This may seem like a naive question, but where in New York can one take a friend for a discreet lay? Central Park? It appears to be designed so that you can’t have any privacy (most frustrating: the Ramble). My place or hers? We are each involved with significant others we both care about. A friend’s place? Nobody knows about us, and we want to keep it that way. A hotel? The ones that don’t ask for identification are too sleazy. Surely we’re not the only people in Manhattan who have this problem. Any suggestions? –Frustrated Fans
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According to the New York Times, the study concluded that the effects of childhood sexual abuse, or CSA, “were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. . . . They [also] argued that treating all forms of sexual abuse equally presents problems that, the researchers wrote, ‘are perhaps most apparent when contrasting cases such as the repeated rape of a 5-year-old girl by her father and the willing sexual involvement of a mature 15-year-old adolescent boy with an unrelated adult.’ The authors also suggested that the term ‘adult-adolescent sex’ or ‘adult-child sex’ be substituted, in some cases, for ‘child sexual abuse.’”
What’s the problem here? Researchers reviewed the data and discovered that just how fucked-up people were by CSA depends to a great extent on how old they were, what they did, and with whom. Why is this controversial? Speaking as a survivor of CSA–sex at 14 with a 22-year-old woman, sex at 15 with a 30-year-old man–I can back the researchers up: I was not traumatized by these technically illegal sexual encounters. Indeed, I initiated them and cherish their memory. My experience is not at all uncommon, especially among men, and it’s absurd to think that what I did at 15 (and what was done to me) would be considered “child sexual abuse” or lumped together by lazy researchers with the incestuous rape of a five-year-old girl.
Speaking of huge asses, big and round, a Republican sent me a mash note recently praising my passion for unborn children, my bedrock belief in the fundamental super-duperness of the American family, and my clearheaded support for tax cuts targeting the wealthy. I get letters like this all the time.
Speaking of the discipline of loneliness, the nation lives in terror of Bob “Boner” Dole’s awful “erectile dysfunction” commercials. If you’ve resisted the urge to disable your television, you’ve probably noticed that Boner Dole’s ads aren’t the only Viagra spots on the tube. You may also have noticed an interesting difference between Viagra commercials starring Boner Dole and those starring attractive white actors. In every other commercial, men beam at their freshly fucked wives, who beam right back. These couples are shown on a beach, watching a sunset, dancing–something, you know, romantic and boner inducing. Boner Dole, on the other hand, is shown all alone in a deserted office, sitting at his desk staring out a window, looking sad and abandoned. Part of what makes Boner Dole’s Viagra ads so hard to watch is how tragic they are. Why is this poor old man taking Viagra all alone in his office? Where’s Liddy? Where’s anybody?
