by Thomas Martin, copyright 2023, all rights reserved. My mother lived as an American in Post-World War II Germany and travelled extensively through Europe while living there. She enjoyed her life and her experiences and she held tightly to the memories and emotions from that time. Many times, I would be with my mother at a location and she would get a dreamy look in her eyes and I knew that something she saw brought back and memory from Europe. When I would ask her what she was thinking, she would begin describing her memory in details such that I too could share in her joy. Through my life, her travel stories set the stage for my own time traveling, often retracing the very steps she took. Although my mother enjoyed going out of the house and enjoying lunches and dinners, my father did not. When I would come home for a weekend, I would always try to take my mother out for lunch. About forty miles east from my parent’s house was Palm Springs and I knew
Boys growing up in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s were taught that modesty was a feminine quality and should not be part of being a man. Those of us in the 60s and 70s were required to take Physical Education, usually in grades 7 through 12, which required the taking of a shower at the end of the period. The first days of PE were quite awkward as we walked around fully naked with our fellow male students. What was also learned, although not from any book or guide, was that there was an inviolable rule, a taboo, that two men never touch and especially when both men are naked. The two great concerns here are that some observer might suspect you both of being gay and then the constant fear, of almost all adolescent boys, that it may inadvertently trigger the dreaded and usually embarrassing male sexual response. Even as boys grow to be men, these limits remain for most of us, some more firmly than others. But there are some men who can see beyond these boundaries, especia