An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics - Derek Haines (beach read book .TXT) 📗

younger peer, who was just a little more in the dark than we were, we would tell him that homos were men who fucked other men’s bums. This seemed to cover it satisfactorily. The concept of, and the word lesbian did not exist then. It would be a few more years before I would be aware, (and society in general) that homosexuality could also apply to women.
So, I was on my own in this sex thing. At least with the other appetite, there was some help at hand. Once, visiting family friends, my parents were offered these funny things called olives. Black things in a small jar. I asked if I could try one. “Of course” I was told, “But you probably won’t like them.” I tried one. It tasted awful! The second one tasted marginally better. I had a feeling that these olives were like cigarettes. The first one nearly killed me, but with perseverance I would end up loving these little black things.
With the sex appetite, things were not so easy. “Would you like to try oral sex?” was never a question I heard asked of me. There is a very solid appetite connection here. Between the black olives and oral sex. The appetite for both did take some acquiring, but once acquired, well, I know I will never lose my appetite or passion for black olives!
“Try it, you might like it” was a phrase I heard as a kid when served a food I had not eaten before. (While on the subject of food, I just realised that that fortune cookie induced hole in my molar has not been attended to as yet. My tongue has just confirmed the fact again by sending a pain message from being caught yet again by the sharp piece of enamel clinging to the molar’s root. I do not like pain. But as you have probably gathered, I am also one of those people who live in fear of dentists. Yes, I know, be tough, grow up, and make an appointment. Ok, I will. Tomorrow. Or maybe Monday week. I think I have a busy week coming. I hope!) If I had had this easy opportunity to establish likes and dislikes, and maybe I will try it again type of potential likes, when it came to my non-food appetite, it would certainly have reduced the time it took to discover what my actual sexuality was. (One’s sexuality is a recent addition to my vocabulary. Back then it had no name. Just funny feelings and desires.) Now this is of course a nonsense. It just could not happen in the same form of, “Try it you might like it” scenario. But the opportunity to talk about a few confusing points might have been a help. Sure as hell my mates were of precious little help. Apart from having a few people to boast about imaginary sexual conquests.
The closest any of us really got to a sexual victory, apart from my mate who had crabs, was masturbation. What a godsend! Why didn’t someone just tell all of us hormone crazy young men about this outlet for the testosterone build up? In a way they did I suppose. It was generally understood, and the message delivered loud and clear from a few mature and knowledgeable fronts that yes, there was a thing called masturbation, but it wasn’t to be discussed, apart from the simple warning that it would send you blind! With my success rate with girls, I lived for a few years with one concrete and absolute certainty. I was going to go blind!
We can all be made to believe the most incredible lies, if the lie is delivered from a credible and trusted source. We can also all be unaware of a truth or reality when it is hidden in the bottom draw of a filing cabinet, stored in a dark basement, behind a locked door for which the key has been lost. But told later, after making a complete and utter fool of yourself, “Oh, why didn’t you just ask?” was a perpetuation of the teasing lie. In the 1960’s you learned as a youngster, DO NOT ASK! The only results that would be achieved from taking up the invitation was to be called a ‘dirty minded little boy’, or at best, ‘you will find out when you get a bit older’. Or ‘ask your father’, which if you did only got you into a viscous circle because father would immediately refer you back to mother. Find out for yourself. It was easier.
For a four year old, is it any easier to ask now than it was for me? Would a sixteen year old of today get a straight answer from his or her parents? The answer is in both cases, in the vast majority, yes, of course. Times have changed, and changed for the better. Society is far more open, and has a more open mind and understanding attitude towards truthful and useful ‘life information’. However, it may be a mute point, because if I categorise and label my early years as the ‘ignorant age’ complete with all its failings, what are we to make of the new era of the ‘information age’ from which our young generation gain so much of their knowledge? It may be that both generations learn about life from outside the family.

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An organised, structured, well designed and implemented life plan has not been a process I have succeeded in planning or executing. A sense of order and neat methodical application to a task has not been a high priority for me at any time. So any likelihood of organising my thoughts into a rational and logical order in this book is a hopeless wish on my or your behalf. As mentioned in a prior chapter, tearing a page out of this book once you have read it, is a practical suggestion to know exactly where you were when you put the book down. But if order is a high priority to you, may I suggest keeping the torn out pages, and once finished reading the book, just put them back in an order that suits you better, or you believe may suit a subsequent reader. The reason I make this comment is to warn you that I am about to skip right back to a beginning of this chapter, with a beginning that I believe could be better than the one I have already written. But not wanting to waste the words I have laboured over in version one of the beginning of this chapter, I plan to ignore the clear fact that this chapter has already started, and just proceed on an ‘unaware, I did not know’ basis by beginning this chapter again with a new version. So as to not look completely stupid, I will not put the chapter title in again, but just carry on as if nothing has happened.

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Sex! What is sex?
Well, it depends on which variant of the noun sex you are dealing with. Let me begin with what my little pocket sized edition of ‘Dictionary for Dummies’ says in reference to this subject.
SEX /sεks/, n. 1. the condition of being either male or female.
SEX /sεks/, n. 2. Biol. the total of physical differences by which the male and female are distinguished.
SEX /sεks/, n. 3. the natural desire of attraction drawing one sex towards the other
SEX /sεks/, n. 4. men or women seen as a group.
SEX /sεks/, n. 5. to find out the sex of.
SEX /sεks/, n. 6. sexual intercourse being the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by ejaculation; coitus; copulation.
Now that this is clear, and might I add, so cleverly simplified down to the very essence of the subject in my little ‘Dictionary for Dummies’, that there is hardly any need to go any further with clarification. In fact, after reading these entries it is hard to fathom what all the fuss in about in relation to sex. Surely, as a concept and fact of life there is not all that much to it. Why have I lived a life of almost complete mystery, confusion and intrigue with regard to this sex business, when really it is so simple? If I consult my ‘Dictionary for Dummies’ in regard to the other appetite, it is far less specific and clear.
EAT /it/, v., ate /eit, εt/ eaten/’itn/ eating; n. 1. to take into the mouth and swallow. 2. to destroy as if by eating. 3. to cause to worry or trouble, what’s eating you?. 4. to take a meal. 5. to make a way by or as if by corrosion. 6. to waste away with longing, eat one’s heart out. 8. eat out, to dine away from home.
Now if I had been sensible and had simply gone to a dictionary in my kindergarten days, and read these two entries, chances are that I would have made more sense of the concept and meaning of sex, than I would have done with the concept of eating. In my opinion, the problem has been that complicating the simple, and simplifying the complex is something, as a species, we have made into an art form.
To contradict myself however, of the six definitions of the noun sex, none really are as simple as they sound. In all honesty, number 6 is the clearest of them all. Nice and mechanical, clear and unambiguous. The first definition would have had me in a spin for years trying to find out about my ‘sex condition’. (I should not use the past tense here, as I have just reconsidered this last sentence and have come clean and honestly tell you that I am still confused as to what my male condition is, or should be, or could be.)
I was on the right track regarding number two definition, when I made the startling observation behind the kindergarten that kids with dresses could well all be ‘Willy deficient’ by default. As far as number three is concerned, well, all I can say is why oh bloody why has a whole society, NOT, for some obscure reason, noticed the word NATURAL in this definition. To have been told that “this was a natural desire and attraction”, would have saved millions of people over a millennia I could imagine, a lot of heartache, guilt, fear and frustration. I know it would have saved me a lot of wasted time and emotional energy. I do not feel I need to delve any further into these definitions. I have located the key that unlocks the door to understanding.
It is all quite natural! Has been all the way along. What a relief. As natural as eating. Sexual desire, and hunger. Both appetites, equally natural and normal. Perhaps I will rejoice the discovery with a celebratory dinner with a couple of gay friends, and end the evening drinking beer in a S&M club watching people get their rocks of by being whipped ever so erotically, by a leather and latex dressed ‘Mistress of Discipline’!
30 Sado-Masochism for those unfamiliar with what S&M means.
Ooops! Have I misinterpreted the meaning of natural and normal? I must have done, because my ‘guilt’ program has just started to run again. I can hear it starting to get into gear. Here it comes. Oh boy it is loud!
MY GUILT: “You dirty, disgusting creature. You should be ashamed of yourself. How could you? As if befriending homosexuals is not bad enough, you now want to delve into perversion. Disgusting!”
MY CONSCIENCE: Ok, I give up! I cede to the wishes of my guilt. Tomorrow I will look for a virgin wife, a house with a white picket fence, in a neighbourhood with a church. I also promise to undertake sex ONLY as a means to