"Adventures in Springerland "
Now before I get into another little digital diatribe of unrepentant self-righteousness, let me first preface this particular rant with a warning that it deals with some adult subject matter. Any of my easily offended readers might want to save this letter for when they are feeling especially rebellious or a moment of personal moral frailty.
Or let a heathen friend edit it first to remove any potentially objectionable words, sentences, phrases, clauses, opinions, ideas, concepts, events, prognostications, revelations, assumptions or presumptions.
Or just delete the whole damn thing. I'm sure to write something more family friendly later. And besides, it aint that important anyway.
Now on with the fun…
I have been doing a lot of climbing lately to train for a rapidly approaching trip to Yosemite. Before I go, I have to get the hands, the feet, the lungs, the back, and most important, the head in shape. To do this, my climbing partner Pavel and I have been spending every weekend at Tahquitz rock in Idyllwild California, located near Mt. San Jacinto, 7000 feet above the hot and smoggy skies of SoCal's 909 area code. The Inland Empire. Not California's most prestigious or desirable real estate.
Climbing can be dirty business, so after last Saturday's session on the rock, we drove out to a local trailer park to raid some public showers in order to wash away six hours worth of chalk, dirt and sunscreen.
Ever been to a trailer park? Why it's a little piece of low rent paradise! Plastic flowers around the Windjammers. Golf carts to facilitate Budweiser fueled summertime gossip. Mullets, Marlboros, pickups, pink polyester pant suits. Bass boats, boom boxes, and back hair. That Inland Empire banter…"Margie! Bring me another Keystone!" And, of course, the all too common "wife beater" tank top. Complete with beer belly.
Don't read me wrong, I found this visit to the 909 refreshing - no pretense. No bullshit. No lawyers on parade like a Friday Night at the Irvine Spectrum. What you see is what you get. No silicone. Not that I mind the silicone.
As usual, I digress…
While Pavel and I were waiting a turn for the community shower near the lake, a gangly adolescent girl strutted by with prepubescent friend in tow. She was about thirteen, skinny, with stringy blond hair, too tight jeans and a too tight black tank top. She was loud, a bit obscene, edgy, and trying desperately to expand her barely pubescent body into the costume of a bad girl. Her diminutive partner followed her around like the excitable yappy dog from those Warner Brother cartoons, always bouncing around Spike the Bull Dog, obviously enamored and enthralled that this bigger, badder, and oh so adult peer was willing to share her attention.
This girl reeked of trailer trouble. She was clearly in a hurry to tear down Jerry Springer's driveway, and I've seen plenty of people on that journey before. Hell, my extended family paved that road. When it comes to trouble, my cousins put the fun in dysfunction.
But again, I digress. We can discuss my family some other time.
So as Lolita and her peewee partner struts past yours truly, she abruptly pulls a lollypop from her mouth (completes the image, doesn't it), and shouts in frustration to no one in particular: "God damn it, this is really pissing me off! I just cannot deep throat this lollypop!"
And in case you think I am taking an author's liberty with the accuracy of the statement, let me be clear, the above quotation was indeed verbatim.
Again, for effect: "God damn it, this is really pissing me off! I just cannot deep throat this lollypop!"
Now I'm no prude, but when did thirteen year old girls mature so fast that they practice fellatio with candy, share the experience with grade schoolers, and when unsuccessful, announce their displeasure to an entire @#$!ing trailer park!
And why didn't I know any of these girls when MY hormones were caffeinated, carbonated, and put in that turbo charged paint mixer of my puberty? But I suppose that's not the point here.
Pavel and I were appropriately appalled - though not terribly surprised considering our current digs. Lake Hemit isn't exactly the Riviera. Mr. Springer spends a fair amount of time trolling for guests in these cultural nether regions of America.
I sadly get the feeling this one's gonna marry a cousin or a convict or both. It's a scary path she's strutting down.
I don't know about you, but I much prefer an image of thirteen year old girls, even when unfortunate enough to hail from the 909, who are more interested in practicing kissing than oral sex.
I suppose I could be romanticizing the presumed innocence of youth here.
There have, of course, always been "bad" girls. Smoke will always fill that third floor bathroom. Although I have thrown a couple decades worth of dirt on top of my own horrific pubescent memories, and despite my prior rant about my misspent youth, I must admit, I hung with a crowd of miscreants for more than a few of my formative years. And I remember some friends in junior high who knew more about sex than I know even now.
Not for lack of trying.
I don't however remember any of the girls my mother warned me about practicing fellatio on convenience store candy. At least not in public. Such displays were saved for keggers in the desert or smoke filled basements.
Are kids that much different now?
And if they aren't that different, didn't we have enough dignity to…oh screw it. Dignity schmignety. I had a mullet and listened to glam rock. I actually once sold pages of a discarded old pornographic magazine behind Magee Jr High to 7th graders who wanted to see pictures of real live BJs performed by paid professionals. If my company only knew where I first practiced those sales skills…
You know I shouldn't have disclosed that considering my mother is probably reading this.
And thinking of parents, after our rebellious teenage visitor had passed, I turned to Pavel, the father of two grown daughters, and offered him my deepest, most sincere sympathies. This sentiment goes out to all the fathers of beautiful baby girls. Sooner or later, regardless of how well or how poorly you raise your daughters, one day, they will discover boys. And gentlemen, we all know what we were like when we were boys.
I desperately hope I am never blessed/cursed with baby girls, cause I can't handle the thought of my beloved feminine progeny…um…playing with a penis. Or practicing playing with penis. Or thinking of practicing of playing with a penis. If I have girls, I want them to be utterly repulsed even terrified of a penis, at least until they are 40. Or I am dead.
I suspect that in my rapidly overwhelming adulthood, I am beginning to understand why my father went absolutely batty when my sisters reached dating age. Come to think of it, that's about the same time the gray began to show in his hair. At least that's something I won't have to worry about.
All in all, it's another reason I have no children. Well, that and these all too regular bouts with celibacy.
Back to my rant. Most of us were obnoxious sex crazed undignified little cretins at one point. But I hope most of us knew well enough to have kept it private.
Maybe it's with age that we romanticize our own lost youth, and forget that eventually all kids, sometime between the age of 12 and 16, become volcanoes of sexuality. Curious, confused, compelled, complicated.
Sadly, however, lots of those kids just don't have a foundation to help them deal with it all appropriately, responsibly, safely. And, subsequently, announce their oral explorations to trailer parks and strange dirt encrusted men.
Scary, isn't it?
