X-Rated Ingo
Graphic Evidence

Ingo Winzer
2018

Sex is one of the most important things we do in life, but we mainly focus on the physical part - I guess we all would like to be good at that. And it's easiest to talk about the physical part because that's all over the internet. But as I told my son when he was a teenager, that's not really sex, that's just what it might look like on the outside.

To really talk about sex, you have consider what's happening on the inside, both you and with your partner. You have to be willing to talk about your own vulnerability, your ignorance, the set-backs most of us meet at one point or another, and why the whole damn thing seems so important.

Here are stories about women with whom I did and did not have sex before I got married. I first wrote pornographic versions of these stories some years ago, when my marriage wasn't doing so well, probably to remember what I good time I had had. But I realized afterwards that the really interesting question in each case wasn't what had happened (physically or not), but why and what it meant.

In my 20s and early 30s, I had sexual experience with thirteen women. Maybe I should be ashamed that I thought about these women largely in terms of sex - and that I'm describing them here that way. But I'm not. I wasn't interested in them just for that, but it was an important part of why we were together. And although Mother Nature prods guys to do or say anything for sex, all of these relationships were totally above-board. I never misled anyone, never claimed to be in love, never cheated, and always treated every woman with enormous respect.

Furthermore, I wasn't interested in running up the score. Several other women (Jean Thomas, Michel Dahlin, Frances King, Peggy Olaski) were in my bed and supposedly willing but I sensed that they didn't really want to - so we didn't. And then there were a few women (Lydia Snover, Ann Reissman, Ruth Ann Ramsey, and a woman whose name escapes me who was running up her own score and removing her clothes in my living room until I threw her out) who very clearly did want to, but I didn't want that kind of relationship with them.

Love. Would I have liked to have love as well as sex? You bet! But you can't make yourself love someone, or vice versa. Writing about the girls I actually was in love with (or thought I was) will be for a different time - and probably won't be very interesting. I suppose it's telling that for me, sex and love never happened at the same time.

At first, my knowledge of sex - and more importantly, of women - was pitiful. Over the years I got better at the physical part, but I've never been foolish enough to think I really understand women, even now when I'm 70.

Looking back, a number of the women I knew had "problems" with sex, that is, it didn't always seem to be easy and fun for them. Or was it this very idea - that sex should be easy and fun - that was my problem? I usually didn't have a deep emotional investment in these relationships, so maybe that's why sex for my partner sometimes wasn't so great?

I also suspect, though, that a lot of women start off with lousy experiences, emotional or physical, and don't recover until much later, maybe never. Difficult as sex can be for guys to handle - I should know, as you'll see - it's bound to be an even bigger problem for girls.

Backstory

If you haven't read my bio (at xoxxu.com), a bit of backstory is needed. My family moved a lot when I was a kid, so I never got to know girls much. In my teens I was at an all-boys school in Switzerland, then at an English boarding school - again no girls. And when I went to college it was MIT - which at the time was 95 percent male.

So, I start my adult life knowing basically nothing about girls, how guys interact with them in a normal way, how to have a girlfriend, exactly how sex works, any of that. Much less do I know how girls think and feel about those things. Sure, I have an older sister who's always been my best friend, but she didn't know much more than I did, and these aren't things we can talk about anyway.

Our parents didn't raise us to be prudes, specifically, but by their example we learn to think of the physical aspect of our bodies as something highly personal and secret. Even nakedness, or going to the bathroom, is something to be kept to yourself. It may have been different with my sister, but my parents never said one word to me about sex.

I therefore got the idea that sex is somehow improper, not something you do with a girl you really like. In my freshman year at MIT, when I girl I really like from England, Barbara Dunn, is in New York, visiting an aunt, and I fly down for the day and we're put in the same bedroom overnight, not only do I not know how to have sex with her, I don't want to have sex with her because I would somehow be doing something bad to her.

It's the same story next summer, when I'm back home in Switzerland and Erica Johnson, a girl who dates one of my fraternity brothers, is traveling through Europe with a girlfriend and they swing by for a visit, then take me along for a week. The girlfriend, Dana, goes off somewhere and for a few days Erica and I are on our own, usually sleeping in separate rooms at night but one time we have trouble finding any hotel space at all and have to sleep in one room, in one bed, even though I offer to take the floor. Erica seems willing and I'm more than a little infatuated with her, but that makes it all the more impossible for me to have sex with her, because it would be something nasty. (Note that fidelity to my fraternity brother is not a factor in this calculation.)

Let me point out that in those days abortion was illegal in Massachusetts and birth-control pills unavailable. That's not why I was shy of sex, but it's true that the sudden accessiblity to both a year or so later, made it easier for me (and a lot of girls) to start thinking differently.

The most important change in my perspective, though, about women in general, comes from a weekend job I take as orderly in the emergency room at the Beth Israel hospital, in my sophomore year. I quickly become part of a group of young nurses who treat me as an equal. Growing up separate from girls since the sixth grade, I'm now right in the middle of them, working beside them, hanging out with them, going drinking with them, to the beach, to their weddings.

When I move to the midnight shift there happens to be a shortage of nurses, and since I'm highly competent it's soon just me and a single nurse, dealing with maybe a dozen cases a night, but sometimes nothing for hours, just us two shooting the shit while the doctors sleep. The first year it's Kathy Hawkins, who later joins the war as a flight nurse. We spend a lot of time together, at work, not at work, hanging around, talking about sex among other things, drinking, a close hug now and again.

And that's how it goes later with Eleanor, Karen, Elaine, Marilyn, others. Lots of hours together, just us two. In a reversal of fortune, I now learn far more about women than most guys ever do, probably why my closest friends in life have always been girls.

Most of that knowledge comes later, but just seeing girls as regular people already makes a huge difference in my outlook. So it's not surprising that it's also in my sophomore year that I have my first real girlfriend (the kind you actually kiss).

Sue Hodge

She's not on my list of lovers, because we never did have sex, but we tried - and we spent a lot of time making out, clothes on and off, hands all over each other in lengthy make-out sessions, sometimes bringing each other to orgasm.

I was a virgin, I think she was not, but this was not a topic we discussed. We should have, and if I had just said, "I've never done this before," it would have saved me a lot of emotional agony. At our first try, not knowing exactly what I was doing, I got my foreskin painfully pulled back, canceling both my erection and the mission. But I couldn't explain, I couldn't talk, the embarassment was too great. Even afterwards I couldn't tell her what had happened or why.

She must have thought this was a mental block - after all, she had handled me erect often enough. But she also couldn't (or didn't want to) ask. Maybe she felt embarassed too, felt that she wasn't desirable enough, that I didn't really want her, who knows?

If we had talked, explained, the anxiety would have disappeared. But we didn't, couldn't, so of course the next try was even worse, another failure at the crucial moment - purely psychological now - and again after that.

We didn't date much longer. I felt rejected, and maybe she did too.

I learned two big things about myself. First, that my inhibition, my involuntary prudishness, was bad for good sex (or, in this case, any sex at all). Far better to ask questions than to pretend you know what you're doing. And second, that sex meant much, much more to me than I had thought. And if that's true for me, it's probably true for everyone - because I'm just a regular guy.

Also - though it didn't cross my mind right then - I eventually realized that if this was a tough episode for me, it must be even tougher for girls who have a bad experience the first (or second or third) time. Despite the embarassment, my own difficulty was pretty minor - nothing bad was done to me, I was old enough to weather the setback, and a year later everything was fine. But if you're a young girl abused by your uncle, or shamed by your mother, or raped by a friend, you might never get over it.

Sue

Erica Johnson

I write the above because I think it may apply to a number of the women I knew, not necessarily that they were abused, but that their first experiences weren't very good. For young guys, driven by testosterone, the physical side of sex blocks out almost everything else, but for girls I think the emotional side is far stronger and therefore they're more fragile.

Because I joined a fraternity at MIT, because many of the guys had girlfriends, and because I didn't have one of my own, I became friends with a number of the guys' girls. There was a lot of socializing at the fraternity house, everyone hanging out together. That's how I became friends with Erica, and then came the summer trip in Europe.

My fiasco with Sue happened in the spring, and of course, I told no one about it, but somehow - I guess because Erica was such a sympathetic person - I eventually discussed the whole thing with her. That winter, after a very difficult split with her boyfriend, Erica and I grew closer and eventually we found our way into bed.

I was surprised how simple it was. I worked the night shift at the Beth Israel afterwards, her scent all over me. Back in the morning, she had an orgasm so intense that she fainted. That happened a lot, she craved the intimacy of making love, it was never just sex. And her body was highly sensitive, I once gave her an orgasm just playing with her nipples. I didn’t learn much from her about sex, though, because she came so easily; I thought there was nothing to it. And it turned out (to my great surprise) that I wasn't suited for an intense romantic relationship; after six months we went back to being good friends.

[Let me point out right here that I never had a bad breakup with anyone.]

Erica

Marilyn Griffin

She was one of my nurses near the end of my career at Beth Israel. We were pretty good friends, often worked the night shift together, just us and the sleeping doctors. She was fun and liked to drink, called everyone honey.

Sometimes after work we'd have a couple of Harvey Wallbangers at the Windsor Bar on Brookline Ave, 7:30 in the morning, then drive to her apartment and screw. That was pretty much it, drinks and sex now and again, no consequences the next day and no romance at all. We worked together so closely it almost seemed natural. Once her roommate walked in on us and we didn’t care. She had very deep orgasms, scratched the hell out of my back, I loved it. A really generous girl, I hope she's had a happy life.

Marilyn

Leigh Rooney

Leigh was the most beautiful girl I ever dated, with a long, athletic body. I came across the photo on the right on the internet; it can't be her but looks exactly like her. She worked for a Cambridge design firm and I was in a fragile emotional state at the time. We dated a few times, had fun, but I thought her excessively shy (even by my standards), surprising for a girl who looked so good. She wouldn’t even hold hands in public. But she came up for a winter party at our house in Manchester-by-the Sea, wore a little black dress with spaghetti straps, drank champagne and stayed for the night. Sex was difficult. I tried my best but came before she even showed any sign of arousal. In the morning she was sullen, in the afternoon we drank Bloody Marys and she came alive again, pulling me up to the bedroom for sex - again without success, even though I was anaesthetized and could last as long as needed. That night she told me she had never had an orgasm. I didn’t know what to tell her, didn’t know what to do. Sometimes there are have no answers about sex.

Years later I realized that she should have had a single drink, not the large amounts of booze she took on board beforehand - but I guess she needed those to quell her inhibitions in the first place. In my very limited experience, I was beginning to see that sex can be a complicated business for a woman.

We dated some more, making lots of noise in her bedroom to shock her roommates, but never to the intended effect. I told her we needed to be closer emotionally, building on my own difficult experience, but she wasn’t so sure about that, or about my own desirability as a partner, I guess, because she soon stopped seeing me.

Leigh

Linda Kilburn

I had known her for many years, mocking her determination that everything in her life had to be "successful". But at this time a failed marriage made her a normal insecure woman and very likable. We went to a summer concert on the Esplanade with a group of friends and she drove my VW back to her house afterwards because I was fairly drunk. She was too, I guess, because we were soon kissing on the sofa. I thought this was an accident, but she led me to the bedroom and then we were pulling off shirts and shorts. A blue ceiling light colored her skin gray. I was drunk and could last and we went at it hard. (I was raw for days, this is when I discovered why public hair was invented.) We showered and then were at it again, a bit more sober and taking our time.

Not long after, I moved back to town, to an apartment not far from her house (not because of that ). We'd had just that one incident, but she walked over one afternoon with a six-pack of beer and we had a few, then got in bed. It wasn't a big success. I pretty much got right to it, like the last time - and as was my only experience with women - while she complained that we should have some foreplay, my first hint that women might like more attention than just sticking it in.

Whether it was my poor technique, or my own unsuccessful circumstances at the time, that was the end of it - not over, just not on any more. She resumed her trajectory of achievement - the role she knew best, I guess - and hooked up with a more upwardly mobile guy. 50 years later we're still friends (though that will stop if she ever reads this).

Linda

Mary Corrigan

I had no interest in Mary when I met her, a roommate to help Linda pay the rent, but I dated her for four years until she finally gave up on me - and an unsatisfactory life in Boston - and moved back to Wichita. She was pretty with plain but nice looks, a bent nose, mousy hair and Midwestern clothes. She smoked cigarettes and her hands were in poor shape because she worked as a lab technician. But I was smarter now about women and none of that mattered once we got to know each other. She had a firm body and nice legs she liked to show off in a short leather skirt.

After my brief fling with Linda I was at their house a fair amount. One late night, watching TV, Mary and I got our lips entangled and the next day I proposed a three month affaire, even naming a drop-dead date so we could end things with no harm done. She laughed and said I should known better.

I dated her longer than anyone else in my life and learned a lot from her but I didn’t love her and, sadly, I think she loved me. For her own sake, she should have stuck with the three months.

One thing I learned (which would have been useful with Linda and Leigh) was how to be good at oral sex, because it turned out that this was the only way she would reliably have an orgasm. Just a few times over those years she came the regular way, but otherwise it was my lips between her legs. As with other things, the more you do, the better you get, and I got very good, played her like an instrument - lucky girl.

I knew very early that we didn't see our relationship the same way. I was perfectly happy just dating and having a good time, while she wanted something more meaningful. Maybe that's why she had difficulty coming - my honesty about the absence of love denied her the emotions that can make sex so good. There's a blues tune that goes, "you wanted someone to play with but I needed someone to love".

Mary

Juanita Costa

Graduate school. We dated easily, had sex regularly after weekend parties or sometimes on a study date after a vodka gimlet or two. She was a pleasant, slender Norwegian from Minnesota, formerly very fat - she showed me photos that I advised her to burn - with beautiful skin and long hands.

She'd walk naked in my apartment but without assurance, as though being fat had made her wary of men. Her orgasms were light and frequent. We were over before school was done - aside from sex our relationship was on the shallow side. We briefly dated again later, when she worked in New York City and I was in Connecticut, but I think by then she was tired of men just using her for sex.

When aroused, she gave off a spicy scent that embarrassed her but didn't bother me one bit. She also got very wet, after oral sex I looked like a man hit with a watermelon. I think a lot of women have difficulty with the animal aspects of their body - girls with whom I played tennis or racquetball even apologized for sweating so much - but guys don't care (at least, real men don't).

Sandy Walker

Graduate school. She came to review classes I taught on Saturday mornings for a graduate statistics course. I worked problems on the blackboard for two hours. She was older, sophisticated, with streaked hair piled on her head, and expensive sweaters that showed off a beautiful neck. Giving me a ride home after class one week, she asked if I’d like lunch at Sandy’s house, which was very tidy. While she made a salad, I idly picked up a sex magazine, thumbed through, put it down carefully. 

Next week I invited her to my apartment for lunch, gave her a sandwich and a glass of wine and propositioned her. Yes, she would like to. Yes, she would take her clothes off now and get on the bed. Her breasts were full and firm and those sweaters hid a fat little body. After a few flat kisses, sex was effective but emotionless. I couldn't tell if she came. The next time, at her place, she insisted on total darkness. I worked hard, couldn’t tell what she was feeling, didn’t think she was having fun. Going to the theatre on our third date, she was beautiful in a clinging red gown, but in the blackness of her bedroom afterwards I wasn’t sure she was a real person.

I couldn't (and still can't) understand it, the sex magazines, the sexy clothes and manner, the easy acquiescence, yet the complete absence of involvement. Was this panic, desperation? Was she playing a role didn't really like? There was no connection. Another couple of dates and we were done. And she never came back to my Saturday classes.

Janet Faulkner

Graduate school. I didn’t want sex with Janet, but she was really good at kissing. She was pretty, with short hair, a high forehead and slender legs. We started hanging out after a school Christmas party on Beacon Hill, where a dunken Juanita wouldn’t leave me alone; I was done with her and didn’t want to date anyone anymore. So Janet and I became buddies. Why not just go on dates without having to worry about sex, she said? We did and that worked very well, but after a while we started kissing good night. And then of course it happened, and we couldn’t go back. And it wasn’t good. Vivacious otherwise, she was completely passive in bed. It was as though sex was totally separate from her real life.

As with Sandy, I couldn't figure this out. But maybe, just like me, girls don't learn much about sex until later, because at first they only meet guys like me (my earlier version), who just stick it in. Or maybe, just like me, some girls have a bad experience the first time, or first few times. Still, I knew a lot by then, did my best - but got only the slightest response. After moving to Connecticut I was back in Boston a couple of times, stayed at her place, but now filled with tension. We may have had sex again but I doubt it.

Beth Meizlish

Olin. We were new colleagues. After work, after a few beers, we went to my place for another drink, then fell to drunken sex. That was it, just that once (well, once again a few years later) and remained good friends for the years we worked together. It was what it was and nothing else. In a way that's what many guys want.

Ann Stillman

Olin. She was a secretary in our office group, a Junior League WASP whose parents had money and pretensions and lived next door in New Canaan, with panic buttons on the walls and a crazy grandmother on the couch. She was Ann Kelly at first, married to a beefy young Mr. Kelly who got drunk and banged her regularly once every Friday night, as she often complained to Beth and me - the Three Amigos. Small, freckled, pretty in a sharp-featured way, she was insecure and self-involved. We were just friends for six months, though I often noticed her very trim body. But after a Christmas party at a local restaurant, she held my arm a bit long at the goodbyes, invited me back in for a drink, then told me she might get divorced and flat-out asked if I would date her afterwards. She asked me to kiss her when we left. When I pecked her on the forehead she said, “You can do better than that,” and gripped my jacket tightly.

A month later she invited me to watch the Super Bowl, now living in a suite in her parents’ house, where we kissed and squeezed. The next day she came to my place and quickly fucked me, with noisy orgasms, on the top, on the bottom. She came loudly in my bed during the next months and into the summer, but was most excited by silent sex in forbidden places: the changing room at her beach club, the lawn of her country club at night (I got strawberry stains on my pants), her room with the door open and her parents on the sofa outside, an empty apartment a realtor had just shown us. She liked being fucked hard on the floor and once got a rug burn just above her butt. I caught her cheating that way next winter after she enrolled in business school at Boston College. I thought it was funny, but she found two guys too difficult. A Super Bowl party was our last date.

In some ways she was the easiest relationship I ever had. Sex was good for us both, we knew where we were right from the start, we spent a lot of time together, had a lot of fun. She made no bones about the fact that eventually she wanted to get married again, maybe to me. And I almost felt the same, why not? We didn't love each other, at least not deeply, but so what?

Ann

Linda Loglisci

Olin. She managed the word-processing pool, very pretty, with dark hair and a few nicely placed extra pounds. She was a heavy smoker with two pre-teen girls at home and an ex-husband lurking in the neighborhood. She had a frizzy perm, wore short skirts and thin gold jewelry. After some months of acquaintance I asked her out, picked her up, met the girls. When we got home later they had been farmed out to a sitter for the night. We kissed, drank, she wanted the lights out. I repeatedly felt the string of her IUD, almost like a knife. We dated a few more times, drinking heavily, the IUD always a problem for me, until one morning when her ex-husband started shouting up at her from the street. That was too much of a complication for me.

Catherine Fairfield

Olin. A friend of my friend Ruth Ann (who wanted to sleep with me but we never did), the three of us sometimes lunched together in the Olin cafeteria. She wore blue hose and tweed skirts and a black velvet headband - almost from a different era - and was very busy with three young children. Her husband had left the family for a younger woman who liked anal sex. That's what she told me. When her mother took the kids for a weekend, she asked if I wanted some dinner. We drank too much, I stayed overnight on the sofa, woke to see the light from her room and her dark figure as she glided on top of me.

We dated a few months with her kids around, it was pleasant but just an interlude, because she wanted to find a new father for her children, and that wasn't me. She was not passionate, sex was more efficient than fulfilling. She later met the right guy, I think.

Sue Ellen Klein

Olin. Sue Ellen was small, expensively dressed, and answered with a nervous laugh when I asked her out for a drink, a fix-up from Catherine. She was pretty, with very beautiful legs, a poor complexion and a faint odor of wheat, to which she was allergic. She was high-strung and laughed a lot, a hand to her face. On the second date she kissed me on the mouth, and after the third date we went back to my apartment.

She was tipsy, very nervous, but turned aside my offers to take her home. I brought out a deck of cards, suggested we play strip poker. “Oh my... ," she laughed, reddening, but sat down beside me on the sofa, our knees just touching. I lost easily and was soon sitting naked while she had only lost her heels and skirt. She kept glancing at my erection, excused herself a few times to go to the bathroom for a nervous pee. Losing the bra was difficult. Standing up, she leaned forward as she unclipped the front and dropped the straps off her shoulders, masking her small breasts with her arms. I waited until she sat down, her face flushed, then reached over and kissed her very quietly. I took her hand, brought her into the bedroom, removed her panties and kissed her for a long time before we got anything going.

We dated off and on for more than year, not steady, not what she wanted, which was to have a man love her. I would easily strip her to the waist, but she resisted being entirely naked and only came with difficulty after long, exhausting oral sex.

I liked Sue Ellen a lot, wished that I could be in love with her, but I wasn't. As with Mary, as with others, sex would have been far better for her if I could have given her love. Maybe I could have told her things she hoped to hear, but that would have been cruel.

Sue Ellen

A year or so later, after I left Olin and moved back to Boston, Sue Ellen phoned to tell me she was getting married. Mary Corrigan stayed in touch with me after she moved back to Kansas. Leigh Rooney called me up a year afterwards and we had lunch. Linda Kilburn fixed me up with Mary and we often double-dated. Catherine Fairfield fixed me up with Sue Ellen, I easily worked with Beth Meizlish and Linda Loglisci afterwards, I briefly dated Juanita Costa again, I had lunch with Ann Stillman some years later, Erica remains my good friend.

The point I'm making is that when these relationships didn't work out, they just sort of stopped, no drama, no recriminations. I never had a nasty breakup with anyone. I think that's because I was always honest, I never left a woman for another woman, I never took it personally (well, after a week or so) when a woman decided I wasn't the right guy for her, and I always was friends first, before any sexual stuff happened. Just friendship would have been fine with me, I never pushed it.

But all of these relationships were failures in a sense. With a few exceptions, I always vaguely hoped that more than friendship and sex would happen - and after a while always realized it would not.

I would have liked more. Not necessarily love, just a woman I really enjoy being with - or is that the same thing?