We’ve replaced this blog’s normal Friday QnA with Folger’s Crystals, let’s see if anyone notices…

1. How did/will you tell your children about sex and childbirth and at what age?

Justin came into our home already graphically clear on the gory details (thanks to some ‘friend’ of his family who thought it was amusing to shock a first-grader). I’ve freely answered any questions he has, but these tend to center on the ‘whys’ of a situation, not the ‘hows’.

2. How old were you when you found out about sex and how did it happen?

There was a copy of The Happy Hooker (‘by Xavier Hollander — “Madame X”’) ‘lying around the house’ (read: carefully concealed in my parent’s second closet on a back shelf) — which made things pretty clear.

In addition, I was a voracious reader and had exhausted the ‘young adult’ section of the library by about age 11, so I’d hit the grown-ups side of the library (with my parent’s written permission) and Cujo by fifth grade, so there were references to such things in my reading, but nothing particularly clear until I was loaned some of those godawful thick “historical romances” by my great aunt. Jesus, the things you ladies read. Wow.

3. What was the most shocking thing that you ever discovered about sex? (Shocking at the time that you discovered it, not necessarily shocking now.)

Teenage fumbling lead me to finally ‘getting’ (double entendre) oral sex as a high school freshman. I swear to you that it seemed at the time as though the whole world had opened up and carefully explained itself to me. I’ve been a huge fan of that sort of exchange (and convinced that it was meant to be a fair exchange) ever since.

4. Tell us about any “first” in your sexual life.

I’ve always been in long-running relationships, all the way back to freshman year in high school. The big ‘first’ was about seven years ago: a ‘dating’ relationship that started without sex being involved for awhile (although I’ll daresay it seemed longer at the time) — basing the whole thing on something other than physical intimacy to begin with made it much more resiliant to the vagaries of time.

5. What is your “sexual identity”?

I’m hetero, and comfortable enough with myself that gay friends (or having straight friends show up in very odd roles in my dreams) has never bothered me. It just is. I think we spent less time focusing on the differences between straight, gay, and bi people and more time enjoying the things that we all share in common, we wouldn’t have to deal with the tension that laces so many discussions these days.

Hey, where’d this soapbox come from? How’d I get up on it? What the hell?

Always seem to get the education faster. Me, I was pretty clueless for a very long time, mostly because the whole idea of sex scared the hell out of me, even though it always seemed to be a topic of conversation at my parent's house.
If you want to understand my morbid and perverted sense of humor go meet my dad.

I thought the book on the shelf was the Happy Hooker!!

That was, in fact, its actual name.

My sister, ladies and gentleman: turn to her for all your reminiscent pornography trivia needs.

Thanks for trying Folgers. Didja like?

(Three big boosts for any weblog endeavor...Have Doyce, ***Dave, and PromoGuy mention you. Screw Yahoo.)