Day 12: Masturbation for the win

Now that All the Sex Monologues are over, I thought I'd share one of the monologues I wrote for the show. We held a couple of writing workshops in between our two shows, and at one of them we brainstormed ideas for monologues we'd like to see. Someone said they'd like to see one about teaching kids about masturbation. I decided I had enough experience to write that one, unflattering as it is.

After I submitted it, and it was accepted for the show, I sent it to my son to get his approval. He said it was OK, but it wasn't really how it went from his perspective. He was pretty angry with me the day in question, but he decided he'd better just take control. But he said I should go ahead and perform it, because it absolutely was true from my perspective. So here it is. One of my "bad mommy" stories that I turned into a triumph, in my own head and on the stage.

Note: I wrote this to be performed, and I don't think it's nearly as entertaining as a written piece. But a number of people who couldn't come to the show wanted to read it, so I decided to share it anyway. And with no more excuses .... 

Masturbation for the Win!

When they were 12 years old, each of my kids took a comprehensive and somewhat controversial sex education class through our UU church called Our Whole Lives (OWL). When I say comprehensive, I mean they learned more about sex than I know every today. When I say controversial, I mean Jeraldo Rivera did an expose on OWL, and he told the entire country what perverts we were for giving our kids all the information we could about human sexuality.

One snowy night as I was driving my son home from his Sunday session of OWL, I asked, as I always did, if anything had come up that he wanted to talk with me about. He said the topic that night had been about masturbation.

Easy peasy, I thought. Not nearly as scary as oral sex night.

“OK, tell me about masturbation, if you want to,” I said. I knew he was already doing it. Nobody needs to shower for that long.

“They said most people do it. And it can’t hurt you …”

“True,” I said. “Otherwise why do it, huh?”

“And they said it’s OK in some families to do it, but not in others. So they didn’t really say it was OK to do it. It depends on your family.”

Like that’s ever stopped anybody, I thought. “At least you don’t have to wonder about that,” I said aloud.

“Well …. yeah, but I do,” he said. “I’m not really sure if it’s OK in our family or not. We’ve never talked about it, so … I’m just not sure.”

“I guess you’re right. We haven’t talked about it.” I couldn’t believe I’d missed that one. We talked about everything else. Sometimes my kids begged me not to talk about topics of a delicate nature. I had just assumed he’d know masturbation was OK.

“Not only is it OK,” I said. “I’d worry about you if you didn’t do it. It’s a pretty basic human need.”

“They said some parents might get mad if they caught their kids doing that,” he said.

“That’s true, I said. “But it probably won’t stop their kid from doing it. Anyway, in our family it’s OK as long as it’s done in private.”

“Mooommm! I knew that. Jeez.” We laughed.

“It’s not just that it feels good though,” I said. “When you get older, and you’re more interested in girls, masturbation can also help take the edge off. So you aren’t so eager to have sex that you make mistakes that have adult consequences. Like babies.”

“Yeah, OK,” he said. “Can we stop at McDonalds?”

I knew the conversation had gone far enough for now. “Sure,” I said. “I could eat some fries.”

Masturbation wasn’t a topic that came up often in our family. I probably only reminded him one more time, when he started to show an interest in dating, that masturbating could make being with a girl -- and by that I meant simply sitting next to her at a movie -- more comfortable. And it could help him make better decisions about whether he was even ready for sex with another person. I hoped I might raise a son who wasn’t as desperate for sex as most of the boys I dated in high school.

I wish I’d gone further and told him to vary his grip when he masturbates, like sex advisor Dan Savage recommends. Savage advises men to use a light touch when they masturbate instead of what he calls “the death grip,” so they won’t ruin their ability to orgasm under gentler circumstances, like in a vagina. It’s good advice, and if I could go back in time, I’d tell my son that too.

Fast forward about three years from our conversation in the car. I’m talking with my sister on the phone. My son is suppose to be mowing the yard, but he’s been in the bathroom for at least half an hour. At least. It’s a common problem, his hiding out in the bathroom instead of doing his chores. I’d already yelled up the stairs a couple of times.

“Hold on,” I said to my sister. “I’m going up there. He’s probably in there reading a book, and the yard will never get mowed.”

I stomped up the stairs and stopped at the bathroom door. “I’m coming in,” I warned as I opened the door and stuck my head in.

He wasn’t holding a book in his hand.

“Sorry,” I mumbled as I closed the door and ran. I mean I literally ran down the stairs and through several rooms to the sunroom furthest from that bathroom.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered into the phone. “Oh my god. I should not have done that.”

“Why?What happened?” she asked.

“He wasn’t reading a book,” I said. I was pacing the floor, my stomach churning with embarrassment.

“What was he doing?”

“What the hell do you think he was doing? He was whacking off!” I whisper-shouted. “He was sitting on the toilet …. whacking off.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to hide here in the sunroom just like I’m already doing until he grows up and moves away. Then I’m going to offer to pay for his years and years of therapy.”

“You’ll have to come out someday. What are you going to say to him? Is he horribly embarrassed?”

“I would assume so. I know I am! How could I have been so stupid and rude? I’ve probably scarred him for life,” I whispered. (BEAT) I didn’t hear my son until he was in the room.

“What did you want, Mom?” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if I walked in on him masturbating every day.

I scanned him for signs of crippling psychological damage. “Did you remember you said you’d mow the yard before dinner?” I decided to follow his lead.

“Yeah, and I will. Was that all?”

“Ummm, no. No, Yes. No …. Yes, that was all I wanted.”

“OK, I’m going to go do it then.”

“OK. Thanks.” He left the room and I let out the breath I’d been holding since he’d walked in.

“Did you hear that?” I asked my sister.

“I did,” she said. “Did he look really embarrassed? Poor kid.”

“No, he didn’t look a bit embarrassed. He didn’t even care that I caught him beating off. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“No, I’m not really sure, and I don’t want to guess,” she said.

“It means I win. It means I raised a son who’s not ashamed to do something that is natural and feels good and should never have been stigmatized. I’m embarrassed and freaking out, but he’s not! I win the parenting award for masturbation!”

Later …. quite some time later, when we …. OK, when I was able to talk about it, he said, “Of course I wasn’t embarrassed. You told me it was OK to do it. Should I have been embarrassed?”

“No,” I said. “You should not have been embarrassed at all.”

And, I thought. Neither should I.

Even the fiercest mothers....

I posted a photo on the Facebook page for Reticulated Writer today of an adult woman wearing a big lion mask, fingers curled into claws, apparently trying to scare a baby who is at most a year old. The photo appears to have been taken right before the baby reacts. Here it is.

(http://nickholmes.tumblr.com/post/30312151677/narnia)

Here's what I wrote about the photo (apologies to those of you who already saw this. I have more to say): "I hate this photo so much. What the hell is wrong with people? Why is childish innocence such a hard thing to just accept and nurture? This woman should be locked in a haunted house with Freddy Kruger for a night. If I saw somebody try to scare Coraline like this, I'd flip the fuck out and this bitch would find a grandmama bear climbing up her lion-headed ass. I really hope she isn't this baby's mother."

After a short conversation in the comments, I remembered just how hard it really is to protect kids from people who are threatening them, especially when it's a mother who's doing the threatening. I remembered how helpless I felt when I couldn't.

Years ago when I was still homeschooling the kids, we met some friends who live near Chicago at the Indianapolis Children's Museum for a day trip. The mom was (and still is) a close online friend, and my son Drake was good friends with her daughter. After a long day of playing at the museum, we all went out to dinner at someplace that might have been Cracker Barrel. It was one of those restaurants with shit for sale and too many people packed into the dining room.

My friend and I did what women friends do. We went to the lady's room together. It was the only quiet place in the restaurant. We were talking and laughing as we washed our hands. We saw each other in real life so seldom, and shared so much online. We were happy about the day, and sad it was over. 

As we laughed about something, a young black woman, a mother,  came in dragging a crying three-year-old by her arm. She shoved the child into a stall, already screaming threats at her. She slammed the door shut and locked it.

I can only paraphrase what she said, because it's been enough years I don't remember exactly. It was something like, "I am going to beat you so hard. How dare you do that do me? How dare you? You are going to wish you'd never fucking been born....." It was brutal language.

Another woman who had come in behind us, quickly washed her hands, looked at us with what could only be a mixture of disgust and guilt, and hurried out the door.

My friend and I stayed. We were frozen, eyes locked, trying somehow through telepathy to figure out what the fuck to do.

In the meantime, the young mother continued shouting and threatening her child, "How dare you hit me in there? You fucking hit me and now I'm going to hit you so much harder. You'll never hit me again. Stop crying! Either you stop or I'll do it right here....." In that vein.

We didn't hear her hit the child. Only threaten to. And the little girl stopped crying when she was ordered to. Three years old and she stopped crying on command so she wouldn't get it worse. I hadn't mastered that by three.

My friend and I made some noise. Cleared our throats. Rattled our paper towels. The shouting and threatening continued for .... you know, it was probably seconds, and not hours as it seemed.

Just as I thought I might make a move, say something, threaten to call the police, the door to the bathroom stall opened and the mother dragged the child out again. She wasn't crying. As she walked by us, the mother glared at both of us as if to say, "What the fuck are you doing to do about it?" And they left.

My friend and I looked at each other in disbelief, tears in our eyes. And for me it was more disbelief that I had witnessed such a thing and done nothing than that I'd heard it happen. I got some pretty rough treatment myself as a child; I've written about that once before. I can barely write about this incident without ducking, wanting to run, my gut clenched with anticipation, waiting for the hit.

That's no excuse. I'm not a child now.

I'm not sure which one of us broke the silence. "Shit. How did that just happen right in front of us and we didn't do anything?"

Why indeed? We're both mama bears. Both fiercely protective of our own kids, any kids. We were furious as it was happening, flooded with adrenaline ... and apparently, helpless to protect a child from her mother.

We went back to our table and told the story. The other family had left, I think -- the one with the mother and child. We both thought we would only have made things worse for the little girl if we'd said anything. The mother was furious. Two older white women interrupting would only have made her madder.

Wouldn't it?

And yes, we agreed it was possible race was an issue. That the mother might have been more embarrassed, angrier at her daughter, because we were white and she was black. That we considered that as we stood there doing nothing. But neither of us thought we would have intervened if the mother had been white either. We just had to be honest and say it mattered. Why not. We couldn't feel worse.

Because that experience pretty much stripped us bare of the illusion of control and protectiveness that was so much a part of us it was our very skin. Both of us felt so .... I'm not sure there's a word for the shock and shame we felt that we had witnessed a child being abused and said not one fucking word to stop it. Not one fucking word. I'm not sure how my friend felt. I felt like everything I knew about myself as a mother had been stripped off me and all that was left was my own cowardice.

And yet ..... we tried to think what we should have done. What we would do if it ever happened again. And we couldn't think of a damn thing. It's OK if you judge us. We did too. But we couldn't think of anything we could have done different that would have made the outcome more positive.

The bottom line was that we knew we couldn't stop it, but we could make it worse. Or we thought we could. The mother didn't hit the child, at least not in that bathroom stall. She didn't do anything illegal. I didn't need my social work degree to know that. But it was abuse. Of that I have no doubt. It's just not the kind that's illegal.

And had we embarrassed her in front of her child, she probably would have done more than shout when they got home. As far as we could tell, once she made the little girl cry and then made her stop, she was satisfied. No way to know.

I cried a good part of the long drive home that night. I lay awake many nights obsessing over what I could have done to make a difference. I imagined myself ripping the door open, grabbing that little girl into my arms and giving the mother a dose of her own medicine. I even imagined handing the child to my friend and beating the shit out of that young mother.

I more often imagined saying, kindly and gently, "Sounds like you're having a rough evening. Anything I can do to help?" And that my friend and I, being the amazing, nurturing women we are, would talk to her and help her see there are better ways to deal with kids and anger. We would fix everything with empathy and experience.

I imagined calling the police, and telling them she had .... what? Yelled at her daughter for hitting her back in the restaurant? Threatened to hit her, but hadn't. I could imagine how that would sound.

I've been indulging in a Sons of Anarchy marathon while I've been recuperating from food poisoning, and I thought, What would Gemma do? She'd stomp the shit out of somebody, is what she'd do. She'd tear the paper towel dispenser off the wall and slam it into young mother's face. Then she'd get really close and threaten to find her and do worse if it ever happened again. And you'd believe it would never happen again. Fiction. Life doesn't work like that.

Much as I chewed and gnawed on that incident, I couldn't think of one goddamn thing I could have done to help that little girl. And it's small comfort to know she can go through shit like that, come out the other side, and still become a different kind of mother. One who doesn't threaten violence or worse. I did.

She shouldn't have to.

So while I like to put up a big, tough, earth mother front about what I'd do if I saw a child being abused -- like in the photo above or worse -- what I know, both from my life and from being a social worker -- is that even the most fierce warriors of the matriarchy sometimes just watch and feel helpless. Even I just stood and felt helpless.

Really the only comfort I have is that my friend is a big, tough mama who doesn't back down from a fight. We're both like that. And if neither of us could think of another way we could have acted, maybe it's one of those situations where we did the best we could and it will never be enough.

Funny, isn't it? What a photo of a woman in a lion head scaring a baby will dredge up?

It's OK if you judge. I have all these years. I still do.