Sex with a view
Dec. 11, 2011—-
The most memorable place I’ve had sex is atop Mount Tamalpais, overlooking the East Bay in Marin County, Calif.
Like all magical moments, it wasn’t supposed to happen.
The weathered coastal mountain peaks at 2,500 feet. We drove about three-quarters of the way up Mount Tam and parked at a scenic turnaround. We hiked the rest of the way.
We sat down to rest on a grassy slope. She rolled out a blue and white blanket for a picnic. The blanket matched the azure skies, a contrast to the fog we saw over San Francisco. We talked about poetry, free birds and the songs of Greg Brown. We tried to scare each other with rumors about the late 1970s “Trailside Killer” who murdered hikers at the mountain. We were alone.
It is difficult to climb a mountain alone.
The next thing we knew I was on top of her with beads of sweat rolling down the back of my neck. Strands of her brown hair swept across her face like waves on a shore. Her blue eyes were everywhere.
Sometimes they still are.
We were in a state park and someone could have been watching. Maybe we could have been arrested and learned more about the “Trailside Killer.” Who cared? Outside views are perceptions. This was our great reality.
During my life, I’ve motioned for hanky panking in an airplane, against the refrigerator door and on kitchen tables. I like my friend Mark’s stories about having sex during a rain delay in the upper deck of Old Comiskey Park, no doubt during the era when the White Sox wore red uniforms and Wilbur Wood was tossing knuckleballs.
But our San Francisco moments were sparked by metaphors: Alcatraz, where confinement seemed so small from the top of a mountain; the freedom of coast oaks, with treetops swaying back and forth like a pendulum in the gentle summer breeze.
I remember how warm it was on the mountain top and how cool it was down below. (We did afterglow record shopping at Mill Valley Music).
My book editor recently told me about a study where readers looked at a series of contrasting pictures. They enjoyed distant and romantic landscape photographs, but the drama of someone falling down a cliff or jumping out of a building is what resonated with the readers.
Well, that’s a no-brainer, I first thought.
But those are fleeting moments in time.. And every deep moment has a resolution.
I’m a flatlander from Illinois. Never left my home town. Never took the chance.
On that day I did and maybe that’s why I remember it the most.
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