I mean we fooled around a -lot-, perhaps never again did I have as active a sexual life as with my first girlfriend, but no penetration.

Good lord, so much fun to be had in that realm.

The lack of sex bothered me.

The lack of sex bothered me because it lay behind this thin veil of decency. On the other side we had gone too far and the act would have been a burden.

A good Catholic girl, she thought condoms an indecency. Fornication out of wedlock was perhaps OK if you really loved someone, but condoms were not OK.

This is perhaps what bothered me most and at such an age...

I'll painfully admit that it was somewhat later in life than most, but we were still both late-teenagers at the moment. There was no way in hell either of us would have been in a position to have a baby with each other at that time and stayed sane.

I needed to stay single and while fucking her didn't mean that we were married, it meant that we'd have to gamble that a baby was on the way and -that- lead to being married.

I remember having a lot of angst about what I perceived to be moral value differences between us and how it would never work because we were philosophically different on the nature of religion in our own lives.

These are heavy things to think about when you are 19, but when sex carries a heavy price tag it doesn't seem produent to do it.

This is one of those heavy heart tales. I suppose all these tales are heavy heart tales at some level -- getting them out doesn't necessarily free me of them, but perhaps clears the way for getting through them.

The sad thing was that we never did do it. We are still friends now and a friend of mine said the only reason that is was because we didn't go that far, but I don't know that's necessarily a fair thing.

We both decided we had other things to do and did them instead.

She fretted about it a bit. I had lied and said that sure, I'd done it before, trying somewhat to take the pressure off of wanting to do the act but not compound the leverage by making it Our First Time Ever, Both Of Us.

Too many technical things there.

In the years past I've wondered what difference a plain old, non-conceiving sex act would have had. We would have probably been closer after that -- I can't imagine how good some of those memories kicking around would have been if we'd gone that extra inch, if she'd slipped instead of slid.

Her first guy, first time she had a kid. Sometimes I wonder about that too. I couldn't have raised a kid back then -- hell, I can barely even dream of that now.

Years later I still miss her body, wish for some weird time warp situation where we're both 21 again and off on that one last chance weekend and something pleasant had come of it. That we'd been better friends afterwards.

At times I think no, none of this was really the issue. It was just about time and who we were.

You can never go back and relive those moments, at least there's no clear way to. Maybe in the next life perhaps.

Between here and there I've kicked myself for being so stupid, getting so hung up in superficial things. So far removed now I can scarcely remember the details, its easy to second guess. My recollection is that were I to meet her now as she was then I wouldn't find her overly differing at a core philosophical level.

We'd still have something between us now, I mean. Had we gone down the route picked up by another man.

I dearly hope that this is a learning lifetime and the one that goes on my permanent record is the next one when I'm a bit wiser. Suppose I should go looking for the reset button around here...