This is Joe at his wedding.
32. why we never had sex: horizontal with my dearest high school friend
Welcome back to horizontal, the podcast that makes private conversations public, or, in the words of listener ghostheart, “takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations.”
Joe: Being a father is my … is my most … proud accomplishment, more than, being a doctor, more than anything else I’ve ever done. It’s the most important thing to me. If I was not a doctor I would … and, and I was not, you know, sort of, definitively going to be the (favorite word again) primary breadwinner— I’ve always said and I still say, I would be happy being a, a house husband. Raising the kids and keeping the house and doing the cooking and the cleaning and ….. I could be perfectly happy doing that.
Lila: Do you still see that as a possibility for your life, or, because of the path you’ve chosen, probably not?
Joe: Because of the path I’ve chosen, almost certainly not. There are … it’s a remote possibility. But … very remote.
Lila: This being the most important thing to you, have you— mourned the loss of that… dream?
*
Joe: Do you remember when we used to lay on the floor of the second floor of Building 4?
Lila: (long pause) Which one was Building 4?
Joe: Outside of Mr. LaMore’s room? Literary Arts? And Mirinda would hate it, because she was in that— in and out of that room. Aaand, she was not happy that we were friends. (Lila sighs) We would, I mean, not uncommonly, we would just be laying on the floor, just hangin’ out.
Lila: Oh my God, early horizontal.
Joe: Early hor— I mean, I’ve been horizontal with Lila since give me a fuckin’ break here, ok? (Lila cracks up)
Lila: Since the 90s!
Joe: You’re talking to O.G.
Lila: (laughs) We would just lie on the floor—
Lila: — outside of Mr. LaMore’s classroom? Joe: We would just lie on the floor—
Joe: — and just kind of, like… lay there, and talk about shit and roll around and, get goofy.
Joe and his greatest accomplishment.
Welcome back to horizontal, the podcast that makes private conversations public, or, in the words of my listener ghostheart, “takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations.”
In this episode, I lie down with my closest friend from high school, Joe McCue.
[Full disclosure: he is my only friend from high school. Which is to say, the only friend from my high school — Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, Florida — who I am still friends with today. Not my only friend in high school. (I had at least two more.) He’s not quite my last friend standing from that time period, because I do have a couple of guys who went to other high schools that I considered my “older brothers” whom I’m still in contact with, but you might say that people from that time in my life are … few and far between.]
Which makes my friendship with Joe all the more precious to me. Joe and I went to an arts magnet school at Gibbs, called Pinellas County Center for the Arts, or PCCA for short. His major was Visual Art; mine was Performance Theatre. He was one year ahead of me in school.
Joe is now an osteopath. He spent eight years in undergrad, because he loved the act of study, and kept starting majors and nearly finishing them, only to become swept away by another major and course of study (or at least, that’s how it seemed to me). Eventually, he decided to become a doctor, and went to school for, I don’t know, 9 more years or so. He’s now finishing out his fellowship in Osteopathic Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine in Bangor, Maine.
This episode was recorded in Joe’s sweet old house in Bangor, where he lives with two cats, a wife, a child, and the occasional miscellaneous borrowed pet.
Joe’s house was the second stop on my 10,000 mile cross-country road trip, and this episode marks the first release from the series of recordings I made on my “horizontal does america” tour.
In October and November of 2017, I, my recording equipment, and a couple of suitcases circumnavigated the United States in a Honda Civic, in order to lie down with people in their homes, in their cities.
Joe and I got horizontal in his guest room— his wife next door making phone calls from their bedroom, baby asleep, cats locked out, dog-sitting dog downstairs, cars going by on the sleepy country street.
The next morning we went to Treworgy farm and did this photo shoot amongst the pumpkins.
horizontal with pumpkins in Bangor, Maine. Photo by Joe McCue.
If you enjoy lying down with Joe and I, become a patron of the horizontal arts! Patreon is an innovation in the life of the artist! It is a website that crowdsources income on a monthly basis. It can make it possible for me to continue creating independent, uncensored, ad-free, homemade radio. There are lovely perks when you become my patron. For instance, for $25 a month you’ll receive recorded love poems (the upcoming poem will be “She Walks in Beauty,” one of my favorites). At that level, you’ll also get 2 tickets to a live recording of horizontal, quarterly lullabies, an invitation to my secret Facebook group, and a post of what I call GPG: Genuine Public Gratitude (or not! If you want to remain a private patron, I shall honor you privately!) There’s loads of other perks on patreon.com/horizontalwithlila
Because I cannot bear to see them go to waste, here are some other titles I considered for this episode:
the paper anniversary
the nose couple
and…
the vanilla episode
[Should I have called it the vanilla episode? It’s such a good title. Okay, I’ll save it for another one, some day in the future, that will be even more vanilla. You’ll see.]
So you know what you should do now, right? You should definitely come lie down with us.
horizontal with joe mccue in Bangor, Maine
Links to Things:
Patron of the horizontal arts!
My horizontal does america tour, on which I recorded this episode!
Girls are Girls, and Boys are Boys: So What’s the Difference? a book that little Joe learned from
Show Notes (feel free to share quotes/resources on social media, and please link to iTunes, this website, or my Patreon!):
iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/horizontal-with-lila/id1238031115&ls=1
website link: https://horizontalwithlila.com/
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila
Joe, mostly obscured by pumpkins, at Treworgy Farm.
[9:17] Joe’s middle school sex education.
[10:47]
Joe: I had a sex talk, before I have memories. We grew up calling things penis and vagina and knowing that penises and vaginas went together to make babies. Yeah, I mean it— that was just sort of— we grew up very matter-of-fact. I remember when my baby sister was potty-training — she’s 8 years younger — you know, they get the potty-training books for, for babies, for kids, whatever, and my mom would cross out the— word “peepee,” which they were using for vagina, and write in vagina. And would cross out “weewee,” which they were using for urine, and write in: pee— as an example. We had a book that was my—
Lila: They used “peepee” for vagina?!
Joe: Yeah. There are all sorts of weird and dumb ways that … people talk about …
Lila: Genitalia, absolutely— Joe: Yeaaah.
Lila: — but I’ve never heard “peepee” for vagina; I’ve heard it for penis.
Joe: It’s a— it’s actually not an uncommon one in the potty-training world… But I had a book, that was illustrated in black-and-white and green-and-yellow, that belonged to my brother — who is 7 years older than I am — that I grew up reading, called Boys are Boys and Girls are Girls, So What’s the Difference? [Note: Joe reversed the order. It’s actually called Girls are Girls, and Boys are Boys: So What’s the Difference?] And it was written … in the 70s, in this very, like, mid-70s, sort of—
Lila: “Groovy” time— Joe: Sex is a, is an open—
Joe: — thing to talk about, kind of way. You were just very matter-of-fact and— there were pictures of breasts and pictures— I mean, not pictures, but— drawings of breasts and drawings of penises and boys in showers feeling awkward and—
Lila: Boys in showers feeling awkward?
Joe: Yeah, like with that, that awkward face on, and with their knees kind of together, but you could see their penis.
Lila: Because they’re having an erection they’re awkward?
Joe: Because they’re feeling sexual urges. I don’t remember if there’s actually an erection— I still have the book.
Lila: You still have it?!
Joe: Mmhm, yeah. It’s in this house.
A still life with Girls are Girls and Boys are Boys, requested by me, arranged and shot by Joe. “But of course, there are some differences between girls and boys. Girls have a vagina. Only a grown-up girl can become pregnant and give birth to a baby. And boys have a penis. When a boy grows up, he can become a father. It takes a male and a female to reproduce.”
[13:52] Our high school sex ed in Florida.
[15:22]
Lila: The memory that surfaced was … anatomy … so I think it was Science class … vaguely recalling an Anatomy textbook, and getting to the reproduction section … and being in class with … Wes? This soccer player, that I thought was sooo handsommme. And … would always talk to me … but I was certain he wasn’t interested in me — although I hoped — and then I remember, coming into that class one day, and seeing— I guess we left our books, maybe, in there (Joe mmhm’s) and seeing that somebody had written in my book: Lila Donno-ho. (Lila titters) And I was so upset about it! I was so upset! And—
Joe: It’s just a small stroke that changes that.
Lila: Uh-huh, and I showed him, and he said, “Ohh, hehe, heehee, that was me.”
Joe: (pause) Did you still like him after that?
[18:03] Getting horizontal with Lila since…
[20:19] What was the relationship like between Joe’s parents?
[20:40] Joe says that there were some traditional gender things in his household growing up, and some non-traditional gender things. Which was which?
[21:17]
Joe: My mom was 18 … yeah, 18 years and 8 months when she had my brother, and … she was 33 when she had my sister and she was 25 when she had me.
[22:48] Joe on morals vs. ethics.
Joe: Moral doesn’t imply religiosity, erm … it implies, a sense of what the group thinks is right. Moral comes from mores, which is Latin for laws. [Note: other interpretations / translations include: “manner,” “custom,” “usage,” and “habit.”] (Lila mm’s) So that’s what groups have decided are the correct things to do; ethics are personal. (Lila hmm’s) From the … Greek ethos.
[24:55] Lila wonders about the term breadwinner. [Note: My (minimal) research tells me that the term is literal, as in, the person who brings home bread to feed the family, rather than slang, as I thought.]
[25:52] What did Joe learn from witnessing his parent’s relationship?
[26:14]
Joe: They never wanted their kids to— to see them, really arguing … but I knew it was there. The tension was there. And maybe the tension was there because they didn’t argue openly… I don’t know, but I never wanted a relationship to be that contentious, that— tense.
Lila: I wonder … about it being there, if they didn’t argue openly bec— … because my parents did argue within earshot of me … and it also felt … fractious … and tense.
Joe: Yeah. I’m sure it’s just different.
Lila: Yes, an un— unspoken tension … has a different timbre.
Joe: Mmhm.
Lila: (long pause, then cracks herself up) A New England flavor, if you will.
[27:18] How was the unspoken tension formative in Joe’s life?
[28:08]
Lila: As in, it tempers you to be used to … tension?
Joe: Yeah, or maybe it just builds the tension into you. I mean, I’m a—
Lila: Wiry, tense person?
Joe: Yeah. (Lila giggles) I mean, I’m a, I’m a very superficially … placid. Very superficially calm. Very collected generally speaking, but… you know, I, I’m extremely wiry—
Lila & Joe, almost in unison: Wiry is the word.
Lila: I was just about to say — wiry is the perfect word and it’s like—
Joe: Wiry is the word.
Lila: — delicious when I say it, because when I get that right word, it’s almost sexy to me. […]
Joe: In the physical and the electrical sense, I think. That’s part of why it’s such a good word.
[29:37] Did Joe ever see his parents act physically affectionate towards one another? Did they hug him? Did his siblings hug each other?
[30:40] Did Joe’s older brother (a “dude’s dude,” as Joe tells it) let Joe tag along when he was hanging out with his friends?
[31:17] Joe on his older brother.
Joe: He is one of my absolute ideals of fatherhood, because he’s been a father since he was— 7 years old.
Lila: To you.
Joe: To me, to my sister, to— and for a long time, he and my sister, being 15 years apart … I mean, it took until she was— probably until after she was grown before their relationship started to become more— fraternal/sororal rather than father/daughter. (Lila hm’s) Took a long time. (beat) I had always looked up to him, but— mostly I think our relationship was fraternal, was brotherly.
Lila: So with your sister, did you have that same sort of … paternal … experience as, perhaps your brother did with you?
Joe: Yeah. I taught her to read. Every night I would go in and we would read Winnie the Pooh together and … first all she had to do was— you know, first, we would read, and then she would, she would have to tell me the letters, that started the chapter we were on … then she’d have to read the name of the chapter, and then she would have to … you know, read the first sentence, and … then she would have to read the first paragraph, and I did great Pooh voices and things, so she really wanted this to happen … and eventually, she would be reading to me.
Lila: Hm. Is that your earliest memory of wanting to be a father?
Joe: Oh no, I wanted to be a father before then… As— as far back as I can remember I’ve thought about what my kids will be like and how I will raise them and what their names would be and … all of these, very non- male gender normative things. (Joe chuckles)
Lila: Yeah. And when you say “as far back as you can remember,” how far back is that?
Joe: Uhnn— I remember being like— I mean, I have earlier memories, but I remember being like 5 or 6, and thinking about those kinds of things. Which is pretty young.
Lila: (tickled) Do you remember the names that you wanted?
Joe: (pause, big in-breath) I always liked the name Sophia. (Lila hm’s) At one point, I think I was a little older, I think I was like, middle school or high school … I decided that I wanted my first girl to be named “Sophia Blue.”
Lila: (laughs, Joe does not, long pause) Middle name Blue?
Joe: Yeh, but my … second niece’s middle name is Sophia. (long pause, quietly) My brother stole that from me. (laughs)
Lila: Uhh! But it’s a middle name! Nobody ever uses a middle name. Or hardly ever. A middle name is like a secret. You can still make it a first name of your daughter. Your eventual, potential, maybe, daughter.
Joe: … I could… But I’m also not the only one who makes decisions. (pause) We thought that Finn was going to be … a girl. We didn’t know. Until he came out… But we thought that he was going to be a girl. And his name was going to be Tallulah Quinn.
Lila: Hm… That’s lovely.
Joe: Tallulah Quinn Pretto-McCue. Instead, he came out and immediately, he was Finnegan Maxwell.
Lila: … So you’re using both last names, but yours is last.
Joe: Mmhm.
Lila: How come?
Joe: Pretto-Mccue sounds better than McCue-Pretto and I’m not a chauvinist and she’s the last Pretto. Which is why she kept her name.
Lila: Yeah, I wondered why, hers wasn’t last.
Joe: Mm, I’m not a chauvinist and it’s more important for him to be a Pretto than for him to be a McCue. There are lots of McCues. But she’s the last Pretto. And also, Pretto-McCue sounds better.
Lila: But if it’s Pretto-McCue, won’t people just say McCue?
Joe: No, if anything, they would drop the last one.
[37:02] Joe on fatherhood.
[38:32] The primary right of refusal Joe gave his wife over his residency and fellowship decisions.
[39:43] Joe on Finn.
Joe: He is a Daddy’s boy… If I come home and I don’t … and I walk past him to put my things down, even now, he’s 18 months old, even now I walk past him to put my things down and haven’t stopped to, talk to him and play with him and pick him up, before I do that, he’s very unhappy about it. (pause) When my car pulls up, and he’s in the backyard, he runs to the gate and peeks through and tries to figure out how to open it to run to me, when I’m still in the car. (long pause) He knows I love him. (pause) And he knows that I’m his.
[41:02] Joe on doctoring.
[42:00] When Joe discovered masturbating. (Hint: It was before he could ejaculate. Lila heard men mention this during her episode with rene, and during the cock project as well.)
[43:05] Who was Joe’s first girlfriend in kindergarten?
[43:32]
Joe: I don’t know why she liked me, she was the— she was the pretty girl in class … and … there was a kid — Neil was his name, he used to eat paste — and he would always try to steal her.
Lila: Ohhh, Neil.
Joe: But we would— we would make block towers and she would kiss me.
Lila: (gasps) On the lips?!
Joe: Yeah, just like how kids do, nothing like, sexy sexy, but … (Lila giggles) She liked me more than Neil. I don’t know why. (Joe guffaws, Lila giggles)
Lila: Perhaps his paste-eating qualities were not attractive to her.
Joe: Nn— I remember him being a — a relatively handsome kid. I mean, for what— that means for a memory of a six year-old evaluating another six year-old’s (Lila giggles) handsomeness. But I remember having that conscious thought. That he was not a bad-looking kid.
[44:57] How did Joe fare in the getting-girls-to-like-him department throughout the rest of elementary school, middle school, and high school? He describes himself in early middle school as a “short, scrawny, long-haired hippie kid.”
[46:16] Joe tells Lila the story of his bad first time (having intercourse).
[47:20]
Joe: We met on the school bus— she was a year younger than I was, and, she was … you know, spritely and poppy and loud and—
Lila: Brassy.
Joe: — pretty. A little bit brassy. Mostly l— mostly just loud. Loud and colorful. There are some who would’ve— who would call her “brassy” and say it in a way that meant “grating.” And … I can understand that. But I certainly didn’t find her that way… at the time. And even now I don’t, ‘cause I’m still friends with her… but we… we ended up, we both had crushes on each other and ended up dating, and dated for a while and ….. Dated from … October through February, if I’m not mistaken. And I broke it off, but I don’t recall why… precisely. And she— was not prepared to— let it go. And we— continued hanging out and we continued being friends and continued fooling around. Less often and less— devotedly I guess? If that’s (laughing) the word. And— a couple of times while we were dating, we had— you know, in just fooling around, had, sort of— brinked up to that point and decided that— n— you know, now was not the time, we were not ready. One or the other of us or both of us was not ready.
Lila: Was she also a virgin?
Joe: Mmhm, yeah… She had— I think just a— a year earlier, lost her older sister, in a car accident… And—
Lila: (quietly) Oh my God.
Joe: — her… parents were split and— as a result of it, and … divorcing. I don’t think they were actually divorced at the time, but, divorcing, maybe they were, all the way, I don’t know… and … she didn’t get along real well with either one of them. At the time. I mean, she was a teenage girl, so … there’s that, but (Lila hmpf’s) she was all kinds of fucked up in the head. And I don’t mean that in a demeaning way.
Lila: She was traumatized—
Joe: She had a lot of trauma.
Lila: — is what you mean to say, yeah.
Joe: Yeah, and it wasn’t trauma that was worked-through. So, I don’t ever recall … her backing off … first, the couple times that we, kind of, came up to the brink of, “Well, is this gonna progress to … the act?” I only remember me saying, “No no, not yet.” Several times.
Lila: And did you … did you not consider oral sex, sex?
Joe: (beat) I considered them different levels.
Lila: And when you say the act, you’re only meaning—
Joe: (overlapping) I’m only meaning—
Lila: — penetrative sex.
Joe: Yeah, I’m, I’m meaning intercourse. I mean, oral sex is penetrative sex when it’s the— when fellatio’s involved… that’s penetrative, but, I mean intercourse… And then, one … night, we were, hanging around and we were— hanging out and we were fooling around and, it had been very emotional, and— you know, we had told each other that we … thought we still loved each other … and, we decided to … go forward with it … annnd … it was, very— painful for her which was, very … emotionally difficult for me, and very, and very unpleasant for me.
Lila: It was physically painful for her?
Joe: Yeah.
Lila: Were you not using lube?
Joe: (beat) We were using a lubricated condom.
Lila: Yeah. No.
Joe: Yeah but I don’t, I don’t any specific I mean we didn’t— it was both our first time, what do w—
Lila: I know.
Joe: What the hell do we know?
Lila: I know.
Joe: She’s also a very small person, and I’m not.
Lila: I didn’t learn about lube until muuuuch later. I just thought I didn’t like penetrative sex— I thought I didn’t like intercourse.
Joe: (beat) But yeah, I, I think part of her discomfort was, was emotional— discomfort. I certainly had a lot of emotional discomfort. I had a little bit of physical discomfort, because it was a— tight fit, but it was not a pleasant first experience. At all. And I— I knew … that that was not what it was supposed to be like. And I knew that that’s not what I wanted my first time to be like, and— you know, she cried, and, I cried, and— I was crying because she was crying, annnd… I didn’t want for me to be participating in that kind of act causing someone else to cry. […] I had a very, like, girl gendered idea about what the first time should be like. About how the first time needed to be special. And, that it w— you know, that it was this— this sort of sacred thing to be protected…
Lila: And you didn’t get that.
Joe: No. Not at all.
[54:51] Lila and Joe on why they never had sex.
[55:50]
Joe: We had a level of intimacy that is difficult for people — who are, of the gender that the other is attracted to, to have, without there being some kind of— romantic or sexual involvement, then or historically.
[56:47] Lila on her admiration of (and desire to be friends with) Joe’s talented high school ex, Mirinda. [Note: Mirinda did not share this sentiment.]
[59:50] Lila’s memories of driving around with Joe in the Brat, and parking, and cuddling, and talking.
[1:00:32]
Joe: I told you, I’ve been getting horizontal with Lila since the 90s.
32. why we never had sex: horizontal with my dearest high school friend
Welcome back to horizontal, the podcast that makes private conversations public, or, in the words of listener ghostheart, “takes you into my bed and lets your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations.”
Bonus! More Girls Are Girls and Boys are Boys still lifes, by Joe:
He lost the dust jacket, some years ago. Did this skull have something to do with it? Who knows.
“And girls were supposed to wear the color PINK. But all that is a LOT OF BALONEY! Lots of girls want to be doctors and climb trees”
Not just one thing! You could be a writer, a mother, a wife, a cook, a doctor and a stamp collector all at the same time. You could be a cook, a father, a husband, a teacher, a nurse and a ping pong player all at the same time.”
“There are a few more differences between girls and boys that show up when they are about twelve years old. A girl’s breasts grow larger. A mother can use her breasts to feed her newborn baby, or she can use a bottle. Girls also begin to menstruate. Once a month for a few days blood tissue is passed through the vagina and they put on a pad which prevents their clothing from getting soiled.”
“At about 12 or 13, boys find that sometimes their penis becomes big and hard. And at times sperm comes out of their penis while they are asleep. It also occurs when they fondle their penis. Masturbation is a big word for rubbing and stroking the penis or vagina. It’s an enjoyable feeling for both boys and girls.”
And THAT’s what’s horizontal.
Become a patron of the horizontal arts, by supporting me on Patreon, a website for crowdsourcing patronage! Patronage allows artists like me to make independent, uncensored, ad-free work, schedule recording tours, and devote my time to creating more horizontal goodness, for you! Becoming my patron has delicious benefits, ranging from quarterly lullabies to bonus episodes to tickets to live recordings to handwritten postcards! You can become a patron for $2 a month on up, and the rewards just get more sumptuous.
