Thursday, June 17, 2010

Fathers and Sons

I was talking with my friend Jonesy the other day when I couldn't help but ask him what was wrong. We were sitting at my tiki bar drinking Dr. Pepper on shaved ice with crushed cherries. The sun was hot. There was no breeze.

"Oh, I'm having trouble with my younger son." he answered. "He's having trouble dealing with my divorce and he absolutely hates that I live at a nudist resort." He stirred the ice with his finger. When he lifted the glass, the beaded moisture left a ring on the bar. I'd wipe it up later.

(Note to self: put the coasters on the tiki bar.)

"What's he been doing?" I asked.

He put the drink back down near the ring.

(Couldn't he at least hit the same spot each time?)

He gave me a wry smile, "Every time we talk he feels like he has to beat me up about living here. He won't give it a rest. He thinks it's wall to wall parties, naked beauties and orgies."

"I thought the orgy thing was a secret?" I feigned incredulity. "Have you told him that people around here look like people you meet anywhere?"

A nudist resort does not automatically attract beautiful, hard bodies. In fact, just the opposite is true. Most good looking young people enjoy the dress up, the clubs and the sexy flirtations. The people who come here skew older and, as an act of gross rationalization, claim complete body acceptance. This allows them to be over weight and out of shape - without embarrassment. In fact, most of the people here would not go to a clothed beach because of how bad they would look in a bathing suit.

"Yeah. But he doesn't believe me. I even snuck a picture of Adele." He pulled a photo out of his pocket. Adele was a very sweet but large lady of our mutual acquaintance. Picture taking at the resort was mostly forbidden. We also knew that Adele was a free spirit and that she wouldn't mind.

He handed it over to me and said, "I was going to send it to him with the caption:

.............................See Son, It's not all about sex!


I glanced at it and handed it back to him. "Cute." I said. "Adele's husband, Roy, might object."

Jonesy took the photo back and looked at it again. "Oh, wait! This is Roy!" He tucked the photo away then picked up his glass and sloshed a little as he turned on his stool.

(Oh, look! You missed a spot.)

I changed the subject and asked, "What's your son do?"

"Besides bitch at me like we're married?"

"That's rhetorical, right?" I always have to check after that incident with the traffic cop.

He nodded, then said. "He's a teacher in Ohio."

"Oh!" I answered, trying to sound impressed. "He must be real bright."

"He is. if you're impressed with night lights. He was recently turned down by Mensa Lite. He spelled his name wrong on the application. I asked him how that could happen and he claimed it was a union thing. The teacher's union is very strong in Ohio."

I never know when Jonesy is messing with me. "What's Mensa Lite?" I prodded.

"Mensa Lite is for pseudo-intellectuals. People who talk about their degrees rather than their accomplishments. People who talk about the book reviews they read, rather than the books they have read. People who think Al Gore is an intellectual."

"So, why're you so down on him?" I wondered.

"Maybe it's because he won't let up on me. Maybe it's because when his mom left me he never once asked me what had happened or even how I was doing." He paused and picked a piece of cherry out of his drink, dripping across the bar and onto the deck.

Then he seemed to rouse himself, remembering that he was supposed to be making a joke or something. That was Jonesy's coping mechanism. Mine was wall to wall parties, naked beauties and orgies.

"You know," he said, "I remember the night he was conceived and, I gotta tell you, the sex wasn't that great."

There's the old Jonesy I know!

He sat a little straighter in his chair and I could see the gleam in his eye. He was getting ready to be on a roll. I picked up my drink and sloshed a little on the bar by way of encouragement.

"I kid around about his mother being unfaithful but I am almost 100% certain I am his father."

"How so?" I played the straight man.

"When he was born he had my last name." I smiled and he continued, "Did I ever tell you why we named him P.J.?"

"Uh, uh."

"Because his mother had called dibs on B.J."

"Cute." I said. I began to fondly remember Jonesy's ex-wife but he wasn't done yet.

"Isn't it ironic," he asked, "that being an actual bastard is passed on through the mother?"

I had to laugh.

"And why isn't there a specific name for illegitimate females? I think bitch would have been a great choice. But it was already handily taken by adult women." Jonesy has been a little bitter since the break up.

I sucked on some ice, tasting the cherry juice.

"I am wondering one thing, though."

"What's that?" I mumbled through the ice.

"Even though I am as certain as a guy can be that his sons are legitimate, does my recent divorce make them Bastards by Proxy?"

.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Golden Age of Fornication

"Birth control pill for men still a way off"

Really? Birth control pills for men?

That headline leaped off of my news reader this morning and struck me like a ton of condoms. I mean, say it isn't so!

It reminds me of the southerner who, after a vasectomy, had sex in a tuxedo. He told his wife, "If I'm going to be impotent, then I'm going to dress impo'tant!"

The only viable reason I can think of for a man to need a male birth control pill is because she is too blond to remember to take hers. But, then again, if we can figure out how to slip a roofie into her Cosmo I'm pretty damn sure we can manage to hide a birth control pill in her Big Mac or a morning after pill in her omelette.

Is it because women are too lazy? Or maybe it's just the opposite. Is she so intent upon wanting it all (the Career, the sporty car, the house, the 2.3 kids, and the sex without consequences) that remembering to take the pill is just one thing too many. Let the man do it.

I grew up in an era when there were larger families; 4.7 children on average. Back then, women ovulated and men ejaculated. It was uncomplicated. Maybe a little messy... but who cared. Men didn't do the laundry.

Being a .7 child (I was a little puny back then) I got to view life in what I call the Golden Age of Fornication. Back when every man a woman slept with truly believed he was her first. Back when the back seat of the car wasn't filled with car seats and flat screen DVD players but was made for laying down and moving around a little. When condoms were birth control and if she got pregnant... Well, he didn't really believe he was her first, did he?

But now we have fifty different styles of condoms, some kind of vaginal O-ring thingy, defoliant foam, birth control pills, morning after pills, 5-day after pills and legal abortions. The odds are that if you weren't born before 1973, you probably won't be.

If I were tackling this problem from a practical point of view I would look at what I am up against. (No pun intended.) Women make one egg a month. A man can generate 1,000 sperm a second. It's like trying to control the Mexican border. Wouldn't it be easier to just get rid of the Americans?

But really, all seriousness aside. Men already have vasectomies available to us. Right? So, why not add another layer of protection into the mix? Why not make a pill for men that kills our sperm production, day-by-day, on a pill-by-pill basis? And leave the important stuff to the women.

Then again, I thought chemical castration was for criminals.


P.S.: There is no such thing as safe sex. There are still about twenty other things that can go wrong.


P.P.S.: The reason men don't need birth control pills is that they can't get pregnant. It would be like a woman getting a vasectomy. Science might get it to work, but our hearts wouldn't be in it.


P.P.P.S.: Why do we need all these different kinds of contraception, anyway? Hasn't anyone ever heard of a blow job?


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