Talk Hard!

Bleach is a caustic chemical you are not advised to get on the outside of your skin, much less pour down your gullet.

If you swallow bleach, you could get chemical burns in your esophagus (the inside of your throat) and your stomach. It could even kill you (though that is more likely with industrial bleach than with household bleach). You are advised to call 911 and or 1-800-222-1222 to get help from a poison control center if you mistakenly ingest bleach. For crying out loud, don’t do it on purpose.

Why am I saying this? An Associated Press article indicated that some teens in Florida believe that drinking a cup of bleach will protect you from HIV. Other rumors have been known to suggest it can help you pass (or foul up) a drug test.

Except insofar as drinking bleach will make you so unhealthy you are unlikely to care about any of the rest, and will therefore not participate in activities that lead to STDs, pregnancy,etc, for a while, bleach is not a prophylactic medicine (prophylactic means something that prevents or protects). Bleach isn’t a medicine at all. It is a cleanser, but it is very harsh and not recommended for use on skin, so don’t wash your genitals or douche with it to protect against HIV either. It will burn you and still not prevent transmission of the disease if you’re otherwise participating in dangerous behavior that exposes you to it.

If you use drugs with needles and syringes that you share, you can and should use bleach to disinfect those implements. Wear gloves while doing so. It can also be used to disinfect clothes and surfaces like counters and floors.

Please don’t try to use it to disinfect the body.

Thank you.

So, did you hear about the 5-year-old who got voted out of his class?

The boy in question is, according to him mother, in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger’s, which is a high-functioning form of autism. The Asperger syndrome itself has a range from low-functioning to high-functioning, which generally describes how socially, physically, and cognitively coordinated the subject is. I happen to have two friends with Aspergers right now, both of whom are fairly high functioning, though they still have to interpret many social signals cognitively.  What helps kids like that is patient feedback, such as explanations of (among other things) why other kids might find their behavior disruptive and unnerving, and how to act differently and interpret social signals.

What does not help is having the majority of a classroom express such feedback in a horribly humiliating session of “Tell Alex why you don’t like him,” which is what his teacher did. She has since been transfered; further punishment is currently up in the air.

If you have a student in classes with you who tends to rub people wrong and get in fights, try finding a moment just before conflict, when you see it coming, and head it off by explaining, in clear language, why you would have chosen to act differently. What input you took note of to come to that conclusion.  What rules and social mores were at work in your head. Thinking about things that way might even be interesting to you. I had a friend in middle school who had fought a lot before he joined my class. I remember one day being surprised that he did not understand the basic concept of the social contract - of picking up after yourself because you hope someone else will do the same for your environment if they spill something, and because spills - of drinks, of a packet of pens, whatever - can be dangerous if left unattended to.

The person in question may not welcome your input. But then again you might be surprised.  My friend started picking up on notions of social utility. He still bugged other people (especially for the month or so when he found it hilarious the way some girls would get upset just because he stood near them - social psychology and personal space at work) but he didn’t get in fistfights any more.

Try talking things out, and your whole school experience could become more interesting and less violent and disrupted. Try not to be mean about it. Let them know you want the best for them as well as yourself. Mean it. Talk hard.

It’s a gorgeous day here and I hope everyone out there has time to relax and connect with friends and family.  Don’t forget our soldiers who are far from home, as well as those who have served their time and are home and those who served and died. No matter what your service is, being away from home and loved ones is not easy. Those who have died for our country deserve our remembrance.

You can easily send an online message of support, or contact your local VFW or other organizations for more information on supporting both current troops and veterans. Ask your family about family members who have served. Go to your local cemetery and see how many graves have flags on them. Talk about what it means. Those of you who are too young to simply remember must first learn about the past in order to do so.  I hope you will take the time, today and throughout your lives.

“It made me want to be thirteen again right now and reading it for the first time.”
-Neil Gaiman

“A rousing tale of technogeek rebellion.”
- Scott Westerfeld

Little Brother is worth reading for a lot of reasons. It’s about teens, and school, and authoritarian jerks and using cool technology hacks to get around surveillance, and to organize things like sudden rallies and rock concerts and city-spanning games. But it also has a romance angle, and it also has one of the best first time sex scenes I have ever seen written, capturing the awkwardness and the complex emotional experience it can be. And I particularly congratulate Mr. Doctorow for including condoms in the scene! With spermicide!

All authors should follow his example. At the risk of major spoilers (which I am somewhat alleviating by taking out the names), I offer Cory Doctorow’s sex scene to you now. Two virgins and an Xbox. (No, not like that. In bed.):

When we got to [her house], I had no urge to plug in my Xbox. I had had all the Xnet I could handle for one day. All I could think about was [her]. Living without [her]. Knowing [she] was angry with me. […] never going to talk to me again. […] never going to kiss me again.

She’d been thinking the same. I could see it in her eyes as we shut the door to her bedroom and looked at each other. I was hungry for her, like you’d hunger for dinner after not eating for days. Like you’d thirst for a glass of water after playing soccer for three hours straight.

Like none of that. It was more. It was something I’d never felt before. I wanted to eat her whole, devour her.

Up until now, she’d been the sexual one in our relationship. I’d let her set and control the pace. It was amazingly erotic to have *her* grab *me* and take off my shirt, drag my face to hers.

But tonight I couldn’t hold back. I wouldn’t hold back.

The door clicked shut and I reached for the hem of her t-shirt and yanked, barely giving her time to lift her arms as I pulled it over her head. I tore my own shirt over my head, listening to the cotton crackle as the stitches came loose.

Her eyes were shining, her mouth open, her breathing fast and shallow. Mine was too, my breath and my heart and my blood all roaring in my ears.

I took off the rest of our clothes with equal zest, throwing them into the piles of dirty and clean laundry on the floor. There were books and papers all over the bed and I swept them aside. We landed on the unmade bedclothes a second later, arms around one another, squeezing like we would pull ourselves right through one another. She moaned into my mouth and I made the sound back, and I felt her voice buzz in my vocal chords, a feeling more intimate than anything I’d ever felt before.

She broke away and reached for the bedstand. She yanked open the drawer and threw a white pharmacy bag on the bed before me. I looked inside. Condoms. Trojans. One dozen spermicidal. Still sealed. I smiled at her and she smiled back and I opened the box.

I’d thought about what it would be like for years. A hundred times a day I’d imagined it. Some days, I’d thought of practically nothing else.

It was nothing like I expected. Parts of it were better. Parts of it were lots worse. While it was going on, it felt like an eternity. Afterward, it seemed to be over in the blink of an eye.

Afterward, I felt the same. But I also felt different. Something had changed between us.

It was weird. We were both shy as we put our clothes on and puttered around the room, looking away, not meeting each other’s eyes. I wrapped the condom in a kleenex from a box beside the bed and took it into the bathroom and wound it with toilet paper and stuck it deep into the trash can.

When I came back in, [she] was sitting up in bed and playing with her Xbox. I sat down carefully beside her and took her hand. She turned to face me and smiled. We were both worn out, trembly.

“Thanks,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She turned her face to me she was grinning hugely, but fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.

I hugged her and she grabbed tightly onto me. “You’re a good man,[…]” she whispered. “Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I squeezed her back. Finally, we parted. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she was still smiling.

You can download Little Brother for free, or buy it at the usual outlets.

Things people believe at one time and teach other people often turn out not to be right, and are hard for other people coming later even to believe. Take the word hysterical, for instance.

It came from the Greek word for uterus, Hystera, and an ancient Greek medical theory that spoke of a woman’s uterus drying up and shrinking from lack of use and then wandering inside her body and strangling her lungs from inside. In Victorian times, some doctors believed that perhaps even a fourth of all women suffered from female hysteria, a “disease” (no longer recognized by modern medicine) that was caused by sexual deprivation in particularly passionate women. The devices designed to treat hysteria were the ancestors of the modern vibrator, so I suppose we have reason to be thankful for these beliefs, but it just goes to show what an entire establishment can convince itself of, when starting from a certain point of logic.

In modern usage, the word hysterical refers to acts marked by excessive or uncontrollable emotion, especially unfounded fear or panic, e.g, “mass hysteria was caused by (insert medical or terrorist scare rumors here)”. Beliefs about medical problems with with one’s own body that don’t actually exist are more often called psychosomatic than hysterical these days, though the term can still be applied.

Next time someone calls you hysterical, try answering, “My uterus is right where it should be, thank you very much!” and see what they make of that!

by Ed

{This week has involved a series of topics that came up when I asked people what advice they’d been given that turned out to be completely wrong. One person responded with “The skimpier the outfit, the sexier.” Ed had already written a post on that topic, so here it is!}

I’m an old fogey at heart, well at heart and in age as well, and it amazes me to see the extent to which people are willing to go today to advertise that they are sexy. Both men and women, everything from skirts too tight to move in to shirts that show off the man fuzz, people are always trying to advertise their sexual potency. On the one hand it makes perfect sense, we are all trying to land a partner and it feels good to walk around and think “Damn I’m sexy” but there is a fine line between “Damn I’m sexy” and “Hot damn I’m desperate.” Crossing that line is sadly far too easy, especially today with the growing emphasis on sexual displays in dress and attitude at younger ages.

Don’t get me wrong, back when I was in high school girls wore tight fitting clothes to catch guys’ eyes. Well, other guys’ eyes; I was a mega-geek so I just got to look and drool, but my point remains valid. Even back in the prehistoric early 1990s people dressed to attract the other sex, and even back then dress could easily send the wrong message. Part of what makes for a really sexy presentation is the hint of sexuality, the underlying promise of sexuality, without actually showing off all the goods at once. Letting other people know you are attractive with clothes that fit your body well and show it in a good light: excellent plan of attack. Wearing clothes that if they slipped a quarter of an inch would land you in jail for indecency, well that just makes you seem desperate.

Try this out sometime: get a DVD of an old black and white film, preferably something with Humphrey Bogart in it, just pop it in and watch. Bogart has the distinction of being probably one of the sexiest men in history when he wanted to be and he did so in a subtle manner; his eyes conveyed passion and raw sensuality without being over the top. That is the kind of smoky, mysterious sexual power you should aim for when attempting to attract someone; the sensual, the offer of possibilities, not the all-you-can-eat-buffet in advance. One of the dying arts today is real flirting. Real flirting is a way of making someone else feel attractive without pressuring them into feeling they have to repay the debt in kind; real flirting is the art of saying “You’re yummy” without a chaser of “Can I hump your thigh?”

Always remember you are someone and, because of that, you have value. Buy clothing that compliments your body, no matter what shape it is in; being sexy starts with looking as good as you are, not as you wish to be. Carry yourself knowing that you are sexy, catch someone’s eye and give a small smile. Show off your awesome sexy side without over selling it. If they are really interested they will come over and try to catch your interest. If not, at least you get a moment of knowing that you caught their attention. If you do it right, you’ll leave a smoking impression no matter where you go, no matter what the time.

Following on the last post and cleanliness, smell, and taste, perhaps I should point out that cologne and perfume also do NOT taste good. A friend of mine told me the other day that when he was in high school everybody was recommending that guys spray cologne on their junk and it wasn’t until he got with a girl and she asked him if he knew how bad it tasted that he found out that was not a good idea.

It had not occurred to me that anyone might recommend that, but if you’ve received that advice, I can assure you it’s not really helpful. In fact I encourage you to disregard it entirely.

For the most part, so long as someone stays clean on a regular basis, I like for my partners to smell like themselves. They smell better when they’re happy or turned on and worse when they’re sick or stressed, but I wouldn’t want them to mask their scent from me. When you get into the question of skin I might lick, my feelings are that much more negative about chemicals like perfumes and cologne.

Also, there’s the small note that chemicals burn sensitive skin. This same friend had a story about another friend of his who tried spraying this commercial scent directly into his bare bottom, spread to expose the most private parts back there. The shock and pain startled him so much he bolted forward and smashed his face into the wall and had to go on his date walking a bit weirdly and with a bloodied nose. This experience, I dare to suggest, was not so positive.

So give yourself, and your date, a break, and lay off the scent in your nether regions. And possibly other places too, until you know the other person will like it. It may be that your love interest likes perfumes and colognes on other body parts, and it’s possible they don’t, or even that they have a bad asthmatic or allergic reaction to it.  Want to know? Ask them. It’s that talking thing. Try it.

One of the possible bad side effects of shyness about touching and looking at your own genitals is that you may not clean them well or rinse them thoroughly. Both the taste of soap and the taste or smell of body fluid build-up in poorly cleaned folds of skin in the genitals can be unpleasant for a sexual partner, so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with how you are shaped and how to spread and stretch yourself out to best rinse off.

Also you want to be especially careful that anyone bringing their mouth down to your privates is not risking swallowing bacteria from fecal matter, which can be bad for them. So wash! Wash regularly, and especially the day of any sexual encounter.

The secretions and oils produced by the penis and vulva naturally lubricate and moisturize the genitals and I don’t write this to make you ashamed of them. There is a particular name, smegma, for the normal accumulation of oils and secretions and naturally shedded skin cells that can accumulate in the folds of the vulva or around the penis, especially in the folds of the foreskin of an uncircumcised male. If allowed to accumulate, smegma can look whitish and some people compare it to cottage cheese or other soft cheeses.

Unchecked buildup of smegma may cause irritation and even a painful infection of the foreskin called balanitis. [see an article about circumcision and health for more info]. Gentlemen who still have a foreskin should retract it back over the penis and stretch it out the other way too, to clean it thoroughly. If your foreskin doesn’t retract, don’t force it, but 90% of teen boys with a foreskin have a retractable one by that age, so see what yours can do. If you’ve been circumcised, you don’t have a foreskin, but still be careful to rinse under the edge of the head of the penis, as well as down around and under the family jewels and to the rear.

By the way, it is advisable to use a gentle soap, if any, for washing the genitals. Something like the Neutrogena bath bar, which will not dry out your most sensitive skin. Those antibacterial soaps like Dial may sound good, but there are friendly bacteria down there, and there are other living things like yeast, and if you mess up the balance you could end up with a yeast infection or something else not fun. So use something gentle instead.

Showering together can be a really good time, and if you think you rinse off well but aren’t sure, you can have your partner check you in the shower. It’s really hot and if you still have soap on your privates you partner can tell you and you can try again, and check again, and, well, that’s fun, isn’t it? They’ll probably be willing to risk getting soap in their mouth once in order to help make it less likely in the future.

Ladies, don’t be afraid to take a compact or other mirror and spread your legs and use your fingers to take a look at yourself and explore how you fold and where the corners are that you might want to give attention to. Does that sound weird and uncomfortable? Then you’re overdue! Lay down on your bed or stand in the bathroom and check yourself out! We’re all different and I assure you that you’re beautiful whether you look like people in magazines or not.

Now be beautiful and clean, and that’s sexy as hell.

The University of California at Santa Barbara offers a wonderful site called Sexinfo that has all kinds of information articles and frequently asked questions. I came across it while researching pubic hair for my last post and I recommend you check it out.

(Sorry I haven’t been posting all that regularly.  Been a crazy week.  I was trying to post a song yesterday but the sharing software wasn’t working. )

The news reports that girls are shaving or waxing their pubic hair at younger and younger ages these days. Including at ages so young they have not yet hit puberty, so their pubic hair has not started to grown in, distinct from other body hair. Some girls also wax their eyebrows, to look like models or actresses. The general response in this article seems to be “Why do it when so young?”

While I also wonder the same, I would ask the more general question, “Why do it at all?”

QUO reports that armpit and leg hair shaving didn’t start in the west until the early 1900s, when advertising campaigns started pushing the notion of shaving the underarms and, later, lower limbs. Like deodorant, razor marketing “arouses the psychological fear of unpopularity and exorcises it by showing how you may avoid embarrassment,” wrote early advertising experts Doris E. Fleischman and Howard Walden Cutler.

To me, shaving is a habit that’s very difficult to stop once you do it, so you’d best think about it beforehand. I have never shaved my legs, and the hair on them is generally soft, blond, and seems pleasant to the touch both for me and for my lovers. People who shave their legs regularly, however, find that the hair that grows in is thicker, and darker, and the stubbly in-between stage between freshly shaved skin and mature soft hair is highly unpleasant to touch, causing a sort of “rug burn” effect.

I do shave under my arms, every other day, and whenever I miss shaving for some reason I get quite uncomfortable under there. I can only imagine how annoying that stubble is for women who shave their legs. It also takes a lot of time. Do you perhaps have better things to do with your time? Something to think about.

Some other girls in middle school certainly found me odd for not shaving my legs, and teased me about it. My uncle commented that it was time to start shaving them one summer when I was a teen, as my lower leg hairs were turning slightly darker and more visible. Yet I never have, and I have been pleased with that experience, on the whole.

Pubic hair is something that changes quite a bit as you grow older, and hair in your body in general spreads and gets darker and more coarse. We have standards in society about covering the pubic area with clothes, and as pubic hair spreads, that becomes harder for women to do with traditional swim wear, and thus we have the “bikini wax,” designed to constrain the apparent pubic area to that which can be covered by a bikini, removing the coarse public hair that would otherwise show and—what? Hint at the sexuality of that part of the body? Oh no!

This coarsening effect includes eyebrows, and I have no issue with shaping your eyebrows as an adult, provided you retain the natural shape of them to some extent, instead of trying to look like someone who isn’t you.  If you aren’t sure what your natural eyebrow shape is, by all means consult a beauty salon, but know that tweezing and waxing can be time-consuming, expensive habits that don’t necessarily make you look better, just different.

I guess that’s my issue with waxing and shaving in general. The human body is a marvelous thing as it is, and the notion that we need to make dramatic adaptations to it in order to look pretty, or to avoid embarrassment and teasing, disturbs me. If you are making a decision to change the hair on your body in order to experiment with something you might like, go ahead. If you are doing it to fit in better with other people’s expectations, to conform, well, think about it, would you?

And don’t be afraid that other people won’t like you if you have all your pubic hair. It’s a perfectly natural, naturally attractive thing to have.