“I seriously doubt.....

......the reason you hung with (your wife) was just good performance in bed.”
What an utterly tactless and stupid thing to say to a good friend.
Except....
He had just pointed out a blond in a video was “cute.”
My saying that reflects deducing not every relationship with a female has sexual connotation.
Viz: “What’s she like in bed?”
I think this is a product of my upbringing, that every relationship I might have with a female had sexual connotation.
Fortunately I didn’t marry that way. What I married was a good talker, someone who thought at my level.
Now that she’s gone — she died almost five years ago — I’m back in the same world we left: every relationship with a female has sexual import.
And every effort I make to commune with a female has sexual motivation.
That being the case, I fear all attempts to get friendly, especially with “cute” girls.
I am a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Sexual Relations, whereby all pants-wearers are automatically evil scumbags driven by sexual impulse.
Hilda was Sunday-School Superintendent of my parents’ church. She was also our immediate neighbor.
She could successfully push my buttons. My parents convinced me I was rebellious and disgusting.
It wasn’t until I went out on my own, to college, that I began to see otherwise.
So for perhaps 70 years I perceived any attempt on my part to befriend females was sexual.
Now, at long last, I’m seeing otherwise. I’m befriending “cute” girls.
A tiny post-office here in West Bloomfield has a copy of my annual train-calendar.
They have it on the wall.
I stop by occasionally, maybe once or twice a month.
The place is staffed by cute females.
“Oh goodie!” they project. “Here come that guy that produced that calendar. He’ll shower me with ‘useless facts.’ I have no idea what he’s talking about, but love the attention.”
“Useless facts” are to explain why I don’t like the picture, or how I got it..

My March-2017 calendar-picture, Amtrak’s 04T in Lilly (PA). (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

“The front of that locomotive is poorly lit. I need the sun over here!”
“Amtrak 04T, east on Two, 258.8; CLEAR!” we hear on our railroad-radio scanners.
We suddenly execute a 180° turn. “Do we have time to beat that thing to Lilly?”
No idea what I’m talking about, but smiling and eyes twinkling.
Hilda would be appalled.
“He wants to get laid! Of-the-Devil!”
“No,” I’ve concluded. “Cutie-pie loves it!”
So go ahead and make an effort. They’ll love it, and not perceive it a sexual advance.
If they do: not my problem! (It no longer is.)

• “04T” is Amtrak’s “Pennsylvanian,” the only passenger-train left on this line, which once had many passenger-trains.
• “Phil Faudi” (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) is the Altoona-area railfan leading me around as a business back then to photograph trains.