Traveling to Golgotha
Just traveling. As I write this, if you haven’t written on an iPhone, you haven’t lived, we’re barreling through West Virginia. West Virginia kinda creeps me out.
The New York Times has published a piece on adolescent male relationships. Set against the context of what they call: the sleepover.
You ought to try it in a jeep.
Riding shadows through Appalachia. Sometimes I pray I don’t have to get out of the car, and hopefully there’s enough gas to make it out of West Virginia.
The whole framework of the New York Times nailing down an idea it has no experience with whatsoever is hardly new. They do it all the time.
The Big Boy Boogeyman never raised its head in the New York Times.
If you haven’t read the New York Times while barreling through West Virginia, you haven’t lived.
The Big Bad Boogeyman is called — sex.
How is it that you get to define the development of male relationships and pretend sex is not anywhere in this equation seems more than a little disingenuous.
I did respond. Imagine that.
Sex.
It is kind of an innuendo. Trust but verify. What is it that we as parents are supposed to verify.
Adolescent boys do not have sex with one another. Please.
Obviously, the issue is explosive. As someone who deals with boys who live with HIV, I am here to tell you, it happens. I am also here to tell you that — hard as it might be — a frank discussion, not innuendo, has to happen, and not accidentally, to facilitate an increased awareness of the part of the kid, but only if the parents, themselves, are reconciled to educate themselves. When it comes to adolescent boys having sex, the elephant in the room is the innuendo of sexuality.
You cannot speak to adolescence without dialogue that includes sex. Your teenager is going to feel ten times as awkward as you do.
Judgement. Quite frankly, it’s the gay kid who has been hiding his sexuality, mainly because he’s scared to death what people will think, especially his peers, who by fiat is pushed into suicidal ideation that all parents wring their hands over, the refrain being We Are Sorry For Your Loss, when sexualized adolescents are never enabled to discuss sexuality in an open and forthright way.
They are afraid you will judge them.
And you will. I see it every day. What I know is that there is virtually little guidance. Almost none. Suicide is not the answer. Adolescents who are facilitated to regard sexuality at a feeling level, light years from the gym class version, are adolescents who will survive.