Tag Archives: sex

When You Are Adopted. . .

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says Aaron Levi, Wilt Chamberlain’s 50 year old son, “rejection is woven into your DNA.”

My family’s version of Manifest Destiny concluded on December 31st, 1973 when we arrived, via a car caravan from Ohio, at a West LA hotel. Immediately after checking in, my demented older brothers decided we had to finish our journey by driving the last few miles to the Pacific Ocean. And then become one with the ocean on probably the coldest day of the year. Running from the Pacific Coast Highway to the water, we looked north towards Pacific Palisades and saw our first SoCal celeb, Wilt the Stilt, playing beach volleyball.

At that exact moment, you could count on one hand the number of people who knew Wilt had a 9 year old son named Aaron, living in Oregon, with his adopted family, the Levi’s. Read or watch the whole moving story here.

The story is interesting on several levels. For instance, Ben Carson, long shot Republican candidate for President, is popular among social conservatives. Carson is certain homosexuality is a choice. Ben, please read paragraph six of Pomerantz’s story and then explain how Aaron Levi decided to be gay before he was 9. Maybe Carson will reason Levi asked for Mary Poppins because he didn’t have a strong father figure. Complete bullshit.

On NPR recently, I listened to a segment on why we doubt scientific findings. One guest explained how some people’s identities and worldviews determine how they interpret scientific findings. For example, individuals who reject evolution and climate change don’t do so based on objective considerations of evidence, they do so because accepting those findings would require too fundamental a change in identity and worldview.

I couldn’t help but think of that when reading how Chamberlain’s remaining sibs have refused to meet Levi. Why the flat-out rejection? Because meeting him would require them to rethink what they believe to be true about their deceased brother. His sanitized image is an integral part of their self image. Put differently, Levi doesn’t fit into their worldview.

Levi deserves a lot better. The Chamberlains should follow the lead of one of my elderly relatives who was shocked recently when he was contacted by his deceased sibling’s secret daughter, now Aaron Levi’s exact age. They met, shared histories, and now she’s a cherished member of the family.

It’s not that hard if you put adoptees’ needs to know their history before your need to maintain a fictitious public image.

Postscript—Time will probably tell, but what’s the over-under on Levi’s half brothers and sisters?

Young Adults Aren’t Having as Much Sex as Everyone Thinks

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Sentence to ponder:

“More and more technophilic and commitment-phobic millennials are shying away from physical encounters and supplanting them with the emotional gratification of virtual quasi relationships, flirting via their phones and computers with no intention of ever meeting their romantic quarry: less casual sex than casual text.”   —Teddy Wayne in the New York Times

I recommend reading the article in its entirety. It’s required reading if you don’t know what “IRL” stands for. Wayne’s descriptions and analyses challenge my thinking. Normally, I find the negative reactions of older people to changes in youth culture predictable and mindless. Older people thoughtlessly flatter themselves to think things were always better “back in the day”. By reminding myself that the changes aren’t better or worse than in the past, just different, I consciously practice a form of cultural relativism.

But when many millennials give up, as Wayne reports, on “the more challenging terrain of three-dimensional partners”, it’s hard for me to think screen-based relationships are just different than IRL ones. By punting on in-person vulnerability and physical touch, millennials are foregoing intimacy. And by living less intimately with others, they’re compromising the quality of their lives.

Committed friendships—especially romantic ones—are risky because they’re a by-product of vulnerability. You can’t know how caring and accepting a friend will be until you reveal some of your unflattering attributes, insecurities, fears, and related neuroses. Many millennials appear to be like grade-obsessed, risk-adverse students who consciously avoid challenging courses and instructors.

Wayne focuses too narrowly on sex at the expense of physical touch more generally. Sometimes in fact, the more subtle the touch, the more profound. My clarion call in the Writing Seminar last week was “Depth of description and analysis trumps breadth.” To illustrate this, I had them read a Joe Morgenstern essay titled “How One Scene Can Say Everything: Deconstructing The Five Best Minutes of Little Miss Sunshine“. After reading Morgenstern we watched the scene in which a major family crisis is avoided when a ten year old girl puts her arm around her devastated older brother sitting on the ground below her. Then she gently rests her head on his shoulder. She doesn’t say a word. Within seconds his anger subsides and the family reconciles.

It would be easy to offer up apocalyptic conclusions about the millennials choosing watered down, on-line acquaintances, over wonderfully and painfully flawed “real life” ones. And to the cumulative effect of less physical touch. But I’m going to resist that because their intense aversion to risk didn’t arise in a vacuum.

I suspect something was amiss in the way my peers and I raised our millennial children. Maybe we gave into our fears about their safety and were too overprotective. Maybe we didn’t model as well as we could have what we know. That life is sweeter as a result of intimate friendships even when they provide tremendous joy one day and heartbreak the next.

Paragraph to Ponder

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From Roman Krznaric in The Wonderbox:

The idea of passionate, romantic love that has emerged in the West over the past millennium is one of our most destructive cultural inheritances. This is because the main aspiration—the discovery of a soulmate—is virtually impossible to achieve in reality. We can spend years searching for that elusive person who will satisfy all our emotional needs and sexual desires, who will provide us with friendship and self-confidence, comfort and laughter, stimulate our minds and share our dreams. We imagine somebody out there in the amorous ether who is our missing other half, and who will make us feel complete if only we can fuse our being with theirs in the sublime union of romantic love. Our hopes are fed by an industry of Hollywood screen romances and an overload of pulp fiction peddling this mythology. The message is replicated by the worldwide army of consultants who advertise their ability to help you ‘find your perfect match’. In a survey of single Americans in their twenties, 94 percent agreed that ‘when you marry you want your spouse to be your soulmate, first and foremost.’ The unfortunate truth is that the myth of romantic love has gradually captured the varieties of love that existed in the past, absorbing them into a monolithic vision.

Physical Intimacy

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Three hundred plus posts in I’m sufficiently warmed up to take on the taboo. Well, in a half-ass, “what if my daughters stumble upon this” kinda way.

Heard a report on Seattle’s NPR station recently that said the average adult in the U.S. has sex 85x/year. Previously, I had heard or read it was 2x/week, so I guess people are less intimate than previously. Washington Staters are lagging at 72x/year, mostly because of the guys I run with, but we lead the nation in outdoors sex. I can’t think of any other factoid that has done more for my self esteem. Makes sense, moderate summer temps, no bugs, and we love our mother earth.

I got very excited recently when I saw a rubber cord tied to the headboard. Turns out it was for physical therapy purposes only.

You’ll recall a while ago that I learned any self respecting blogger is supposed to be helpful to readers, mostly via sporadic, specific advice. So here goes.

Maintain the spark by maintaining an edge. Por exemplar, when the galpal saw this picture of me giving it to the man by breaking the speed limit, she took me by the hand and suggested we go outside.

Blurry because of the extraordinary speed

Alienation of Affection

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Try to keep up. North Carolina is one of seven states that allows a married person whose marriage has ended to sue another person for what’s referred to as “destroyed affection”. I learned this when a friend in NC informed me through a newspaper link that a woman I used to work with was recently sued for allegedly breaking up another woman’s marriage. Then I heard the story on the BBC via NPR.

The woman who brought the suit was separated from her attorney husband who apparently had an affair with my acquaintance. He was one of the college’s attorneys and was co-writing a book with my acquaintance who was the Dean of Student Life. Makes me wonder if Tiger has a bunch of books coming out shortly, but I digress. The victim of “destroyed affection” argued she had a “good long marriage” until younger co-author hussy “came along and maliciously destroyed it”.

An interesting twist, in bringing a suit like this, you don’t have to show that anyone had sex with anyone else, just that he or she (joke alert—I’m betting it’s almost always “she” because we know men are much more respectful of the marital covenant, I mean no one was hitting on Elin Woods) destroyed the affection in the marriage.

Apparently, people bring about 200 cases a year of “alienated affection” and the most anyone has won is something like $1.9m. The woman in this case won $9m, thus the media spotlight. I’m guessing my acquaintance, who is now Dean of Student Life at another college in another state, makes $80-90k/a year, so good luck collecting.

A couple of implications of this bizarre legal drama spring to mind. Penelope Cruz, if you’re reading this, you should know my wife isn’t a particularly litigious person, but hey you never know. Just to play it safe, maybe you should stop making movies for awhile. And to the older guy at church, yeah you know who you are buddy, who keeps bugging the gal pal to go on a “bike ride”, don’t think I don’t know what that’s code for. In fact, to the gaggle of guys at the “Y” who constantly tweak their swim schedules to overlap with the person I’ve enjoyed a “good long marriage” with, consider yourself forewarned. Alienate her affection and I WILL go legal shock and awe on all of yous.