I lived at home until I was twenty-five years old. Now, most people would say that living with your mom and dad until your mid-twenties made you a loser - and normally, I'd agree with you. But there were two mitigating factors that kept me cocooned in the very same bedroom that I'd lived in since I was seven:

1) This was Fairfield County, Connecticut, the third most-expensive place to live in America. I remember going over to a friend's place at one point, where they lived in a room.

Not an apartment, mind you - a room. Their entire rented property consisted of a ten-by-ten square room with two outlets.

Their bed was a mattress, with a TV at the foot of it - and you had to walk over the mattress to get anywhere else, since their clothes, books, and movies were all crammed into this tiny space. Jay lived there with his girlfriend; they shared a refrigerator and a two-grill stove with three other scientific experiments who also lived in ten-by-ten rooms, and a bathroom across the hall had a toilet and a shower they shared.

For this spartan living space, they paid the princely sum of $800 a month - or, converted for inflation, about $1200 in today's moolah.

And the thing is, people shrugged and said, "You know, that's not a bad deal." Hence, when my family, angry that they couldn't find it in their hearts to just out-and-out evict me, told me that I would have to pay $450 a month in rent, I shrugged it off. I had a ten-by-ten room already, and the refrigerator was always full of free soda.

2) My parents had no control over me. Oh, my stepfather would get downright pissy at times and told me firmly: No drinking in the house. No overnight guests. You respect our rules.

I staggered home drunk, women on my arm, and would endure Bruce's lecture the next day with a smug grace. Hey, Bruce went to bed at 10:00 at night - try as he might, as long as we were quiet getting in, he could do nothing. His bedroom was two doors down from mine, and there was a buffer zone that prevented him from hearing what we did.

And my sexual explorations weren't confined to the cover of darkness, either. I frequently snuck upstairs with my girlfriends to watch television in lieu of having dinner with my family - which was a code word for intense, muffled fucking. We'd be having sex, but we'd do it quietly, stealthing it like James Bond having sex in a monastery so that no one would hear.

...or so we thought. Two years ago at a family reunion, everyone told me how mortifying it was to be eating at the dinner table - my room was located right above it - and have to endure the poundings, groanings, and orgasmic sighings emanating from upstairs. My efforts to mute our animal lusts were in vain; they heard every gyration.

They just couldn't bring themselves to tell me.

Which leads to a cartoon-like image of my mother, stepfather, stepbrother and stepsister sitting at the dinner table, stonefaced, as the house rattles to the sounds of my rampant plookings, forks frozen in their hands; chunks of plaster tumble from the ceiling to splash in their soup as my mother turns to my stepfather, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the cries, grunts, and oinks raining down from above, as she says, gamely, "So how was your day today....?"

Gini still giggles over that one.

Sneaking women up to my room was easy, but getting them out the next day was the tricky part. Bruce became obsessed with checking in on me, to see how things went. Timing their exit with Bruce's shower, yet still maintaining a veneer of independence and ne'er-do-well care, was a challenge.

Sometimes, though, I failed. And failed miserably.

I remember one evening when I brought my girlfriend Bari home. We had stayed up late that night and then screwed until the early hours of the dawn, so when I got up she was comatose. I took my shower, getting ready for work, and vowed to wake her when I returned.

I had forgotten that it was cleaning day.

Every Thursday, my grandmother - a professional housemaid - would clean the house for us. My grandma, hearing me get in the shower, realized that it was time to clean the sheets.

She walked into my room, waking Bari just in time for my grandmother to whip off the top sheets, revealing a very naked woman that she'd never met before. The very naked girlfriend found herself without a stitch of clothing on the bed, facing what she knew was my grandmother.

My grandmother looked at Bari. Bari stared back, her eyes as wide as teacups.

It was my grandmother, always quick on her feet, who acted first. "Sorry!" she said, then draped the sheet over Bari and darted out of the room. When I returned, Bari was still quivering from shock.

Yet that was not the most embarrassing incident.

One night, after returning from a drunken splendor, Bari and I snuck up to my room to pass out. Except that I was ravenously horny. (Bari might have been too, for all I know - but as you'll see, that was completely irrelevant to what was to come.)

Now, normally, a quick leap before bed isn't a problem for almost any girlfriend, especially when lubricated with generous helpings of Guinness - but this time, for no apparent reason that I can possibly put a name to, I became convinced that Bari wanted - no, needed - to have anal sex.

Now, keep in mind that I didn't want anal sex. But I was completely sold on the fact that Bari, that poor repressed thing, had an urgent need to take it right up the poop chute.

I explored. She protested. I kept pressing the issue, trying to worm my way in there so that she could experience the delights of the rear-end collision. My finger snuck in and popped out again as she began to protest: "No, no Ferrett, I don't wanna have anal sex...."

This launched into a conversation. "Yes you do," I slurred. "You wannit right up the butt! Doan lie!"

We attempted to have sex from behind, and eventually she broke down in tears. "Stop that!" she cried. "Just fuck me in my pussy! Stop the anal sex! I don't wanna have anal sex!"

"Aw, come on," I shouted. "You want it up the butt, Bari! You want it so bad! Bari, you wannit right up the ass!"

Eventually, I relented - though I still had my suspicions about Bari's deep-seated fudge-packing needs - and we had sex and passed out.

The next morning, I opened the door and came face to face with a visiting uncle, who I had forgotten would be staying in the guest room next door. He stared at me in that quiet way that told me he had a lot to say to me, but didn't know where to start, and I realized he had heard the entire anal sex debate, live as aired on CNN. We had, in all likelihood, woken him up, and then he had to endure our noisy lovemaking afterwards.

The kicker? His name was Uncle Barry.

I'm not quite sure that he didn't think I was trying to fuck him up the ass, at least by proxy.

Eventually, the whole having a girlfriend thing only became an issue for my stepdad; my mother realized her son was a horny bastard, and she had taught me there was nothing wrong with sex, and how could she argue? So she allowed it.

In fact, she became so comfortable one night that after three glasses of an excellent Chardonnay, she staggered into the room where Bari and I laid, naked underneath sheets, the smell of spermatozoa and used condoms still in the air, to tell me how much she loved me.

"Er," I mentioned as she pulled up the chair and sat down next to the bed to talk, "Bari's here..."

"Oh, Bari!" she said, enthused. "I love you, too! You're a great girlfriend! So how are things going?"

Poor, beleaguered Bari - who had yet to get used to being completely starkers in the face of my close relatives - tried valiantly to carry on a conversation with my mother, but the conjunction of a post-coital bliss and Ferrett's mom was too much to bear. She was shellshocked.

Fortunately, mom's an easy drunk. She didn't mind. Eventually, we shooed her off, but not before she became obsessed and giggling about how she wanted to give us both a hug because she loved us so much.

She found the whole thing funny. Bari, however....

Eventually, I moved out and discovered that my bedroom was a great place for sex because it was naughty. When you fuck at your own apartment or house, it's expected - hey, this is your place. But it's tough to beat quietly padding up the stairs, the excitement of getting caught fluttering in your stomach, as you know that once you get up there you're going to have to do everything in secret.

Alas, Bari was the cause of my biggest missed opportunity, when I was dating her and felt in a faithful mood - rare for me - and I passed up the opportunity to sneak into the back of a movie house with a tiny bombshell of a redhead and fuck behind the screen as two hundred people looked on.

It's not her fault, of course, but I've never forgiven her for that.

I lived at home until I was twenty-five years old. Now, most people would say that living with your mom and dad until your mid-twenties made you a loser - and normally, I'd agree with you. But there were two mitigating factors that kept me cocooned in the very same bedroom that I'd lived in since I was seven:

1) This was Fairfield County, Connecticut, the third most-expensive place to live in America. I remember going over to a friend's place at one point, where they lived in a room.

Not an apartment, mind you - a room. Their entire rented property consisted of a ten-by-ten square room with two outlets.

Their bed was a mattress, with a TV at the foot of it - and you had to walk over the mattress to get anywhere else, since their clothes, books, and movies were all crammed into this tiny space. Jay lived there with his girlfriend; they shared a refrigerator and a two-grill stove with three other scientific experiments who also lived in ten-by-ten rooms, and a bathroom across the hall had a toilet and a shower they shared.

For this spartan living space, they paid the princely sum of $800 a month - or, converted for inflation, about $1200 in today's moolah.

And the thing is, people shrugged and said, "You know, that's not a bad deal." Hence, when my family, angry that they couldn't find it in their hearts to just out-and-out evict me, told me that I would have to pay $450 a month in rent, I shrugged it off. I had a ten-by-ten room already, and the refrigerator was always full of free soda.

2) My parents had no control over me. Oh, my stepfather would get downright pissy at times and told me firmly: No drinking in the house. No overnight guests. You respect our rules.

I staggered home drunk, women on my arm, and would endure Bruce's lecture the next day with a smug grace. Hey, Bruce went to bed at 10:00 at night - try as he might, as long as we were quiet getting in, he could do nothing. His bedroom was two doors down from mine, and there was a buffer zone that prevented him from hearing what we did.

And my sexual explorations weren't confined to the cover of darkness, either. I frequently snuck upstairs with my girlfriends to watch television in lieu of having dinner with my family - which was a code word for intense, muffled fucking. We'd be having sex, but we'd do it quietly, stealthing it like James Bond having sex in a monastery so that no one would hear.

...or so we thought. Two years ago at a family reunion, everyone told me how mortifying it was to be eating at the dinner table - my room was located right above it - and have to endure the poundings, groanings, and orgasmic sighings emanating from upstairs. My efforts to mute our animal lusts were in vain; they heard every gyration.

They just couldn't bring themselves to tell me.

Which leads to a cartoon-like image of my mother, stepfather, stepbrother and stepsister sitting at the dinner table, stonefaced, as the house rattles to the sounds of my rampant plookings, forks frozen in their hands; chunks of plaster tumble from the ceiling to splash in their soup as my mother turns to my stepfather, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the cries, grunts, and oinks raining down from above, as she says, gamely, "So how was your day today....?"

Gini still giggles over that one.

Sneaking women up to my room was easy, but getting them out the next day was the tricky part. Bruce became obsessed with checking in on me, to see how things went. Timing their exit with Bruce's shower, yet still maintaining a veneer of independence and ne'er-do-well care, was a challenge.

Sometimes, though, I failed. And failed miserably.

I remember one evening when I brought my girlfriend Bari home. We had stayed up late that night and then screwed until the early hours of the dawn, so when I got up she was comatose. I took my shower, getting ready for work, and vowed to wake her when I returned.

I had forgotten that it was cleaning day.

Every Thursday, my grandmother - a professional housemaid - would clean the house for us. My grandma, hearing me get in the shower, realized that it was time to clean the sheets.

She walked into my room, waking Bari just in time for my grandmother to whip off the top sheets, revealing a very naked woman that she'd never met before. The very naked girlfriend found herself without a stitch of clothing on the bed, facing what she knew was my grandmother.

My grandmother looked at Bari. Bari stared back, her eyes as wide as teacups.

It was my grandmother, always quick on her feet, who acted first. "Sorry!" she said, then draped the sheet over Bari and darted out of the room. When I returned, Bari was still quivering from shock.

Yet that was not the most embarrassing incident.

One night, after returning from a drunken splendor, Bari and I snuck up to my room to pass out. Except that I was ravenously horny. (Bari might have been too, for all I know - but as you'll see, that was completely irrelevant to what was to come.)

Now, normally, a quick leap before bed isn't a problem for almost any girlfriend, especially when lubricated with generous helpings of Guinness - but this time, for no apparent reason that I can possibly put a name to, I became convinced that Bari wanted - no, needed - to have anal sex.

Now, keep in mind that I didn't want anal sex. But I was completely sold on the fact that Bari, that poor repressed thing, had an urgent need to take it right up the poop chute.

I explored. She protested. I kept pressing the issue, trying to worm my way in there so that she could experience the delights of the rear-end collision. My finger snuck in and popped out again as she began to protest: "No, no Ferrett, I don't wanna have anal sex...."

This launched into a conversation. "Yes you do," I slurred. "You wannit right up the butt! Doan lie!"

We attempted to have sex from behind, and eventually she broke down in tears. "Stop that!" she cried. "Just fuck me in my pussy! Stop the anal sex! I don't wanna have anal sex!"

"Aw, come on," I shouted. "You want it up the butt, Bari! You want it so bad! Bari, you wannit right up the ass!"

Eventually, I relented - though I still had my suspicions about Bari's deep-seated fudge-packing needs - and we had sex and passed out.

The next morning, I opened the door and came face to face with a visiting uncle, who I had forgotten would be staying in the guest room next door. He stared at me in that quiet way that told me he had a lot to say to me, but didn't know where to start, and I realized he had heard the entire anal sex debate, live as aired on CNN. We had, in all likelihood, woken him up, and then he had to endure our noisy lovemaking afterwards.

The kicker? His name was Uncle Barry.

I'm not quite sure that he didn't think I was trying to fuck him up the ass, at least by proxy.

Eventually, the whole having a girlfriend thing only became an issue for my stepdad; my mother realized her son was a horny bastard, and she had taught me there was nothing wrong with sex, and how could she argue? So she allowed it.

In fact, she became so comfortable one night that after three glasses of an excellent Chardonnay, she staggered into the room where Bari and I laid, naked underneath sheets, the smell of spermatozoa and used condoms still in the air, to tell me how much she loved me.

"Er," I mentioned as she pulled up the chair and sat down next to the bed to talk, "Bari's here..."

"Oh, Bari!" she said, enthused. "I love you, too! You're a great girlfriend! So how are things going?"

Poor, beleaguered Bari - who had yet to get used to being completely starkers in the face of my close relatives - tried valiantly to carry on a conversation with my mother, but the conjunction of a post-coital bliss and Ferrett's mom was too much to bear. She was shellshocked.

Fortunately, mom's an easy drunk. She didn't mind. Eventually, we shooed her off, but not before she became obsessed and giggling about how she wanted to give us both a hug because she loved us so much.

She found the whole thing funny. Bari, however....

Eventually, I moved out and discovered that my bedroom was a great place for sex because it was naughty. When you fuck at your own apartment or house, it's expected - hey, this is your place. But it's tough to beat quietly padding up the stairs, the excitement of getting caught fluttering in your stomach, as you know that once you get up there you're going to have to do everything in secret.

Alas, Bari was the cause of my biggest missed opportunity, when I was dating her and felt in a faithful mood - rare for me - and I passed up the opportunity to sneak into the back of a movie house with a tiny bombshell of a redhead and fuck behind the screen as two hundred people looked on.

It's not her fault, of course, but I've never forgiven her for that.