"Cherish"
"Love Will Never Do Without You"
"If"
and "That's The Way Love Goes"
are by Madonna and Janet Jackson respectively, and there are probably others by them, I can think of "Like A Prayer," "Human Nature," and "Take A Bow" which always used to disturb and depress me, but those in particular. And the crazy thing is the resemblance between the first two that I knew subconsciously but did not think about until now due to the fact, as I just discovered, that they were both directed by Herb Ritts! Janet Jackson criticizes Madonna for her limited vocal range and use of scandals and yet uses her "preferred photographer" to produce a video to revamp her image as sexy and he churns out a video suspiciously like "Cherish." oneupmanship much? So it was Herb Ritts who made me doubt my sexuality because I thought I was supposed to be attracted to men who look like Chippendales and wasn't. (thank god for moving to a new middle school and the medium built to waifish trend that hit around that time and has apexed about now with the indie boys, seriously, plus my somewhat newfound appreciation for more aggressive male musculature since thanks to college I have an idea of what waify boys look like without their flattering shirts). And of course Herb Ritts is gay, which explains the butt exposure of muscular, naked men, because I believe that gay men have a butt obsession only equalled by the 40 year old, Fabio loving women who hire Chippendales at bachelorette parties. I think most of my peers dig their men slightly scrawnier (and paler?) and don't have as many preferences with regards to minor muscles, like how big a guy's latissimus dorsi ought to be. The Chippendale man rolling around under the sheets with Cindy Crawford is about the idea of sex I had in 4th and 5th grade even though I learned about it when I was 6 and friends with 13 year-old Olga who told me about menstruation and I responded "nah,"
aka I'm a spring chicken, when I first learned about sexual things:
penis: an elevator, the pale blond kid in preschool
before and after that, Greek statues. Boy was I surprised (and grossed out, actually) after my first experience with porn that they can be hard, or even big. I was particularly grossed out because I compared them to something I knew better, excrement. I had no idea what was so attractive about women mouthing long bloodshot poo or gargling white stuff in their mouths.
sex with women: One time my neighbor Stephanie and I covered our mouths and pretended to kiss under the covers of my bed. I was tortured by the idea that I had sex with a girl for a long time afterward.
hard on: a play called "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" about three men locked up together in a cell in the Middle East. One guy had a dream with another man in it, the man did something and he said, he/it "gave him a hard on." And I thought that meant a guy gripping your penis hard while you give him a piggy back ride for the longest time.
porn: in 6th grade my parents and I were invited to the house of Michael K., a good guitar-playing boy with no tv.
semen: in 6th grade I was in the Westport YMCA after school program run in their upstairs daycare before it was transferred to Mahackeno, the Nilla Wafers and stale carrots snacks and "Sex and Candy," that Fastball song, and that Goo Goo Dolls song until I was about to puke.. are memories beside the point. Maureen was the caretaker who wore dowdy sweaters over turtlenecks and had huge hips over which she wore pleated slacks, played gin rummy with me, and lived in Seymour, CT as I recall, ironically. She had the habit of using the word seamen instead of sailors and the bitchy, advanced Westport kids used to laugh when she said it and I didn't know why. And I was similarly confused when Emily in 6th grade TAG laughed at the name Alan Cumming.
I know I must have learned something in middle school health other than Coach Simone's "Rearls of Wisdom" and coffee addiction, but the only time I fully understood or memorized the workings of the penis, the purpose of the testicles or that men even had them, sperm, and words like vas deferens was in high school health. I was asked the question "spit or swallow" way before I knew what it meant, maybe like in elementary school.
urinals: Fuck you, Marcel Duchamp. Though I've seen plenty of movies with guys peeing next to each other, I remember my surprise when I entered a men's bathroom by mistake (in Heimbold??) and realized that the urinals were backwards.
jacking off: thanks again, Michael K who went to Adventure Camp with me a while after our first meeting. Some boys ran out of their cabin and told us that they caught him jacking off with shampoo. Though I had no idea how this was done, I called him Jack for the rest of the summer.
cunnilingus:
my friend maxene's George Carlin poster
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