Sex Drive ~ Part One
After exactly 4 years - I am finally ready to share this story. It represents the kick off to mother's Alzheimer's. Looking back it was an indication of the craziness to come, but at the this time I didn't know it. I will post Sex Drive in four parts. The following is part one.
June 25, 2008, 830am - My Mom’s Office
Mom: “I put an ad on the Internet for a man...”
Me: “You did???
I stop what I am doing and look up at her in shock.
Me: Well, what did you say in the ad?”
Mom: “I want to get screwed!”
WHAT?
I hear the words coming from my mother's mouth - but I cannot believe what they have said.
Me: “You do?
“Whose name did you use in the ad?”
Mom: “My own.”
I cannot believe it - any of it. My mom has put an ad on the Internet for a man and she has just told me in a whisper, at her office that she wants to get screwed? Worse still, she put her own name in the ad? That’s not even safe to do! My mother has lost her mind, but she seems perfectly capable to tell me about it...
This is not my mother. Not only is she is the most conservative woman on the planet, never drinking, never smoking, she has only had a few sexual partners in her whole life. Where was this coming from?
Although we had had a very strong relationship, we had never discussed sex. She grew up in the 60‘s and the age of The Cleaver’s; I in the 80‘s in the age of Madonna. She was much too shy to ever talk to me about sex, it wasn't part of her generation, and I never wanted to embarrass her. The day after I got my period I came home from school to a book lying on my bed. “Did you get the book?” That was the extent of our sex talk.
The doctor had warned me - but I hadn’t believed her. I didn’t believe my mother would ever exhibit these symptoms. “There is one more thing you need to know, people with this illness often lose their sexual inhibition and because of this they often exhibit sexual behaviors - in public” the doctor went on...”people with this disease have been known to take their clothes off, touch themselves, or someone else, in public.” Oh, thank god - I thought to myself, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about - this is my mother you’re talking about. I would do something like that (with the right amount of alcohol) - my mother? ha. She would never-ever do anything like that. Or so I thought.