Tab. BOO!

It's come to my attention recently that you can't make a joke about rape without getting flayed alive.

I guess that's because rape isn't funny.

Then again, who decides what's funny?  Individuals do, of course.  But then there's groups.  There's probably individuals out there who'd find poodle-in-an-electric-socket jokes funny, but I'm willing to bet that groups like PETA and the SPCA wouldn't-- officially and on-the-record.

Although maybe there's a quirky, young, just-a-bit-off SPCA intern out there somewhere pushing papers and trolling on blogs who'd laugh at a joke like that.  Just, you know, once he clocked out and got home.

Matthew Inman, creator of "The Oatmeal", a blog whose penis is a thousand times huger than this blogs'll ever be, made a rape joke.  And everybody freaked.  The joke, for the three of you who still read this blog and the two of you who haven't heard yet, featured a small F5 key running from a large and scary beast and the caption reads, "Every time the internet does not perform as expected, I rape the shit out of my F5 key".

I'm guessing nobody would have said anything if Inman had written I fuck the shit out of my F5 key.  Oh, words... you're so weird.

Comedy, which frequently uses (weird) words, is weird-- we learned that from my last post; 4 seconds, you know-- and it's also very, very dangerous.  It's much more dangerous than being serious, because being serious is just so obvious, it's so out in the open-- there's nothing more to being serious than being serious.  There's lots more to comedy.  It's loaded, and we all know loaded things are scary.  Don't point that rape joke at me.

A friend of mine showed me a clip from the Louis C. K. show where he's helping his young daughter brush her teeth in the bathroom.  The daughter innocently tells C. K. that she loves Mommy (they're divorced) more and likes being with her better.  C. K. appears wounded, but takes the insult in stride and continues helping her brush her little child-fangs, and then she rinses, spits, and leaves the bathroom.  When she does, C. K. angrily gives her the finger once she's safely exited and out of view.

It's funny to give your young daughter the finger, right?  No.  But I laughed.  And I don't even like Louis C. K.  I think he's obnoxious.  Still, I laughed.  So it must have been funny-- to me, anyway.

You might not have laughed at that, and that's fine, because a joke (whether it's a good one or a bad one or even an appalling one) gets sent out there into the ether and whomever reacts reacts the way that they do.  A joke can either be

1.) hilarious

2.) really funny

3.) funny

4.) kinda funny

5.) not funny

6.) in poor taste, but still kinda funny

7.) offensive

Do you have the right to get offended by something?  Sure!  It's America!  Let's put on our "Number 1 Dad" aprons, barbecue the shit outta some dead animals, crack open a beer and get offended!  Getting offended is our right, goddamnit!  But do we have to raise such ire, unleash such forceful condemnation that we lambaste some hapless schmeck who stuck his foot in his mouth-- should we be shaming and castigating and ending careers over this?

I kind of wonder about that.

I kind of wonder about people in glass houses and all that bit.  Who among us is without sin?  Who has never said something ill-conceived, or even ill-meant?  I wonder if the rabid denizens with the pitchforks and torches out there, broadcasting their righteous indignation to the wicked world are as lily white themselves as they purport to be.  Are we a bunch of tightly-corseted Victorian frailties crumpling down upon our tufted fainting couches?  Or are we big boys and girls who can see and hear something appalling, identify it for what it is, get out all that vitriol by penning a status update or two about it, and then move on to what's for lunch?

There's lots of things out there that I shouldn't find amusing, but I do.  Maybe my soul is as twisted as a barber's pole.  Maybe.  I don't really know what that says about me.  I don't know what it says about my upbringing or my parenting abilities or my effectiveness as a father or a behavioral healthcare provider or even as a human being.  What I do know is that, while my sense of humor may be as warped as old glass, I'm not the kind of person who would seek to couch my own inferiority and frustration and flaws by attacking some idiot behind a microphone or camera lens who said something cheap or dumb or disgusting.

Who cares?  Fuck 'em.

Remember-- you can always change the channel.  You can always set phasers on "Ignore".  You can choose to govern your own tongue so you do not commit such an egregious verbal solecism yourself.  Because, in the end, you're all you have any control over anyway.

All humor is derived from pain, it's just a matter of degree.  I suppose the only joke that doesn't hurt somebody is a knock-knock joke, and if that's the society we want to be, where we can only do what's safe, I guess comedy clubs and films and television are going to be replete with jokes about chickens crossing the fucking road.  I get taking out "redskin" in "Peter Pan", I get changing "nigger serenader" to "banjo serenader" in "The Mikado".  There is a difference, though, between hate speech (which, I hate to tell you, is as constitutionally protected as a game of peek-a-boo) and poor taste, and I worry that certain sectors of our society are equating the two, which is more dangerous than comedy itself.  Because then, if those two irrevocably different entities are equivalent, how will we truly ever know the difference?

Rape isn't funny-- but, in my mind, if you want to go ahead and do a dumbfuck thing like try to make a joke out of it: it's America-- go ahead.  The Holocaust isn't funny, and lynchings aren't funny, and, frankly, Polish jokes and blonde jokes aren't funny either, but the fact of the matter is this: you've said something horrible, you've written something disgusting and shameful and dreadful, whether you've done it in the privacy of your living room or on Myspace 9 years ago or at the dinner table and your father freaked, you've done it too, so, basically, have your reaction, get it all out so we can all move on, and while you're at it, shut the fuck up.   The other fact of the matter is yo mama's so nasty the deodorant threw up on her armpit and thought it was her pussy.

This Post Is About Sex

Actually, it's not about sex. I just thought I would put that as a title to try to get more people to read the post. Call it marketing.

What this post is about is surprises, and I suppose the only way surprises could really be related to sex is the charge facing Julian Assange, which is "Sex by Surprise," which sounds like it could be the title of a Neil Diamond album.

(Fortunately, it isn't.)

As I write these words (5:43pm, Thursday) my wife is planning on taking me somewhere special for dinner. I'm not quite sure why, of all nights, we're going out for dinner somewhere special. I don't think May 19th is some sort of event in our history together. If it is, I'm going to be in the shit. But I don't think it is. I don't think she has some kind of good-for-one-night-only coupon to Applebees or something. We're way too uppity for that shit.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Apron texted me while I was at work with a rather cryptic message, stating, "I have an awesome idea for something you really would like to do tonight. It involves food, no carabiners, and no harnesses. Lots of vaseline and ropes, though."

I think she's kidding about that last part. But, just in case she's not, I've got our vinyl facemasks with the zipper mouth openings tucked away in the glovebox. The mention of "carabiners and harnesses" is a not-so-subtle reference to the surprise my wife planned for my birthday which was...

(Drumroll, please...)

Indoor rock wall-climbing.

......................................................

I figured out where she was taking me the night before it was scheduled to happen.

Me: "What am I supposed to wear to this alleged surprise?" I asked my bride.

Her: "Um... comfortable clothing..."

Me: "Okay. What about on my feet?"

(Pause.)

Her: "Sneakers."

(Pause.)

Me: "Are we going rock-climbing?"

(She looked at me.)

Her: "Yes." (Pause. Cue Mrs. Apron tears.) "You don't want to go, do you?" she whimpered.

Truthfully, she was right, and she knew she was right. I didn't want to go. Why the fuck would I want to go? What about my personality, my fears, my proclivities, my preferences, my tendencies, my interests, my frail sanity would make anyone think I would want to strap myself to a harness and climb up a fucking wall and then come down, only to have to do it again?

I wanted to flip out at her and ask her that very question, but, instead, I sucked it up, because the woman I loved was crying pre-emptively because she knew she had disappointed me, and so I did what I had to do and I said,

"I do want to go." And I plugged the dam. Frankly, I don't think she believed me, but it was enough to quell the tears, and it sealed the deal. The next day, I was going indoor rock-wall climbing.

Surprise.

I didn't really enjoy myself. Surprise. I was way too preoccupied with judging the speed (or lack thereof) with which I acclimated myself to the harness, knot-tying, and (to me) complex instructions delivered in a rote fashion by the staff member at the rock wall gym. When I was the climber, it was no problem. In spite of my predictable fear of heights, I zoomed up the fucking wall-- aided in that vertical venture by my monkey arms and legs. It was when I was the belayer, responsible for the safety of the woman I love more than anything in the world, that I freaked out inside, sweating like a bastard, hands trembling as I clutched onto the rope and the break for dear life, absolutely panic-stricken that something stupid I would do would send my beautiful Mrs. Apron plummeting to earth, damaging her skull and our marriage.

Fortunately, none of the various disaster scenarios I violently and graphically saw in my head throughout the afternoon came to pass, and, after three hours, we were sitting together, bathed in steep sunlight at a sidewalk café, she enjoying a veggie-burger, me plowing into fried clams and cuban-style egg rolls. Which was definitely more my speed.

Surprises are funny, you know-- rather like sex, I suppose. You build them up, trying to discern what the other person is going to like, and sometimes you get so wrapped up in thinking about it and planning it and obsessing over it, you forget just a little bit about what you're doing (or why you're doing it) in the first place. But, even when they're not quite what you wanted or expected, surprises generally turn out just fine.

You know, like sex.

In the Mud

I got sent home from work yesterday, not for talking about my dick too much, as the title of this blog may imply, but for being ill. See-- when you work in a hospital, even a psychiatric hospital, they don't like it when you show up to work sick. Of course, being a relatively new employee, I don't have any sick time, so I stayed for three hours, saw some patients, ran a group, wrote some notes, and drove home.

On the way home, I listened to a radio program on NPR, because that's what elite snobs who drive Volvos do, even when they're sick. On this particular program, the topic was sex. This, coupled with the fact that my other two favorite public radio stations were in the midst of mind-altering fund-drives, was enough to compel me to listen.

I listened even though I maintain a pretty rigid policy of eschewing call-in shows. I can listened to any amount of talk radio run by educated professionals who are skilled and comfortable being on the radio, but as soon as some dunder-drawered donkey-dick from West Philly calls, my spine starts to disintegrate-- just a little bit.

I don't understand what it is about having your call get accepted on the radio that turns ordinarily logical, couth, appropriate people into, well, ham-lipped fuckheads, for lack of more florid terminology. People who call in to radio call-in shows just can't seem to get their acts together, and they inevitably end up embarrassing themselves and, consequently, me. They drone on endlessly, they interrupt people, they insist on having the radio on in their room or their car or wherever they're calling from, making it impossible to hear, or there is just dead air which, most of the time, is preferable.

Back in the days when my father had an eighty mile round-trip commute, he would often call in to sports radio shows and generally flip out on people as Israelis have been trained for centuries to do. My father always identified himself as "Frank," which is definitely not his real name. Frank is, in fact, the name the judge who processed my father as a citizen suggested my father adopt to "fit in."

"Frank?!" my father shouted at the judge, "FUCK THAT!"

Clearly, even back in 1972, Daddy Dearest was well on his way to American assimilation.

So, getting back to yesterday. I was sick driving home in my Volvo, with the seatwarmers turned on to help soothe my aching, elite body, and I was listening to this call-in show about a new report released about American sexual behaviors. I thought it was very ironic and annoying that the report studied Americans aged 14-94, and yet, the host of the show was constantly inserting the disclaimer that, "This is an adult conversation" and that "the content of this program may not be suitable for children."

Well, wait, I thought-- you're allowing "children between the ages of 14-17" to be studied, to be asked the most intimate, personal and revealing questions about their sexual status and behavior, and they're discouraged from listening to the fucking show about that selfsame study? Had I been a full-blooded Israeli instead of a watered-down half-breed with asthma, I would have whipped out my cell-phone to vociferously point out this hypocrisy, but, as it was, it was all I could do to keep from choking on my own phlegm and keep the car straight.

So, what did we learn from this study?

* Well, floppy, sloppy, crinkly, stinky, dusty, musty old people are having sex more. Thanks, Viagara.

* Teens are less sexually active than the prudish establishment thinks and, when they are, most of them are using condoms. Thanks, Trojan (who, incidentally, funded the study).

* More "newly-single" people in their forties and fifties are re-entering the dating scene and are not using condoms. Thanks for the herps, aging yuppie assholes.

* And, speaking of assholes, more people across the age spectrum are dabbling in anal sex. A couple of months ago, a former coworker shared with me a euphemism for this particular sex act: "Doin' it in the mud."

Play ball.

Happy Sexy Novel

I may very well be showing my age by writing what I'm about to write, but I'm sprouting gray hairs here and there, and I've been known to like me a buffet or two, so maybe I ought to let it all hang out and say: oneof the nicest things about going away on vacation is having some quality time with a good book.

There. I said it. Kiss my sweet fanny, you snotty little tyke, you.

I'm reading "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving. I like it very much. He's a pervert with aharsh and bizarre world view, and maybe that's the attraction. I'd like to say it's because I observe and am moved by some deeply lyrical literary melody in his prose, but more likely it's because I'm a horny mother and his writing is virtually showered in cum.

Honestly- his novels are like a carnival log flume ride called "The Ejaculatorium." ("Yer gonna get wet!") I recently speculted to my wife that the pages in all Irving books should be laminated.

I wouldn't call my level of reading "voracious" and it's most likely a couple shades shy of "avid" too, but I read enough to have observed certain traits when it comes to contemporary novels, and the most starkl among the commonalities is that there is always at least one vharacter having sex with another.

Not that I mind.

Nor, I suspect, do all the prudish, haughtym thin-lipped critics of sex in television and film. Because a humparama is okay as long as it's cleverly ensconsed within flowing pragraphs describing Federal-style desk chairs and the hunting prowess of Mrs. Emmilina Fitzhume's Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

I wonder if any of the plays and manuscripts I've penned that have earned me a comfortable pillow-set of rejection letters would have been considered more marketable, or at least interesting to the reading public if there containeda pssage or two where someone was gently cupping someone else's breasts, or slowly undulating against her silken beauty beneath the damask sheets whilst Mrs. Fitzhume's Cavalier King Charles Spaniel effortlessly broke the regally-crested mallard's neck between its elegant though powerful jaws.

Maybe if I had used more of the words "quiver," "pulsate," "throb," or "heaving, rhythmic spasm."

Maybe.

Or maybe that was just the old way to get published. We're so porned out these days- unshockable. Everybody knows someone who's been asphyxiated with a feather boa or had their face used as a toilet during some off-kilter horizontal encounter.

Besides-- we shrewd, up-to-the-minute, iEverything 20somethings know how to get published; do something ridiculous for a year, blog about it, and pitch it to some gay NYC literary agent wearing edgy Danish eyeglasses and you'll be set.

See? We know how it's done. We just choose not to.