As I hurtle day-by-day closer to the grave, my mind is filled with a smug satisfaction. No matter how bad things get, as limbs become sore and the memory gets all, you know, thingummy. I can sit happy in the knowledge that never again will I be a teenager. I can actually look back relatively fondly compared to many, I never had spots, didn’t wear glasses (then), I was tall and slim, I found academic schoolwork ridiculously easy, I was in a class where the girls outnumbered the boys 4-1 and those were pretty good odds, even for me. I remember gradually learning about matters of sex completely aurally (no I don’t mean, tsk, my ear drums are still intact) - but we didn’t have any kind of sex education lessons at the kind of school I went to, although there were a couple of girls who seemed to be “naturals”. So when I heard words like bisexual, I had to figure out what it meant for myself (obviously one couldn’t ask, because “everybody knew”, so the vast majority of us had to feign non-innocence and giggle knowingly) and it was obvious really, a “buy sexual” was someone that visited prostitutes.
Song playing as this was published: Dead Kennedys - “Holiday In Cambodia”
A ration of 4:1, grils to boys. Lucky dog. I had the pleasure of attending an all-boys Catholic high school.
“Holiday In Cambodia”: I haven’t heard that song in ages. (When cowboy Ronnie comes to town/ forks out his tongue at human rights…)
Karl, it had been an all-boys school until two years before I was sent there so, there weren’t (m)any older girls there and our class was seen as a weird anomaly, hated by the rest of the school, but it was a burden I lived with.
Maybe it was a result of name choices for girls in Britain in the early 70s, but I could just as easily have written, there were more girls called Sarah than there were boys in my class.
Hmm, I’m not sure about the grammar of that last sentence - there weren’t any boys called Sarah, maybe I should have paid more attention in English language lessons. To the teacher as opposed to one of the Sarahs.
I attended an all-girls private school from ages 13 to 18 and the first ever sex education class in the history of the school took place when I was in 11th grade (17) since our class appeared to the headmistress to be especially, shall we say, active. We all just laughed. With the boys-only school only a few blocks away, it was all boys, all the time, except during school hours.
I wanted to attend an all girls school but they wouldn’t allow it
Christina: Yes, I bet. Why do they always build same sex schools so close to one another?
Haddock: That was going to be my next joke…..
Point is, we didn’t get told anything. I had to build my knowledge by my own hand.
*I had to build my knowledge by my own hand.* - there’s a joke in there somewhere!
Try having sex education being taught by the woman who carried a tape measure solely for checking hemlines, and which was sponsored by Tampax.
The woman somehow managed to always say “X is wonderful in the right context, but you should never do it”, where X was sex, drink, drugs, rock-and-roll and black socks.
Sponsored by Tampax: So we got taught a huge amount about menstruation, and can build a perfect scale replica of the inside of a uterus (hmm, maybe that could be Rachel Whiteread’s next work), except at no point did the external topology get mentioned (it was always hidden in a hazy bit of darkness. Labia? Er, the science block maybe?). And because it was sponsored by Tampax any process which might interrupt the demand cycle was hushed up. Add in a Catholic RE woman who was virulently anti anything but babies (condoms increase HIV infections according to her), and a lingering memory of that gravestone ad which basically said “SEX = DEATH”, and er…
Couldn’t agree more about the not being a teenager. All that enthusiasm and pretending to want to go to clubs. Agony. My sex education was administered (in school, I hasten to add) by a Catholic priest, which I think has an element of the blind leading the blind about it. And on the subject of blindness, he didn’t say masturbation - hope that word’s allowed with my first ever comment here! - would make us blind, just nasty, wicked, selfish and evil. Enjoying your blog greatly. Keep up the good work!
BiB: I laid off the obvious jokes when Karl mentioned RC Education, but ” My sex education was administered (in school, I hasten to add) by a Catholic priest”? I hope the Vatican has denied all knowledge and that the priest is now working in Quebec.
Of course, the word “masturbation” is positively encouraged, especially in first comments, well all comments actually. I’m not sure about its effects, although my eyesight has been deteriorating by about a quarter of a dioptrine per year since I reached adolescence - I blame reading. Okay, I blame reading “reader’s wives stories”. Will have to see if being Broke In Berlin is similar to being Strapped for cash in Stuttgart…… Bless, blogines, eh?
I attended an all-girls catholic school… in Asia! Can you imagine how that was?!
AnP: Yes, but only in a perverted, lustful way. Sorry, just kidding - I had a former nun to teach Religious Education. We discussed the evils of abortion, but were never actually told how someone might actually get to be pregnant.
buysexual.. now that is funny!