Watching TV
Skeeter and I were watching CNN—Obama, health reform, fat-cat GOPers, mousey Dems—you know, same old, same old.
But then I had to ask: "I don't know the world of men—all that straight and queer—"
"—gay—" he chimed in as he always chimes in.
"—gay. So tell me: if there are a bunch of men who are at a birthday party, do they ever get into tickle fights?"
"Well, I have seen it."
"Straight men, I mean."
"Well, yes, with straight men. If they're reeeeeeeeeeally drunk or reeeeeeeeally high and there is a subcurrent of horniness with no women available, straight men can work out their frustrations in a number of physical ways and tickling is one of them."
"Really?!" I asked.
"No, of course not!" he bellowed laughing. Then he offered an anecdote, as he is wont to do (sigh). "When I was a kid, grade five or six, we had this stupid thing called Fruits Day. Every Thursday guys would go up to other guys and knock them in the nuts and shout, 'Fruits Day!' I mean it was a real knock in the nuts, not something friendly or chummy. Except when it wasn't. You could tell the kids who were working something out by the...er...gentleness of their Fruits Day knock. I knew that very young and one of the kids became my first partner in...'exploration'... if you will."
"Ew. I mean: interesting."
"I suspect it's the same way in athletes locker-rooms with all the towel swatting etc. The ones who are looking find each other by using supposedly über-male bonding rituals."
"Like tickle fights."
"Well, maybe. But if you look at Glenn Beck, it doesn't look like he's buying the tickle fight explanation."
"And Jon Stewart didn't either," I added. Then I was pondering something and finally said, "But isn't he married and doesn't he have kids?" Skeeter made that noise humans make that is like a snerf. I think they call it a scoff; disdain, incredulity, horror at the ignorance of others.
"You know," he said in a tone that suggested he was about to share something juicy, "I almost got married and had kids. I thought I had to. 'Til I didn't."
"Close call for that girl," I said.
"Indeed."
"But what about 'snorkeling'?"
"Well, that's a navy thing, I think. Or maybe a navy myth—"
"—that straight guys do?"
"Straight guys do way gayer stuff than queer guys, sometimes. Wrestling, for one. One of my brothers told me that there was this thing guys did called Shoot the Biscuit where, at parties or on camping trips, the guys would have a circle jerk around a cookie and tried to shoot onto the cookie. The last one to shoot would have to eat the cookie."
"Ack!" I couldn't help exclaiming.
"I'm with you on that one," he said.
I thought about it for a while and said, "That hardly sounds like good training to be any kind of decent lover...I mean HURRY HURRY HURRY!"
"Well, I don't think that was entirely the point, do you?"
"Hm." There another silence and I said, "Though it does sound a lot like a tickle fight."
Skeeter laughed his head off and said, "Now you get it."
"What a very odd world you people live in," I said, "nothing sexual is ever black and white. No wonder you're all such a mess."
"No wonder," he said.
And I fell off to sleep as he continued to watch the congressman's transgressions parsed every which way on the 24-hour news network.
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