Thursday, April 28, 2005
biology
Hey.
Korean food was awesome. Not as good as sex, but pretty fucking good. There was one dish with chillies and about four kinds of mushrooms in it, including my favourite mushroom of all time: ENOKIS (brilliant creatures!)...these delightful skinny crunchy little ones that look like tadpoles -- or sperm, depending on how dirty you're feeling when you eat them.
I bet no one will like enoki mushrooms now that I've compared them to sperm. Oh well, all the more for me!
Speaking of which, when I was on the bus today I glanced over at the seat beside me and noticed a substance which appeared almost unmistakably to be sperm. I wondered if I should change seats, and finally decided not to. That got me thinking about just where sperm goes on most people's Unspoken Hierarchy of Biological Waste.
For me, feces and vomit are about the most disgusting substances that can come from a human being. If either of those substances, or even anything that looked like them had been on the seat next to me I would have noticed right away, felt nauseous, and not sat down there in the first place. I saw a girl vomiting into a garbage can at a bus stop today and nearly died. I hadn't the stomach (no pun intended) to ask her if she was okay. But this substance was different. First of all, a lot of things look like sperm. Superglue, yogurt, McDonalds milkshakes, wood glue, melting soft serve, all kinds of things. (Yes, I realise I have probably turned all of you off dessert at McDonalds and fixing your child's model airplane for the rest of your natural lives, but Tony Pierce said be honest, so there ya go).
Secondly, the spray pattern was all wrong. You know how on CSI they study blood spatter and inform you about how the person died? Well, the same processes must be involved in sperm splatter science. I've decided that must be the case. In order to make that spray pattern the person would have to have been running on empty, and curved at a very odd angle (their body, not their penis, you dirty-minded people!).
Thirdly, for me blood, vomit, urine, or feces in a public place indicate distress. They indicate sickness, death, and injury. But sperm is like a sign that reads: SOMETHING AT LEAST MILDLY ENTERTAINING OCCURRED HERE. And I have respect for that. Even if it's in a public place.
Which got me thinking...if one masturbates to something deplorable, like child pornography or crime scene photos, does that make the orgasm itself deplorable, or only the means used to achieve it? Likewise, if someone masturbates in public, which they probably shouldn't do, especially on a bus when there are probably children around, then is the orgasm that results from it in itself a bad thing? It seems to me that that's like blaming the messenger's transportation method for the nature of the delivered items.
Oh, and yes, I realise that that anecdote was a complete overshare and most of you who are still reading are probably totally disgusted with me right now. But I won't apologize for it, because I think it's important that we question what makes things so disgusting to us in the first place, lest we direct our disgust somewhere it doesn't belong.
Why, after all, are some people disgusted by gays and lesbians? Is that fair, kind, or humane? I think not. It seems like blaming people for something that it altogether natural to them. And at the same time, how can we blame people for being above all else biological organisms and acting that way?
When I was waiting at the bus stop on my way to get Korean food, I noticed a guy maybe a little older than me standing on the corner. He was wearing a red hat, paint-stained pants, and well-worn hiking boots and had a native design tattooed on his shoulder. He looked unmistakably like a construction worker, except he didn't check me out so I couldn't be totally sure. He looked really quite rough around the edges, like the kind of guy I would meet at a party and discover was the type who liked working with his hands and drinking cheap beer. The really odd thing was that he had two little children with him. They were maybe 3 and 6 years old, both little girls, and the younger one he had in his arms with her head resting on his shoulder. Both kids looked like they had native backgrounds. He was talking to a woman wearing camouflage pants while the older child wandered around the outside of the bank on the corner, doing nothing in particular. I knew instinctively that the woman wasn't the children's mother -- her manners were too casual and she never touched them or spoke to them, even when she said goodbye to the guy and walked away.
For a minute, while the guy was talking to her, I judged him -- harshly. I felt he was a bad parent. His kids were hastily-dressed and he didn't exactly look the fatherly type. Then there was the odd meeting with an apparently unconnected woman near dinnertime on a hot day, and the fact that the little one looked like she needed a nap.
But then he walked by me, and I saw the older girl's clothes a little better. She was wearing a fuzzy blue hooded shirt with pink trim and matching pants. I have the greatest respect for parents who dress their children in clothes that match, especially when they are single fathers. My parents were really into clashing patterns, and the fact that they dressed me in stripes and polka dots in the same outfit irritates me to this day. It may sound insignificant, but try being an eight-year-old who is teased mercilessly because of their clothes and you'll understand what I mean.
Then I saw the guy reach down and pat her little hooded head as she was walking. It was such an affectionate pat, not a condescending one. Then he adjusted the little one in his arms really gently, so she wouldn't wake up.
There are loads of things that one can do as a parent to make sure that children grow up relatively unscrewed-up. One can send them to the best schools, one can discipline them with just the right balance of love and severity. But for me, I always wanted my parents to love me just enough to pay attention when they were dressing me, and to treat me as though I was someone they valued and not as an obligation or a burden.
This guy did both things, and so I ignored the rest. The scene became a rather sweet moment between a father and his children, and I was satisfied.
Sometimes it's good to know I'm still capable of putting the cynicism down like a tired and slightly rusty sword. At the end of a hot day when the sun's going down, it feels good.
Will post more samples from my old blog, probably tonight.
Peace out and other assorted gangster greetings.
-N
