Currently Reading Kids First Book About Sex By Joani Blank see related

What is Missing from the ‘Birds and the Bees’: Talking to Your Kids about Sex

            In our generation, the sex education was not only poor and sparse, but in most communities a taboo.  Not one year of my public or private education was devoted to learning about sexuality and sexual health.  While I understand that students in larger, wealthier, or more urban communities were more fortunate, they too lacked adequate instructors and information.

            On a trip to Montpelier, Vermont, with my good friend and roommate, Kurt, I decided to get the most of my vacation one of the largest hippy locales in states.  Downtown Montpelier is riddled with book stores.  Like Starbucks in NYC, Vermont’s capital is home to a book store every fifty feet.  Luckily I found some great deals on original, classic, and bizarre new and used texts.  One of these was a 50 cent rectangular picture book entitled “A Kid’s First Book about Sex.”  Intrigued about whether or not it carried honesty or some religious rant about abstinence I picked it up without opening the first page.

            At a local Irish pub Kurt and I sat down to lunch.  I immediately reached into my shopping bag and opened the book.  A 1983 text by Joani Blank and Marcia Quackenbush, the book talked about everything from self-esteem to arousal, masturbation and intercourse.  The book seemed to be guided to towards pre-adolescent kids, but I even found myself a bit uncomfortable with the words and images.  When lines read, “Here are what some kids do when they are alone: take a shower, sleep, daydream, read,, draw pictures, work on projects, masturbate…” I was taken back.  How come my parents never talked to me like this or about this when I was a wee-one?

            I was born in 1983, so there it isn’t like there wasn’t literature available when I was learning about sex.  It just seems that what Blank and Quackenbush were talking about back in the early eighties has some how become more taboo over time, not the opposite.  A child tells their teacher their father has been discussing masturbation and genitals with them and chances are that parent is going to be meeting with Child Protective Services.  If our society was brazen and liberal enough to talk about these topics with children twenty years ago, why can’t we do it today.

            My first lesson about sex came when I was in the second grade.  It was following a viewing of “Pretty Woman” my irresponsible aunt allowed my five year old sister and I to watch.  My mother sat my down my twin bed (which was covered in California Raisin sheets) and drew a medical style diagram of male and female genitalia with full viewing of a flaccid penis and uterus.  It made absolutely no sense to me at all, but from then on I feared male genitalia like a venomous snake not to be reckoned with.  Never draw a thick hook like being hanging from a man’s stomach for an imaginative seven year old.  My mother apparently never got that memo.

            My mother has always been morally and socially liberal with raising my sister and me.  She has the belief that being honest and open with us would help prevent us from making uneducated decisions.  What it resulted in was extreme embarrassment from my sibling and me, but also made our mom the most popular mother on the block.  Yes, my crazy “cool” mom was responsible for the sexucation of my entire middle school dance team and Girl Scout troop.  However, she taught nothing about masturbation or genital exploration.

            This is where society has met its ultimate downfall: beyond the obvious religious intolerance for sexual, self-satisfaction society is unaware on how to educate their children about anything more than the biology behind their body parts.

            Paul Joannides, who I mention here regularly, makes a great point about how to discuss such a topic with kids.  He notes that when a pre-adolescent child is touching themselves is not fantasizing, but doing it as a form of pleasurable exploration.  This acknowledgment not only helps us who study the subject of sex understand the separation of perversion and pleasure, but also study where our fantasies and fetishes come from.  If you are raising a child, or plan to in the future, there are several things to remember when sexucating your kin; things that were most likely missing from your parents early adolescent scheme on the birds and the bees.

• Remember the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching: Young children need to learn to explore and appreciate their bodies.  Many of our generation’s parents neglected to remember this when we went to scratch our genitals.  When your kids start touching and exploring, encourage it, but also set rules.  Make sure they aren’t doing it in public so that they don’t risk being abused or molested.  Also, don’t allow them to do it too frequently.  Like anything children do for comfort (i.e. sucking a thumb or sharing a bed with their parents) it is a behavior that needs to be monitored so to avoid habit.
• Teach your children that it is ok for them to touch themselves, but not other people, nor should other people touch them.  To be explained at adolescence, these rules may change, but when your kids are very young, it is important for them to understand the difference between “good touches and bad touches”.  Pedophilia is a rampant problem in American society, and if for no other reason, sexucation is necessary for avoiding abuse.
• Explain the difference between ejaculate and urine.  You have no idea how many men have told me how “off guard” they were the first time a thick white fluid came from their penis in the absence of pee.  Tell your children what makes up these liquids and about hygiene in relation to them.  Nothing like the fear that you might be dying the moment a egg-white like substance comes from your genitals (i.e “Portnoy’s Complaint”).
• Discuss genital differences.  No two vaginas are alike people!  Children, especially young boys, will begin comparing their genitals with other boys and girls early on.  This is where insecurity and sexual self-esteem comes in and sexual development becomes overwhelmingly psychological.  Explaining in POSITIVE terms the difference, abnormalities, and structure of body parts is immensely important to helping to maintain a positive self-image in your children’s eyes.

Remember when you were a teenager?  The last place that you wanted to hear about sex from is your parents.  However, when children hit their teen years they are most likely to make irresponsible decisions about sex and relationships.  They also have the greatest chance of depression and poor self-esteem.  The number one thing about raising teenagers is remain a moderate teacher.  Don’t be the authoritarian parent, or the wanna-be friend.  Your job is to remain involved, but not oppressive.  Tell your kids you are there to talk, and try to get involved where they seem to let you.  However, as we all know about being a fourteen-year old gum chewing brat sneaking cigarette’s from mom’s purse, the last thing we are going to listen to is some forty-year old with a shaking finger and raised voice.

I don’t have children, and don’t plan on having them for a good ten years, but many of my readers and friends have kids of their own.  Knowing how many of my friends were raised and miseducated about sex makes me worried that our children’s generation might suffer the same sexual oppression we did.  I hope to all of you with children, or are planning on having them in the near future, this helped make the toughest topic you will face as a parent a little bit easier.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover, and Other Reasons I am Nobody's Relationship Columnist

I have felt the need lately to address my readers about a few personal, professional, and important issues that I have been facing since the beginning of Miss O’s column series.

It has been several weeks since my last article. I have been moving, going to school, and working over the course of the past few months and it has not only managed to burn me out, but has left me with all my research text in boxes that now inhabit my Honda Civic’s entire backseat. I will be at my new home within the next five days, and promise a new column before the start of September, come hell or high water. Be prepared for a series of columns concerning erogenous zones, understanding the g-spot, and common genital abnormalities coming early next month.

But for what I have come to say. I warn that my thoughts are rambled, for I have been thinking about how I would write this for over a month. The issues and ideas flowing mainly through my mind in the car and shower when I have the complete inability to jot them down. This article is mainly a personal statement, and is written mainly to set a foundation for my readers to better understand my background, my ideologies, and what has driven me to a unpaid career writing about the science and philosophy of sex.

I am in no way a relationship columnist. This is the most common misconception that I get about my work, and myself. I am an amateur sexologist. In no way is this similar to a clinical relationship therapist or a marriage counselor. My field of interest and study is in sexual health and practice, but in no way tries to theorize the complex emotional structure of a typical heterosexual man/woman relationship.

The main reason for this is simple. I know nothing about health relationships. I came to a rather disheartening realization about this the other night when my mother asked me, "So how many boyfriends have you had?"

I answered, "Real ones? I would say one. But I have had seven lovers."

"Lovers?" She asked me this like I asked the man who first used the word with me. A lover in my vocabulary was always someone far more important to you than what I was to him. If this woman were not someone I had spent my whole life trying to get to acknowledge me, I would have just said, "Men that I have fucked or who have fucked me."

"Yes, mom. I wouldn’t know a health relationship if it hit me in the face. Thus I am either lured, or lure others, into sex based liaisons. I just don’t see myself as someone who could be in a healthy relationship."

"That is a very good point," she replied downing her fourth glass of wine.

In all honesty, I did not tell my mother this because I thought she would be proud, however, she seemed far more apathetic than I expected. See, I had expected my mother to tell me it was wrong that six of the men I had slept with were men that did not encapsulate an intimate or romantic bond with myself. I wanted her to tell me that casual sex and friends-with-benefits hookups were unhealthy and "immoral." She didn’t tell me this. She didn’t even respond negatively to my candid statements about my inability to engage in heterosexual relations with men beyond the confines of sex.

I can’t lie. This whole article is one of those, "This is a cry for help" public statements that will either make me look like a pathetic liar in your eyes, or more of an honest human. Either way, I hope that you can understand why this was a necessary statement to make.

One thing many people don’t know about me is that I suffer from several interlinked psychological disorders. Common as they are, they have been very problematic since the age of eleven, and have continued to the present day. When I was in the sixth grade, I can remember sitting in Miss Nichols’ math class next to my best friend. I can remember looking out the small rectangle windows trying to concentrate on something long enough to force a stone-walled appearance to grow upon my face. The problems was, at this time, I had begun my entrance into depression. I was so unhappy that I would cry at a whim, pray to God every night to let me die, and made me gorge food until I vomited. I can remember crying and screaming to a God I had no evidence of, to take my life because not only could I not sleep at night, I could not find the strength to face the day. I would stare at the wall and repeat to myself, "Relax, relax..." over and over until I would pass out. I was only a child, a baby. I have never, to this day, understood how someone so young could suffer from such deep-seeded unhappiness.

When I got to high school, I was bombarded by the realization that no one knew me, and with all due respect, had no interest in getting to know me. I can remember eating the first few weeks of lunches in the girls bathroom, reading ‘A Separate Peace,’ and praying the day would end. I would cringe with fear at having to set foot in a class that would require me to work with other people. Other people who had gone to private school with each other and been friends since Sunday school. My anxiety was so bad that my heart would tighten in my chest as I walked the creaking floors from one class to another. When I would go home I would call my friends that resided at public schools and talk to my parents over dinner about how "great" everything was for me. In reality, I secretly prayed the place would burn down. Everyone fit in so well where they ended up, and I sat in fear every night that I would never fit in, I would never make a friend, and that I would not make it the four years it took me to get out of high school.

By the time I left for college, I was prepared for a new life. I didn’t go in like many people, thinking that I was going to reinvent myself and come back to Maine will a new persona and style. I instead left telling myself that I was going to seek happiness where ever possible. I was far more social and attention grabbing. I was far more positive and friendly. It gained me a large circle of friends and I felt at peace with life, in a small sense. It was a great start, I thought, to improving my condition.

I soon met a boy who gave me promises and dreams. He was theatrical and imaginative and he made me feel like God had finally given me a reason for happiness. It soon became apparent that this was not the case. It was instead a relationship that worsened my condition. I was blinded by lies and immaturity until the "shit hit the fan" about a few months after we got to know each other. He clung to me and sucked the life from my body at every chance he got. It is funny how, at the time, I thought I was the dominant player in the relationship, and now looking back I realize what a puppet I was to his own dependent and egotistical behavior.

Things had gotten so bad with this person, that I finally reached out for medical attention (for the first time) at the age of nineteen when I called my doctor and she prescribed me Lexapro over the phone without an appointment. When I got back to Boston, I was so happy and peppy. One night as we lay in bed, a smile beaming across my face he said to me, "I can’t stand to see you this happy." I left him the following week and never spoke with him again. The said part was, I had only been on the medication for two days, not long enough for it to even begin building in my system. It wasn’t the drugs that were making me happy, but instead, that someone was finally willing to listen and accept that I had a problem; that someone was going to try to fix me for the first time in twenty years.

The end of this chapter led me to the deepest paranoid depression I have ever suffered. I became severely "manic" depressive and agoraphobic. I never left my apartment, and when I did, my heart would race in my chest until I would get back to my bed at the end of the night. My anxiety was so severe that I was addicted to uppers and downers to keep me on a schedule that allowed me just enough functionality to keep me from failing out of school, or having a severe mental breakdown.

This chapter led me to one of the most important moves of my life. For the first time, I was willing to get rid of my materialistic pride and made the decision to transfer to a public college in Maine. After working 72-hour weeks and living with my parents for eight months while I interned with a lobby group in Augusta, I was smiling regularly. Getting up in the morning was no longer a chore, and I rarely ever cried. I was constantly out with friends and back on track of a "normal" human being. I felt good.

There were many unfortunate occurrences that have occurred in the past years since I have made my transfer and move back to my home state of Maine. I don’t discuss them with many people, some things I don’t even discuss with my closest of friends. I have chosen to do this because as much as I trust them to support me, I am tired of having them see me break down in tears, dwell on the issues, and most of all, be the negative one. I have since, not just for other people but also myself, tried to carry a perpetual smile and optimistic view, even when this view is nothing but a sugar-coated chunk of lies.

I learned to avoid my own issues and anxieties by engaging myself in the lies and issues of other peoples. I, for a long time, gained a lot of pride and sense of importance by playing the role of "mommy" to many people. However, this past week I came to the sad conclusion that this was in no way helping me, and in a world of selfish, unstable people, I have been walked all over several times and have managed to see my own problems build up in a background and blow up in my face today.

I am independent, but I don’t want to be. I am strong, but the weakness in me is filling the cracks where my strength has begun to wear away. While I am not willing to state that I am selfish enough to take advantage of my friends’ good will as many acquaintances have done to me, and I have done to people in the past, I do not believe I could be a true friend if I did not make people aware that I too need a shoulder to cry on from time to time.

What I have learned is that appearances are often masks we wear to cover up who we really are. Some of us want to appear weak so as to avoid having to work at being a better person. Someone of us want to be too strong to ever need anyone else because we are too ashamed to admit our own weakness. I have spent the majority of my life trying to save and protect the first said persons and have played the role of the latter. These days I am too tired to be strong, but I often worry it is too late to be honest with people. If there is anything I know, is that no one is happy to hear the "friend" they thought they knew so well was nothing but a mirage of secrets and lies.

In no way do I want to be a woman who is constantly calling people drunk guilting them into gaining attention. In no way do I want to be a person who thinks she is in love with every man who fucks her. I don’t want to be someone who is desperate to complain about how horrible her life is. However, I cannot continue to be cheery and strong. I refuse to be a push-over to avoid confrontation, smile to avoid being a nuisance, or avoid telling someone they hurt my feelings so that they have to explain to me how less of a priority I am in their life.  My stupidity lies in the fact that I never want to ask someone who for help, I just want them to read the signs, because as a friend, that is what I would do.  My mother tells me, "You are the most pathetic type of person.  They type of person that gives their entire self away and sit around praying someone will give you something back.  Well, no one will ever give you anything back unless you come out and beg for it, because they are so used to take, take, take.  You might want to change yourself or your friends before your entire self is depleted."

Too late.

I do not write relationship columns because I don’t know what a healthy relationship is. I know what good sex is. I know how to keep yourself hygeniacally and phyically pleasing. I could tell you the best positions and kinks to attempt based on your personality. What I can’t tell you is how to be a good girlfriend, boyfriend, or even platonic friend. I can’t tell you how to be part of a support system, how to attain respect, or how to make someone love you enough just to be by your side when you need them. Maybe I am just a sucker for selfish people, or maybe I am too idiotic to know what to ask for a hand-up, but I know quite a few things for a girl my age, and healthy relationships is not one of them.

Currently Listening Details By Frou Frou Let Go see related

To move away from my normally raw discussion of bondage and masturbation, today I would like to share with you something different, however, equally disturbing in its own right.

Everyone has their sob stories. Their broken hearts, their debt, demanding jobs, et cetera. I could sit hear and bitch and moan, give excuses for why my life sucks, and attempt to make you feel bad for me, but we all know, in reality, no one gives a damn about anyone else’s shit-hole life. Why would they when they already have their own? If you have to sit through some pathetic rant and whine, you might as well be hearing about it on a television screen where the characters involved look like Jessica Simpson and skank around like Paris Hilton.

I currently in the middle of moving. Now, if you know me at all, you know I am not good with location changes. The first time I ever moved was when I first took up residence at Melvin Hall, a crowded ‘dive’ of a dorm that sat on the out skirts of Northeastern’s campus, located at 90 The Fenway. The room that I had I shared with a vivacious and social-butterfly of a tomboy: a girl from Long Island who was a intense hockey player and one of the kindest human beings I have ever met. We shared a bunk bed in a room that measured something pathetic like 9 x 9 with a closet that couldn’t hold my wardrobe, let alone both of ours. He equipment lay dormant in the middle of our room for quite a long time. With in the first few weeks I moved my desk and chair to the dormitory basement to provide enough room for us to move in the cramped space. I became easily annoyed and frustrated, being one who had not shared a bedroom with anyone since the fifth grade when my parents had remodeled their home to allow my sister and I our own private space. I had spent most of my life a free-spirit, a loner, and an introvert. It was difficult enough for me to learn to share a room with someone, let alone bunk with them in a room the size of janitor’s closet. My experience with the move was less than wonderful.

The following year I moved into an apartment complex on Northeastern’s property. Willis Hall, which was at 50 Leon St smack in the middle of campus, was an upperclassmen building that affording you with a kitchen, bathroom, living room, furniture, and a bedroom you shared with one other person. I had looked forward to living in Willis, for my boyfriend at the time and my best friend were both going to be living in the building as well. However, I had reservations about my new roommates. I was again facing the terror of cramped space, but instead of just one other person, I now had to face daily three other people. I had to share my possessions and space with three girls I didn’t even know. Our apartment was a smoking room, and because no one wanted their clothes and sheets wreaking of smoke, there was always someone in the living room watching Real World and smoking a Camel Light. The girl I shared a room with happened to be one of the most fucked up people I had ever met, let alone, had to live with. She was an art student who was not only a pathological liar, but was a kleptomaniac. Her faults aside, he boyfriend (whom I referred to as the "dirty hippie") was fucking perverted jack-off who looked like he never showered. He was constantly stealing my cigarettes and eating my food, and she soon followed suit after I failed to call him on it. They were emotionally and physically abusive to each other, and ever other night someone would scream and cry. While my boyfriend and I too did our share of fighting and crying, my roommate and her man seemed to spat routinely, where as it got to a point when I knew not to be home. She was an alcoholic, and when she would pass out in the bedroom at night I would wake to the room smelling of a sickly sweet odor of fermentation. She and her dirty hippie boyfriend would drunkly fornicate in my presence and play loud music and movies when I was trying to sleep. She not only smoked my cigarettes, ate my food, and used my makeup, but she also stole my prescription muscle relaxants that I received due to a back injury sustained in an auto accident. The girl was nuts. I hear she has sense cleaned up her act, but she was fucking nuts.

If I had felt that barriers had been breached in my first dormitory episode, they certainly were the second time around. People started saying that I had really bad luck. Fuckin’ right I have bad luck, man! My mother has been telling since I was a wee one, "If it weren’t for bad luck, you would have no luck at all." Then I remind myself that I am not starving, or suffering an incurable disease (that I know about, at least), or struggling to cloth my seven children. Then I feel really lame for moping around and pouting, and hold my head in shame for all the whining I have been doing.

So, like I said, I am moving. I have been here on Grant Street for about eight months, and I am ready to go. I pay $400, plus utilities, to share an apartment with an unemployed law student who teaches herself to play guitar ALL day long and cooks stir fry every night without doing the dishes. She takes an hour long shower every morning, even though she does not have a job or class to go to. She is the BEST roommate I have ever had.

My room is small though, and I have never really used the living room. I come home, and shoot left into my bedroom everyday. I crawl in my bed that sits next to the window and spend all my free "Amy" time watching Family Guy and reading. For the past six months I have had a strong desire to move in with a friend, so that I had some feeling of enthusiasm about coming home each day.

So my friend is moving in with his mother for financial reasons. I have seriously considered doing the same, but a commute from Minot is not looking to good with a 18 credit semester ahead and a good job secured in Portland does not seem to be logical. I was really excited, because my new roommate was not only a friend, but a friend that I trusted to be an awesome, responsible roommate. I don’t think I have ever been so excited, actually, about moving. Considering I hate the idea of packing and sleeping somewhere new. I am still five-years old when it comes to location changes. I still get that same hole in my stomach I did when my parents shipped me off to stay at a relatives for the first time.

Well, last night I was at their place. My to-be roommate was off to spend time with some friends over tea, and my friend who was giving me the room was off to rescue an emotionally struggling friend. "Good," I thought to myself. "I can get this place all spic-and-span for when Kurt [my new roommate] gets home. It will sure impress him and give him good reason to be happy I am going to be his roommate."

I went to town. I was so ready to mop the floors and dusk and the whole sha-bang. I wanted to clean for Kurt, because I know he didn’t have time since he got his new job, and I wanted to clean for me, so that when it was time to move in my family didn’t haul me from the door and refuse to allow me to take up residency. What you have to remember is that I am customer service representative and "overtime" college student. I make about $400 bucks every two weeks, before taxes. My parents help me with my rent in exchange that I can maintain a hefty scholarship, which means nothing below a 3.67 GPA. If they were to walk into my soon-to-be apartment today, they would tell me that I either had to find another place, or move in with them. There was, or is, a lot of pressure on my shoulders to make sure this place is not only livable for me, but acceptable to my folk’s high standards of living, as well.

So I start in what is supposed to be my new room. A huge room with a bay window and a double closet. I haven’t had a bedroom this large or well windowed in my life! I am very anxious, however, for the way it looks now you would swear a tornado had come through. You can’t see the floor, and it has fallen victim to months of indoor smoking. I decide to make my friends bed first, to remove some of the clutter. Then I take apart his fan, which I swear has never been cleaned, and put it in the tub with hot water and bleach to help remove the half inch layer of dust from the blades and gated cover. On my way back in to clean up the clothes and trash on the floor I step on a tack and it goes [Adie, stop reading this or you will vomit] right into the arch of my foot. This is certainly not the first time this has happened, but it hurt like a bitch and I hopped over to the freshly made bed to remove it. When I looked down, the tack had gone all the way in; there was nothing but a clear thumbtack head sticking out of my foot. I knew this was going to hurt REALLY bad. Now, another little hint about me: I can stay calm through most things that piss me off, such as nasty hygiene and messes that this apartment showed, but the second I am inflicted with pain or some loud noise, or anything to disturb my chi, I freak out. I pulled the tack out of my foot, put pressure on it until the blood stopped, and slammed the bedroom door behind me. No way in fuck I could deal with that mess last night without pulling my hair out.

So I went to the kitchen, where there was an ungodly smell for weeks. The trash was everywhere. The trash bag was over flowing, which annoyed me, because it isn’t like they didn’t have more bags, or that it was tough to take the damn trash out. I help telling myself, "You have no right to be mad, you don’t live here...yet." I just was amazed that no one felt embarrassed to have company in an apartment that smelled of rotting food, fermentation, and stale cigarettes. I wanted to badly to go home and shower, but I was determined to impress my soon-to-be roommate with how well I take care of house.

I took out the trash I had collected. I threw up in my mouth when I removed the last bag from the trash can. In the bottom, what looked like beer and dog shit, sat in the bottom. This is where the smell was emanating from, well, the worst of the smells. I didn’t know what to do with it. I figured it would go down the sink, so I took it to the bath tub and used the rest of the bleach to deodorize and clean the can. Everything went down the drain, except the dog turn-looking chunks. I didn’t want to touch them, so I ran the watch hard over them, but they didn’t move. "They must not be food," I decided, "They must be some form of paper or something that doesn’t deteriorate well." So I reached in to pick up the little shits. I am literally throwing up in my mouth now and am luckily near the toilet. As I grab at them, I realize that they are falling apart in my hand. The little turd-like things were quarter-size chunks of MOLD! Not only have I never seen mold this big, but so gross. I finally threw up. I threw the mold in the toilet and flushed. I was done with the bathroom!

I wanted to keep going, but with the restrictions I had put on the places I would allow myself to go in the apartment, I left only the living room that was no longer off limits. I picked up the cludder, but with a lack of a vacuum and anything to really dust/clean with, it was hopeless. I was dripping sweat, and all my little OCD brain could think was, "Oh God, the germs are going to get in through my pores and hair follicles." At this point I started to each, grow paranoid, and get super mad. I started writing a note to the guys, a note that I hoped would be an eye opener to how desperately they needed to get their acts together. I understood that they didn’t have much free time, do to the fact that they both worked long hours, so I felt slightly bad for getting on their butts about it, but it was past the point of just being slightly lazy. They were living in a place that wasn’t even healthy to be cohabited. As much as we all like a social life, you need to make health and hygiene a priority at least ONCE and a while!

Half way through my letter, after I had noted that after spending a week in the Mississippi bayou, I had not been so disgusted by bug infested homes as I was in that apartment, my soon-to-be roommate walked in. I was noticeably, and what I consider, understandably angry. I explained to him how upset I was with the situation and how I was concerned about moving in. Now, a third "if you know me at all," when I am upset, all it takes is a little reassurance to calm me down. Instead, when I said I didn’t know if I could move in, Kurt said, "Well, you need to let me know soon so I can find a place to live." Ouch. Now I felt bad. Then I said that if we could get it clean then I would be fine. He said he thought be could. Few. I was still a bit shocked and mad. He asked if that was all I was mad about. I said yes. "Well, I am going to bed. I have to be up in six hours." Ouch, again. He was definitely pissed. I felt bad, but it was guilt, not a feeling like I actually said something out of line, but that I had bitched at him when he had to be up at 5am. I left questioning whether or not he was going to turn around and say, "I don’t want you to move in." I was so paranoid that come August 30^th, I would have no place to live. I apologized over IM, but when the morning hit and he had not responded, I wondered why I was the one that was one who was now feeling like crap. While the two of them were out being social, I was home cleaning an apartment I didn’t even occupy yet. I didn’t care. I wanted that room. I wanted to share the place with Kurt. However, I didn’t want to be treated like I had no right to be upset; I didn’t think it was fair that I was being blown off, no matter how late at night it was. I wasn’t going to spend $425 to live in squaller. But then again, I didn’t want to lose a friend over a disagreement over mold in the bottom of a trash can. I didn’t have the energy to deal with a "conflict of interest." So I decided to suck it up and let it go before I found Kurt telling me to fuck off and find myself bunking at my folks house for the next six months. The shock-and-awe of the whole night was a nice kick in the ass, let me tell you, that has reaffirmed everyone’s perception that I can be guilted into apologizing for just about everything.

So Monday I will enter, what I hope will be, my new apartment. With a bottom of bleach, anti-bacterial wipes, and a vacuum, I will clean that place top to bottom. I will not complain or bitch, or even ask for a spot of help. In what I expect to be 12-hours of boy free environment, I will turn that place into a livable space. I will keep a smile on for every moment my soon-to-roommate is around to assure to him that I can be a big girl about the whole situation, and hopefully after all that he will allow me to move in without argument.

I suppose the lesson here is that I better make a damn good living after college so I can afford my own one bedroom so there shall never be a conflict with my roommates ever again.

Fetish is a word that is widely overused in the English language. These days people can have everything from a shoe fetish to a fetish for the color pink. These, however, are not fetishes. Fixations maybe, but not fetishes.

Fetish is a term used to a sexual obsession. It is a "reliance on a prop, body part, or scenario in order to get off sexually" as defined in an English dictionary. Fetishes are often viewed as unhealthy because the compulsion to engage in a fetish scenario is so strong, that one might not be able to reach climax without such an aide.

Some fetishes are easier to deal with than others. For example, a fetish can be anything from wearing particular items during sex to dressing in drag to the licking of toes, and even talking dirty. I once knew a man who had a fetish for women wearing high heels during sex. His fixation on the shoes can be adequately labeled a fetish due to the fact that he could not get aroused without seeing his woman in a set of pumps before bedding her. Luckily for him, his fetish was no so deviant as to cause ripples in his relationship.

Men who like to dress in their female partners’ clothes is a very common form of fetish. It is reminiscent of the resistance against gender-role identity. Cross-dressing is a form of kink that is often seen as straining the social boundaries of heterosexuality, that many people are not comfortable with it. As mentioned in Part I of this series, women who dress in men’s clothes are seen as "fashion-forward," but men who dress in women’s clothes, well, they are ostracized in American culture. Cross-dressing is a fetish that can be beneficial to couples who engage in role-playing and D&S behaviors, for it allows a dominant/submissive dynamic that opposes traditional gendered characteristics. Cross-dressing becomes a fetish when a man or woman requires the dress of themselves or their partner in the clothing of the opposite gender. This in no way means that the fetished person is homosexual and desires to be with a same sex partner, but instead has a psychological fixation on the gender-role identity associated with fashion or style. As bizarre as drag appears to most of American culture, it is a common behavior seen in every avenue from rock music to comedy to art. It is a rather healthy way to adapt and understand the opposite gender and behave egalitarian. Many men enjoy dressing in women’s clothing and panties for the same reason that women do it. The feel and design, the feminine beauty that comes from female fashion is something men are not only faced with daily, but become rather curious. I know if I were a man, I wouldn’t be able to turn down the chance to try on a satin dress or metallic heels. Then again, I am a gay man in disguise, as it is.

Oh, my fetish! My sexual deviation that I cannot help but fall victim to. Talking dirty is a fetish for some, a fun rendevous for others. For this behavior to be a fetish it means that one cannot reach orgasm with out verbal communication that is in some ways vulgar or sexually oriented. Talking dirty can be anything as raw as "fuck me like a whore," to anything as kind as, "I love the way I feel inside of you." Verbal communication is a common fetish with women, because we are more emotionally and mentally stimulated, where men are more visually stimulated. Women are more likely to have fetishes that are psychologically stimulating or demanding, where are men are more likely to fixate their attentions on body parts or props. When it comes to talking dirty, however, it is a fetish who’s application can be easily met by one’s partner. Because "dirty talk" is the most common, and undefined, fetishes, it is rare that many people will refuse to use it in the bedroom. However, I have found in my own personal experiences that heterosexual men have a harder time talking dirty to their female partners because they fear "demeaning them," for they have been socialized that you don’t talk to a woman you respect in such a way. For people who have a fetish for verbal communication during sex, the best thing to do is to discuss your desires and wants with your partner before you engage, for it makes it more comfortable than screaming out half way through, "smack my ass, daddy." That can be a REAL turn-off for some.

Some people like feet, breasts, hands, hair, etc. Some people like hats, socks, Halloween masks, etc. Fetishes come in all shapes and sizes! The fixation of a fetish is not an area that sexual psychologists have been able to deter people from. Once someone develops a fetish, chances they will build a stronger reliance on said fetish over time, and not vice-versa.

While the characteristics of a strong fetish is rather similar to the patterns of serial rapists, it is important to note that a fetish is not a sexual predatory behavior. Most people have fetishes, some more socially acceptable than others. There is distinct difference between mentally ill (i.e. someone who is a pedophile) and someone with a strong fetish (i.e. someone who can only get off when a woman jacks him off with her feet). Please remember when dealing with someone who appears or claims to have a particular fetish that boundaries exist, and that regardless of what you define fetish as, that any behavior must be between consensual partners of legal age.

Pornography, since the awakening of the internet age, has become a very common fetish that has led to much study in the academic world of sexology. A fetish that begins development during pubescent stages in several young men’s lives, men who repeatedly masturbate (or chronically masturbate) to pornographic image and film often find it impossible to reach climax when having intercourse with a partner without the aide of pornography. It is a serious issue in modern sexual culture, but due to the strong reliance of a person on their said fetish, a "cure" for this sexual dysfunction has yet to be found. It is this critic’s personal opinion that is this affliction is truly a fetish by definition, the chances of someone being able to remove pornography from their sex lives is slim to none.

It is important to remember there is a difference between a fetish and an interest. You can really enjoy having sex with your pantyhose on, but unless you are RELIANT on those pantyhose to enjoy sex and climax, it isn’t a fetish. Fetish is a rather severe terms for a sexual desire. It goes beyond an attraction to large breasts or blonde hair, it is a dependency on a prop or scenario that must be fulfilled in order to reach climax. Fetishes can be healthy as well as unhealthy, and it is important to understand the root and severity of your fetish before entering into a sexual relationship. It is important to remember that not all people are comfortable with such "sexual deviations" and communication is key to good sex, in any situation.