Are You Sexy?

Recently, I was in the waiting room in my dentist's office with my wife, Christine, while our youngest was in for a cleaning. As I perused the magazines on the table next to a display about gingivitis, I honed in on a woman's fitness periodical which sported a cover with a smart looking, smiling, thirty something woman, power walking in yoga pants while swinging weights in each hand. The long list of articles were primarily for women as in Get Slim & Feel Strong, or 20 Best-Ever Haircuts, and Should You Steam Your Vagina?

Initially, the latter captured my attention, but as it took ten minutes to find the table of contents, which didn't help anyway because of the blocks of unnumbered pages dedicated to advertisements. I gave up on trying to find the article when I came across a quiz entitled, Are You Sexy? Even though the survey was written for women, I decided to take the test anyway because, theoretically, it shouldn't matter because we're the same or something. The first question asked,

What is the average amount of time you spend engaged in a kiss?

I never really timed it, but I surmised probably a second or two. I looked up the answer which indicated that the longer you spend in a smooch, the sexier you are. They recommended nothing shorter than ten seconds. Armed with this information, I leaned over to my wife, bent on kissing her for the requisite amount of time. Midway though our sexy extended kiss, she said with her lips still locked on mine,

"What are you doing?"

"A sexy kiss," I answered.

"This is sexy?”

"It says right here that long kisses are sexy."

"Oh. I thought you had a stroke or something."

That went so well, I dove back into the survey.

Do you experiment in the bedroom?

I definitely do this one. I'm into the scientific method. Once my son and I built a volcano for a middle school science fair. I checked the answer key. More points for me! Eager to be even more sexy, I forged ahead,

Have you ever taken part in a ménage à trois?

I had to look this one up because even though I took twelve years of French in Catholic school, I really can't actually speak the language unless some French person was in need of someone to conjugate the verb "to go." The literal translation of ménage à trois is "household for three." I was disappointed when I looked up the answer. Apparently they were asking if I ever had sex with two people at once which made no sense to me since last I checked I have only one penis. Moving on,

Have you ever filmed yourself and your partner?

Yes! I filmed us at the beach, on vacation, during family gatherings. For some reason, I got a lot of points for video recording my wife and me. They hinted that a video while on an airplane is very sexy. They said that it's proof that we're in what I think is a recreational pot smoking group called, the Mild High Club.

What is your favorite go to screwvenir?

This was a hard one. I had to Google what a "screwvenir" is which is "anything that you keep (whether stolen or given to you) from someone's house after you've slept with them." The answer key gave points for shirts and underwear and deducted points for body parts. I got nothing since I don't have any screwvenirs, but I did keep the cork from first bottle of wine Christine and I had together.

Have you ever had sex with a woman?

Big points for this one. Having two kids years apart proves that I had sex with a woman at least twice, but I can tell you for sure, it was more than that. Way more. Like twice that.

How many different positions have you tried?

I worked for a few tech companies. All in all, I answered "at least five," which got me some points. Apparently, if I worked for more companies I would've been more sexy. Moving ahead,

How many partners have you had?

I didn't do so well here. I've never worked for a law firm so I've never had partners. The next question was likely a Hipaa Violation.

How often do you engage in anal penetration?

I answered once every five years unless they find something. I didn't get any points as that was too infrequent. Moving on,

Who is your celebrity crush?

A celebrity crush is the person who if you slept with your spouse would give you a pass. It was important for me to pick someone Christine would like otherwise a pass would never be forthcoming. Christine is sure that she and Jennifer Lawrence would be best friends. She's really not my type and a bit too young for me. I decided to play it safe and put down "Betty White." She's 99, but I’ll bet she's dynamite in the sack.

Tallying up my score, I got a 27 out of 100 which according to the key means I'm "not very sexy." Furthermore, my score came with the advice that I "should consider spicing things up more." They also advised that "I should perhaps venture outside of my comfort zone." I don't get it. Holding my breadth every time I kiss my wife while constantly coming up with new experiments all while convincing my doctor that I need yet another colonoscopy certainly places me well outside my comfort zone.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on August 21, 2018.

How I Learned About the Facts of Life

Frogs Grinding 

“I know the girl has the egg, but what does the boy have?” asked our eight year old, William.

There are some rights of passage of parenthood like the loss of teeth, the scared nights when lightning etches across the sky, the first ride on the bus to grade school. These and others, you plow through headlong without a manual. In and amongst this list is the revelation of "the facts of life" as we used to call it. Having been through this before with our oldest, Aidan, I was a seasoned pro at explaining the fine art of shagging.

Aidan was easier because he got to experience the birthing process firsthand. His questions surfaced shortly after we told him that he was going to be a big brother. My wife, Christine, and I explained that the baby grows in the "womb," and not in "mommy's tummy." I was always confused as to how a baby could survive in a vat of partially chewed food. I thought a miscarriage was when a women inadvertently shat out her baby. William was now positioned for my speech regarding the dual function of the penis. He knew he urinated from that thing, but he was always curious why he sometimes awoke to an unwieldy appendage that made his morning wiz temporarily unmanageable.

I had two older sisters who told me everything by kindergarten. Along with bursting my bubble about Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, assuring me that disbelief had no bearing on the windfall from each of the associated holidays, they also told me all about where babies came from. The details were sketchy, but I had locked down the basics about the swish and flick of the wand in the chamber of secrets. No one ever told me about thrusting, though, so when I finally found out that's what you did while grinding the mortar and pestle, I thought it was kind of odd. I surmised a good rogering added up to the two of you just staying motionless while engaged in polite conversation. That seemed to make sense to my six year old mind; after all, frogs didn't move much when they bumped uglies.

For many years I thought "the facts of life" were other things I needed to learn apart from hiding the bishop. When my sister finally told me the facts about the facts of life, I was disappointed. I thought it was something new and exciting, an enigma on par with the thermostat in the hallway which I was forbidden to ever touch.

"That's it?" I said.

By first grade prodding the longshoreman with a bull rake was old news. Everyone was in on that. Years later, when I was 13, my mother handed me a book, entitled "a doctor talks to 5-to-8-year-olds. 

The Lowercase Frog
Bumping Book

It was full of pictures of frogs pushing their friends to the hospital and eggs being chased down by a maniacal horde of sperm. There was a whole section on tadpoles. I got the book a year after my sister because back then everyone believed that "girls matured faster than boys." It didn't matter that the book was written for seven year olds, I got it at a time long after my friend and I stumbled upon his father's stash of fuck magazines. Sad as it is, I learned about the finer details of the forbidden polka from Jugs.

We know today that girls are more compliant than boys which makes them seem more mature, but in reality, boys are just more likely to look out the window and wonder aloud if they'd get hurt if they jumped from that tree limb while girls are equally likely to comment on their teacher's makeup. Boys are three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, an affliction for which the only biomarker is balls.

Eventually, my mother asked me,

"Did you read that book I gave you?"

Playing up my external mortification, I answered,

"Yeah, but I didn't get most of it. Can you explain it in your own words?"

My mother was a leading lady right out of a Roger and Hammerstein musical, one part artist and two parts dingbat. She was shocked when one of her friends announced that she and her husband still slept in the same bed. Confiding on the phone to another friend, my mother announced,

"There comes a time in every married couples life when they sleep apart."

She was fifty.

Being a consummate dick even at 13, I prodded my mother to explain how to play Mr. Wobbly hides his helmet.

"Well, what parts didn't you understand?" she deflected.

"Just one thing," I offered.

"What might that be?"

"How'd you carry all those eggs on your back for nine months?"

She looked perplexed as if their was just too much ground to cover so she said,

"Ask your father."

Now, it was my turn to impart the ultimate life's lesson on our youngest son, completing yet another milestone in my journey as a parent. I didn't want our kids to learn about procreation through smutty magazines, from their knuckhead friends or by pictures of reptiles boffing. Mind you, we're not the kind of parents who pull up a stool to the gurney so their firstborn can snip the umbilical cord to their younger sibling. We also don't have, nor want to watch, a birthing video. It may sound intriguing to get to spy your buddy's wife's bits and pieces, but by the time they queue up the crowning, you'll be wishing for a C-section.

We always saw ourselves as parents that were upfront with their children even though we let them believe in kid things like Santa and the Easter Bunny long after they knew they were untrue. I never felt a need to grow up too fast. So to, euphemisms like "sleeping with somebody," or "making love" always seemed a bit docile to me as if the act was merely pleasant. When Aidan was Willy's age he asked,

"Why do people have sex?"

"Because it's how you make babies, " I answered, then after thinking about it, I added, 'It's really a lot of fun too."

After Willy absorbed my lecture on the duel purpose of the male organ, he said, "My friend, Keith, has two dads. Where did they get an egg from?"

"Some nice lady let them use one of hers," I answered.

He was quick to note that meant Keith wasn't related to one of his dads and that he probably didn't know his mom either. He explained,

"Only one dad is his real dad."

I never liked the term "having children" because it always seemed like an inadequate description of the journey one is on when bringing up a child. You have things, most of which will amount to very little. Kids are all together unlike anything else in life. I told William that many adopted children never know their mom or dad either. Then I explained,

"The people that raised you, they are your real parents."

Ozzy's Revelation

Ozzy

First off, Ozzy’s real name is John. Recently, Ozzy revealed that he's addicted to sex and apologized to "all the woman" he used to satisfy his lust. I would have focused on apologizing to just my wife, but today when you publically mess up it’s important to apologize to as many people as soon as possible. His long time wife, Sharon, announced that at 67, Ozzy is finally getting treatment for sex addiction. Good for him.

This raises some questions. What exactly is the treatment for sex addiction? How do I make sure I don't inadvertently get any? Does it involve pictures of nuns? Sharon also added,

“He should call Tiger Woods for some advice.”

I would love to be privy to that conversation.

Tiger: “You got to follow through on your stroke.”

Ozzy: “But sometimes I get hung up in the rough.”

Tiger: “Always insist on a shave first.”
Ozzy: “Shave? Are we talking about golf here?”

Ozzy probably thought,

“And to think all these years, I thought I was just shagging groupies."

I might be going out on a limb here, but I think all men like sex. Rock stars like Ozzy just have a greater opportunity than, say, your average accountant. Many aging rock stars, who are getting a little crusty around the edges, probably still get their share of groupie wild nights. Just ask Mick Jagger. Ozzy’s mistress, Michelle Pugh, a celebrity hairstylist, believes Ozzy might have misled her with his intentions. She describes herself as “inspired by rock and roll as much as she is by nature.” If you draw a circle around the words “rock and roll” and “nature,” they intersect in one place at Ted Nugent.

Ozzy bit the head off a dove, and then later a bat, and I forgave him for that. Once, Ozzy used a shotgun to dispatch stray cats that had scratched his wife’s Mercedes, and I stayed mum. He pushed a fifty inch television set out a ninth floor window of a hotel, and I turned a blind eye. He cheated on his wife numerous times, and once again I looked the other way. He peed on the Alamo, which crosses the line for me. We all have our limits.

The Alamo

My real problem I have with Ozzy is that his music sounds like the record is spinning on the wrong speed, a little like Alvin and the Chipmunks, just darker. Ozzy's lyrics usually embrace difficult subjects like teenage suicide. Problem is he encourages it. The little ditty, "Suicide Solution" has the lines,

"Where to hide, suicide is the only way out."

"Don't you know what it's really about?"
 

Keep in mind that Ozzy is not unloading these lyrics on the brain trust of our society. His fans were once young now middle-aged, impressionable, unemployed, satanically bent, potheads with no direction who will likely live in their parent’s basement forever. Sure as the name implies, they don’t call it Black Sabbath for nothing. Ozzy is a shuffling contradiction. He is a member of the Church of England, but his followers are predominantly Satan worshipping, nutjobs. I don’t think the Black Sabbath concert attendees care much for the quality of the music. I often wonder who these people are that adore Black Sabbath. They bring road kills to concerts that they toss onstage. Ozzy apparently encourages this. It’s the next level of Gallagher. One guy brought a slaughtered cow head. There’s always one overachiever. I wonder if security had to wand the cow head to make sure it was safe to bring into the concert hall.

I wish Ozzy well, I guess. At 67, a dude that is still firing off rounds is great news for all us aging males. You go John, bite heads off animals, make televisions fly. Just stop peeing on the Alamo, will you?