Sex with Teenagers
Some phrases just have zing, don't they?
Admit it, you're looking at this article because the title drew you in. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Whether or not you had any pre-existing interest in sex with teenagers yourself, there wasn't a force on earth that could have prevented you from clicking that link. Certain ideas are so attention grabbing that any previous notions floating around in your head are immediately dispelled. If three seconds before he was about to devise the theory of relativity someone had approached Albert Einstein and shouted "Look, kissing girls!", mankind would never have heard of E=mc².
Of course, I've given you two sexual cases, but there are all sorts of emotional states that tend to overwhelm the logical faculty. Beyond lust, there's aggression, envy, hysteria, pride, affection, sorrow, and the list goes on from there. Each one serves to take over the entire process of thinking and replaces it with an all consuming fervour. I suppose I could work hard to come up with even more examples, but to be honest, I'm kind of still thinking about those kissing girls.
This week, on a evening out with my cousins, I met a very pretty girl who made me feel profoundly stupid. She was very young, — although still legal, in case you're wondering — and as a result not someone I'd remotely be interested in even if I wasn't immensely devoted to my dear wife. (We ok hunny?) Seriously, she was simply attractive to the eyes, and there's no part of my rational mind that considered the experience anything but an intellectual recognition of that undisputed fact. Nonetheless, while in her presence, my brain didn't seem to work all that well.
With all men and most women I'm usually Mr. Chuckles. I love to make people laugh, and women especially. The fact that I look like a 900lb swamp-frog generally does little to impress people, so offering up some yucks is a good way get over with them. It's really my one available social tool, yet in the presence of newly met pretty girls, the funny machine just turns off.
I realize this topic just sounds incredibly juvenile, and I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't see it the same way. Recognition of the childishness of it all enthralled me. How, as a grown man, and with not a lick of interest in any woman other than my goddess of a bride, (Seriously baby, we good?) could I be rendered so comedically impotent simply by the presence of a fresh face? I have zero interest in sex with teenagers, but in this case the part of my brain from which comedy is generated seemed sickly dysfunctional.
It's happened many times before, and it has nothing to do with their age. Many years ago, I met Terri Hatcher during a press junket I was working on. At the time I was infatuated with the woman thanks to her role on Lois and Clark, but when for ten minutes there was nobody else in the room but myself and this much older queen of the screen, I turned into a mousey mute. Teri Hatcher, the object of many a boyhood fantasy, went out of her way to be chatty with me, and all I could muster was a discussion about the weather.
Nowadays however I'm not infatuated with anyone. (except you, darling) Age dulls more than the ability to act on the passions, but also the passions themselves. The aforementioned case aside, I'm far less likely to be stupefied by random interactions with random women than I was as a young buck. But the phenomenon goes much further than that. There isn't any politician that can make me as angry as they could have when I was young, no song that can inspire me as greatly. In the words of King Osric from the largely underquoted film 'Conan the Barbarian':
"There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child."
Remember when you were trying to have sex with teenagers, but doing so because you were also one yourself? Remember how much you could obsess about a particular boy or girl at school, even one you hardly knew, to the point that it hurt? Remember when your fears and desires so completely dominated every aspect of your life? Remember that? That's my point - I can't either.
It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Not to echo the sentiments of my last podcast too closely, but young people need to be big, swirling clouds of hormones so that they'll get themselves into compromising positions in the back seats of inexpensive automobiles. How else is the human race to propagate itself?
Many resent that aspect of aging, scientifically explained or not. They long for the times when their hearts raced, their opinions on the world seemed so important, and their optimism appeared to be more than enough to fill the cups of their future. The diminishment of the passions is inevitable, and when one realizes this they may make fruitless efforts to reacquire them. I should know, because I think I may have wasted years of my thirties trying.
But being older is an improvement over the emotionally crazed state of youth. Other than things like an occasional mental malfunction in the presence of feminine loveliness, we adults are generally in a better position to know the world around us should we take any interest in it. We're many times more capable of dealing with developments, many orders of magnitude more secure in our convictions. We may miss the days when we could be so excited by so many different things, but let's also not forget how miserable we could be rendered by minor matters. Freer, more powerful beings are the aged, even if the lifting of any physical weight tends to throw out our backs.
With the clear mind of adulthood we have an opportunity to divorce ourselves of that which frightens us and focus on whatever it is that fascinates us. We can go forward confidently and use the time we have left to discover the places previously clouded by the furies of youth. In many ways, the world is our oyster — even if oysters are more likely to occur to us as a way to save on our viagra bills.
But I don't feel silly when a young belle momentarily transforms me back into a stumbling teenage dork. It's really no skin off my back at all, nor is it indicative of any real desire in my current life. It's simply the last flickering flames of a fire that was once burning too hotly anyways, like that occasional pimple that still troubles even the oldest of us. Instead I simply treasure the memory of days when any of that stuff seemed important at all, and then get back to contemplating that big world around me.
Sex with teenagers was fun in it's time, but time stands still for no grown man.
