I have arrived at an age when vulgarity is over. I can no
longer make jokes about anyone’s genitalia, the tightness of spaces, the oozing
of pleasure creams, nothing.
This is too bad.
But it is true.
I have a bit of a leftover adolescent thing. As Freud, Faulkner, my friend Karen and others have noticed---the deeper brain knows no such
thing as time. It’s all alive at once. Many of my new-to-sex-boy-thoughts have
not blown away. They are forever buried in there so I often think about such
items as sausages in buns, snail marks on sidewalks, happily choked chickens,
etc.
In the metro system in New
York City, there is a recorded P.A. announcement that
comes on after everyone has been discharged at any station. It states the
current location and then it goes,“The next stop will be _________.”
This could be 14th
Street, Grand Concourse, 34th Street/Penn Station, Sutphin Boulevard,
etc. Because there is always a slight
pause before the recording names the next station, it gives me plenty of time
to fill in the blank with, “deep inside your mother’s vagina.”
I am not proud of this. Though I do enjoy saying it quietly
under my breath. I think this makes me feel like I am twelve years old and I am
getting away with something. Of course, I do not want the subway to stop deep
inside anyone’s mother’s vagina. Nor does saying this feel at all sexual. It
just feels fun. Like I am getting away with something silly. I don’t feel
aggressive. I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I do not have pent up rape
fantasies. I just like the playfulness of it.
But I have veered.
What I have to say is---you just can’t say anything like
this out loud after a certain age. It comes off as creepy. It doesn’t sound
silly. It sounds mean. I think it’s because people think you mean it, or that
you are going to incest someone, or that, somehow, you are disgusting for being
sexual at all. It makes you come off as crass and/or dangerous. So you have to
keep your immature word games to yourself.
I am a biologist by education (though never by employment).
And frankly, I could watch someone take a scalpel to a body, open it up, throw
the guts around, and then put them all back in and sew it all up while I am
eating a big bowl of spaghetti with red clam sauce. I am completely
non-squeamish. I could lick a sliver out of your eye. I could hold the brains
of a Kennedy family member in my hand and not be traumatized. I am not afraid of being old one day because of the possibility of crapping in my pants. I don’t know why. I just think I'm kind of earthy. It comes in handy. I am the one who is always asked to kill every turtle sized cockroach or any abandoned
lame baby opossum. I just do it. Whatever. We’ll all be snuffed out sometime.
Makes you kind of want to enjoy the day even more, no?
I think my boyish thoughts about sex are simply corporal.
Our bodies are just bodies. I am not wanton. In my middle years, I have
naturally become quite middle class, conventional and calm in my habits at home
and abroad. These thoughts and words are just old fun-timey childish blathers I can only enjoy within the privacy of my personal space.
If I am to mention anything sexual in mixed company,
ever, it splats ugly like a turd in a punch bowl. And not because of me, I must
say. But because of the audience. If the audience were truly paying attention, they would realize I'm just being a kid about stuff.
Other men, when we are alone, can take it better than other
women. I don’t know what that’s about. And if there is anything worse than
listening to a grown guy talk about sex it is listening to a grown guy talk
about how women are different than men about the subject. So I will not go down (on her) this path.
Adding to that, it seems you get to a point in life when you
can also not talk about politics, religion or money. People behave even more
aggressively and can easily attack you. Sex is one thing. You can see people
get scared when sex comes up. But the other subjects? People are opinionated
and are ready to fight to the last man for their beliefs.
My response to all that?
Fuck ‘em.
But that doesn’t mean I want to fuck ‘em, really. But I do
feel a little bit aggressive because my freedom has been clipped. So I concede that the use of the word Fuck is often a fabulous fun fricative experience designed to expel energy.
But I have to let it all go. All of it. And accept the social situation.
The price we pay for indoor plumbing, antibiotics, trips to Paris and bagged nuts.
Titter.