Sex Ed

Duane, that he-man editor of the Philadelphia City Paper (8 February 2007) is in a rare tizzy. A reader has accused him of the grossest hypocrisy for in effect financing his high toned editorial content with sex ads in the rear, so to speak, of his alternative paper. This elicits from Duane as coherent and plausible defense of the American intellectual firewall between editorial and business sides as ever I remember reading.

But the part time thriller writer has a softer side. Last month this emigrant New Yorker was recounting his recent family visit to Ground Zero and his anxiety about explaining it properly to his four year old son. (Done, with aplomb.) But this week he concedes that when his daughter has reached the “proper” age, he knew he’d have his lobes full trying to explain the aforementioned rear of his publication. Sex Ed, indeed.

I am highly disqualified in such a discussion. First, ten years (from age 3-13) in a boarding school run by Dominican nuns, followed by three years in a minor seminary (with a two year interim in the U.S. Navy where I oddly, and sadly, remained a virgin) culminating in three years at a Jesuit University. What I didn’t know about sex could fill the Vatican’s Library.

So after a year in graduate school when I fell on a blind date for a high IQ Catholic blonde bombshell, was I ever under-prepared for holy matrimony. Never did two such intellectual virgins pool such bottomless ignorance in the Sex Department. That our “marriage” lasted for twenty years is more a tribute to her patience and our children’s charms than to what I did or didn’t do with her in bed.

Divorced, as a late deBloomer, I became a serial fornicator, making up with frequency and variety what I had so egregiously flubbed as a husband. My deepest regret is the bad example I set my children by my delayed playing. Now, at 80, I have much more time to consider the issues which Duane raises. I have no problem with lonely hearts ads, even though the escalating coarseness of some of them unsettles me. And the no holes barred sex edifiers seem to me to add exponentially to this coarseness. If I learned anything about sex, it’s that it should be gentle and generous.

It didn’t begin with Playboy Hugh, but Heffneritis engendered a new mental disease that encourages timid souls to fantasize about undescribably great SEX while HE stands by a cluster of sluts dressed in his pajamas. As a TV journalist I was once invited to his spread (forgive the noun) in Hollywood.

The epiphany of the evening was seeing Hugh descend the grand staircase, to the plaudits of his guests, gamely brandishing his current receptacle. But what??I couldn’t believe it. Irresistible Hugh cannot dance worth a hoot. He was the squarest, tightest assed T(w)erp I have ever seen, and as a certified graduate of Detroit’s Eastwood Gardens outdoor dance pavilion, believe me I’ve seen many four footed prancers.

And now there’s the Porno Ring tracked down by the Austrian Polizei, with American subscribers leading the list! And American police trapping sexual morons getting set up with underage “websighters” YOU TUBE could easily become YOU LUBE: And the dry fucking seen on MTV is grist for some chiropractor’s mill. Whatever happened to “You’re the Top/ You’re the Louvre Museum/? Rock music seems to my old “Satin Doll” (“Knows Latin!”) ear as so much pig grunting up to an orgasm.

In the PCP’s “sister” publication, the Philadelphia Weekly, there’s a recent piece about a local girl’s very successful sex column at Columbia University, under the contentious title, “Talking Head”. (Joanna Zuckermann Bernstein, PW, January 24, 2007)

Twenty-one year old political science/human rights major Miriam Datskovsky “doesn’t seem the type to write about boy friends and blow jobs,” comments Ms. Bernstein. Miriam contends she’s not the sort either to draw attention to herself. Which her “Sexplorations” column has, in spades, since it began in September 2004.

In Amy Sohn’s piece on sex columnists for “Magazine” she was characterized “one of the more intelligent of the group”! In the popular blog, “Gothamist”, she was described as rising “above her peers, producing culturally insightful work that explores the ins and outs /ahem!/of sex at Columbia.” Sweetly blown job.

In her piece, "Spitting, Swallowing, and Some Other Secrets,” Miriam generalizes: "There is nothing not dirty about oral sex. It’s someone’s penis in your mouth, it’s your tongue inside someone’s pussy. Blow jobs. Eating out. Giving head. Gross. And yet we love it. We love receiving it; we love giving it. Or maybe we love receiving it and hate giving it. I’m an anomaly. I hate receiving it and love giving it.” And her biggest turn off is some guy interested in her because of her column!

This once Orthodox Jew went secular at 13. But her family is supportive. Her uncle reads it all the time. Her dad never. And her mother only reads “mom-proof” efforts. (The blow job piece didn’t make the Mom’s cut.) I’m afraid such columns would never have helped our hyper-Catholicized marriage. And I’m glad for my children’s sakes that we’re more open about sex.

But I’ve come to despise Hefnerized sex, along with all over-consumerized human interactions. I hope my latest child (Daniel Patrick Hazard was two months old today on my 80th birthday!) will be as unexploitative of women as I wasn’t. And bless him, my first son Michael. When I had the crudeness to excuse myself from a family meeting to service my current inamorata, he greeted my return with: “You make it very hard to love you, Dad.” A hard hard lesson learned.

And I encourage editor Duane not to worry about his daughter—although all alternative papers would set a better general example if they encouraged their ad salespersons to look for greater diversity in financing. And his daughter will learn more from watching his behavior to her mother than from any other alternative, weekly paper or a live person.

By the way, Miriam, after her imminent graduation, hopes to write a book about the relationship between sexuality and feminism for college age women. Reticent as she was in the beginning, she’s clearly on the make now! Call Sexploration the lowest rung on the career ladder.