May 8
The Naming of The Beast
It’s a strange old world I have lived to see. Coming up on my 79th birthday — unless something intervenes, and Fate always is watching — I am largely inactive, mostly housebound, and too-often bedridden. My mental faculties remain more or less intact, so the internet gives me a window from which to watch the world go by. On platforms like Medium, I tend to notice the writings of women first.
Nothing new here — I spent my life noticing women. A random memory obtrudes of a moment long ago when I was a state bureaucrat whose duties required attendance at late-night legislative sessions. This particular night, I was chatting with a couple lobbyists in a corridor outside the chambers when a door opened and several people emerged in close conversation. “Who is that?” I said. The lobbyists began to name to elected officials and staff in the group. “Not them,” I said. “Who’s the redhead?” One of my companions snorted. “Trust you to only notice the woman; it’s like an obsession.”
Say rather endless curiosity about the other sentient species with whom men cohabit this world. Medium these days is adding to my education. Lately, a woman gave a facetious review of the (evidently endless) “dick pics” parading across her electronic devices in living color. If they were so proud of their appendage, she observed, they should name it.
A far cry from my youth when it was shameful to admit you owned one.
I entered puberty in a Florida beach town. My body was changing. The public view: I was shooting upwards, putting on weight. Five-foot-five and 150 at fourteen; 6'2 approaching 200 pounds three years later…Privately: constant hard-ons and obsession with sex, frustrated by abysmal ignorance. Micky Spillane, Raymond Chandler, Richard S. Prather — the hard-boiled mystery writers I read only had allusions to sex. Forget about movies.
Unknown to me, mysterious censorship forces were fighting a furious rear-guard action against graphic sex in books. An 1868 British court banned writing that would “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” By which the court meant everyone who could read. Balzac, Flaubert, Joyce, D.H. Lawrence were banned because they might affect impressionable children. As if they foresaw my prurient interest...
I was on my own to confront the rampant monster. Like an alien possessing me. I caged it in a jock strap at school to avoid embarrassment…Especially after a girl behind me in English class decided to give me back rubs to imitate her friend rubbing her boyfriend’s back in seats beside us, and blowing in his ear. I was afraid that was next. She terrified me. I avoided her outside class…
Meanwhile in 1957 the U. S. Supreme Court, in an obscenity test case, held any writings with the slightest redeeming social importance “have the full protection of guaranties.” This was a major reversal of censorship dating from an 1873 Act of Congress for “Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.”
The Supreme Court had finally extended First Amendment protection to sexy writing!
In 1959 I scored a first-edition paperback of Lady Chatterley’s Lover after a federal judge threw out an attempt to halt American distribution. Maybe the best thirty-five cents I ever spent. The male appendage stood revealed in assiduous detail.
Lady Chatterley’s cock-proud gamekeeper did name his dick: John Thomas.
To a painfully virginal 19-year-old male ashamed of my erections, such audacity was breath-taking. I already knew even to admit owning a penis was shameful, let alone flaunting it. Sixty years later, the world has turned. Boy has it! Hollywood and TV still keep John Thomas under wraps, but the lucrative porn industry offers images of every kind of dick in lubricious detail. And evidently some males these days believe using a “dick pic” for their calling card is just the ticket. I’ve read women's’ laments here and elsewhere. The referenced article is the first time the practice was viewed as humorous.
These comments by women about internet-delivered dick pics flash me back to the late 20th Century. When “internet” meant “AOL” and modems squawked when connecting. I stumbled into the AOL World of virtual sex purely by accident, and “met” a North Carolina school teacher in a Chat Room called Married and Flirting.
This woman used her five available AOL screen names anonymously to enamor a whole cavy of virtual, or cybersex, paramours. (the term cybersex had not yet entered common usage.) She had one special screen pal and considered any day dreary without “seeing” him. But when I first talked to her, she was annoyed with him about a photo of his erect penis.
Not because he sent it to her. Because he didn’t.
This guy was described as a computer genius for a New England company building nuclear subs. My private thought was his behavior might attract enemy hackers seeking people with high security clearances vulnerable to extortion. The man was a security leak waiting to happen.
She said he had a photo of his erect phallus on his computer and printed out a copy. Left it in his office, where his teenage daughter found it. Sound like a plot for a cheap porn movie? Nope, the story went that she was upset and ratted him out to mom. Result, his home computer time was severely curtailed, as he explained to the school teacher. She was sad to lose frequent contact. He told her the dick pic was a mistake — he was scanning himself for a medical checkup. Yeah, right. “I’m sure he was sending it to a woman,” she typed, with a sad face emoticon.
I was all set to commiserate, say she was well shut of such trashiness. Her next complaint stopped me. “Why didn’t he send it to ME?”
A signal the world was changing beyond anything I could have envisioned. Further proof, if I needed it, I would never ever understand women
