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I didn’t see my husband’s passing as an opportunity to make drastic changes to my public lifestyle. Changes started in private. I felt relieved to have privacy without his constant presence and freedom from his critical scrutiny of my every action. As a result, I enjoyed guiltless masturbation more often until it became daily, whenever and wherever the notion struck me. Yet, the more I tried to satisfy my sexual needs, the emptier I felt afterward.
For the first year, I stayed sheltered from public interactions by spending the majority of my time operating my dance studio sessions and staying inside my quiet home. When I went grocery shopping or out for exercise, I still wore my wedding ring and conservative clothing.
I spent evenings reading books and watching television to broaden my horizons. Romance stories that featured late-life love and passion promised possibilities for my future. Television sitcoms helped me see how other people react to situations I never encountered in my past. Comedies showed how laughter makes life more enjoyable. I wanted to transform my life like a butterfly.
Church friends continued to visit regularly to check on me. They implied my life without a husband would lead me astray without their guidance. I resented their insinuation that my body would cause me to succumb to sinful desires of the flesh if I was left to determine my own life choices. With minor influence from my body, my mind was foremost in seeking major changes; but I had no clear goals, just an interest in making a fresh start of my daily life.
With such rigid oversight from friends and Matthew’s aged family, I would have remained oppressed if I stayed in Atlanta. There was one voice pointing to another way of life, my neighbor Molly.
Molly had lived next door for over twenty years. Nothing in the first fifteen years suggested she would be the one who would teach me about sex and open my mind to understanding the desires I had been suppressing all my life. At first, she was reticent to talk about habits, morals, or sex acts whether regarding herself, me, or anybody else. I thought she was a lot like me; she kept me from knowing she was the complete opposite.
When she did speak, she was unpretentious about her opinions even when she was well informed. When asked to respond to any of my personal issues after we became confidants, she seldom revealed her opinion right off, preferring first to find authoritative material to guide me.
Several years before Matthew passed away, a local incident making the gossip rounds solidified the trust level of my relationship with Molly. A woman had called police to report she saw her neighbor masturbating. When the police investigated, they refused to charge him. Those were the only public details in the newspaper police blotter. The gossip stories I heard added many unconfirmed details that were comical or disgusting depending on the teller’s bias.
I found out Molly knew the man so I coaxed details from her. Normally unwilling to talk about someone else, she seemed to sense my intent was not to judge his actions, but to understand his need to masturbate. Anxious to dispel any notion that his acts were vulgar or inappropriate, she insisted that he was masturbating while watching porn on his computer in the privacy of his home.
Molly clued me in on the circumstances that involved his neighbor. The woman could only watch him at night by opening her frosted, second-story, bathroom window, and using binoculars to look down at a steep sideways angle through the blind slats of his window, see him sitting in his chair.