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I had read the Kinsey report on female sexuality and knew that only one third of American women regularly experienced orgasms. Anyway, that was what was true AT THAT TIME...the report itself is widely credited for increasing that percentage enormously...a good example of the positive feedback of scholarly work...until then never applied to sexuality). I figured that I had scored a woman in the other two thirds. Mary did come...occasionally...but it was too rare for me to understand my part in it, positively or, more frequently, negatively. Besides, after coming myself, I was usually so tired from my day's activety that I rolled over and went to sleep, leaving her staring at the ceiling and wondering if she was ever going to enjoy the fruits of married life.

When we did talk, I wanted to discuss the "interesting" things I was learning in school, the scientific studies, the arcane mathematical principles. All Mary wanted to talk about was our children and the problems associated with running a household. Bo-ring! Babies held little appeal to me. I considered that children only became tolerably interesting when they reached school age, and then only marginally until they achieved the "age of reason," hopefully sooner rather than later. Washing dishes and clothes, changing diapers, trying to decipher meaning from the incessant babble of infants held no interest to me whatsoever. I considered the work trival, beneath my dignity and incredibly tedious. That Mary often agreed with this assessment...she had been attending college herself at the time we met...to become a nurse...and was not exactly ecstatic about her lot in life...did nothing to change my opinion. Of course, she was also learning about the joys of child raising and tried to interest me in the yes-buts of her situation, but I didn't want to hear them. I was sure I was right and that was that.

By 1959, as I entered my senior year at the university, our intellectual lives had drifted widely apart. I had given up trying to interest Mary in my school activities or the many college friends I had made. Likewise, she had given up on interesting me in the life she was leading, contenting herself to trying to get by each day without blowing her top at me or at the children. I do not even recall if she had any friends, but the pool she had to draw from was quite small. There were few mothers with children in the community in which we lived, especially three children. Most residents were young single college students who, like me, really couldn't care less about child rearing. I considered our children accidents of married life or, more nearly correctly, birth control failures.

Among the friends I was making were many young attractive females. At first I wasn't particulary anxious to engage in any hanky-panky with any of them, feeling that one failed sexual relationship in my life was enough. However, as time went on and the societal attitudes toward extra-marital affairs began to loosen, I found myself increasingly tempted. Although I was rather naive, being a small town boy with very slight premarital experience (with one notable exception, but that is another story), I had to recognize that I was considered a desireable male and that many women were coming on to me (MUCH more subtly than is the case today...the sixties hadn't happened yet), some of them were married with lousy sexual situations like ours, others just early examples of "swinging singles" with little regard for stepping on another woman's turf.

One such woman was Jean Cejka (pronounced "check'a"). She was a statuesque brunette well over six feet in height (in fact, in heels she was taller than I!), with a beautiful face and body. She had also been a child prodigy (as I had) with a very high IQ and at nineteen was already a senior in college, majoring in Psychology (which was also one of my majors...although mathematics was my main man). She decided, in a coldy calculating way, that I was the perfect breeding partner for her, a perfect match for her genetic endowment. She reasoned that our children would be supermen and superwomen, tall, atractive, athletic and brilliant. She "knew" I had already proved my virility by fathering three "inferior" children with an "inferior" woman. So, she tracked me down and eventually invited me out for coffee one afternoon and bluntly announced her "plan" to me. I would divorce Mary, we would marry and start producing Übermenschen, meanwhile taking turns making a living to support each other through graduate school. She wasn't about to give up her career, but figured that together we would eventually have such great earning power that we could hire expert nannies to raise our children.

Now, flattered as I was by being approached this way by such an attractive woman...I had frequently noticed her in the Psych department...she really stood out...I found her come-on to be repulsive and not just vaguely so. As disatisfied as I was with my marriage, I did not consider either Mary or the kids to be "inferior" in any way. maybe not "superior," but definitely not inferior! In fact, I really am thankful for Miss Cejka since she was the first person to get me to seriously consider the reality of my life and my relationship with my family...to examine MY part in it all. I started to ask myself just how bad off was I? Despite our problems, Mary was a good and faithful partner. When we did talk, we didn't bullshit one another. We weren't loving, but we weren't at odds either...at least not very often.

Despite the fact that I quickly rejected Miss Cejka's advances, she persisted. After a while. I began to take her actions less seriously and actually found them silly and quite funny. But, despite my frequently laughing at her, she was so persistent...showing up after my classes to "walk me" to my next appointment, I didn't quite know what to do about her. I was afraid, for the first time ever, to discuss the matter with Mary. How could I get her to believe that I wasn't in some way culpable? In fact, wasn't I guilty? Hadn't I led Jean on, so flattered and bemused by her initial come-on that I failed to really make my rejection stick?

Finally, assistance arrived on the scene, in the person of another beautiful Psych major, a married woman named Karen Johnson. One day she too met me after class, introduced herself and invited me out for coffee. Once seated and past the formalities, she told me the following story:

It seems that her husband, Bernie, a gifted classical guitarist, had been courted by Miss Cejka in much the same way as I was being rushed, minus some of the super children bullshit. Now Karen and Bernie had an "open" marriage, rooted in what was then called a "Bohemian" lifestyle. That is they allowed, or at least tolerated extra-marital affairs. Thus, he quickly attempted to actually get down with Jean, to have sexual intercourse. But, each time, as soon as he progressed past the heavy kissing and petting stage, she would stop him, explaining that she had a "block" against actual complete sex acts. It turned out that she had been caught, as a teenager, messing around sexually with an older step brother...by her mother, his step-mother. Jean was subsequently induced, both by her mother and others, to testify in court and to "turn state's evidence" against her hapless step-sibling, leading to his conviction on the charge of statuatory rape. He subsequently served a long prison term in the Wisconsin state penitentiary. The trauma of this experience, she maintained, made it impossible for her to enjoy sex outside of marriage. She felt enormous guilt, having really liked her brother, and was unable to deal with it.

Yikes! Was I glad to have sidestepped THAT one! The thought of entering any kind of sexual relationship with her took on a much darker hue. One wondered how she intended to overcome this block while "breeding." Maybe she thought marriage bestowed a magic charm on the paticipants that overcame such "minor" problems. Anyway, armed with this new knowledge, I decided to come clean with Mary, to tell all and clear my conscience. Now, understand that I had not (yet) violated my marital vows, so had relatively little to which to confess. My worst sin was really concealing the whole matter until Mrs. Johnson enlightened me. In any case, I fessed up.

At first Mary was flabbergasted. Like me, she didn't consider her marriage a bed of roses and really didn't empathize much with my university experiences. But, she hadn't considered that she would be faced with threats like this! After much discussion, I convinced her that the only way to clear the air, was for her to meet Jean Cejka herself and see exactly what she was up against.

So we went to a psych department party which I knew Jean would be attending. When Mary first laid eyes on her, her beautiful head and shoulders towering above all the others in a lovely evening gown, she felt she had been "kicked in the stomach by a mule." I found her hiding in a corner, rapidly downing her third drink muttering "I can't go through with this. How can I compete with HER?"

Waiting until she was fairly intoxicated, I began to assure her that Jean was actually no threat, no competition at all. But, she would have to find that out for herself. Finally, after fifteen minutes or so and armed with the false bravery of alcohol, she walked up to Jean and introduced herself...as the "inferior" woman married to Mr. Chaplin and announced that they should "talk."

They spent about an hour at it. I never found out exactly what was said, but I do know Mary had a very serious look on her face. For a while. After about a half hour, she began to smile, then to laugh, a twinkle returning to her eye that I hadn't seen for a long time. Miss Cejka maintained a dignified demeanor through it all, I'm sure fortified by the certainty of the truly clueless that she was "right" to behave as she had.

So, I escaped the first test to my marriage unscathed. But, as you can see above, Jean Cejka was not the only one who was clueless. I still did not know what a rare and wonderful person this woman to whom I was married had become, how priceless my "inferior" children really were. I still had a couple of more asshole lessons to learn before I could get on to such important matters. But that is another story.

To be continued...

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