They made me “sick as a dog.” But almost immediately after throwing up, I mostly felt a lot better. But sometimes my eyes brimmed with tears as my temple continued to hurt excruciatingly for a few more hours. Even after I threw up.

It was my worst nightmare. I had one of those headaches. Not with just any girl. In Victoria’s backyard. But she made me lie down on our bench. Put a washcloth over my aching head and blurry eyes. Held a bucket for me to puke into. And finally ran over to my house to get an aspirin from Mother. Then she rubbed my throbbing temple, took my hand, and held it while I cried.

A few more pleasant weeks passed. We were sitting on the bench under the spreading elm in a soft and kind spring breeze. I gazed into her mesmerizing, green eyes. She gazed back into my dark, brown ones. I admired her long, athletic legs. She said she liked watching me mow the lawn with my shirt off. The first thing she’d ever said about me physically. I said I got too many sunburns doing that and wished I had her tan. She said my freckles were cute. She removed my last worries as she took off my glasses.

Who kissed the other one first? Lost in time. I felt electric and alive.

What was happening to me?