Memories Travel Without the Weight of Time

I'm five:lying in bed in the attic room I share with big brother (though 4 years older, he won't climb the creaky stairs at night unless I go first-- his fear of the dark gives me a secret thrill). Before leaving for sleepland, I like to watch the shadows flickering across the ceiling, a kind of magic made by the reflected headlights from the cars passing in the street 3 stories below. At seventeen I'm making out with my first girl on the plush sofa in her house while her mom sleeps upstairs. We are a pair of clothed virgins and naive. Suddenly, as I lay her down, I come! My first ******, as strangely I never jerked off (a mystery I still cannot fathom) but oh wondrous it was to leave my body and step briefly into heaven. First came the girls, then the women, in droves for I was tall and fair and good with words but most of all, I could make them laugh. And I loved them all in my way, and I could love none of them: for I was afraid of the binding, the fastness that love demands. It hollowed me out, this fear and I could not see the utter blackness it led me to-- and pain beyond pain. At 24 I was reborn that moment I wept for the loves, and love I had lost. I was not a new man, nor a good man but I was a beginning man, my soul taking baby steps towards God and a glorious love infused universe. In my 32nd year I stood in the nave of the little Anglo- Saxon church, waiting as my bride came down the aisle. She began crying, I began smiling--my happiest day. Now, 40 years later, it is still my happiest day..