“No… not yet,” said Mary, her nude, buxom body aching with desire. “Not with them watching.” She got up from the bed, red-haired top-to-muff, and took some pictures of saints and the Holy Mother down from the wall and placed them safely in a dresser. Raised in New York by strict Irish parents, Mary was still single at age 30. A schoolteacher. And a virgin. The young man in the bed, equally red-haired, stifled his passion and said he understood.

I was fifteen at the time.

That summer had been a turbulent one. Having been in and out of trouble at Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw district of inner-city L.A., my parents, both schoolteachers themselves, had taken my 11-year-old brother Danny and I on a “family bonding” road trip down through central Mexico. My transition to adolescence had not been easy, and I was making life hell for two well-meaning parents – liberal, idealistic, intellectual, but ill-equipped to deal with various dynamics of the time. I was also idealistic and surprisingly well read for that age, but I also stood six feet tall and was tough enough to fight my way into the wrong crowd, which seemed like the smart thing to do back then (or if not a smart thing, well at least the cool thing).

The family arguments in the car were incessant and rancorous, and it was with great relief on all our parts when my folks finally agreed to leave me at a modest tourist hacienda, enrolled for a mini-intensive at the Art Institute in San Miguel de Allende, as they went off with Danny to Guanajuato and then Mexico City for a few peaceful weeks. Danny would much later write a screenplay inspired by the famous mummies found in the catacombs of Guanajuato… and I will write about my first taste of freedom.

O’ Freedom! Not just from the chafing bonds of parental control, but from the bubble of school and neighborhood, which can seem to a kid like it’s the whole damned universe.

My universe had now expanded to the sleepy Mexican village of San Miguel, perched high in lush beautiful hills, smiled upon by the sun and quenched by warm afternoon rains – and also home to a little art institute and small community of Americans. With my height, athletic physique, and quasi-Buttheadian features (high hair-line and all), coupled with a large vocabulary – my parents to thank – my actual age was hard to pin down. Liquor was considerably easier to obtain than it was in Los Angeles, and I particularly enjoyed my life-drawing classes at the institute – the only ones I actually attended. My favorite model was an attractive American woman, perhaps mid-30s; a tall, tan, graceful brunette, utterly non-self-conscious as she presented her body to the class in all its feminine glory. I fantasized meeting her outside of class, but a maneuver of that level was still a bit out of my league at the time.

I did meet two nice ladies in the dining room of my hacienda. One of them – slim, chatty, cute, and charmingly southern – invited me to join their table. We ate and laughed and talked and drank. I could already hold my liquor at that age, and also managed to hold my own conversationally–talking more about philosophy and politics, and keeping vague about my own circumstances – other than I was studying at the Institute. Southern Suzy didn’t like talking politics. She was jest a lil’ southern gal out for a good time. An archeologist, actually, on summer vacation. After a few more glasses, she shared some rather randy stories of a lusty love life out in far-away digs. Finally, it was time to leave. We said our goodbyes and got up to go… and I felt Suzy’s fingers discreetly brush against my privates. I tried not to turn redder than nature had already painted me. Then another, more lingering brush. Although I had some sexual experience, mostly back in the neighborhood, underneath all my bravado, I was still a 15-year old dork with only fast talk and Clearasil hiding his zits. Was she fondling me? I asked myself as I headed to my room. I decided she definitely was fondling me.

Why didn’t I close the deal?! It took me by surprise. I wasn’t even sure what she was doing or why she was doing it until I was back in room. And I wouldn’t realize, until years later, that when single women vacation abroad, they hope to find romance, even if temporary, and with a little drink, they often lose a large degree of inhibition towards that end. Stupid, stupid me! I sullenly took matters into my own hands to finally get some sleep – thinking alternately about Suzy and that luscious life-drawing model.

The next night at dinner, I looked for somewhere to sit in the dining room. Suzy was at a table with her friend and some guy – some lucky guy, apparently, the way Suzy and he fawned over each other. She saw me awkwardly walking around and called over. “Please join us, hon’!” “Okay,” says the dork who blew it yesterday and beat off alone in the night while hot Southern Suzy evidently went out and picked up some other guy who knew what to do when a sure-thing reached out and grabbed him. The guy’s name might have been Peter; a non-descript, academic something or other. Suzy and Peter left immediately after eating, leaving me to keep company with the shyer friend, Mary.

Mary had never been out of the country before. We could have been brother and sister, our red hair so similar. My parents both had red hair at that time. So, previously, had hers! Mary said she was enjoying her vacation, meeting new people, catching up on her reading. We talked a lot about books. Then about life. And over the ensuing week, Mary and I became great friends.

Ironically, although she had an open mind, Mary had led a rather sheltered life. Avery sheltered life–adventure and romance achieved vicariously through books. I, on the other hand, despite the youth, was inner city street-smart and had seen more of the “real” world than she. I’d heard cutting-edge jazz and smoked dope in after-hours ghetto speak-easys. I’d even been with a prostitute after earning provisional “white-homie” stripes, banging heads alongside my Crenshaw Boyz in the Hood (Crenshaw being the hood referred to in that violent movie – though back then, trouble was only still at a West Side Story level).

Mary couldn’t get enough of my off-beat adventures. But what impressed her most was that I had a philosophy clearly articulated in my mind – kind of a fusion of idealism and nihilism. Quite immature and self-serving to now look back at, but Mary yearned to articulate her own independent philosophy to live by. She wanted to be free.

We hung out evenings, drinking and listening to mariachi music at the local cantina. We took moonlit walks at night. Held hands. And finally… kissed. Passionately. It was like all the dormant lust and fire within Mary unleashed itself on me. I was so exploding with hormones at that point in my life, it didn’t take much to unleash me either. That not withstanding, my kisses were still sincere, as she and I had managed to form a tender bond by then.

She suggested we go to my room. We groped and petted on the bed for a long while. Clothes came off finally, awkwardly, piece by piece, our bodies intertwined as we writhed in our underwear. Her large bosoms pressed against my chest, her prominent pink nipples stiffened to my touch. Mary moaned as I finally pulled her pants off, soaking wet – her sex exuding an intoxicating, pheromone-laden musk. Hot and crazed myself at this point, I slid out of my underwear and clumsily tried to mount her.

“No… not yet – not with them watching”. She got up from the bed and took some small religious pictures down from the wall and placed them in the dresser.

It was then that Mary confessed she was a virgin. She didn’t want to be anymore. Mary got back in bed and we resumed kissing, but something had changed. Her hand rubbed me down below in a determined manner. A moment later, I came. Then she started to sob quietly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Now the tears and sobs really began to flow. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t you see?!” she screamed. “Can’t you see?!”

After a while, we dressed and left for a walk, me with most of her lipstick still smeared over my face. We strolled holding hands, talking finally. She was held back by something deep inside and couldn’t go through with making love. She had too much guilt – from her parents, from her upbringing – too much guilt. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t run from it, even in Mexico.

I tried to explain that she needn’t be affected by all that. “Hell, if anyone should feel guilty, after all the shit I’d done…” (and only a fraction of which I’d told her about) – “it ought to be me! And I was brought up pretty damned straight myself, and that didn’t stop me from going totally out-of-control.”

We stopped on a high bluff and watched the sun rise. She cried in my arms. I stood stoically, playing the role of an adult as best I could – and she, the unwitting child.

I walked her back to her room. I then went back to mine, but couldn’t sleep for hours.

Mary and I remained friends the rest of the week, but on a platonic level. When my family arrived to pick me up, by chance, Mary passed by in the hacienda lobby. Our eyes met and, seeing me standing with my parents, suddenly our age and station difference came crashing home to both of us. I introduced everybody briefly – three red-headed school teachers on summer vacation in Mexico! Neither Mary nor I gave any indication as to what had transpired, and Danny was still too young to suspect what mischief his brother might have been up to.

I was a bit pensive and easier to get along with on the trip home, and I didn’t cause my family much further grief until I got back to school in the fall.