It isn’t what you’re thinking, I bet!

Conventional wisdom has it that the parents of teenagers spend lots of time preventing their kids from having sex. Actually, the reverse is true. One of the biggest challenges of camping with teenagers is trying to find ways that the adults can have sex. …Having sex while a couple of toddlers sleep soundly on their side of their tent is one thing, but if what you’ve got is a gang of teenagers playing cards by flashlight, you better have a Plan B.

More helpful hints in Sex on the beach at jo(e)’s page.

The Girl With A One Track Mind recently got asked “What’s BDSM?” by her mother.

And it triggered a horrifying memory of an episode I had otherwise forgotten.

I grew up in a very small town a long way from anywhere. Social options were … limited. And girls? Forget about it. There was only one my age, and she didn’t like me. Hell, I didn’t even like her much. But she had brothers I got along with OK, so I hung at their house a lot.

Which is how, one day when I was perhaps fourteen, I found myself sitting at their kitchen table playing UNO with about six people ranging in age from littlest sister (age 9?) to The Mom, whose oldest kids were long gone from home. The Mom was a “fun” adult, tolerant of kids and never angry, made awesome chocolate eclairs and always with a kind word for everyone. She was also pretty for her age, blonde, and a devout, bury-all-her-problems-in-the-joy-of-Jesus fundamentalist Christian. Not preachy, but completely lost in belief, with no room in her worldview for other answers and no other way to cope with her many problems.

So one of the brothers made a particularly boneheaded move (hard to do while playing UNO) and Sister My Age made a derisive remark that concluded with “…you stupid dildo!”

Of course Littlest Sister pipes up from inside her cute little halo of blonde hair (these folks were all blonde Scandahoovians from Michigan): “What’s a dildo?”

Crickets.

The Mom got a curious look on her face, and in a completely friendly tone (no guile possible, just motherly interest) asked Sister My Age “Yes, dear, what’s a dildo?”

She meant the question honestly. She had no freakin’ idea.

I dunno how much Sister My Age knew. In that house, it’s possible she didn’t know any better than Mom. But she obviously knew it was something “bad”, because she stammered and blushed a bit, and then she protested that she didn’t know, it was just a name she’d heard someone call someone else in a movie (which she named).

And then, for my sins, The Mom turned her gaze on me. “[My Name], do you know what a dildo is?”

Did I mention my sins? My big one, here, was the sin of being smarter than any of the many children The Mom had ever popped from her loins. I was the big reader, the guy with the huge vocabulary, the guy who knew it all and (at fourteen) never failed to let everyone know it. The Mom knew I’d know, because she knew that I’d read every piece of printed matter that had every fallen under my eyes, whether I understood it or not.

Now it was my turn to blush and stammer. For indeed, I did know. I’d read The Joy Of Sex. Hell, I’d had to volunteer as librarian in our town’s little public library, just so I could smuggle it out of the place without having to write my name on the little paper slip in the front while being watched with basilisk eyes by the normal little-old-lady volunteers who’d known me since I was five. Also, there was an Older Brother of this family who used to hide his three porn magazines in the woods in a treehouse fort constructed for that very purpose. I’d invaded the fort and viewed them. I knew what was what.

And I was stuck. Claiming ignorance wouldn’t work. I had never been seen to do it. Nobody would believe me. Nor, looking back, do I think I was capable of it.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t very well look this nice eclair-baking Christian lady in the eye and say “It’s a big rubber penis.”

So I hemmed, and I hawed, and said I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a very nice thing to call your little sister; I knew it was some sort of thing for married people, because wherever I had read the word (and, pious me, I could not remember where) it had also been called a “marital aid.”

That was the magic phrase; The Mom obviously knew what those were, because I saw the light dawn in her eyes, and then she said to Sister My Age “Don’t be calling your little sister that” and jumped up to offer some more eclairs.

One of the neat things about downloading dirty pictures from Usenet is the way you can stumble across images that are deliciously bizarre. Like this one from alt. binaries. pictures. erotica. vintage:

As the kids these days like to say: WTF? Is there actually a vinyl-reindeer-antler-sucking fetish out there, or was this model merely bored that day?

There’s a great sequence from a comedy routine by Ron White, where he shares a bit of dialogue he supposedly had with one of his blue-collar buddies:

“We’re all a little bit gay.”

“Naw man, I ain’t gay!”

“Sure you are, and I can prove it to you.”

“Hell no!”

“Well, do you watch porn?”

“Of course man, you know I watch porn.”

“Do you only watch two women?”

“Naw, I like to watch a woman and a man make love.”

“Do you like the man to have a tiny, flaccid penis?”

“Naw! I want to see a big hard throbbing cock!” {pause} “I did not know that about myself!”

Here’s Storm’s opinion on panty removal:

While J frequently tells me to take my panties off, usually in the heat of the moment, my personal opinion is that a girl, in the presence of her lover, should NEVER have to remove her own panties.

Seems reasonable to me!

Never let it be said that I don’t enjoy free swag. Here’s the latest goodie to land in my mailbox: a reproduction of an antique hand-carved die featuring a man and a woman engaged in the ancient art of mutual oral sex. Like the man says, any way you throw this die, it will come up 69:

This, and other naughty dice, come from the novelty dice page at Ellesh’s Closet, where they specialize in “Naughty Historic Novelties for Adults.” I don’t get to Renaissance fairs often enough, but now, through the miracle of the Internet and the good offices of the United States Postal Service, some of the fun stuff there has come to me. Now if only somebody could perfect a “mail order wenches” service….

I apologize for the lack of detailed text-heavy posts lately; I’ve been out and about and doing summery stuff instead of sitting pasty-faced behind drawn curtains at my computer. And that’s not going to change any time soon; I plan to spend a good bit of August chasing The Nymph around in actual forests. You know, the kind with trees and bugs and stuff. Once or twice, there may even be cheese-filled hotdogs roasted over campfires on sticks. It should be a good time. But posting will continue to be light.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture that reflects well on where my head is at. It makes me want to feel cold slippery rocks between my toes. I’m nostalgic, if you will, for that special squint you have to do when you’re wading in bright sunshine and half-blind from all the reflections off every ripple. Fishing pole optional. Naked women, a substantial bonus:

Ah, the joys of summer. (Picture courtesy of Hippie Goddess.)