If Wishes Were Women...

Reality is a major buzzkill; my mom proved that to me.

When I was a teenager, my friend next door used to sell his older brother's stash of Playboy magazines to get money for ... for what? What could have been more valuable at that stage of life (post-pubescent and pre-internet) than a treasure chest of naked women? Maybe MacDonald's. 13/14-year-old boys are driven by many basic hungers.

I'm not saying that I ever bought any of the magazines but I looked at many of them. So many times that I even took breaks to read a few. One article I remember was about sexual fantasies. It said that fantasies were less likely to recur the more unreachable they became. If "I Dream of Jeanie" was cancelled, your recurring fantasy of Barbara Eden stepping out of the TV and dropping her harem pants would go away with it.

If you have an active fantasy life, you can preserve your sexual ones. I can imagine multiple scenarios where I might be in North Carolina and run into Andie MacDowell; in each one she is so aroused that she invites me immediately to her bed as she did Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I'm not saying I know she lives in North Carolina or her exact address or that I would stalk her if I lived closer to NC (say, in Kentucky instead of Ohio). But Andie is the only fantasy that I spend much time with now. I mean besides Jennifer Aniston.

As a teen I had no real life, so I held on tight to my fantasies. There was some doctor I went to; I can't recall the reason but, when I need a go to image, I can still dredge up a vision of the nurse, or receptionist or whatever she was. Her role doesn't matter, it was her body, her face and her smile that filled the days when I was without the Playboy supply.

I was not yet 16, so, for whatever reason I had to see this doctor, my mother had to drive me there. As a father, I now understand Mom's desire to know what was happening to her child. At the time, however, when The Nurse was taking me in for some procedure and Mom asked, "Can I go in to be with him?" I knew only that my mother would do whatever she could to destroy my life, which, as I said, was entirely comprised of fantasies.

The Nurse told her, no, no one was allowed to be in there with me, which temporarily made things okay. Then, on the way out of the exam room, as I stopped by the front desk, The Nurse shot me that smile and said, "See, you didn't need your mom in there with you." She thought that was my idea. I suddenly saw her for what she truly was, an adult woman being nice me as an insecure, awkward adolescent because it was her job. That reality destroyed my fantasy of myself. Thanks, Mom.

The Playboy article was right. Yes, I can still call up an image of the seductive Nurse, but the fantasy of what she and I would do in my room disappeared. No, it was there, but damaged. What happened is that each time I visualized myself in my room with The Nurse, my mother would come through the fantasy door with some pie and tell me dinner was ready and my little friend had to go home.

Okay, so the pie always satisfied another hunger, but reality is still a major buzzkill.