The Talk

When I was in grade school, my family had several scrambled cable channels that weren't always that scrambled.

Cue a few weeks later and my dad catching me trying to make out an obvious penetration porno scene and him sitting me down to have "the talk".

It was a lot of metaphors and hypotheticals. It took at least 20 minutes, of which at the end I was no better educated than beforehand. Plus, I was confused because I wasn't sure if I was in trouble or not.

Focus How did you parents talk to you about sex? How are you going to tell your kids?

I'm sure it feels like a mandatory task to give the talk, but I learned more with a the scrambled channels than I ever did listening to my dad.

 

Never had the talk with my parents. Might be because they thought I was a smart kid or they were too modest to talk about it.

Doesn't really matter, didn't need it.

 

My sister was born when I was 5 and I asked the obligatory, "Where do babies come from?" question. My mom told me that when a mom and dad love each other and want a baby, the dad puts his penis inside the mom and that's how a baby is made. I was grossed out and confused about the mechanics of it all so I had no further follow-up questions.

Years later when I was about 10, we went to a family friend's house and their son revealed a recent find of his: a fucking huge pile of Penthouse mags underneath his dad's side of the bed. There must've been at least 75 of them. I saw the vagina in all of its forms, both glorious and puzzlingly streched and articulated. It was my introduction to the female body. I had my questions, sure, but no desire to ask them lest I lose any future viewing privileges.

Probably a year after that, I was visiting my grandparents and was asked to go get their mail. Buried in with bills and grocery store ads was a Penthouse. I had struck fucking gold. I stole it, naturally, and spent the rest of that vacation looking at it in secret. When we came home and I was unpacking, I was careful to shut my door and search for a great hiding place. As I was lifting my bottom dresser drawer out to hide it underneath, my mom opened my door unannounced and saw the mag. She flipped and I was in trouble. Later that day, she sat me down and asked what I had seen and if I had any questions. Having talked to her more about this incident when I was older, she told me that she wanted to clear up any questions I had and wanted to assure me that women worth my time weren't jamming glass vases inside of themselves or letting a guy bang them in the ass while pregnant. She sincerely wanted me to ask questions. The only question I had was, "What's a twat?"

As far as the actual mechanics were concerned, I learned all I needed to know from porn. Then, after my first couple sexual experiences, I unlearned most of it. Jack-hammering was not the way to a woman's heart, no matter how much the woman on film moaned.

All I ever got from my dad was a box of condoms and a warning: "Here. Don't tell your mother. It's not permission to start, but now I get to beat the hell out of you if you get some girl pregnant. Got it?"

 

I lost my virginity at 14 while in the 8th grade. My talk went more like:
"Bourbondown, that was (girls) mother on the phone...She tells me you and (girl) have been having sex!"
"Oh fuck"
"Did you ejaculate in her?" (yes my mother used the word ejaculate)
"No"

There was a meeting between both sets of parents which was even more awkward. But the next time I had a girlfriend (maybe a year later) my mom promptly went out and bought my rubbers. Now years later my dad says, "I had to pretend like I was mad but in reality I couldn't help but being a little proud."

 

My parents expected me to know I guess. The only real talk we had was one day I was in the garage with my uncle helping him with something when a girl I knew walked by. He looks at me and says "this is you and this is her, thats all there is to it" while holding a screw and a washer and repeatedly putting them through each other.

 

When I was around ten my mom bought some books on sex that were written to educate kids in an age appropriate fashion. She left them around the house where she knew I'd find them. I was, and am, a constant reader so she knew I'd soak it up. I did, no talk was needed, and about the only bad side effect from that method of teaching me was that it took many years before I'd use any form of slang term for "penis", "vagina", etc.

 

I sure as hell never had the talk. We had this weird sex ed primer in 5th grade where they explained what sex was, and I DISTINCTLY remember being relieved to finally find out why it got hard sometimes. At that point in my life it wasn't something that was happening very often I guess, and I'd never asked anyone about it, but I was glad to know. That was also my whole introduction to the penis + vagina = baby thing.

The closest thing my mom gave me to the talk was when I was very young. I knew the basic difference between boys and girls - boys peed standing up, girls peed standing down. This was my entire knowledge of it, brought on by my wondering why I always had to put the toilet seat down.

So, imagine if you will. You're a boy, you look down, you see a penis. You pee out of the penis that's in the front of your body. You know girls have to sit down to pee, what do you assume? Naturally, you assume that girls have a penis on the bottom. So for a couple years I was under the impression that girls had a penis on the bottom. Then one day I got hit in the gnads for the first time, and understood what pain was. Well, wait a minute, I said to myself sitting in school one day, how are all these girls sitting down on their privates! Doesn't that hurt?!?!

I wonder what was going through my mom's head when I went home that day and asked something akin to: "Mom, how do girls sit down? Doesn't it hurt your penis to sit on it?" That's when I learned about a vagina, but I still assumed it was just for peeing until 5th grade.

 

I had the fantastic joy of being sexualized early. So it was confusing and opened up a side of my brain that had no business being wide open like that for the better part of a decade. Anywho, I recall asking my mother what an orgasm was. Mind you this is the same fundamentalist Christian woman who was bent on not allowing me to go to sex ed for fear that I'd hear something methodically crafted to make me sin against the Lawd. I have no idea where I heard the term orgasm. My mother raised me and told me that no question was taboo so I just asked questions and expected honest and frank answers. Ready for this doozie?

Queue puzzled look from a 9 year old.

Would not answer. This was basically all I got. At that point I realized that this bitch was unreliable in the uncomfortable question arena. So I asked my older brother and my absentee father. Them fuckers gave me an education, some take home material and some prepubescent homework.

Edit. Comma

 

This is exactly what my Mom did too.

I remember one book specifically had all the slang terms for penis and vagina on one page. Eventually my Mom asked if I was learning from the books and if I had any questions. I only had one question. "So......the cock goes into the cunt, right?"

I got a bar of soap in my mouth for that one, and an explanation that there are nicer ways to say things.

 

I remember my mom's attempt at having the talk with me.

Mom: So..... sex.
Jennitalia: Yep. What do you need to know, Mom?

And she tried several times after that, but I always managed to elude the talk.

My education came from reading Cosmo at the bookstore where I worked.

 

Don't you dare bring a child into this world before you get married. Good talk.

 

I was raised Catholic, so I learned all about sex and std's from the internet. I'm not kidding when I say that I didn't learn anything about sex other than the most basic and confusing anatomy / biology of it, which was dressed up in such fancy terms that I still had no idea what was going on. I now make the effort to disabuse everyone of the notion that life is a miracle. Life is a miracle in the same way that taking a shit is a miracle.

I never even received a proper lecture on contraception and STD's until I reached university and had microbiology / therapeutics lectures. And even then, I have the nasty habit of sleeping in for the std lectures.

 

"The Talk" falls into two catagories for me.

Growing up, I never really got the talk from my parents. That was left to sixth grade health class and the poorly drawn cartoons that tried to explain it.

But, ironically, I wound up getting "the talk" from a mentor a few weeks ago. We were discussing the girl I was getting fairly serious with when he looked at me and said "Kid, listen, sex is awesome, but she will fuck your shit up at this point in life. Walk away."

 

When I was about 10, I found this in our basement:



It described the whole process from conception to birth using cartoon drawings of two fat people throughout the book. There were no money shots or awesome drawings of clitoruses (clitori?) or anything, but it did depict some hot softcore missionary action. A couple of years later, my best friend and I found a VHS tape in his dad's closet called "Bears vs. Rams". Well, it wasn't a football game, but it definitely filled in the gap in terms of what I knew about the birds and the bees. I never had a discussion with my parents. I think they basically looked at me when I was like 14, and were like, "Whoa, this one is definitely a stud. No crash course necessary."

 

I read that very book when I was 8 years old. I was in the library with my grandma and I went to the kids section while she went to find her own books. Well, I was never the same after that. I felt like I was just given classified information. None of my friends knew what sex was. My little 8 year old world was fucked up from then on because I saw everybody as these 2 people from the book. I didn't feel normal again until sex ed in middle school.

 

So by now you must know roughly 47,000 different things that'll drive your man wild.

 

I never had the talk. Of course, is that talk that necessary when sex-ed starts in the 4th grade?

 

Mine was a tough one. As wee lad, one day I discovered that rubbing my junk furiously felt good. Somehow, I had the sense to not tell my parents I was doing this, and only doing it when they weren't home. I didn't know what I was doing, just knew it felt good. Then one day, I noticed for the first time after an especially furious rub job that a small bead of something white had come out. I freaked out. I thought I had a disease of some kind brought about by my furious tugging. I got scared and worked upthe courage to tell my mom what I had been doing.

Unfortunately, my parents are very conservative Pakistanis, so I was scolded heavily and my mom actually told me that the white stuff was a bad sign and that I had better stop right away. I wept and wept and told my mom I was sorry and I would never do it again. That only lasted a week or two. This started a terrible period where I would try and try to not jerk off but then I would give in. Finally I told my mom that I had kept doing it and I was sorry but I couldn't stop. This resulted in another scolding. Finally my dad stepped in and told me that it was ok and normal. I think my parents got into a fight over that too. Then I found some book about how to deal with your son getting older in a drawer in my living room. It was there that I learned from some doctor that it was normal and wouldn't lead to any issues. I guess my mother didn't subscribe to this thinking. Either way, I kept doing what I was doing though I didn't quite know what I was doing until sex ed in middle school.