A Doctor, not an Elevator

This is fun!  I think it's going to be a weekly feature.

QI am a heterosexual male in my 20s, and I need some help putting a label on my kink/fetish. I usually don’t care much for labels in any aspect of life, but I’m hoping that knowing what to call this may help me find others who share the same interest: I love it when a woman watches me masturbate. She doesn’t have to touch me at all, take off her own clothes, or play with herself. However, she has to enjoy watching me for me to enjoy performing. I have no interest in “flashing” or otherwise imposing myself on someone who doesn’t want to watch. Also, I don’t want to show just anyone; I just enjoy being watched by a woman.

I’ve seen some CFNM porn, but that often seems to be more about humiliation, which I’m not interested in at all. —Wanting a Named Kink

A To start with, are you sure this is a fetish, or an excuse not to have a real sexual relationship with someone?  Be sure to work that out with yourself before you become so attached to your fetish that you're unable to experience the full realm of sexual possibilities.  I'm sure if you go on Craigslist and simply describe what you're into, you'll find like-minded people.  Naming your kink isn't necessarily going to help you find those people, as names are imprecise labels for things - not everybody who labels themselves BDSM likes leather or latex, just like not everybody who shares your fetish (whatever you choose to label it) would be into clothed girls, or interested girls, or girls at all.  Why not simply call yourself a happy wanker, and leave it at that?  Wankerhood is a label you can wear proudly. 

QI’m a gay man who never experimented with girls when I was younger. I’ve been in a relationship for a little over a year now, and it’s great. We have an “open-enough” relationship that allows for some exploration of our sexuality with other people and we talk openly about it. The only thing is, I don’t know how to tell him about this fetish I’ve developed for CFNM. I don’t want to have sex with a woman, but I really want to find one who wants to stay fully clothed while watching me masturbate. I also have a fantasy for a woman to watch me have sex with my BF or another man. Attempts to find a woman via various Web sites have so far been unfruitful. I want to blame the prudes in Minneapolis for this, but I’m starting to think women just aren’t into watching a man get naked and jack off.

How do I ask my boyfriend to get involved in this kink? And how do I find a woman who is into watching? —Horny and Clothed in Minneapolis

A Keep looking for a woman.  Go to queer bars - I know there are plenty in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and the people who frequent them won't be prudes.  Don't keep searching online - that's great for buying books and maybe even shoes, but not necessarily a (fail) safe method for finding a kink buddy.  I don't want to sound like your mother (or mine), but meeting people online can be dangerous as you don't know who is actually representing themselves as what, and what potential commitors of hate crimes could be lurking behind a nice, queer-friendly profile.  Am I being paranoid?  Probably, but better safe than sorry - I've heard a few truly horrible stories from students of mine who have been lured into dangerous situations and ended up in the hospital after going out with people met online.

Anyway, just tell your boyfriend about your kink.  Do you want him to wank too, or watch along with the girl?  Have a specific request before you bring it to him, and don't get upset if he's not into it.

QMy boyfriend and I met about six weeks ago when a guy I met on Craigslist took me over to my then-future boyfriend’s house for a three-way. During the three-way, my then-future boyfriend struggled with a condom and said that they “choked” him. Then he asked if he could stick it in me without a condom. He stated that he had had a vasectomy and then asked me if I had any STIs. I said that I didn’t and he said that he didn’t either. Long story short, we hit it off and thus began a relationship. After a month of blissful, unprotected sex, my boyfriend told me that he has herpes! He said that he got it a long time ago at his bachelor party. I want to dump the motherfucker, but he’s telling me that he hasn’t had an outbreak in three years and that if I really cared about him it wouldn’t make a difference. What do you think? —Didn’t Know I Was Dating Herpes Boy

A  What?  Under no circumstances should you ever have unprotected sex with a stranger you met online, who uses Craigslist to arrange anonymous three-ways, who refuses to wear a condom for a stupid reason.  It's nice that you hit it off, but your exposure to herpes is your own fault for ignoring the cardinal rule of safe sex.  I think if you care about him you can still have a relationship with him, but I don't think either of you are in any kind of position to be in a relationship with him a liar and you a dumbass.  Sorry.

QMy girlfriend and I haven’t had anything resembling sex in months. But anytime I bring it up, she says she doesn’t like to discuss it and that she’d rather “surprise” me with it. That apparently feels more natural, and the mere discussion of sex is a dead turnoff. —What the Fuck?

A What kind of a relationship do you have where you don't have sex?  Or anything resembling it?  You can't have a relationship if you can't talk about, and engage in, sex.  Dump her.  Yesterday.  Clearly she's not ready for this.

If by "resort", you mean, "hell for people who don't drink themselves stupid and are offended by gross come-ons and hate language", then, why yes.

I was reminded today of what was by far the worst modeling job I have ever done by a request that I repeat the experience.  You see, I've been trying lately to spread some good Karma around, both selfishly because I've earned some rather rotten Karma (as have we all) and also because I have just felt the need to be nicer to people I don't particularly like.  My inner Mulder tends to show, you see.  Anyway, there's this girl I know, who is a friend of Mr. Black's, who desperately wants to be my friend, who I thought I needed to be nicer to - otherwise, I never, ever, ever, would have done a Bud Light (or is it Lite?  Hmm.) promotional Flip Cup Tournament at a place called Uncle Fatty's Rum Resort.  Just repeating the name sends a nasty shiver up my spine.  At any rate, she had some emergency and asked me to cover for her at this gig, so I agreed, basking briefly in the glow that comes from helping out a fellow human being.  That glow only lasted a few hours, until I pulled up in front of Tiki Bar hell.

Now I know that anyone who knew me during my grad school days knows that I wasn't always sober, and I won't pretend that I didn't do various stupid things when I was drunk (hahaha insert your own witticism here) and I can't pretend that I didn't have fun then.  I had even been to frat boy bars with my  cohorts and escaped unscathed and pretty much undisgusted.  Uncle Fatty's, though?  I'm not sure words can do justice to it.  For starters, the owner of the bar, who is in his early thirties, was wasted from the moment I got there and spent his time grabbing my ass and being as obscene as possible when asking me about my sexual preferences ("See that girl over there?  Would you let her finger-fuck you while people watched?").  I think it's pretty fair to say that the whole atmosphere of the bar reflected the owner's personality - it was full of barely-21 (I was the oldest person there, other than the owner by almost six years - I know because I had to get everyone's birthdate when they came in), white, middle-class and upper-middle class, crass, straight homophobes who seemed to think it was their right to molest the model on duty (me, in this case) and stumble drunkenly into strange girls and try to make out with them.  Seriously - practically every word out of these people's mouths was a slurred come-on or queer-themed insult.  If it wasn't, "If I was you, I'd take advantage of having a body like that" directed towards me or some other relatively attractive female, it was, "Dude, you're such a fag" or other related comments directed towards male members of the opposing beer pong flip cup whatever the hell it was other team.

I don't want to sound like the crochety old woman complaining about kids these days, but let me tell ya - if what I glimpsed - dull kids drinking themselves stupid the night before finals and, more to the point, seeming to need a stupid game as an excuse to drink and using being drunk as a free pass to be nasty to those around them - is the future of our country, my advice is to pack up and leave.  Now.  I'm not sure whether I was more disgusted or saddened by this seventh circle of hell-in-Chicago.  It was disgusting, for obvious reasons - but none of the kids involved looked like they were even enjoying themselves, especially not when they staggered outside for a smoke and ended up puking on a stranger's shoes instead.

To add insult to injury, as it were, the promotional company that put this all together is just a joke.  I got paid with a handwritten check made out for half the amount owed me, and I have yet to hear back from the person I registered the complaint to.  It's been about... five weeks now.

So the moral to this story, because there is one, I think, is that doing something good for someone else to boost your own balance at the Karma Bank will backfire.  That, or this was karmic retribution for some of the stupid things I've done while drinking.  Or maybe the moral is that kids these days are really stupider than they were when I was in school.  Or that a place called Uncle Fatty's Rum Resort can only be a place of pain and suffering.

Here is some awesome stuff that you should check out.

The X Files - My ongoing obsession.  When Severin first suggested we watch it, I was skeptical, mainly because it was all the rage back in the 1990's and I don't tend to trust things that are all the rage.  But the episodes are strong, and are (with a few notable exceptions) very well-written.  The characters are unique and well-developed.  I really believed Mulder, Scully, and Skinner as real people.  Oh yeah, and who can resist a series that has aliens, government patsies, conspiracies, shit blowing up, and David Duchovny?  Who, by the way, is sexier than ever these days.  Just thought I'd add that.

Watchmen - A really great graphic novel full of "psychological realism", as the jacket says.  It's accurate, at least, in this case.  An interesting look at the idea of superheros, both as people and as pieces of the greater picture.  I'm assigning it to my students this coming semester, so stay tuned for possible commentary on that.

The White Stripes - I really, really hated them the first few times I heard them, but then something clicked, and I just can't get enough.  I only listen to them in the car, though, because Severin loathes them.  Maybe that's it - it's good driving music.  I think they're kind of overrated, but still pretty awesome.

Leonard Nimoy - Mr. Nimoy is one of the nicest people I have ever met.  I had the priveledge of being photographed by him last November, and words really can't do him justice.  He's intelligent, gentle, and genuinely interested in other people.  His wife is pretty awesome, too.

The Grand Canyon - Even if you hate nature, it will wow you.  Seeing it from an airplane is not enough.  Just trust me.

Addis Abiba - An Ethiopian place in Evanston.  Ethiopian food is my new favorite cuisine.  Lots of vegetarian options, and it's not so heavily spiced (like Indian food) that all of the dishes taste vaguely alike and the ingredients don't stand on their own.  Injera is better than forks.

Crazy for God - I'm not entirely satisfied with this memoir as I was hoping it would spend more time reflecting on the author's (Frank Schaeffer) reasons for and contentment with his move from evangelical fundamentalism to the secular world (more or less).  I found it enlightening and sometimes hilarious - I was raised in a Schaeffer home and made my own journey out of the church... it's always interesting to me to see other people's journeys. 

And... that's it for now.  I have to go lead a seminar and have some iced tea.  Horray for iced tea!  Horray for Cillian Murphy!  Horray for you!

Those of you familiar with Dan Savage's column, Savage Love, know that every year, to raise funds for charity, he auctions off the right to answer his mail to some schmoe like me.  Some of you who know me know that I have often talked about starting an advice column of my own.  Since I have had no idea of what to write about for a few days, I'm bringing the concept of Dan Savage-for-Charity to my blog, only without the money for charity part.  Behold, Vivian Black's answers to this week's Savage Love letters.

Q My boyfriend and I both like porn and toys, and we’re obviously open about everything and often play with them together. But recently he posed an interesting question that left me feeling like a prudish conservative: If virtual-reality technology is developed such that one can have a sexual encounter with a computerized person (insert favorite famous wanna-fuck object here: Brad Pitt, Jessica Alba, whoever), would that be too close to cheating? He says that it’s just a face attached to a sex toy and nothing more. If porn is OK and sex toys are OK, he reasons, why not combine the two? But I’m feeling a little jealous of my boyfriend’s virtual fuck buddy of the future. What’s your take? —Worried About Virtual Promiscuity

A To start with, I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion, and therefore "obvious" that you and your boyfriend are open about "everything" because you both like porn and toys.  Playing with toys and watching porn doesn't automatically make you the most sexually enlightened people ever to grace Steve's green earth, nor does it mean that you will have a relationship in which you can, say, talk openly about your changing worldviews or your feelings about David Duchovny without fearing the ridicule of the other.  If you want me to believe you're open about everything, and I don't see why you should care if I believe it or not, instead of talking about your love-o-porn, you should tell me about the last time you admitted to something really, really embarrassing, like actually enjoying Pauly Shore movies.

That being said, you should ask yourself why a virtual fuck buddy of the future makes you nervous and jealous.  My guess is that you really don't have the open, honest, satisfying relationship you want to think that you have, and all of the sex toys in the world aren't going to make up for real intimacy, which may be what you're lacking.  Or maybe you're worried that your boyfriend is going to pick Cillian Murphy as his virtual fuck buddy, and that disturbs you on some level.  Whatever it is, I don't think it's prudish-ness or issues pertaining to monogamy that are troubling you here.  Try tending to the inter-personal part of your relationship, and forget about sex technology of the future, because we'll all probably have been replaced by robots serving an evil alien overlord by then anyway.

Q OK! I’m a bisexual woman who dated this amazing, beautiful, bisexual guy who was a bartender at the Gay 90’s in Minneapolis. (Shout out!) Obviously it didn’t bother me that he liked men, but the thing I just could not tolerate was that after he would come on my stomach he would lick it alllllllllllllll up!!! OMFG, I almost threw up every time!

I never said anything, because I’m not one to knock someone’s kinks as long as they’re safe and respectful. But I’m dying to know if this is a gay thing or did he have some type of protein deficiency? —Jizzed Upon in Minneapolis

A Ok!  OMFG!!!  Like, that is totally gross - eww!  I so can't believe you didn't actually puke on him, LMAO.  IMHO, while that sounds, ya know, really unsanitary and shit, at least he's not taking a dump on you, so what the hell are you worried about?  At least you won't get pregnant this way, LOL!

Oh, and a protein deficiency?  WTF?  A gay thing?  Well, he's not gay if he's sleeping with you, now, is he?  Maybe you should get yourself checked for a protein deficiency, and stop worrying about what your boyfriend does with his own precious bodily fluids.

QI’m writing on behalf of a friend of mine who is too tired and disgusted to write. The advice is too late for her, but I was wondering if you could send out a few hints to those who partake in golden showers.  My friend is a very nice landlady.  She rented her basement apartment to a young woman whose boyfriend visited on weekends.  After a couple of months, the tenant moved out and my friend went down to clean.  The place smelled disgusting and required hours upon hours of cleaning.  The rugs in every room were soaked through and the walls were covered with dried urine.  She had to rip out all the carpeting.  I just assumed people had the sense to do golden showers in the tub.  So, Dan, what are the golden rules? -Irked Lady Landlord

A I find it very hard to believe that someone could or would live in a place with the walls splashed with urine and the carpets soaked with it if they had any choice, which obviously your friend's tenant did.  I also find it hard to believe that one person with a boyfriend who visits occasionally could possibly wreak all of that havoc in a few months, as having the carpets soaked with urine would imply that so much was constantly dumped on it that there was never any time for it to evaporate, and that the quantity of urine was greater than that of an average person.  Now, how did your friend know it was urine?  Maybe the tenant was a mad scientist type who was doing a lot of work with ammonia.  Or maybe she kept a pony, two large dogs, a cow, and some cats in the apartment that avoided detection.  Or maybe your friend is a part of the local liar's club and made this story up, much like the early stories of cattle mutilations.  At any rate, this story sounds fishy, and why are you automatically blaming kinky sexual acts for all of the destruction?  Are you anti-sex?  Are you anti-kink?  This letter sounds pretty damn kinkist to me.

The golden rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and it's a pretty great rule to live by in general.  The same applies to people peeing on each other - be sure it's mutually desired, and be sure it's not wrecking anyone's property, that is, unless you'd want your property peed on, too.

Q I've been reading your column pretty much since you started writing is in the early-mid 1990s.  When I moved to New Orleans, pre-interwebs, and discovered you weren't represented in any local papers, I had a friend clip and mail your column every week so I wouldn't miss out.  The reasons for the longevity of my interest are not only because you write good'n'stuff, but because your advice always nails it.  But while I feel you're correct 100 percent of the time, I'm curious if you feel that you've ever made a mistake.

Are you infallible?  Any regrets?  -Curious in Louisiana

A Thank you for the ego boost, but you made a mistake - I haven't been writing since the early to mid nineties, but I was alive then and I was probably dishing out advice to whoever asked to it in spite of my young age.  I'm glad you think my advice is always right, which is why I'm advising you to invest in the future of this column by paying off the student loans that have enabled me to write good-n-stuff.

I like to think that I'm infallible, but I have said a few pretty nasty things to Mr. Black that I wish I could take back.  Also, I used to dress like a goth, which makes me as human as the rest of you.  My biggest regrets include borrowing too much money in college, not meeting Mr. Black five years ago, my nature-hating phase, and that tattoo of William Shatner on my butt.

My vacation started on Friday, and I'm already running into the whole "brain rot" thing.  I don't have anything that I'm behind on or that needs to get done before August 10.  I am working on a long-abandoned fiction project, but I simply don't have the mental energy to work on it all day.

When my brain gets tired, I find myself classifying random things, so that's what I'm writing about today.  Here are some things that I've considered over the past few days, put into various categories and rated according to how quality they are (based on my perception of quality) on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best.  The categories are: Awesome - the thing is unutterably great, both because I like it and because of inherent quality; Overrated - the thing is said to be great, but is really lacking in one or more important areas; Underrated - the thing is pretty great, but largely ignored or spit upon; Crappy - the thing just plain sucks; Liked - I like the thing, but it's not necessarily based on inherent quality.  Here are a few.  Maybe I'll write about more later.

Vegetarian meat substitutes (4/10) Overrated - I think meat is gross.  A lot of other vegetarians do, too.  The ones that don't and are vegetarian solely for political or health reasons are irritated when meat subs don't adequately replace the real thing, which they never do.  Vegetarians who don't like meat won't want something that is a facsimile of the real, icky thing.  It's creepy, usually too salty, and generally has a nasty aftertaste of some kind of chemical substance that's supposed to smell/"taste" like chicken or beef or whatever.  So why are they so popular on the menu of vegetarian and vegan restaurants?  They do have some good points - they're easy to prepare and serve, and bringing veggie dogs or burgers to a cookout is the simplest way of not being anti-social and still not being stuck with salad. 

Peter Jackson (3/10) Overrated - Hack.  Anyone with access to a big budget can make a decently entertaining movie.  Not anyone can write a coherent adaptation that doesn't leave a lot of loose ends and isn't blatantly, offensively racist.  Not everyone can adequately direct a cast and coax real emotions and believable delivery and interaction out of them.  Hiring good people to build sets, buying quality materials to build your movie out of, hiring a good editor, and so forth isn't impressive.  Of course, I can't deny that the finished products or Herr Jackson are pretty - and I can't even deny that I enjoyed watching the Lord of the Rings movies with Severin.  But I can definitely say that it was in spite of Peter Jackson's direction and at times awkward adaptation that I enjoyed them.

Eames Lounge and Ottoman (10/10) Awesome - Speaking of pretty, this is a fundamental piece of mid-century design that is not only fabulous to look at, but is well-constructed and extremely comfortable.  In fact, I nearly fell asleep in one the last time I was in Design Within Reach.  This is a chair that is well-suited to many body types, has structural integrity, and is clean and iconic.  It could fit into my parents' 1914 home as seamlessly as in our modern loft.  I am in love with Eames design, but this piece really takes the cake as far as AWESOME is concerned.

James Bond (Sean Connery Bond, prior to Diamonds Are Forever) (7/10) Underrated - James Bond movies are full of subtle humor, great design, and the zeitgeist of the 1960's in a way that most people seem to overlook due to the plethora of women in bikinis and weird ways to die.  Saltzman and Broccoli, the producers of the Bond movies, also produced Help! and A Hard Day's Night, two other fine examples of zeitgeist and good filmmaking.  James Bond movies are coherent, entertaining, and valuable cultural artifacts.  And the poster art, generally, is fantastic.

Tattoos (5/10) Overrated - I have three myself, and I love my tattoos.  In fact, I'm considering getting another.  However, I put a lot of thought into my tattoos, as I know other people do.  However, I have seen tattoos, as a medium, more often abused than not... just go to the nearest frat bar, or Trixie bar, or New Jersey to see what I mean.  Having a tattoo isn't cool, and most designs are ugly and poorly executed anyway.  What's cool is having a well-placed, beautifully done piece of art that you love and can carry around with you forever.  Thanks, Nick Colella!

Photobooths (10/10) Awesome - Dude.  And I'm using that in a gender-neutral sense.  There's something so awesome about getting into a machine that was built long before I was born and mugging for a camera that took pictures of people who were once as young and silly as I am now but are now old and wise or, possibly, dead.  It's a link with the past, and it's fun. 

Mystery Men (5/10) Liked - I wouldn't say this is a question of something that's over- or under- rated.  It just is.  And I find it hilarious.  No questions asked.  I would hardly say it qualifies as a good movie, though.

I remember when I used to title all of my e-mails.  I was in college, and I was obsessed with e-mail (no more so than I am now, really, but now at least I have a reason to check it frequently - I might have students with unanswered questions or have people who are interested in hiring me for a modeling gig).  I used it to stalk the singer of my favorite band, who I am still in touch with, and stayed out all night with last time he was in Chicago.  He adores Eames and cooking and is the only person, other than Severin, who shares all of my views on James Bond.  All of the e-mails I sent to him back in the stalking days had weird titles - random things, "The Way to Grey Gardens Is Not an Easy One" or "And then he said to me, he said, 'Frank', he said..." or whatever.

Once I started doing serious creative writing workshops, though, my ability to effectively title things ended.  Of course, that's assuming that random e-mail titles to a stranger you're "stalking" are effective, which they're probably not - but I couldn't seem to title anything.  An early workshop leader let me get away with calling my fiction things like "Untitled Story #3" and "500 Words or Less".  I was happy with that, and I thought it gave me, as a writer, some kind of gimmicky coolness - "Oh look," a potential agent would say, "her stories stand on their own.  They don't even need titles.  I think I can get her a five book deal right away."  When I got into graduate school, I thought that I could still get away with untitled work, but no such luck.

Truthfully, my memories of my first creative writing workshop in Iowa are vague.  I remember meeting my once-and-future ex (well, until Severin, who is not a future ex) there and thinking he was a snob.  I remember saying something unfortunate and rather mean about my best friend's story, not realizing how poorly phrased my "constructive" comment was.  I remember our professor being a bitch, and my best friend and I still do a toast to that when we see each other.  I don't really even remember the piece I worked on in that workshop, but I do remember that I had to give it a title.  I grudgingly slapped on something stupid and left it, knowing that "Untitled Story About Rape" would have been a better title overall.

I had the same problem in subsequent graduate workshops.  In my creative non-fiction class, I tried to name my memoirs the same way I named my critical papers - "Culture and Ethics: Abusive Relationships in the Christian College Environment".  I didn't get away with it.  I remember at that point I was having an educational crisis, wondering whether I should pursue creative writing, like I had originally intended to, or go into literature, theory, and rhetoric.  The issue with titles may well have been the last straw that forced me over onto the side of the lit crit people.  I was tired of all of this creative writing bullshit, I hated creative writers, and I never wanted to read another piece of fiction again, unless it was critically, as a scholar.  Of course, I had already done most of my work towards a double specialization in lit crit and creative writing at this point, so I decided to take my last workshops and finish up.  I may stop hating writing, I decided, and my creative non-fiction professor thought I had talent.

I had no better luck titling work in my fiction workshops, so I started slapping random titles on things and making up reasons, on the fly, as to why they were good titles for my work.  My professor didn't buy it, but accepted it good naturedly, always letting me know that a good title is vital to a good piece of fiction.  My distaste for writing and writers eased up, which is a good thing, because I ended up getting stuck doing a novel for my thesis. 

Don't get me wrong.  I had a great thesis adviser, and I learned more from her while working on my novel than I did in all of the workshops I took put together.   I even had fun.  I call it getting "stuck" doing a novel, though, because my original plan was much different - nobody would advise it with a remote control, though.  It involved Raymond Chandler and masculinity.  Of course, the thesis adviser I ended up with, who is very progressive, would have done it in a heartbeat, but as a creative writing professor, she had to advise a creative writing thesis.  Fair enough.

So I managed to write a 300 page novel about Lois Lane (the longest thesis submitted to the English department, at least at that point) and got overwhelmingly good feedback on it from my thesis committee.  I had a lot of problems writing it, and a lot of issues that I still feel I should probably straighten out before shopping it to agents, but the biggest problem?  The title.  I kid you not.  The title was terrible when I submitted it to my committee, it's been terrible every time I've send the manuscript out to agents, and it's still terrible.  In fact, I can't think of a new title that's anything less than more terrible.  I have problems with titles.

The funny thing is, I always make fun of The X-Files episode titles.  Almost always.  But that's okay - I kid because I love.

6

a.m. Clark Kent wakes up and in three minutes he’s out of bed.  He never wakes later, and he never falls back to sleep, no matter how late he’s been up the night before.  Sometimes he wonders if sleep is simply a formality for him, but he would miss the rest his dreams afford.

            10

minutes in the shower.  Exactly.  Standing under the cold water, he examines his hands.  He tries to see them as a part of himself, he flexes his fingers, makes them into fists.  His body is as foreign to him as his schedule is familiar.

            3

cups of coffee.  He sits, nursing the dregs of the third, and thinks of Lois.  Coffee is her habit, not his.  He grew to like it, though, and he does not know now if he could do without.  He does know that Lois is still asleep, and he knows he will have to spend another day keeping her at a distance.  He lets the coffee linger on his tongue.   

            7

o’clock sees him at the office, in front of his typewriter.  Superman Averts Nuclear Disaster.  President Awards Superman for Bravery (Again).  Superman Saves Kitten from Flooded Basement.

            9

times in the past hour Lois has come to his desk on ostensible errands.  She even asked him if he had any coffee filters.  She keeps her own coffeemaker on her desk, not wanting to use the communal one.  He watches her walk away and turns back to his work: Local bar catches on fire, patrons saved by Superman.

            2

p.m. he takes his break, pouring a cup of burnt coffee from the communal pot.  Lois is nowhere to be seen.  He goes to the roof, leaning on the railing, and looks at the people below, hurrying singly, lingering in pairs.  Lois was the one who had shown him how to get up here on his first day at the Planet.

            5

o’clock.  Quitting time.  Enough local news for one day.  Lois, wearing her red raincoat, stops by his desk, wonders if he would like to have dinner with her.  Or a drink.  There’s a movie showing at The Music Box by Fellini, would he like to go?  He says he has things he needs to do.  He takes his time with his coat and wanders out, turning the lights off.

            8

o’clock.  It is almost dark, and Lois’s movie is playing.  Clark Kent slips into the back of the theatre, alone.   The story on the screen is simple, a man who makes all the wrong decisions, who abuses his ability to be close to people.  Clark Kent wishes he had that privilege.   

            4

phone booths, empty, lie in his hurried path home.

            1

message on his answering machine, a hang-up.  One bottle of beer left in the refrigerator.  One bedroom, bed neatly made, sleeps one.  One woman in a red raincoat, one more cup of coffee, one phone booth, out of service.    

I'm at work right now, sitting in the office, freezing because the college is air-conditioned to within an inch of my life.  I have two hours before I have to be in class, and because this is the last day of the session and my students are giving presentations, I don't have anything preparation work or anything I have to do.  It's all very good, but it puts me in danger of curling up under my desk for a nap, George Costanza style.

So I'm writing instead.
 
Mr. Black and I got married in Las Vegas at the Graceland Chapel.  Yes, we also got an Elvis impersonator.  We drove out to Vegas for the wedding and drove back for the honeymoon, stopping at the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Sedona, Santa Fe, Roswell, Holbrook, Amarillo... not necessarily in that order.  My memory can get easily overwhelmed, which is why I write things down, but I don't have my notebook with honeymoon notes in it with me just now.

We decided to go well out of our way to stop in Roswell because the 60th annual UFO Festival just happened to be going on during our trip out west.  We had both been curious about Roswell and its people and culture for a long time, and we'd never been to a UFO Fest, and Dean Haglund (Langley from the Lone Gunmen of X Files fame) was one of the guests there.  It seemed like a good idea.  We had to drive about five hours straight south from Santa Fe to get there, and as we drove through the unlit, empty desert, we opened the moonroof and I looked for strange lights in the sky while Mr. B drove.  We pulled off to the side of the road to  gawk at the stars together, and being in that open, flat area I felt vulnerable to the unknown and found myself tensing up, waiting for something to come out of the sky to crush us both.  I'm sure had a plane flown overhead, my brain would have interpreted it as a UFO and I would have  just barely not wet myself.

It's strange to me how nature and darkness and open spaces can affect different people differently.  At the Grand Canyon, I was comfortable  in the dark, looking at the stars and the bats and listening to the sounds of nature.  An old friend of mine gets his sense of peace and joy from backpacking in the desert - from being alone with the silence and darkness and stark landscape.  Some of my friends from Iowa were very into skywatching - laying on their backs in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere was pleasurable.  I had gone with them several times, and found the sky full of stars breathtaking and wondrous, and wished that those same stars were visible from Chicago.  Outside of Roswell, though, in the cool, silent desert night, I felt more like a character from a Lovecraft story who is terrified by the infinite, clear sky and feels oppressed by open spaces.  I made my way back to the car quickly, and Mr. Black followed, voicing some of the same feelings I was experiencing.  Maybe it's just the power of suggestion, I suggested.  Strange things happen in the desert, after all, especially outside of Roswell.*

The city of Roswell, as opposed to the desert and night around it, was not in the least strange or threatening.  It consisted on a main street and a downtown area (there was an abandoned office for the Libertarian Party there, too), as well as some outlying strip malls and fast food restaurants.   There was some kind of military school, I think, on the outskirts of Roswell, and a park, and the civic center, which is where the UFO Fest was held.  The streetlights had alien eyes painted on them and most of the businesses on main street had some kind of alien theme to them - there was the UFO museum, Area 51 (which is run by a nice elderly couple, and which is where we had our one real conversation with a local), the Cover-Up Cafe (literally a Denny's where all of the "Denny's" signs and stuff had been covered up by brown paint or canvas with the words "Cover Up" printed on it), and more cheap alien souvenir shops than we were expecting.  We tried to breakfast at the Cover-Up Cafe, but there was nothing vegan on the menu so we went to the Christian business in town - I don't recall the name of it, but it referenced Heaven instead of aliens.  I ordered a roasted veggie plate and coffee and was surprised by the aggressively evangelical tone of the place.

After breakfast, Mr. Black and I walked around the downtown area, growing more depressed by the minute.  Roswell has one thing to put it on the tourist map, and while there was plenty of reference to Visitors from Beyond, none of it was terribly tourist-friendly or varied.  It wasn't quite kitschy enough to be in the same level of awesome as the Wigwam Motels and it wasn't informative enough to answer our questions about the UFO stories and culture.  It wasn't well-kept enough to be pleasing to the eye, but it wasn't run-down enough to be interesting.  We went into the Area 51 gift store and diorama exhibit and wandered around, discussing what it must be like to live in Roswell.  One of the employees there - a face painter - overheard us and volunteered that Roswell is a horrible place to live.  Apparently there's no local economy other than what's generated by tourism, and there's not much of that for obvious reasons; apparently the mayor of Roswell and a good section of the population want to capitalize more on the UFO angle, but an equally large and better-funded segment of the population, namely the fundamentalist and evangelical churches in Roswell (of which there are more per capita than anywhere else in New Mexico, if our source is correct) were continuously fighting against the aliens because, apparently, capitalizing on the "Roswell crash" is going to send a lot of people to hell, and aliens are really minions of Satan.  Apparently the adults in Roswell are alcoholics and the kids are drug addicts, and relatively few people make it out - those few, like our source, tend to get pulled back over and over due to family and other personal concerns.

After being thoroughly depressed by the report on the state of Roswell, we drove over to the civic center for the UFO Fest.  Now, neither of us were quite sure what to expect.  I think I expected it to be more like a gaming or sci-fi convention, with people walking around in costumes, with large forums and a variety of speakers, activities, and enough attendees that it was difficult to get from one booth/conference room to another.  Actually, it was pretty empty.  To my disappointment, no one was wearing a costume.  We stopped at a booth to look at books on government conspiracies, sampled some local New Mexican wine at another, made awkward conversation with an author hawking his book, which he compared to a Robert Ludlum novel, and were stopped by a middle-aged, tanned woman with white hair and a gentle voice.

My exposure to the UFO culture has mostly come from The X-Files and books like Carl Sagan's book about science being a candle in the dark (I don't remember the title of it).  I expected to meet a lot of paranoid people with varying levels of education and with varying reasons to believe in extraterrestrial life.  I knew that there was some new-ageiness related somehow to this culture, but I wasn't expecting someone like Cindy - a multiple experiencer (NOT abductee - we did learn that there are two types of people who claim experiences with EBEs, and that abductees generally look at whatever they experienced as negative and traumatic, and people in Cindy's camp claim positive, life-changing encounters) who was surprisingly (to me, at least) educated, well-spoken, and down-to-earth.  Cindy talked to Mr. Black and I about her life and her encounters, and told a strangely moving story of pulling off the highway to tend to a bird that had flown into her windshield.  She held our hands and told us that we were descended from the Andromedans and that her beings - the alien visitors who stayed with her and helped guide her intuition - told her to tell us that we were going to live happy, productive lives.  She also gave us one of her sculptures and gave us tips on meditation and how to contact her beings.  Then she hugged us, and I, who hate having strangers touch me, hugged her back.

Mr. Black and I walked away somewhat dazed.  What surprised me was how logical and reasonable her beliefs sounded coming from her, and how she didn't seem any less in touch with reality (go ahead and laugh here, but remember - you weren't there) than I did.  I liked her, in fact, more than I liked a lot of the people I meet over the course of my comings and goings.  She was someone who had real inner peace, and felt fulfillment and joy from her life, and wherever that came from - whether from her beliefs or some life experience or maturity or whatever - she had it in spades, more so than any of the religious people I've encountered who claim to have it, and definitely more than my colleagues who claim to love their work and be totally fulfilled by helping educate future generations.

Mr. Black and I bough some action figures from a booth selling toys to add to our toy shelf, got our auras read (when in Rome...), and looked for Mr. Dean Haglund.  We found his booth and a note from him promising to be back at 1:00pm.  It was nearly noon by that point, and we were counting on Dean to be the highlight of our day, so we decided to wait.  We wandered around the rest of the indoor part of the festival, found it depressing, purchased three bottles of the New Mexican wine, and took it to the car.  There were a few carnival-style concession stands set up outside the civic center, so we got sno-cones and stood around eating them.  We made conversation with a couple who had turned their van into an RV - the man was skinny and wore a straw cowboy hat and offered us Miller Lite.  We declined.

At 1pm, we went back inside to find Dean.  We wandered around the displays again, coming back to his empty booth at 1:15 - and so on until 2:00.  At that point we were hungry and exhausted, so we decided to go get a late lunch and then come back and check in on Dean.  How could he forsake us this way?  Dejected, we made our way to a Mexican restaurant that clearly used to be a Chinese buffet.

By the way - good Mexican food being available all over the southwest is a myth.  A myth!!  We ate at every Mexican place we found, and found Pilsen to be a better source for Mexican food by far.  Mr. Black and I discovered that in the southwest, Mexican cuisine is served with a side of rancid aftertaste and probably, for lesser stomachs, explosive diarrhea.   This Chinese-cum-Mexican place was no different - in fact, it was the worst yet, and led to me spending a good ten minutes lying on the restaurant's filthy bathroom floor in agony, because I was convinced that I was going to vomit, or my bowels were going to explode, or my stomach was going to explode, or all three, resulting in a most impressive death.

Dean wasn't back at his post by 3pm, and we had a schedule to keep so we packed up and bid Roswell good-bye, planning to write to Dean when we got home.  I have to give props to Dean Haglund for revealing via e-mail a great sense of humor about Roswell Mexican food and its effects, and based on his horrible experience with the Roswell crash site tour, which kept him from his adoring fans, my last word about Roswell is to stay away from strange Roswellians with school buses.

*Yes, I know that most of the UFO sightings, etc. took place near Groom Lake, which isn't anywhere near Roswell.  But still, it's the Roswell mythos that matters.

This post is dedicated to Chad Wolfe, who sometimes refers to himself as a motherfucker and is always a reliably good person to talk about David Lynch with.  I remember going to the local Brazilian bar in Ames with him once and discussing the ISU bondage club (Cuffs, it was called) and lighting Drambuie on fire.  That was before some drunken idiots started a fire in one of the frat boy bars through lighting shots and ruined the fun for the rest of us.  Last time I checked, Chad Wolfe did not like narcotics but did like teaching composition. 

This is an elaboration on that codeine story for you, Chad.

The January I was sixteen, I took a plane from O'Hare in Chicago to the airport in Frankfurt and then got on another plane, an airbus from the 1960's that smelled like stale cheese, and landed in Zagreb, Croatia.  My luggage got lost on the way and I had to wait five days for it to be tracked down and dropped off at the airport, and another day or two to figure out how to get into Zagreb to pick it up.

I was really happy to be there, though, in spite of having to wash my underpants in the sink every night for seven days.  (I won't go into explaining why I was there - no, I don't have family there - it's kind of a time I don't talk about, although I can thank Leonard Nimoy for helping me ease into actually being comfortable with the subject again.  That is another story, though - stay tuned!)  I was working with some students, kids about my age, mostly, but some adults and younger children, to help them learn English to improve their job prospects.  I was excited about meeting new people and living in a new place, and I was fitting in better than I had ever fit in at home - too well, in fact, as I managed to pick up the especially bad strain of pneumonia that was going around.  I picked it up almost right away, but didn't go to the doctor because my insurance information was in my suitcase (how much are you willing to bet I never did that again?), and I thought that I was more or less invincible.  How dare a pesky illness keep me down in my hour of radiant triumphant joy?

By the second week I was there, the matriarch of the family I was living with was tired of hearing me cough and cough and wheeze and cough and couldn't stand to watch me sweat in the dead of winter.  She schlepped me over to the doctor, who spoke to her in Croatian, and spoke at me in Croatian, and gave me a big bottle and told me in English accompanied by gestures to drink it when my coughing was too bad.  I could handle that.  Back at the house, my Croatian mother made me a saucepan full of tea and honey, wrapped me up in a blanket and scarf around my neck, and told me to read a book and drink my tea and stay home from class that night.

By this time, I had met a boy - a man, really, as he was in his early twenties.  He was a volunteer at the school, in a way - he was in the army and would go AWOL during the time the classes met to help out.  His English was fluent and colored by a pleasant Croatian accent.  The crush was mutual.  I didn't want to miss seeing him as I never knew if and when he was going to be either moved to another base or sent into a skirmish of some sort (this was the 90's, after all).  I decided no pneumonia or admonitions from my host were going to keep me from going to teach, so I took matters into my own hands.

I opened the bottle.  It smelled like cough syrup, and I took a swig.  I waited half an hour, and the coughing didn't subside.  I drank some more.  My coughing went away somewhat, so I finished the bottle, discarded my blanket wrapping for my coat, and got on the tram to the school, vaguely wondering why my head felt so weird.

Can you guess where this is going?  Can you?  I'll give you a clue - there were copious amounts of codeine in that bottle.

I wish I had a hilarious classroom scene to recount here, but the truth is, I don't remember much except feeling light all over and laughing and not comprehending anything that was going on around me.  I do remember being removed from in front of my classroom by the boy I liked and being led into an empty room in the school, sat down, and force-fed some unsweetened Turkish coffee before being put into a military vehicle.  I remember waking up in my temporary home, on the couch, with my coat taken off and spread over me, in a panic because I couldn't recognize where I was.  It was late afternoon, and in spite of my panic, I couldn't keep my eyes open.

My Croatian mom patiently told me that I shouldn't drink a whole bottle of cough medicine at once, but it wasn't until I told the story to my best friend later that I learned that codeine was a narcotic, and I had been high for the first time in my life. 

I had hoped, once I had recovered from my codeine overdose, that it would have somehow magically relaxed the pneumonia out of my body, but no such luck.  I was sick for another three weeks, but wouldn't go near any cough medication except for the tea and honey that was constantly thrust upon me. 

One of the classes I teach is a writing about literature course, which is a combination of composition and intro to lit.  It's my favorite course, and I have a lot of leeway with it, which is great - unfortunately, I seem to have a difficult time with choosing texts and assignments that are easily within the grasp of most college freshmen.

That's not to say that my students are dumb or incapable - nothing could be farther from the truth.  Many of them are downright brilliant.  What I forget, though, is that most of them are 18 or 19 and lack the exposure to twentieth century history, critical theory, film, philosophy, and stupid trivia that I have.  And that, as young adults fresh out of high school, they are easily distracted by some types of sex.

I went to a Christian college for my undergrad work - a tiny, private school in New York.  My English teacher wasn't squeamish about what he assigned for us to read - a student complained once about a homo-erotic short story he had assigned and he shrugged and asked them if they had read the Bible recently.  It may not contain homo-eroticism, but it doesn't shy away from graphic descriptions of sex and forbidden sexual activities.  My college English teacher seemed to simply accept sex in literature as part of an ancient and, perhaps, holy tradition.  I guess I simply assumed that if a bunch of Christian kids could handle the readings he chose with very little complaint or off-topic discussion, sex in literature in the college classroom wasn't a problem.

The other night, Severin and I watched the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated and it touched on the strange relationship between Americans and sex, eroticism, and nudity in media.  It seems as though we are afraid of it, as if sex is dirty and the human body is a source of shameful fascination (with an emphasis on shameful).  I know I'm not saying anything new here, and it's probably pretty clear where I'm going with this - I agree.  I agree that Americans have a juvenile and destructive attitude towards sex; I believe that, in spite of the sexual revolution, frank discussion of sexuality remains a taboo topic and so any kind of presentation of or discussion of it is tinged with back-alley, porno-theatre, peep show dirtiness.  I think that more exposure to sex, sexuality, and non-sexual nudity, in an open and non-pornographic, non-exploitive way, would help Americans to have a more mature view of the beauty and joy of sex.

(My mother would have a heart attack if she read that.)

This does relate to my writing about literature course.  I used a couple of texts that freaked students out last time around - Twin Peaks and Fun Home.  TP is, of course, the David Lynch/Mark Frost production that aired in the early 1990's and FH (please excuse the abbreviations, I'm lazy) is a graphic novel that deals with a young woman coming to grips with the death of her father, his homosexuality, and her own.  It deals with sexuality very openly and there are a few scenes in it that depict intimate moments - not in a pornographic (or even graphic) way.  TP has a lot of talk about sex and deals with the dark world of teen prostitution and masochistic sexuality.  They represent opposite ends of the spectrum, with TP being dark and violent and FH showing sex as intimate, loving, and pleasurable.

Now what freaked students out about TP wasn't the sex.  They didn't bat an eye when Laura Palmer was talking about how much it turned her on when her mystery man tried to kill her or when Jacque Renault described how the poker chip got into Laura's stomach.  What freaked them out was Cooper's dream with the Man from Another Place and David Duchovny showing up as Denis/e Bryson (in a dress and wig.  And he doesn't make a bad looking woman, either, considering.  This role is one reason why I love El Duchovno, but I digress.).  They were bothered by the owls and somewhat irritated by all of the talk about the Black Lodge.  Not once did one of them bring up the disturbing way in which sex and violence had become one.  In TP, they had plenty to complain about and be disctracted by, but it wasn't sex.

I was concerned that assigning FH would be a bad move because I thought that the students might fixiate on the fact that part of the memoir deals with lesbianism and would be unable to see past that to the rich, complex narrative that Bechdel unfolds.  In a way, that was true - but the actual problem wasn't the fact that the narrator/author was a lesbian, but that there were scenes depicting her in bed with her partner, reading, and that there was open talk about puberty and mastrubation.  The discussions of the text were a nightmare - they were unproductive and ended up with me giving a very dry, unprepared lecture on graphic novels, visual storytelling, and the narrative structure of FH because the only thing students wanted to bring up was the fact that it was a "dirty" book.

So, there you have it - the pattern holds.  I am putting together my courses for the fall and am trying to decide which texts to re-use, and TP and FH may not make the cut.  Are my students simply too young, too immature in some ways to handle the depictions of sex in a book like FH?  Is it counter-productive for me to assign something like that?  Why is it that they can handle the sex in TP, but not in FH?  Should I cut TP because I don't want to keep the myth alive that sex is dirty and violent*?  I didn't choose TP or FH because of the sexual content in them, but rather decided to use them because of the inherent merit of each - should I censor myself when choosing texts so as to avoid student distraction?  What's appropriate for a freshman class?

Sigh.  I feel as though I'm beating a dead horse, but maybe that's because I've had so many similar conversations with Severin on this topic.  Then again, we also constantly converse about how bad the weather is in Chicago, but I don't feel that I'm beating a dead horse when I discuss Chicago weather with strangers - it's a good ice breaker.  But it's a worn-out ice breaker.  Maybe this will be my new one - the attitudes of American students towards sex.  That's a definite winner! 

 

*Yes, I know that's not what David Lynch was saying in TP.  I'm not entirely sure what the take-home message is to some of the students who are less savvy in reading and intrepreting texts is, though.