IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HAIR

It’s been a while, so I thought I’d give an update on how life is with a 13-year-old boy. We have a sudden newfound preoccupation with all things hair. Starting with the hair on the head, my son has adopted what I guess is similar to a James Dean hairstyle—short on the sides and back, with upright wave-like hair on top. Thanks to the Internet (no, really, thank you), the boy can scroll through a gazillion photos, trying to find the hairstyle he likes and then come to me and ask me to duplicate it.

I gave birth to a boy for a reason. I’m not a girlie-girl. I don’t do girlie things. I mean, I don’t drive an 18-wheeler or chop wood or anything, but I bite my nails, don’t know how to do a smoky eye, and have never once blown dry or curled my hair. I’m more of a “How to pull myself together in 7 minutes or less without being labeled ‘homeless’ by the outside community” kind of girl.

So when my son asked me to style his hair one day, I directed him to his other parent for help: YouTube. Anything you want to know how to do, there’s a video for it. It’s mind-boggling. Unfortunately, with the desire for fancy hair comes the need for fancy haircuts, so bringing him to the ghetto part of town for a $5 haircut by women who don’t speak English no longer flies. And now whenever we go out, even if it’s to Walmart, it takes him 25 minutes to do his hair, because “you never know who you might see there.” (Oh, I have an idea of who we might see at Walmart and it ain’t pretty.)

We’re also at the stage where it’s of critical importance to evaluate ALL hair on the body. We’ll be driving and he’ll say, “Look at the dark hair on my legs. Look at it. In the sun. Can you see it? Can you? Look at how much there is. There’s a lot, isn’t there? See?” He has no hair yet under the arms or on the chest; it’s all in the pubic area, so I’m privy to the day-by-day account of its growth. He counted them when there were only a few sparse hairs. Now, with the onslaught of pubic hair, it’s a source of pride and warrants bragging rights.

I get it. I vaguely recall comparing my blossoming chest size to every other girl who crossed my path at school. I remember marveling over my pubes, and being ecstatic over the fact that I had gotten my period before my best friend. These are all extremely important milestones as a kid. As is the big M.

Masturbation.

I could pretend my son has monkish tendencies or very low testosterone, but that would be taking the “ostrich in the sand” approach—something I see mothers all around me doing when it comes to their kid and sex. But I’m more savvy than that. I know that once boys discover the wonders of masturbation it literally rivals all other activities…until they begin the quest of trying to find girls to do it for them.

I’m not going to lie. Porn scares me nowadays. The fact that one can find any kink with just a few taps of the keys is disconcerting. Back in my day (yes, I’m starting to use that phrase now) if you wanted to watch porn you had to go to a mafia-owned XXX movie theater with sticky floors. Which men did. But not women. No, no, no. The first porn DVD I ever saw was with my gay friend and it was the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee honeymoon one and it was so awful we laughed our way through the entire thing. I didn’t watch another porn for like 15 years because 1. I sure in the hell wasn’t going to walk into an adult store alone and buy one, 2. I sure in the hell wasn’t going to go into that section of the local video store alone and rent one, and 3. A $300 charge for porn once arrived on the Internet bill because my dumbass ex didn’t realize he was clicking on something he had to pay for, so that pretty much put the fear of watching web porn into me.

Anyway, I told my son porn would destroy his growing brain just like drugs would, and no, I don’t feel guilty for that. “If you promise you won’t masturbate to porn, I’ll buy you a Playboy. You can masturbate to that.” He agreed, we pinky-swore, and then we went out in search of a Playboy. Well. Let me tell you how hard it is to find a damn Playboy in this day and age. I must have gone into no less than thirteen 7-11s and liquor stores, claiming I was a writer needing one for research. And the places that did have dirty magazines had ones which were just as bad as porn.

For $15 I ordered one online. I wished there was a magazine out there I could give my son which would provide a more sex-positive experience—maybe one with pictures of teenage girls with various body types, including plus-size, and no airbrushing, so he could have a more realistic view of “real” women, but then I realized there are probably many of them out there. For pedophiles, and that’s extremely icky, and grounds for arrest.

We’re lying to ourselves if we think teens aren’t going to access porn on the Internet. Sure, we can block it in our homes, but there will always be that one friend who has “Ass Ventura Crack Detective” bookmarked on their phone. I can only pray my son doesn’t grow up thinking all women have huge fake breasts and tight asses. Or expect a nurse who’s examining him to suddenly unzip his pants and start sucking him off. I hope he realizes that only women who do strenuous yoga and/or perform in Cirque de Soleil can contort their bodies into absurd positions while every orifice is filled.

Sigh. Welcum to the Information Age.

PORN AS SEXUAL EMPOWERMENT OR DEVIL’S CANDY

I’m a Facebook slut. Or nympho—meaning I like to be on it, all the time. I do have limits though. I don’t post a new selfie every other day. I don’t poke or poke back (All I can think of is The Three Stooges poking each other in the eyes). And I try to refrain from outwardly shaming people whose opinions I consider asinine crap.

I do however, post way more cat memes than any human should. I divulge information about the boy that will probably come back to haunt him. And when I’m feeling particularly feisty I like to voice my strong opinions or play devil’s advocate on random sites just to evoke argument.

So I’m scrolling through my feed last week and up pops this meme from an anti-porn site. Now I’m not anti-porn. In fact, I like my porn—in moderation. I think it’s only a problem if your SO doesn’t want to have sex with you anymore because he’s (or she’s) wanking it 7x a day to these silicone, Botoxed beauties. Or males with 14-inch penises (24-inch when erect). Or petite she-males.

This anti-porn meme quoted Jonah Mix: “I’m not interested in a world where men really want to watch porn but resist because they’ve been shamed; I’m interested in a world where men are raised from birth with such an unshakeable understanding of women as living human beings that they are incapable of being aroused by their exploitation.” (Yeah, well, unless we’re going back to Egyptian times, good luck with that.)

So, because I was bored I posted a comment: “And I’m interested in a world where women are raised from birth with such an unshakeable sense of self-worth that they are incapable of considering the option of having to f*ck for money.”

And then I waited for the shit storm.

And it came. From both men and women. Not only did I get the “Women who do porn are sexually-empowered and they have the right to choose their own career,” but I also got “Some women actually enjoy doing porn, and it’s not because they’re drugged-up losers. They enjoy sex and like being in business for themselves.”

I fired back with examples citing former porn stars who have exposed the realities of this ugly business (like anal and vaginal tearing, and drug and alcohol dependency), as well as the running joke that women who take off their clothes for money almost always have Daddy issues, and that it became a joke only because it’s true more often than not. I stated that if these women were able to work the same amount of hours for the same amount of money sitting on their asses at a desk, instead of on someone’s face, they would choose the desk job. I also made it clear that not ALL women who get in to the porn industry have low self-esteem. Some are in fact, nymphomaniacs, and others thrive on the money and attention. But one has to ask why they thrive on the attention (self-esteem problems) and what drives them to be a nympho in the first place (trying to fulfill the emptiness inside themselves because, um, they have low fucking self-esteem!!!)

And back and forth it went. Now, when I engage in controversial discussions on Facebook it serves only as a form of verbal masturbation for me. In fact, I get more excited when I make a logical point than I do watching any porn. I realize I’ll never change anyone’s opinion, just like I’ll never convert someone who’s pro-life to pro-choice. I simply thrive on offering up intelligent, thought-out responses which maybe, just maybe allow someone to see the issue another way.

I could care less who chooses to do porn and why. I’m not an advocate for a porn-free world, and as long as viewers are paying big bucks, women (and men) will be fucking…and sucking…and spanking…and flogging. But I stand by my opinion that if women grew up with a greater sense of self, there would be fewer hookers, strippers, and porn actresses in the world.

My comment has received over 600 likes so far, so evidently there are men and women out there who share the same opinion.

What say you? I’d love to hear your opinion on the subject of porn. Is it the work of the devil filled with sinners OR empowering, sexy entertainment?

PENISES, PORN, & MOTHERHOOD (AN UNSEXY THREESOME)

It’s been a while since I’ve talked penises. Raising a 12-year-old boy ensures they’re never very far from my reality. My son loves to talk about his penis and the fact that almost everything gives him an erection nowadays. Sometimes in the middle of the Victoria’s Secret commercial he’ll say, “See? I’m getting hard right now.” “Well, stop it,” I tell him.

He hasn’t gone through puberty yet, nor has he masturbated. How do I know this? Because he’s thrown out comments like, “I don’t think I ever want to masturbate,” to which I inwardly smirk and think, “Honey, as soon as you discover that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I’ll hardly see you anymore.” Which is fine. I actually can’t wait for him to start masturbating because when he’s tired of playing Xbox he drives me nuts.

“I’m bored,” is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me. “Read a book, clean your room, go outside…” None of these hold any appeal for him, but when the day comes when I can say, “Go masturbate then,” I’m certain the suggestion will be met with approval and glee.

I’ll admit there’s a precarious balance between being a “progressive” mother and a “prude.” It may sound like my son and I live a clothing-optional lifestyle and still shower together because we’re so open with each other, but trust me when I say half the time I’m crying, “I’m your mother! You shouldn’t be telling me these things!” But who else can he talk to about male bodily functions? “Go ask your father,” doesn’t apply here, and friends aren’t always a reliable (or healthy or realistic) option.

For as sexually open as I am, sometimes I am rendered speechless. Like when my son asked me how to masturbate. “Um, you’ll figure it out when the time comes,” I mumbled, praying he’d just drop it. He didn’t. “But like what do you do?” I stopped what I was doing and looked up. “You just kinda…you know…move your hand up and down and stuff.” Are you uncomfortable reading this? If yes, then imagine my discomfort in person. Yikes.

If I don’t answer his questions I’m terrified he’ll turn to the internet for information. A few months ago he wanted to impress a girl at school so he Googled “How to get a 12-year-old girl excited.” You can imagine what came up. So then we had to have the Porn talk. I gave him my best spiel about how porn creates unrealistic expectations about women and if he watched too much of it, eventually he wouldn’t be able to have sex with a real woman. Short of resorting to “Your penis will fall off if you watch too much porn,” I think he got the message, but come on—porn at your fingertips? A mere click away? What teenage boy is going to be able to resist the temptation? And it’s sad. It literally makes me want to cry, because I didn’t watch my first porn until I was 18, and it was a joke at that. I was living in Italy at the time, and my gay friend and girlfriend decided it would be a hoot to go to a porno theater to see a movie in Italian. Except that it ended up being in English with Italian subtitles, the floors were icky sticky, and a man sat down next to my girlfriend and began to masturbate, so we fled, laughing hysterically while wanting to throw up at the same time.

My next porn experience was in my early 20s right after the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee video came out. My gay friend (a pattern I seem to have with porn) came over and said, “We gotta watch this. I hear Tommy Lee’s cock is huge!” And it was. But we spent the whole time snickering and counting how many times Pammy gushed, “I love you, baby.”

Porn just wasn’t a reality while I was growing up like it is today. Now it’s an obsession. So I made my son promise he wouldn’t watch any until he was 15, the compromise being that I would buy him a nude magazine when he was ready. When he asked me for one, all these thoughts went through my head before I agreed. Thoughts like: “I guess Playboy wouldn’t be so bad, right? After all, I started looking at my dad’s collection when I was 8. Although that’s the reason I have such a fucked-up body image.” And, “As long as it’s not Penthouse or Oui (is Oui even still around?), both of which horrified the crap out of me when I was younger due to its extreme graphicness. Remember the Vanessa Williams scandal? How could one forget? And Madonna with the hairy armpits and pussy…cat.”

And then I had this thought: “Too bad there isn’t a magazine I can buy filled with pictures of teenage girls with various body types specifically for teenage boys to masturbate to,” which was immediately replaced by: “There are undoubtedly tons of them out there, but it’s freaking illegal to use underage girls in porn and Holy Hell, what was I thinking?”

Clearly I’m not, as my brain seems to be clouded with penises and porn.

8 SIGNS YOUR MAN MIGHT BE ADDICTED TO PORN

photo by thebittenword

Here’s yet another thing I have to add to My Man Checklist. In addition to asking a man within the first 3 minutes of meeting him whether he’s employed, addicted to any substances, or has mother issues, I now have to make sure he’s not an obsessive porn watcher.

Apparently porn is a huge problem for couples nowadays thanks to how readily accessible it is. No longer do men have to go to the sex shop located in the ghetto, dressed in disguise for fear of fellow churchgoers recognizing them just to purchase a raunchy video. Now any raunchiness one can imagine is just a click away.

I’ve never given much thought to the use of porn by men. Except of course, when I received the phone bill years ago and my dumbass ex had run up $300 worth of porn charges on the internet. But it never happened again, and his porn-watching never affected our sex life adversely. Or if it did, then thank God it did, because the man wanted sex like 8 times a day.

When I googled “excessive porn use by men” I read stories of young men in their twenties who no longer could maintain an erection with a female due to the fact that they’ve been masturbating to porn 3-4 times a day since the age of fourteen. (!)

(As an aside, I have to ask the question: HOW DO THESE MEN MANAGE TO GET ANYTHING DONE? Do they masturbate once upon wakening, perform a rub down on their lunch break, one more in the car or on the subway on the way home from work, and then a last one before bed? Really, it boggles my mind.)

Anyhoo, as if we women didn’t have enough to worry about sexually, what with having to maintain our weight, our appearance, the sweatpants to lingerie ratio, not to mention frequency, variation, whether our SO is having an “emotional” affair with someone, or an actual affair with a co-worker, we now have to concern ourselves with celluloid competition.

I came across an article about ways to tell if your SO is addicted to porn, but I changed the wording to reflect my own thoughts about it, so here goes—8 things to make you go, Hmmm, I wonder if my man is addicted to porn.

1. He has morphed from a social butterfly into an antisocial troll.

It’s a rare man who actually enjoys spending time with his in-laws, but if you find him suddenly making the most ridiculous excuses for getting out of visits with family, or friends—“The grout needs to be watched while it dries.” “The drill needs to be watched while it charges.”—and you come home to find the computer hasn’t moved from his lap and all those tissue boxes you bought from Costco are mysteriously gone, he just might be addicted to porn.

2. He thinks sex with you is about as exciting as scrubbing the mildew-ridden grout in the shower.

Every couple gets into sexual ruts every now and then; but if you’re straddling him in a sheer nightie, and he’s annoyed because your head is blocking the TV, there might be a teensy problem.

Or, if when you do have sex, your man seems interested in some new “unorthodox” practices, like inviting the dog to join in, ummm, PROBLEM.

3. There’s not much difference physically between playing an actual football game and sex.

Nobody’s ever complained about a little bit of spanking or hair-pulling, but if out-of-the-blue, your man starts tossing you around like a Doberman plays with a chew toy, and using language that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush…grande problema.

4. There’s zero emotional connection.

Now, there’s a fine line with this one, because a lot of men don’t look at women meaningfully during sex like they might the newest Lamborghini model, but if when having sex, his eyes glaze over and he murmurs things like, “Plumber’s here to fix your sink,” or “I wanted to talk to you about improving that F-grade I gave you,”—red alert.

5. He critiques your appearance worse than a neurotic gay stylist.

If your man starts telling you you’d look hot with double Gs, Botox lips and 6-inch heels, or he makes insensitive, absurd comments like, “Can’t you at least try to wrap your leg around your head while I do you from behind?” or “All I asked was whether you’d ever consider letting me watch you have group sex with the 3 ethnically-diverse female neighbors upstairs and the underage pizza delivery boy. Since when did you become such a prude?” Dare I say it?

6. He tells you it’s all in your head.

My ex was a master at turning situations around so everything would seem like my fault. If you confront your man about his porn use and he turns it around on you by saying, “If you hadn’t been busy during labor for 36 hours, I wouldn’t have had to watch porn,” or “I only watched it because you were neglecting me when you were going through chemo,” then watch out.

If you unearth secrets like a wall-to-wall shed full of porn DVDs (“I’m holding them for a friend, selling them on eBay, I inherited them from my Great-uncle Ed) or you discover a credit card account with charges on it like, “Schindler’s Fist,” “When Harry Ate Sally,” and “White men Can’t Hump,” it’s time to worry.

7. You think your man is having an affair—with the internet.

If your man locks his home-office door every time he goes in it, suffers from eye strain, or carpal tunnel even though his job doesn’t require any repetitive motion, he may have some ‘splaining to do. Especially to his son if his wrist goes limp every time he tries to throw a baseball to him.

8. He used to be such an upstanding citizen. Now he’s just one big giant perv.

Porn is like drugs or alcohol. The more you do, the more you need to feel good. You know how society believes once you smoke pot, you’re destined to become a heroin addict? Well, the more porn you watch, the more desensitized you become, thus eventually needing more extreme forms of porn to be able to get off. Threesomes, anal, and bondage? So humdrum after awhile. Your man may now need to see a woman riding a horse (ahem) or Geriatric Girls Gone Wild just to get excited. Is it any wonder he considers you too vanilla? And this ends up making him feel bad—very, very bad. He may even ask you to punish him because he’s been so bad…

Solutions to this problem? Singlewritermom says, “Run for the hills as fast as you can! Don’t waste your time on this one.” But singlewritermom is single for a reason, so don’t listen to me. Instead, throw all your hard-earned money toward therapy for the both of you, and fast…even better, a sex therapist. Just make sure she doesn’t look like a naughty nurse…or conservative librarian…or young schoolgirl.