A short essay for men only: Playboy

In 1962 on the way to my cousin’s house for Christmas, my mother suddenly realized that we had no gift for my cousin’s husband Ben (name changed to protect my sorry ass).  My father pulled into a roadside store and after some prolonged shopping (possible three minutes worth) came out with a Playboy magazine.  My mother was flummoxed but recovered herself enough to say, as she looked distractedly out the car window at snow banks and towering pine forest beyond, “Well, I’ve heard they have very good articles.” 

Fast forward to Christmas 2010 or so, and this is the same Ben (now probably 76-ish) that has become known as the “Taser Bunny” of the local police.  It seems he was pulled over by a cruiser at 2 am for possible drunk driving after a high speed chase.  He was after all driving his Yamaha Skimobile down a tar road with no snow on it and making a spray of hell fire as his metal front skis abraded away.  Yet, resisting arrest for DWI is not why he was tased, rather he was tased because he did not understand why the local gendarmerie would not return his loaded shotgun. Of course, there are two sides to every story and I have been overseas so long never heard his side.  This maybe is because my cousin, wife of the Taser Bunny, is still upset about the Playboy magazine that once ruined the true meaning of Christmas so many years ago and can no longer talk about her husband of possible 40 years, I lose count - objectively.

No, people have never bought Playboy for the articles.  The magazine certainly attracted gifted writers such as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth and interviewed politicians (Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King) and many (if not most ) of our cultural icons.¹ Yet, not much hard news came out of the magazine.   It’s almost as if these notables were showing up at the hippest nightclub.  It was almost as if they were all on the make themselves.  So when Ben taped the Miss December 1962 centerfold to the chimney in the living room under a very jolly and flushed Santa, the juxtaposition was not a success, although I’m sure he thought it was funny.  No, I think he was spoiling for some marital discord to spice up an otherwise dull family event - and over the years discord is what he’s got big time.

Of course, Playboy in the 60s is tame by today’s standards.  First, along came Penthouse and Hustler and the term “full frontal nudity” was a red line in the sand for our culture.  This lasted for a decade or so.  But with the advent of DVDs and CDs porn, which always had been a pretty good business, became big business.  The red lines and negative stigma attached to viewing or even making porn became pretty indistinct.  And then the Internet arrived and . . . you know the rest.

I have for the last week or so been looking at a lot of porn on the Internet.  I know my bad.  In my defense I would point out that I have been deathly sick and during my illness most of the testosterone washed out of my body.  So as I see it, looking at porn is a type of therapy to rebuild my testosterone level.  Even if you don’t buy this, at 70 I need all the help I can get.  And even if you don’t buy this, I’ve always thought that a naked woman was nature’s way of saying hello – and in my case as I recover to life, sort of welcome back to the living, Forrest.  And lastly in watching porn, I’ve been playing cat and mouse with the Thai censors.  Thailand has become a military dictatorship so I’m striking a blow for freedom (that’s freedom and not femdom).

So I thought I give you my Pros and Johns account of the geography of pornography.

The cons

1.            Smut today leaves noting to the imagination and that’s a shame.  I’m glad the days at the Lichfield drive-in where soft porn movies could run for two hours are gone.  But now the average viewing time of porn is three minutes or less followed by what a female historian – speaking of Louis 16^th failure to get his wife pregnant – a “happy ending” outside of the vagina.  Creative thought is over before it has begun.

2.            Justice Potter Stewart once said:  I don’t know what Pornography is, but I know it when I see it.  Maybe, but I have much better luck with bad taste – which is rife on Internet porn.  I don’t begrudge little people (midgets) or the morbidly obese a sex life, and I’m sure lots of people have made love in a bathroom (mea culpa), but I don’ need to watch these clips.  I also rule out any clip which shows defecation or squirting.  Sex with animals is out, too as is rough sex (rape) and snuff flicks (which I have not found on my Internet voyage).  There are several other categories that generally, but not always, fall into the bad taste category.  You know bad taste when you see it, but pornography is a little harder to be sure of.

3.            Alvin Dark (a manager and .300 NL hitter) once described Carl Yastrzemski as the best player in baseball from the neck down.

      The Greeks loved the male form.  The statues of David and others dominated art in the ancient world.  The Olympics were all male and participants were naked, ergo more statues.  Form over function was the rule, I guess. 

               Too many porn clips have Vargas girls (another gift from Playboy) being screwed by guys we only see from the waist down somewhat like Yaz, or wearing executioner masks, or so ugly I see them as probably part time janitors at ball parks with losing baseball team.  They may sport outsized erections, but the mismatch of beauty is gauche.  Can a naked man not be beautiful?  After all, porn like hockey is a game that average white men can play, too.

4.            Say Cheese.  Sex is the most fun you can have (with or without your pants on), so why not smile a little more?

5.            Wise Blood, Flannery O’Conner’s novel, was (at least for me) ultimately a failure because she tried to use farce to talk about faith and religion –serious things and that shouldn’t be done.  I feel the same way about porn clips that use farce.  I dislike clips with Santa Claus themes, although there may be deep seated reasons for my dread of Santa having sex.

The Pros

1.            Japanese anime (or hentai both deal with sexual topics) is getting so realistic that only the animator knows for sure whether it was shot with a camera or digitally drawn.  I am guessing that these realistic graphics are the follow ons from the video gaming industry.   But the total control the animator has over his materials is heady stuff, and allows focus and story lines rarely seen in typical clips. 

 

2.            Japanese porn girls are often smiling, no matter what the situation – I like this.  And although I have no idea what they’re saying, their voices sound like a little girl relating a tea party she had for her dolls and stuffed animals.  “Oh, Mr. Bear your cup is empty.  Let me fill it for you with hot tea.”

3.            The Summer of ’42.  Generally, if they are well done like the movie, I like mature women showing much younger boys and girls the ropes.  No older woman ever took a passing sexual interest in me, so I can’t critique these clips.  I don’t watch the reverse either because an older man with sexually naïve youngsters seems doomed to be in bad taste.  And ,no, no older man has ever taken asexual interest in me.

[I am going to stop my list here for several reasons.  

First, I’d have to get into technical terms like bukkake, creampie, twink, katoey  or fluffer and my readers might lose interest. 

Second, there are more porn clips on the Internet than there are grains of sand on a beach. (Diogenes wouldn’t be looking for an honest man today, he’d be looking for a good-looking middle aged woman who hasn’t done an MILF clip.)  So I worry that my work may not be statistically valid.

Third, there’d be all those Nosey Parkers who – even though I said for men only, didn’t I? – who just want to cause trouble.  They’re the ones you see walking around with a sandwich board that says: Men who watch porn don’t believe in Immaculate Conception.  You can pick them out because they’re typically wearing a white beard and Santa suit.

Fourth, all this may not end in the happy ending I long for and which I hope is coming apace.]

1.            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_in_Playboy_2010%E2%80%9319  The list of notables who have been interviewed or submitted to Playboy’s 20 Questions I find amazing.  You can pick a decade at the bottom.

“Until death do us part” has a different meaning in Thailand.

Every culture has a hierarchy of three things:  nationhood, family and religion

Having grown up in the US in the 60s, this hierarchy was like a close grouping of bullets over the heart – there was no real hierarchy just a bulls eye.  Gold star mothers gave their sons (and a few daughters) to the cause of nationhood in the religious belief, not just that God was on their side, but that the country was a force for good and stability in the world.  After all we had just been through World War II and now Russia was destabilizing Europe with its repressive Iron Curtain.  And because the religion of Communism was the worship of the nation, it was our nation against theirs.

The inability to see any separation between nation, family and religion was a reason why political disagreement use to always stop at our shores.  When events happened overseas, the US always acted as one.  Times have clearly changed and America has changed, too.  Religion for one thing is not the factor it was in 1960.  But right or wrong, I still ascribe to the idea that America should show a united front to foreign countries.  I may hang fire all over the auditorium about the wrongheaded failure of President Obama on domestic issues, but I refuse to criticism him on foreign policy.  “You think you could do a better job, go for it,” is part of this reluctance, but most of it is my retro belief in America as should act as a whole, as one people.

Other counties, however, that I know have much different hierarchies.

In Saudi Arabia there is no doubt that religion is at the top of any hierarchy and overwhelms family and nationhood.  Family, I would say, comes in at a distant second to religion, although strong tribal affiliation which is not what I mean by family - more like I am a Native American - blurs this.  For instance, I once visited the home on base of a high ranking naval officer.  When his eight year old daughter appeared, I said something like what a pretty girl and he absolutely ignored her and my reference to her.  If he hadn’t have spent years in the US, his religion would have mandated that he throw me out of his house altogether for such a comment about a female.  The third component, a sense of nationhood, is virtually lacking altogether in Saudi. The Saudis do have a national day (like our Fourth of July), but the celebrations are very muted and met with a collective yawn.   

Thailand is also different.

Religion and a tribal sense family share the top spot, but nationhood is fragmented between the urban rich and rural poor.  Nationhood in Thailand is still a work in progress and hard to place on any hierarchy.  But just as you are never far away from a mosque in Saudi Arabia, so too are you never out of walking distance of a wat in Thailand.  This similarity between the two countries, however, masks a striking dissimilarity.

Patriarchy versus matriarchy

Saudi Arabia is a patriarchy while Thailand is a matriarchy.  Only men pray at mosques in Saui.  Some mosques have small hidden galleries for women, but a woman prays at home is a safe generalization.  All Thai Buddhist men become monks (if money and other things allow).  If after leaving the monkhood, they return to the wat it is most likely as a monk.  My brother-in-law (a nice guy) has returned to his wat for two weeks or so much as a westerner might go on a spiritual retreat.  Here he essentially becomes a monk again.  He has is head shaved anew and dons the robes of monk renewing his vows   Women are the wat goers in Thailand and more so than women are the church goers in the US.   Men do go to wats on religious days (usually a couple of days a month), but women outnumber them.

The following is an aside about Saudi Arabia but on point.

[When I got a driver’s license in Saudi, the official DMV form wanted to know my name, my father’s name, and my grandfather’s name.  There was no block for that other parent person’s name.  Many Saudi young men that I met could recite the names of their fathers all the way back to Mohammed (PBUH).  I am not kidding here.  Now, I knew the name of my maternal grandfather’s name, but because my father never talked of his father, I did not know my paternal grandfather’s name.  My Saudi minder at the DMV couldn’t believe this.  He almost swooned and fell on the floor from disbelief.  I could almost hear him saying infidel! Infidel!  Finally, we settled on the name Frank.  My minder was relieved and pleased that I was not going to cause a problem or an incident.]

Go into a Saudi house and you will see the picture of the family patriarch in the place of honor (and never any female pictures).  Go into a Thai house and you will see the picture of the king in that same place of honor, along with family pictures galore.  The King is the titular man of the house – his birthday is the occasion for Father’s Day in Thailand.  Do you see any differences here?

Just as Saudis deem male names all important, the Thais really don’t care.  A Thai name can be either a male name or a female name – this can be delightful but maddening, too.  While we just use I for the first person singular, the Thais use pom (male) or chan (female).  In the third person, however, where we expect a he or she, they just use khow.  There is also a third sex in Thailand, called by many names, but essentially is a boy who has decided to live his life as a woman.  I find this group almost indescribable.   Saudi, I am sure, has more than its share of homosexuals, but I doubt there is a ladyboy in the country. 

Both the Saudis and the Thais like to pack people together tooth to jowl in a way that is just frightening to a westerner.  The Hajj may have over a million people packed into Mecca, and I think I’ve been in an alleyway in a shopping district of Bangkok with about as many people.  While the Saudis really only have two religious celebrations (Hajj and Ramadan), the Thais have three family celebrations in which religion plays a major part.  

Three Thai parties

The first two parties celebrate what I recognize as family and what I recognize as religion.

The Thais celebrate weddings and these are very much like western weddings.  They are expensive, high spirited, formal and good fun.  The Thais also celebrate a son going into a wat to become a monk.  In the west we often say that nuns are married to the church or to Jesus.  When a Thai boy becomes a monk, he often rides in the back of a pickup with his father supporting an umbrella to keep the sun off his newly shaved head.  I do not mean any disrespect here, but the new monk is dressed in what looks to me to be a very fancy, white wedding dress.  He goes into the wat and the next time you see him he is wearing a very humble saffron robe. The monks’ part in all Thai celebrations is to say prayers and get out of the way of the family. 

The third Thai party celebrates the tribe.

The third Thai party is the funeral part or nang soat – this is the one that drives me crazy.  The Saudis bury the dead within twenty-four hours and there is not much if any formal ceremony.  I saw a big post-hole digger in a Jubail cemetery (east coast of Saudi).  Bore a hole, wrap the body in white and stand the body upright in the hole, gather a very few family men to say prayers – and that’s it.  This works for royalty as it does for the rest of us.  It’s brutal, but so is death and I confess it makes sense to me as a man.

The Thais on the other hand take a least a week of partying, day and night, to get someone cremated.  I use the word party because that seems most appropriate even though there is no booze (there is music however).   Then, there is a party the day after and one at a hundred days . . . and on and on (or so it seems to me). 

When I was very ill I went into the kitchen where Chuwat (my wife’s 103 year-old grandfather and my friend) lay for his last few weeks.  I saw that an aunt (who I did not know) had laid him out holding some flowers in his hands.  She made a go-away gesture to let me know he had passed and I almost swooned . . . because I knew what was coming having been through the funeral of my wife’s father.  I swore back then that I would never be in the house having another funeral.  Luckily this time I went into the hospital for five or six days and missed the partying altogether.  

Women run the funeral parties.  It’s their chance to shine.  They cook for a hundred or so people five days in a row, breakfast and supper.   I’m not joking here, either.  The fact that most of the “mourners” don’t eat much makes no difference.

When I was in the hospital, my wife came to see me only once (that I remember) and then with friends and only for an hour or so.  She couldn’t stay and relegated that task to her eighteen year old daughter (someone from the family has to be with the patient at all times in a Thai hospital).  She couldn’t stay because she was the grand master of Chuwat’s funeral.  (Let me be clear: there’s something to my wife being the oldest daughter and therefore responsible for such things.  Also, her own mother, daughter of the deceased, was not up to the task.  I also realize that funerals in the west are equally quirky, but these rural Thai funerals are just too much.)  I chalk this extravagant display up to this being a matriarchal society unwilling to give up something which from time out of mind has been within the domain of women.

Last week, my wife’s aunt (she has literally hundreds of unnamed-to-me aunts) died in a town about a two hours’ drive from here and [BAM!] away she and her mother went.  They probably went because all the relatives were just down her for Chuwat’s funeral and not to go would have been an insult.  But they were needed up there to get things right, “donchaknow” (as my grandmother might say).  My wife’s oldest daughter went too, but came back with the car the same night.  She and her 18 year-old younger sister went shopping the next day.  This left me alone with the ghost of Chuwat for the next couple of days.

I, alas, am a member of the family, but not a member of the clan.  Until death do us part has a different meaning in Thailand.