Watch NBC's Friends?…..WHORE!

I read a new study, published originally in Pediatrics and regurgitated in the AP, in which the assertion is made that: “…pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior than among those who have tamer viewing tastes.”

This conclusion intuitively makes a lot of sense. Kids who grew up trying to decode a scrambled image of a breast on the Spice channel (not that I knew any of those people) were probably more sexually involved than the kids watching mainstream shows like ER or Becker. Man, I hated Becker. If you spent your teen yrs watching Foreskin Gump rather than Forest Gump, something may be amiss.

As I read the AP’s recap, I soon developed my own set of conclusions. The piece lists some of the more racy programs that would shatter the minds of America’s youth. The 3 main culprits listed in the article included Sex and the City, That 70’s Show and even Friends. I can kinda see the Sarah Jessica Parker show, it even has the word “sex” in it’s title and many episodes are graphic about sexual encounters. I wasn’t a huge fan for this one, but I can see the appeal for women and it was occasionally funny. It just hit too close to home for me, having grown up in an environment surrounded by catty, self-involved people with many misconceptions about this whole “love” thing. Plus that Kim Cattrall character reminds me of too many ex-friends to mention, only they were my own age and 30 pounds heavier.

I have seen a lot of the other 2 scapegoats. That 70’s Show isn’t anything special, but it was occasionally entertaining and did manage to create 1 or 2 memorable characters. And I won’t even touch Friends, b/c if you haven’t heard of the program and never watched it during it’s peak, something is probably wrong with you.

That’s when it hit me, like the toilet seat to Doc Brown’s head: the people that never watched any of these shows as teens (or the decade-appropriate equal) were essentially social deviants. It’d be like someone who grew up in the 80’s who never watched The Cosby Show…. Something is not entirely together with that individual.

Please don’t attack me if you fall into this category. It’s clearly not a catchall. In addition, I wasn’t a huge fan of any of these shows and own none of the DVDs and have never Tivoed a single episode of them. But I saw them when I was in college and HS. Just like every other normal kid. And I had friends, went to classes and parties, used fake IDs, had my heart broken, made new friends and one day I finally did get a GF who was kind enough to sleep with me.

In a way I almost feel as though I owe Friends a thank-you card after reading this article. Maybe my less than Pittesque body and total lack of "game" would've never gotten me laid without Central Perk! Besides, it’s not as though we’d lie in bed post-coitus and talk about Ross and Rachel. We wouldn’t fuck on my roommate’s couch and she’d yell out, “Oh, JOOOEEEY!”, in a hurtful Freudian slip. Friends itself didn’t define us as ‘normal’. But I think that we were aware of our surroundings and at least made attempts at understanding what was the standard of life for someone our age did. And for the record; I’d like to formally apologize to my old roommate b/c he would obliviously sit on that couch all the time, it was hilarious.

The article this was originally based on can be found at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27512130/

Sexual Humiliation Story #43b

Note:This is a true and somewhat graphic story involving sexual situations. Proceed at your own risk, and if you know me, probably mine.

During the summer of ’99 I was living in Cleveland, OH at Case Western Reserve doing neuroscience research. And you thought that summer you spent in Cabo was wild, let me tell you! J/k… contrary to what Drew Carey says, Cleveland in fact does not rock. I was staying in dorm-style living quarters sans air conditioning. To make this arrangement that much sweeter, I was 20 y/o and all my friends were 21. NTM, my girlfriend of 4 yrs cheated on and broke up with me via long distance phone call. Nice.

Seeing as I hadn’t really dated since high school, my game was… a little off. Across the courtyard from my dorm I had a good view of one of the only single, attractive women in the Cleveland area. Given my voyeuristic nature, I used this eagle eye view of her dorm liberally and was quickly smitten. Her name was Dana, and I made sure to “accidentally” run into her in the laundry room one morning. To my extreme surprise we hit it off pretty well. Despite being gorgeous, at least by traditional, cable TV benchmarks, she was a bit of geek. Dana was studying for the dental school admission test that summer. I had taken the MCAT the previous yr and a lot of the material was similar. Often I would see her in the dorm carrying a stack of index cards that she had turned into flash cards. We became fast friends and even though I had no big test, we were good study partners.

Naturally my motives were outside the realm of academia. One day after a morning spent reading at the Arabica cafe we ended up kissing underneath a willow tree by the art history museum. It was romantic even by my current standards and it felt good to be back in the starting lineup. But my time in Ohio was limited so I felt that I had to speed up the normal timeline of things. Did I mention I was borderline retarded?

There was only 3 wks left of my research proposal so I had to move swiftly. I planned an afternoon at a jazz club (where I had to bribe the manager just to let me in b/c I was underage) complete with wine tasting and picnic near the museum where we first kissed. Things went great. We talked about all the usual, get-to-know-you questions and then some of the deeper ones. And she didn’t talk about her dental school test at all, so I figured I at least provided her with a solid distraction.

Later we returned to my oh so suave dorm room. For being 20 yrs old and dirt poor, it was the best I could muster. We started to kiss on my tiny twin bed when the lack of air conditioning started to be very noticeable. She started to take my clothes off, so I complied and began to reciprocate. Once I removed her jeans and placed my hands on her panties she paused. “What is it?” I asked.

“I just, I wouldn’t want you to think I was easy.” And she took my hands off the elastic band and placed them around her waist. We kissed like that for almost an hour but never advanced further. She left my room and went across the courtyard to her place with the promise that we’d have lunch the next day.

Less than 1 millisecond after she left I was in full masturbation mode. A 20 yr old making out with a hot coed for an hr in her bra and panties, come on! Apparently “blue balls” were not a topic that was heavily covered on her dental school exam. So things didn’t take too long. I finished up and went to bed.

The next morning I slipped on my flip-flops and headed to the shower. I noticed one of Dana’s homemade flash cards had been pushed under my door. I picked it up and could feel the air leave my chest, like being punched in the dick, as I read the words:

“Next time you jerk off, you might want to close the blinds. –Dana”

I had lunch alone that day. And pretty much every day following that one, as I suspected that Dana wasn’t the only person who saw me that night. Some people look back at their youth and think, in a very Bryan Adams-type tone, “Those were the best years of my life”. Since my past is mainly littered with stories like this one, I hope you can see why I disagree with Mr. Adams.

Rupert the Prude and Craigslist Personals

Craigslist has an interesting section called “Barter” where people can exchange goods or services for currency other than American dollars. I found this board interesting, for example:Will trade singing lessons for a Nintendo Wii. Will trade my CD collection for a Fender Stratocaster. Then I saw this one from a guy who will trade his services as a personal trainer for time with “a woman that takes good care of her feet so that I can kiss, lick, smell, and smother my face into them”. Yup, that’s right. Then I got to the Craigslist personals and was even more aghast.

At this point in my life, there isn’t much that can gross me out. Even the most masochistic and depraved sex internet sites might initially surprise me, but they don’t bother me. This is what happens when you see 3 unrelated men in the ER in the same night, each with different objects jammed up their rectums (a cigar case, a handle of a soup ladle and a gherkin). Then there was the guy who liked sticking swizzle sticks into his urethra until it perforated into what is commonly called the chode. So you can see how this process can be a bit desensitizing to all things gross.

Then there’s Craigslist personal ads. All I want to say is that if you want to find 100’s, nay 1000’s of pictures of penis, look no further. Don’t try Google Image or Yahoo. Craigslist has them all beat by a mile. Apparently a lot of guys think that this is the best approach to meeting someone; show pictures of your cock. The “Men seeking Men” category was almost entirely cock pics, but a large portion of the hetero section was also penisful (don’t think that’s a real word, but it means “full of penis”).

The raw nature of these pictures didn’t really shock me. But then I got to thinking about the whole concept and became depressed. It occurred to me that with the large volume of these penis pic ads, clearly they must be working for someone, right? Already almost everything my parents and teachers ever told me about relationships is not only wrong, but in fact the perfect opposite. Real life can be so disappointing sometimes.