I will not talk about masturbation.....yes, I will

I hate to blame everything on Miss Serendipity. I really do, and I'm sorry I'm posting again so soon. I'm a lousy blogger.

coloring-pages-and-more.com/dot-to-dot.html

But she's done it again. I don't know how to explain these .... dot-to-dots that I notice running through my life.  I know other people don't see them so often, but they are real, the dots and the connections. If I wrote about all of them, I'd need several blogs and more hours in the day. I must share this one though because it has to do with masturbation and I don't think I've ever written about that. Or maybe I have, but I want to again.

Last week I read a post on Jane Pratt's blog, xojane.com, about how her 9-year-old daughter took to class an editor's note Pratt had written for Jane magazine that included a reference to masturbation. The assignment was simply to bring a piece of writing from an adult in her household that didn't have any thing "age-inappropriate" in it. Pratt claims she has talked with her daughter a lot about masturbation and doesn't consider it inappropriate for 8- and 9-year-olds to discuss. And then she wondered if she's the worst mom in the world for letting her daughter take it.

Before I go on, I have to share what went through my head when I read her short post. I have both been a 9-year-old girl and I have raised a 9-year-old girl. Neither of us were thinking so much about masturbation at that age. I was open with my kids about all things sexual when they wanted to talk. In fact my daughter once thanked me for being a sex-positive parent .... awwww. But Jane Pratt says she has "talked to [her] daughter about it plenty." Plenty? How do those conversations go?

Jane: (from the kitchen where she's fixing dinner) Sweetie, please don't play with Mommy's vibrator. You'll run down the batteries and then it won't work when Mommy needs to masturbate.

9-year-old daughter: But, Mom, Barbie and Ken just had sex and he had his orgasm before her. Now he's asleep in the Barbie fun house and she needs to get her cookie masturbate too.

Jane: OK, of course she does Just remember to put it back in the dildo basket by my bed so I can find it when I need it. 

9-year-old daughter: I will, Mommy. Thank you. Barbie says thank you too. (Buuuuzzzzzz.....)

Pratt got a variety of responses from hellz yeah, she should take mommy's masturbation writing into class; fuck 'em if they don't like it to more sensible responses like the one I posted:

Talking to your kids about masturbation is admirable. I talked to mine about it too. And when I did, I told them it was something they should do in private. With boys in particular it’s necessary to have that talk at the "I need to hold on to my wiener 24 hours a day" stage. It's the private part that's important. Both in practice and in speech, masturbation is a culturally sensitive topic. So I also expected they knew better than to get up in front of the class and talk about it, which would include not talking about Mommy talking about it. And I walk the masturbation walk myself. I don't stand up in front of my college English class and talk to them about masturbation. I could, and probably in a way that would entertain and scandalize them way more than thesis statements and annotated bibliographies. But it’s not a dildo I intend to fall on just to prove a point that masturbation is natural and feels good and lots of people and monkeys do it. I don’t think a suggestion to your daughter that she choose a more appropriate piece of writing would have taught her the wrong lesson.

Yes, the  red text is important. I didn't teach a class after I posted that comment until today. I held individual conferences for two days last week instead of meeting with my classes. In fact, by the time I crawled into my class from my death bed today, I'd forgotten entirely about my  assertion that I would never talk about masturbation in class. I was suffering (terribly) from a scratchy throat and a congested head, so we watched several short videos to support our discussion of argument fallacies. One of the videos was a Monty Python clip, which I've posted below. I didn't even notice one of the characters used the word "wanker" in it.

But one of my students, L, did. "He called the guy a 'wanker.' What does 'wanker' mean?" Now earlier in the quarter this guy also said he didn't understand why Michelle Bachman shouldn't eat a corndog in public.

Michelle Bachman giving head to a corndog.

I'm not sure if he's serious or if he's fucking with me, but my syllabus says no questions are stupid. So. "What does 'wanker' mean?"

I stared at him. Several students snickered, but nobody helped me out. They just looked at me with those Lord of the Flies eyes they get sometimes.

"Really, I don't know. Is it somebody who wanks? What does wank mean?" He seemed sincere, damn it.

I sighed. "It means to masturbate. A wanker is a masturbator and to wank is to masturbate. It's a British term." How do you like me now? Giving the etymology and everything.

Another student, E, corrected me. He said, "It's more than just a masturbator. It's a gay guy who masturbates another guy."

"What?" I said. "I've never heard of that."

"It's true," E said. "Look it up. Look it up now."*

"No, I'm not looking it up," I said. "I never wanted to talk about masturbation with you guys in the first place...."

"Why not?" L said. "I do it all the time." I glance over at the interpreter for my deaf student to see if she's getting all this. Yes, I know sign language.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with that, L, but I've just made a fool of myself by talking about it. I just posted a comment on someone's blog last week, after our Monday class, and said I would never talk about masturbation in one of my classes. And now I've said it 37 times, you wanker. I just can't believe the timing." I told them about the post and what I said. I did not show them, and they did beg.

"What's wrong talking with masturbation?" L said. He gets this really sincere look that probably works for him with the girls.

"Nothing is wrong with masturbation." They all laugh. I wait for them to get control. "It's just that we're here to talk about argument fallacies, not wanking."

"Give us an argument fallacy about wanking," someone shouted out.

"No, I'm not talking any more about masturbation. I'm not saying that word again in this class."

See what I mean? Things like this happen to me every day. Can this be coincidence? Or is Miss Serendipity a god, a clock-maker? The woman behind the curtain in the Oz of the Universe? What do you think? Are these dot-to-dots all coincidence, the product of the over-active imagination of someone who needs to toss out her foot-long, 50's style "massager" and buy a bullet or a rabbit?

And the other question is, would you let your 9-year-old daughter take your piece of writing that mentions masturbation to school? Am I really a prude in disguise?

One more thing. Please don't send me any photos of yourself masturbating. I don't think it's all that OK really. (That includes you....and you know who you are.)

* I did, when I got home. It's a popular word in the Urban Dictionary, which is where I get my cool. Look for yourself, ya wanker.

The Weight of Loving Me

A couple of months ago I agreed to do a service at church on poetry. I agreed before I knew the topic, because I tend to say yes and then fake my way through having signed a contract without reading it I'm a professional. Turns out I had to write new poetry--two new poems-- specifically for this service because nothing I've written before was appropriate, for this topic or for church.

I admit I procrastinated on this poem and the other one. I made notes over a couple of weeks, but I didn't start putting the poems together until the afternoon before the service. It took longer than I expected for many reasons:
1. The topic made me cringe.
2. The minister didn't really want me to say "masturbation" from the pulpit.
3. That's none of your business.
4. I thought the entire poem was banal.
5. I was pretty sure I was going to fail...hard.
6. I took a break for several hours and went downtown to party with friends.
I finally went to bed at 4:00am, knowing I'd have to be up at 8:00 to put the final polish on my jumbled up pieces of word shit poems.

Imagine my surprise when my kind and supportive congregation said my poems made them cry and laugh. They asked for copies. One woman wants to send them to her daughter in California. So I thought I might as well post them here. The first one explains my difficulty with the topic. I'll post the second one in a couple of days. Keep in mind, I wrote these poems to be spoken. My fear is that they won't read the same on the page, so pretend you're hearing this on Def Poetry. And, yes, I could upload a podcast, but I'm too fucking lazy busy educating the youth of America.

Loving Me

Rev. Amy says, “Let’s do a poetry service. Will you read yours?”

I say, “Yes, I write poems.”

She says, “The topic is loving oneself.”

I think, Surely she doesn’t mean masturbation!

I say, “I haven’t written any poems about loving myself.”

I think, Because it sounds like either a Hallmark card or an OWL* lesson.

We have a meeting,

Amy, Laura and I, and we say,

“It’s hard to write a poem about loving oneself. We’ll start with how hard it is to say those words

and then we’ll write the ‘I’m super-fantastic’ poem.”

I say, “I’ll write new poems for the service. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”

I start…

…

…

I tap my pen on my desk

tap

tap

tap

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I love me

You should too.

This is not the topic of my poems.

My poems screech around twisting curves at 78 miles per hour.

My poems walk barefoot on hot, gritty sidewalks littered with broken wine bottles, spent bubble gum, and cigarette butts,

or accidentally stumble into minefields of broken promises.

My poems need to be navigated carefully,

not appreciated for their floral scent,

pink bubbles,

rainbow ponies.

And yet the idea of writing about loving myself…

loving me…

feels more dangerous than any bad-ass, angsty, black-leather poem I’ve ever written.

Because back where I come from

loving yourself…loving myself…

looked like showing off

and the punishment for children who showed off could be severe.

Compliments were as rare as type AB blood

and were to be received with denial and shame.

The mantras of my childhood go something like this:

“Little girls should be seen and not heard.”

“You’re not cute.”

“God doesn’t like show offs.”

“Sit down and shut up.”

“You don’t need to go to college. You’ll end up back here married to a farmer anyway.”

 “Stop trying to be better than you are. You’re not better than anybody else.”

Don’t get me wrong. I knew I was loved.

The message was that loving other people and Jesus is OK,

especially in the long run…like eternity.

Acting like you love yourself is obnoxious, and if you persist,

other people won’t like you very much.

God won’t love you.

I learned to equate loving myself with bragging,

showing off,

shame.

Loving myself was wrong.

And so was masturbation.

This is the place in the poem where you expect me to tell you

how I overcame those word wounds and learned to love me

just for who I am, but I told you

my poems aren’t the teacup ride at Disney World.

I have lots of advice for other people about how they

should be kind to themselves,

be gentle with themselves,

love themselves….

What’s harder is knowing how to do it myself.

It has taken a lifetime to deconstruct the girl inside me,

after her bones fused, her muscles grew solid,

her red heart barbed wire-wrapped like the fields of Iowa….

the girl who didn’t dare love herself, but stubbornly wanted to.

And just as long to rebuild a woman who believes…

maybe?...

it’s OK to love myself as I love others.

Maybe it’s OK to stand up at the front of this congregation and sing a song,

and accept compliments afterward with neither denial nor shame…

or to stand up in Joys and Concerns and share a joy

that might sound like I’m bragging.

Maybe it’s OK smile at myself in the mirror and say,

“Hey, doll, lookin’ pretty good today.”

And it’s more than OK that I went to college

and later I went to college again,

and I married a farmer’s son, but I never went back to live on the farm.

Maybe…maybe I’m OK…

or even worth my own love.

As I wrestled with the topic of this poem

I looked in the mirror and said to my reflection,
“I’m supposed to write a poem about loving you

and I don’t know what to say…”

And as I looked into the blue eyes of someone I’ve known all my life,

myself,

she…I…replied,

“I’m not the one who said those things to you,

so why do you keep repeating them?

I wasn’t worried about being seen or heard.

I was a little girl and I just wanted to have fun—

to sing loudly and dance and spin in circles until I was dizzy.

They lied about Santa and the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny;

they lied about God;

they probably lied about you too.

You would have loved me when I was a little red-haired girl.

Why can’t you love me now?”

I looked back at my reflection, and I saw the

blue-eyed toddler who loved to sit on her grandma’s lap and rock,

the shy ten-year-old who hated being teased about her red hair and freckles,

the anorexic teen smoking a Virginia Slims,

and the too-young Air Force officer’s wife, struggling to fit in.

I saw the new mom who swore those words would never come out of her mouth

and they didn’t.

And I saw the older mom who cringed with pride when her daughter,

after a break-up with her boyfriend said,

“I’m hot. I’m gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want me? His loss.”

I wondered if I could go back and tell those other me’s how hard it is

to write a simple poem about loving myself,

or if I could explain to my 90-year-old self how hard it has been to write a poem about loving myself….

And I knew it was time to stop writing this poem,

and move on to the “I’m superfantastic” poem.

See, it’s not easy to deconstruct a child who learned that loving herself was wrong.

It took writing this poem to finally realize,

there was never a reason not to love her in the first place.

*Our Whole Lives, the UU church porn lifespan sexuality curriculum.