A real page turner

If years from now I ever become a writer of merit and someone decides to do a textual analysis of my oeuvre, I predict that the one word that will get the most hits from the software program used for the analysis will be--you guessed it--S-E-X.

A quick check of my posts since I began this blog would tell you that out of 73 or so posts (including this one), at least 21 (isn't that the age of consent in Madagascar?) have featured a significant amount of content relating to sex, sexuality, gay/lesbian folks, or hetero horny happenings that I read about in the paper or see on the news.

Given this choice of subject matter in a goodly number of blog posts (that's nearly 30 percent!), it probably does seem as though I think a lot about sex--I mean, I write about it, so I must be some ol' randy bugger, licking my lips while I use my index finger to trace the bulges in the J.C. Penney underwear ads in the Sunday paper.

Still, it's only 30 percent. There's that statistic that the normal male brain thinks about sex every 13 seconds or something, isn't there? So maybe I'm not as much of a lech as I would seem. Maybe 30 percent just says, "Hi, I'm middle-aged."

To be honest, despite whatever percentage of my blogatory output consists of sex talk, these days I feel more ABD than anything--"Asexual by default." I just don't seem to be operating at full explosive charge in a target-rich environment, as Dr. Phil might put, as if dating and lovemaking were an archery range. I don't know that my quivver is so much out of arrows or that my aim is so bad I can't hit the target. I think it's more of a case that I'm too busy, tired, and distracted to bother to lift my bow and get ready, aim, fire.

Yep, I'm middle-aged alright.

Nonetheless, I do find sex and sexuality an obviously fascinating topic for discussion and dissection. Not because of the luridness of the subject matter--not solely at least--but because of the strange things that sex and sexuality make people do, the acting out performed by those who are turned on, conflicted, or torn asunder by their sexuality, or the acting against sex and sexuality by . . . well, those same people who are turned on, conflicted, or torn asunder by the sexuality of others.

For example . . .

Meet Mark Foley, Republican Representative from Florida, once head of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, and now, apparently, the pederastic swinger of Congress (at least one of the ones we know about). Unless you've been living in a cave over the last week--or merely trying to tune into non-U.S. news sources where editorial directors encourage their audiences to focus on other subjects, like war, famine, poverty, and global warming--you'll know that Congressman Foley has resigned from his post in the U.S. House of Representatives because of allegations (and apparently admitted guilt) over hitting on 16-year-old male pages assigned to Congress with Internet Messenger chat lines that would do Austin Powers proud. "Do I make you horny, baby?" he more or less wrote in one message reported and repeated in my U.S. news outlets.

Well, minus the "baby." Best not to infantalize the age of the "chatee" too much, just in case someone's reading over your shoulder.

Oops, too late.

Naturally, Congressman Foley has since checked himself into rehab, and his lawyer is claiming that Foley was molested as a young teen by a clergyman. Oh, and now Foley says he's gay, too. It's a Republican family values nightmare of the fifth dimension--Jupiter is behind Mars, and Foley's heading for Uranus--and guess what? We all get to witness the bad dream as it unfolds in the national REM phase. Can a book tour and a tearful absolution on Oprah be far behind?

And, of course, all of this has happened without any charges being filed so far, as well as any clear determination whether an actual crime has been committed. The age of consent for the District of Columbia is 16, with no distinction made for homosexual contact. In Florida, the age of consent is 18, where homosexual contact is illegal. (Yeah, I know, that's rich. Somebody be sure to tell that to the folks in South Beach.) What is the age of consent in a chatroom that exists in the ether, when all talk is just that, talk, with (as far as we know) no physical contact being made?

Please don't think for a moment that I'm excusing the congressman's behavior. I may be making fun, but I'm quite serious in saying that Representative Foley's behavior was egregiously tacky and extremely inappropriate. An adult man or woman of any age really has no business sexualizing a relationship with a person of 16, or with a person under his or her care or supervision. And a man who once headed the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children really has no business sexualizing the relationship with his charges, if for no other reason than it's just too ironic.

Sixteen may be the age of consent in some states, but it might as well be a no-man's-land for consent. A person of 16 has just gained the right to drive a car, yet cannot vote nor drink legally. (Pay attention, Michael Jackson.) When most people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond, can't make a wise decision about sex and relationships, why expect someone so young to be able to? Stop making a pig of yourself at the all-you-can-sex buffet. Just push yourself away from the table, Caligula, and have a nice sensible meal at home with a consenting adult, please.

So, tacky, check. Inappropriate, check. Disturbing and creepy, check check. But illegal? The vote's not in quite yet. But, then again, I'm no legal scholar. Thanks to Homeland Security 'n' Pals in Congress and the White House, new stuff becomes illegal all the time. For all I know, it may now be a felony to yell the phrase "hand job" in a crowded theater. And who among us hasn't done that?

But on our checklist we forgot to tick the box next to "pathetic," and it should so clearly be ticked. I mean, if you read the rather lurid transcript of one of Representative Foley's chats, you can't help but think this geezer's got the world's worst chatroom chatter. Granted, we're not talking about an epistolary form of the highest level of artistic merit, but still, could try harder, Congressman Foley. I've seen technical manuals from IKEA with better powers of seduction. I am Curious Yellow Ektorp Jennylund Chair and all that.

Plus, let's consider the visuals of a middle-aged man hitting on a 16-year-old straight boy, a straight boy who tells the Congressman from Florida that he really likes the "whole Catholic [school] girl look." (We'll ignore the "innocent" young lad's self-avowed cast fetish--dude, WTF?--and, instead smile over the significant impact on culture that Britney Spears has had.) Why would anyone but a raging narcissist (or, if you prefer, a member of the U.S. Congress) think that a kid interested in hooking up with one of his plaid-and-pleated female school friends would have the remotest interest in scoring with a gray-suited, silver-haired, blue-talking Congressman?

In my misspent youth in the '70s, I had plenty of fantasies and fixations on a wide variety of older men. There was Robert Redford, of course, and Gino Vannelli, Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac (after he cut his hair), and a veritable Boys in the Sand cast of thousands of extras. Nonetheless, despite my rather catholic (as in comprehensive, not priestly) tastes in dreamboats of the same sex, I'm pretty sure I never had even the slightest fantasy about an illicit rendezvous with Richard Nixon, George Wallace, or Governor Jim Holshouser of North Carolina.

Oh, I'll grant you, the thought of it makes me feel plenty dirty--just for all the wrong reasons. However, when push comes to shove (or hand to sexual organ), the members of the triple crown of early '70s conservative power just don't qualify as fantasy material--unless, of course, you're a Young Republican.

And I think we've pretty much established already that I don't swing that way.