Can you believe I lost my virginity to this guy? I came across a recent picture of him on my old friend's flicker site and, have to say, he looks like a fucking supermodel in this shot. He didn't look this good when we slept together. Not that I'm complaining about how he looked back then either...nice bod, great cock as far as I remember. It was, oh god, 14 years ago. My memory is a bit fuzzy.

So how does this tie in with the country mouse or town mouse theme of Sunday Scribblings? Well, it might not in your minds, but it did in mine. This beautiful boy is from the small town in which I went to high school, he represents for me much of my time there. His name, his face will always bring me back to that place, though I have seen and been friends with him in big cities as well.

He is also the boy I was sleeping with before I went to France. And losing my virginity, well because I was thinking about it so much, it forced my already small town world into an even smaller mental world, where I thought everything revolved around the issues surrounding the boinking (he and I were never "together" in any formal sense, myself already having an inkling that I didn't have "normal" ideas about sex and commitment, but not realizing that the first time you have sex is probably not the best time to explore "free love." One is usually just too hormonal.)

And so I left my small town and went to France for a few months with my best friend and her family (who are French). This was nowhere near my first travelling experience, but it popped my brain open the way not much else has. I met new people, I went to the smallest communities in France, and Corsica, followed by large cities like Montpellier and Sete. I saw the best of both worlds, the 3 hour dinners and fresh food, and days spent lounging at the waterfall and discussing politics and philosophy and punk music. Then the big cities with museums and music and shopping and all the enjoyment that goes with that. My brain had been so closed, my world so small right before I left, and now it was pushing out against my skull.

I have had the great fortune to live in thriving metropolises (metropoli?), fairly large cities, and small towns. I say fortune because really, there are benefits and detractions from both types of place and I've become the open minded, not totally pretentious person that I am in large part because I've experienced both the quiet life and the insane life. And as always, what is most important to me is gaining new perspectives and opening my mind as much as possible and the fact that I have achieved these things even to some small degree is not because I have lived in either the city or the country, but because I have experienced both. There are things to learn everywhere you go, you just have to make sure you're looking for them.