pamie spills everyone’s favorite story

Before I start, I just wanted to share a few things that are going on around here…

My computer keeps messing up at work, and periodically all of my links on Netscape become unusable, and I have to shut everything down and start over. This sucks. If you know why this is happening, let me know.

Someone has been logging onto our computers at night at checking out www.blackcheerleader.com and www.blackhooker.com. It’s funny for a couple of reasons: it took six tries for the person to spell www.blackhooker.com
correctly on one machine, and the other machine he/she is using is one of our most spiritual/ religious co-workers’, so she’s freaking out. The person is going to get caught, no doubt in my mind, but it’s funny that he’d/she’d still access these pages with a Bible and a Watchtower staring him/her in the face.

[db]

Okay, this story is a favorite of many of my friends, and I feel it’s important to tell it to you, too. It’s the story of how I learned about the birds and the bees. It was featured in my last play, Guacamole Toes, which won Best of the Week at this past year’s FronteraFest. It is a story that people ask me to tell other people because it is so unbelievable. But every word of this is true (now I sound like I’m writing to Penthouse Forum)

I first learned about the birds and the bees at a very early age… three. I could read at three years old and I used to go around the house reading everything I could find… and I found my father’s adult magazines, which were full of stories and I’d read those. I always thought people were very important and in a hurry and all going somewhere, since everyone was “coming” after a “quickie.” Needless to say I didn’t have the full grasp on sex until I was about six years old and a babysitter explained to me that my parents had me through “fornicating.” She had apparently just learned the word as well (being ten years old) and felt the need to share her new-found knowledge. She showed me what it was by sticking her finger through her encircled thumb and forefinger on the other hand. She smiled a wicked enough smile that I knew if my parents were sticking each other’s fingers into their hands and that made me, somehow that act was bad.

So, I got older, and I got cable, and I learned what sex really was. My parents never tried to really teach me about it (my mother once asked me if I knew what it was when I actually did know, but I thought I’d get in trouble and lied– I said I thought it was when two grown-ups rubbed their backs together.) But the subject of sex was pretty much left alone.

Until I started dating a boy that my parents hated. They did not want me to hang out with him. They thought he was big trouble. You know your one rebel boyfriend… he only looks meaner than he is. Regardless, my parents tried everything to get me to stop dating him, which only encouraged me to hold onto him more. One day I was sitting in the garage with my mother preparing for a garage sale and I came across a book. It was The Breast, by Philip Roth, which, if I’m not mistaken, is actually about a breast, and how it goes about its day… hmm…

So that got me thinking about sex and all, so I ask my mother how old she was when she first lost her virginity. She freaks out, won’t tell me, and leaves the room. Three seconds later my flushed-face father opens the door, looks at me, and says, “NO.”

In shock and embarrassment, I start explaining to my parents that I wasn’t planning on having sex with That Boy, I was just asking about my mother’s history, since it seemed like the appropriate girl-talk thing to do.

My mother comes back into the garage and says, “Your father would like to speak to you in the living room.”

Now I’m pissed off, because I’m in trouble and I wasn’t even doing anything. Plus I’m fifteen, so I’m just pissed and embarrassed in general.

I go into the living room to find my father sitting on his recliner with his Bourbon in hand, smoking a cigarette and looking rather pale. I sit on my skateboard in the middle of the room and say:

[scripty]
PAMIE
You wanted to see me?

DAD
Yes. Your mother tells me you are thinking about having sex.

PAMIE
No, Dad, I was–
[/scripty]

He waves my words away with
a shake of his hand and a shake of
his head. What he’s about to say is
much more important.

[scripty]
DAD
Regardless. Let’s just say that you are thinking about having sex.

PAMIE
Right. But, Dad, I’m not.

DAD
But we’ll say you are.

PAMIE
Why?

DAD
Pamela, what makes you think that you are ready to have sex?
[/scripty]

Note the use of the word “Pamela,”
a sure sign that someone’s in trouble.

[scripty]
PAMIE
Well, if I was ready–

DAD
Umm-hmmm.

PAMIE
It would be because I am in love and I’m ready to move the relationship to the next level.

DAD
And you think This Boy your soulmate, or whatever?

PAMIE
Dad, I never said I wanted–

DAD
What makes you think that you would like sex?
[/scripty]

pamie pauses for a second to
let that question sink in.

[scripty]
PAMIE
Well, uh, lots of people have sex.

DAD
Yes, they do.

PAMIE
And they seem to like it.

DAD
You mean on television?

PAMIE
I haven’t seen anyone else have sex.

DAD
So you’ve never had an orgasm.

PAMIE
Huh? What? No!

DAD
So you’ve never masturbated or anything?

PAMIE
I! What? No! Dad! Geez!
[/scripty]

I’m just going to mention again here
that every word of this is true.

[scripty]
DAD
It’s a fair enough question. So you really don’t know what sex will feel like.

PAMIE
I–

DAD
Well, let me tell you something. Women don’t actually like having sex. What the woman likes is the foreplay, or the cuddling afterward.
[/scripty]

I don’t talk much though the rest of this monologue, but you can imagine just what it is I’m feeling, thinking, and wishing… let’s get this over with as quickly as possible, as I’m starting to get those icky feelings back:

[scripty]
You see, Pamela, women don’t actually like the penetration part of sex. In fact, it’s quite painful for them.
Now, your mother—
Your mother gets wet very easily. And she doesn’t really like sex, it’s the things that I do to her before and after that she really likes. And I’ll tell you something, Pam, the male penis doesn’t know the difference, really, between a vagina, a hand with a little Vaseline, or a rubber doll.
[/scripty]

Cut to image of pamie shriveled into little shivering ball on what was once her childhood.

[scripty]
So, I think that you and That Boy should just have oral sex for a while. Just try that out. If you feel that you need more after a little while, in, say a month, come back and talk to me some more, and we’ll see if you are ready to move on. Okay? I’m glad we had this talk.
[/scripty]

And I slinked back to my room, where my mother stopped me to see if everything was okay. I couldn’t look at her. I felt so guilty. She knew that my dad must have said something more than he should have, because I heard her go, “WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HER?” a few minutes later. To this day, she doesn’t want to know what he said to me, and to this day she still hasn’t told me how old she was when she started doing it.

I feel completely comfortable spilling this story to whomever (in journal or play format) because my father did the same thing in a short-story class he had a few years back. He basically told the same story, but from his point of view. He had to read it aloud in the class. And afterwards someone raised their hand and said, “I’d never buy that story. There’s no way that would happen. What kind of father talks that way to his daughter?” And he says, “I did. That’s what I told my fifteen-year old daughter.” And his classmate offered to help pay for my therapy later in life.

I may take that guy up on it, because for a while I didn’t want to have sex with anyone, for fear that I wouldn’t like it, and because I thought that it wouldn’t be any different to him than what he did in his bathroom.

Now my parents aren’t monsters or anything, my father just had a conversation with me that was terribly inappropriate. I guess when parents sit down to have The Talk, they don’t always know what they are going to say. My father, obviously, was of the opinion that if he scared me out of sex right off, he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this mess ever again. Clever, but not exactly Ward Cleaver.

People love this story because everyone always feels that their “Talk” with their parents was the worst. And then someone says, “No, you’ve gotta hear pamie’s” and I tell them, and then they feel better. I’ve yet to meet a person who could top me. And inevitably, after telling this story, someone says, “That explains a lot about you.”

I guess it does.