You never talk about sex much, do you?

I was told this the other day.

Not sure that it wasn't meant to be a criticism, but in a way I find it rather a compliment.

Maybe I could bump up the number of page views by writing some really sordid stuff? Mmmmm.

Anyway two points to bear in mind.

1.  I am an old man. If you are still obsessed with sex at my age, you are in a very bad way psychologically. I am in desperate straits financially and the psychological impact of that should not be underestimated, but that is a totally different story! 
2.  For people who are younger, I am  reminded of what a girlfriend in Holland told me some 20 years ago - namely why spend your time talking about it when you should be doing it?

Anyway a few random related issues.

I noted the other day that despite the economic crisis, apparently the number of unmarried teen girls getting pregnant in Europe is going down. Which sounds like good news.

Way back when in the early days of my teaching career (about 1974 or 1975?), I encountered a girl, a very bright personable young woman, who was on the verge of going to university, albeit a year later than most of her friends. The year later was due to the fact that when she was 14, she had got pregnant and had had to take the year out of school.

"Always the quiet ones", one of my colleagues informed me, probably incorrectly. Her parents had taken responsibility for the child, her daughter had become her sister to all intents and purposes, and at the age of 15 she had resumed some kind of normalcy while her parents took the strain. At the age of 19, incidentally, she was still in a steady relationship with the boy who had fathered her child.

In many respects this was a fortunate example - teenage sexual escapades and the resulting pregnancies are often a lot sadder. I have, though, for years been in the progressive mould where kids and sex are concerned  in that I think that they should have all the information there is, nothing hidden, on the subject to ensure that they know the consequences involved. And boys (IMHO boys tend to be more irresponsible than girls in this area) should be informed that they will be held responsible if the worst happens (which would involve financial responsibility long-term for the maintenance of their child!).

A total digression brings me back to the subject about talking about sex. And 1975 also occurs as a dubious second link.  As a writer I should have thought of a more clever way of doing this, but .....

Anyway, one thing that I never did understand were/are these telephone services that you can ring to hear someone "talking dirty". This was in 1975 quite rare (if it existed at all) in England - which apparently is not the story now. That summer though occurred my famous see-all-of-North-America-in-21-days-on-a-very-limited-budget trip (didn't see Montreal, Las Vegas, the Pacific North-West, the Canadian Prairies or Florida, so the title is approximate!).

While in New York City I picked up a free magazine full of interesting thing to do in the city. One page was full of telephone numbers you could ring to have a "dirty" conversation. Loads of provocative pictures of semi-clad young women with provocative names and brief descriptions of the things they had in mind.

Quite what these conversations might entail ("I am touching this", "I am unzipping that", "I am getting really excited" usw) .... Yes, well. You cannot see the person, you cannot touch them and all they are doing is talking. What is the point?

Then you look at the price of the calls. Standing in the middle of 5th Avenue fumbling for change so you can keep this overpriced load of nonsense going and looking a complete idiot in the process???? You could use the money instead to go and see the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and do the guided tour of one of the major TV studios (I think that it was CBS, but don't quote me). Sure enough that is what I did.

Get out to LA, sex appeared in a totally different form. I was wandering down Sunset Boulevard when a startlingly attractive young blonde approached me. My days of loneliness were soon to be gone, all the trappings of a frustrated love life were soon to be behind me, the girl of my dreams had finally appeared?

Well not exactly!

Or rather only for exactly 20 minutes if I had $50 to lay out. Not quite "Sunset Boulevard" as I had hoped or expected, sadly. I was staying in a hotel room in downtown LA that cost $4 a night (cheap even in 1975, and with ingrained dirt on the bath enamel to give it a real downtrodden feel) and I would have $50 to waste like that?

Pity really, she was such a nice looking girl, even if the language she used when I turned down her offer was not so lady-like! I wonder where she is now. 50-odd years old if she is still alive and you cannot live doing that forever.

This was just one of several strange events on that trip. Almost as strange was the flustered young woman who got on the Greyhound at some stop in Nebraska, hurriedly stuck down a bag full of clothes and other items on the seat next to me, made some comment about being back in a minute, and dashed off the bus again. 15 minutes later, one bag still sitting on the seat, the bus about to leave, and no signs of the flustered young woman. I mentioned it to the driver, who had difficulty picking out my accent and drove off anyway.

Next stop - one hour or so later, somewhere else in Nebraska, I headed off to find the lost property place. Told the guy about the woman, gave him the bag, was told that I was a real gentleman (huh? Anyone else would surely have done the same, right?). Might have been the girl of my dreams, might have been night after night ravenously doing what the girls on those telephone services above always talk about .... And then again!

Anyway so much for nostalgia (better known as "Nauseoustalgia" in past years in Mad magazine).  I have run out of material already.

"Well, you never talk about sex much, do you?".

Not really, but then there isn't really much interesting to say about it, is there?