What that means is that our television is continually on
this shitty network called Sprout and we’ve both agreed that if we ever come
across a real world replica of the cartoon character Calliou, we are going to kill and dismember the little bastard.
When it comes to matters of music, it’s a touchier subject.
You’ve probably guessed that I’m very opinionated when it comes to the actual
selection of tunage and, goddamnit, I don’t feel the need to acquiesce when
we’re considering playlists.
After all, I was fucking raised on Sgt. Peppers, Beggar’s Banquet and Jesus
Christ Superstar. I’ll be damned if I’m forced to spin Kids Bop or some album by The Wiggles just to ensure our kids
aren’t subjected to an f-bomb, a lemon squeeze, or fifty foot queenies.
As a result, my two-year-old daughter now has a penchant for
The Runaways.
The entire thing had me considering my own sexuality and how
it arrived to where it is today. From what I remember, there was nothing prior
to the age of 12 that I recall as being patently offensive. There was the inner
gatefold of Alice Cooper’s Love It To
Death (a close-up of Furnier’s made up eyes) that freaked me out and that
robot on Queen’s News Of The World that
impaled frightened citizens with his metallic finger, but nothing that ever
spoke to me in a sexual fashion.
I’m sure that it had to do with a lack of testosterone
production and that would explain why one album, The Knack’s Get The Knack, shines like a light in my
sexual development.
I would have been twelve around the time Get The Knack was released, right around
the time my testes began secreting that magic hormone into my bloodstream. To
be honest, there were other boys that I’m sure were under the full sway of
puberty, already bragging about French kisses and the ass grabbing taking place
at the local dance club-In The Mood-that allowed the 13-17 years olds a chance
to boogie every Sunday night. On Monday, the few twelve year olds in my class who
regularly attended would tell me of their exploits from the night before,
leaving me to curse my dad for not letting me go because I wasn’t old enough
and because it was a school night.
Then there was Doug Fieger. The Knack’s frontman advised me
through headphones that good girls frequently didn’t, that they were
occasionally selfish (“she said she’ll make your motor run/now you know she
never give you none”), and that they could best be identified as teases (“the
flesh is on the bone/and she ain’t givin’ you a bite”). Clearly, the opposite sex would prove to be a
lot more cunning than I originally thought.
Around the same time, I discovered Frank Zappa's Sheik
Yourbuti at one of my parents' friend's house. They'd regularly go over to play
cards and drink beer and leave me alone with the guy's massive record
collection and his killer stereo. system. It was just as much fun for me as my
parents, as I'd don a pair of headphones and spend the evening just absorbing
every bit of rock and roll that I could.
The owner was a guy that would buy albums five or six deep
at a time, and he would put his new releases next to the turntable. On one
particular week, the double from Zappa appeared in his new release section. I quickly
discovered Frank's unique humor, and also discovered words like "golden
shower," "poop chute," and "wrist watch Crisco." I
didn't know what they all meant, but I knew it wasn't for my age range when the
dude noticed I what I was spinning and quietly advised "You probably
shouldn't be listening to that, man."
By the time I began to fully understand the sexual urges
taking place inside of me, pop music had begun a sonic influx of mixed
messages, blatant promiscuity and shaded areas of sexuality.
The obvious contenders-Prince and Madonna-were public enemy
number ones for Mom and Dad. The telling thing was how the folks only caught on
to them years after we began listening to them.
Madonna’s debut, while low on sexual innuendo, provided
girls with a visual ideal that-ironically-many moms viewed as a cute and
harmless raid of local Ragstocks and St. Vincent DePaul’s. Soon, every girl
began cramming their wrists with bracelets, layering on black lace tops, and
mirroring every bit of Madonna’s attire on the “Lucky Star” video. It wasn’t until Madonna began writhing on the
floor of the MTV Music Video Award for “Like A Virgin” that moms suddenly began
to show concern of their daughter’s listening habits.
Same goes for Prince. “Darling Nikki” got the PMRC up in
arms, but we were already discussing the “I sincerely want to fuck the taste
out of your mouth” in great detail over two year before Tipper Gore caught her
daughter spinning Purple Rain. And,
in an act of wonderful admiration, Prince released the wonderful b-side “Erotic City ”
at the same moment the spotlight was on him. Like any devoted teenager, we
strived to “fuck until the dawn/makin’ love ‘til cherry’s gone.”
The attention placed on the artists certainly overshadowed a
few that were equally “offensive” and just as influential in our Walkmans and
Panasonic boom boxes that competed with each other on every football, speech,
and debate team bus trip.
There was Prince’s protégé, Vanity 6, who put the fear of
limited male endowment with one line on “Nasty Girl.” Vanity herself advised
any potential suitors that she needed at least “seven inches or more,” which
caused every dude to bring home a ruler from school to measure up behind the
bedroom door.
Vanity 6 didn’t just affect the guy’s self-esteem, they (and
the subsequent follow-up band, Apollonia 6) showed young high school girls the
power of lingerie. As hard as this may seem, I vividly remember more than one
party with too young girls wiggling out of their normal clothes after too much
Cuervo, revealing newly acquired teddies and camisoles underneath. My fear now
is that my daughter will be present at such a party in a dozen or so years.
Prince also had his fingers in one Sheena Easton who advised
us men that vaginas were to be referred to as “Sugar Walls” while his
contemporary, Morris Day, oozed confidence and other bodily fluids with “If The
Kid Can’t Make You Come” on The Time’s Ice
Cream Castle.
With such “lengthy” demands from Ms. Vanity and a laundry
list of terminology, techniques and positions from the rest of Prince’s protégés,
my attention turned to Terri Nunn. The Berlin
vocalist displayed a wiliness to adapt, becoming a geisha, a slut, or a mother
depending on the mood (“Sex (I’m A)”) and presenting a compact California body that
prompted this Midwestern boy to put her as my “Valentine Wish 1983.” My
girlfriend at the time wasn’t pleased. Not that I had chosen to list Terri Nunn
in the school newspaper article over her, but that I had chosen someone from
such a lame band.
Strangely, why metal is often cited as an unhealthy
influence, there were very few of us who considered the blatant misogyny as
reality. We knew it was about bravado. We knew it was based on fantasy. But
these were two of the same feelings that we had inside. The difference was that
the dude’s in metal were like older brothers, preaching the poontang gospel in
front of a wall of Marshall
amplifiers.
We thought Blackie Lawless’ claim of fucking like a beast
(inspirational verse: “I pound and thrust/And the sweat starts to sting ya!”)
was sheer comedy. We considered Motley Crue’s “Ten Seconds To Love” to be an
unintentional ode to their premature ejaculation problems. And we thought there
was nothing more laughable than nearly every song on The Mentors You Axed For It! After all, if dudes
that ugly could get chicks, there was hope for us all.
Then there was Bronski Beat, who spoke volumes to gay teens
across America during a time when even the slightest hint of effeminacy
potentially created four years of hell during high school. While “Smalltown
Boy” may not have contained any hint of vulgarism or erotica, it was a critical
moment for young homosexuals challenged with managing their hormonal urges and the
confusion that came with knowing your attraction didn’t jibe with traditional
Midwestern morals.
With all of these conflicting messages, it is a wonder that
we were even able to secure relationships with the opposite sex (or the same
sex, for that matter) let alone fumble our way through with the actual act. I
do attribute some of my own neurosis to the role that music played in my sexual
education, but I will not become an advocate for censorship or for parental
warning stickers. Even though the sexual content may have grown leaps and
bounds in its explicitness and in terms of exposure and availability, it
doesn’t negate the role that parents must take it both monitoring and in actual
guidance of their children. Believe me, the prospect of actually having do that
doesn’t bring me any joy; I don’t look forward to having to explain why Katy
Perry liked kissing a girl or why Justin Timberlake feels the need to bring
sexy back.
It’s not something that I necessarily want to do, but it’s
something that I have to do.
I remember my own conversations about sex with my parents,
it was an event that is so perfectly embedded in my mind because it never it
happened. There was not one moment that either of my parents ever mentioned the
topic. Not even when my parents re-carpeted my bedroom the summer before I
entered the 7th grade and my Mom discovered my hidden stash of Oui
and Club International girlie mags lodged deep in the bowels of an air vent. The
offending pornography was disposed of without a word and a perfect opportunity
to discuss human sexuality was squandered.
As far as sexual education within our town’s middle and high
school, I can only imagine that our curriculum qualified as one of the worst in
the country. Barely a week was devoted to the topic, culminating in a
segregated meeting to each gender. We-meaning the boys-were rushed off to a
classroom where the head football coach, a transplant from Arkansas who led our school to over a decade
worth of losing seasons, began to deliver an obviously uncomfortable lecture on
premarital sex.
The coach boiled sex down into two sentences “A male orgasm
lasts approximately ten seconds. Those ten seconds is not worth the risk of
making a child that you will have to care for, for the rest of your life.”
Or to put it another way, “If you knock up a broad, you
won’t have enough time to do two-a-days. Have you seen how shitty we did last
season?! I can’t afford to lose talent for a little taste of poontang!”
I don’t know which was worse, that clichéd attempt at a
scare tactic or the mixed messages that popular music unleashed on our growing
anatomy. Here we had a Southern Baptist Football coach that didn’t seem to
understand that abstinence was not part of the equation while the auto-reverse
of our cassette decks blared continual messages of blowjobs, goodtime
gangbangs, and masturbating to magazines.
Years have passed, and I’m now beginning to think ahead as
to how a consistent message can be delivered to my own children. One that
circumvents both the extremity of today’s popular music (which, at the risk of
sounding old, appears to be tenfold more explicit that when I was in high
school) and the “community-standards” message that our public school system
delivers.
In short, my wife and I will have to deliver the message
ourselves. It pains me to admit that probably the best way to instill the
values that we want our children to carry is to actually communicate that
message, regardless of how tough it may be.
The motivation, of course, is to make sure that neither one
of our kids come home with their own version of “Papa Don’t Preach.”
This article originally appeared in Glorious Noise.
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