the ladybug and the lion

For The Love Of Beer.

“I think you're a real beer drinker,” says my boyfriend, sounding almost proud.

“What's a real beer drinker?” I ask.

“Well, not like my mom, who won't touch anything darker than Corona.”

I had just ingested a bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale and declared my regret that we didn't have more.  This was fairly serious problem in my mind, as I'd recently developed a strong affinity for beer: it's my current post-workday beverage of choice.  I had already gone though most of the brands stocked at my local Trader Joe's and recently hunted down the nearest specialty wine and cheese store, which also happens to have a fairly large selection of beer.  Then came the more exotic brews, such as Sam Adam's Triple Bock: not my after work beer of choice, but I'll consider it the next time I'm trying to find a drink to accompany my cheese platter.

This wasn't supposed to happen, especially with beer.  I've tried being a wine drinker for years, but it just never clicked.  There is the occasional bottle of wine that I fully enjoy, but I never miss it when it isn't around: it never complimented a meal in the way I thought it should.  If I was being totally honest, I would have to admit that my desire to appreciate wine was at least partially a desire to be part of high culture as opposed to for the love of the drink.  And then I started drinking beer.

Beer, at least in my mind, is not “high culture”.  Beer is manly, grotesque, meant for drinking games (specifically beer pong) and late nights in grimy bars.  At worst, it's cheap, revolting to taste.  At best, it's tolerable, but certainly isn't meant to compliment superbly prepared meals of seared ahi and blue cheese crusted steak.  I associate it's smell with a hug from my father on a hot summer's day, or drunk (male) friends from college.  Beer is not feminine. 

Or so I thought until I tried some “real” beer: the carbonation, the dark flavor.  I was hooked. 

Phonic memories of Zimbabwe.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

We were the only white people on a rickety old bus packed with sweating bodies, sitting at least two but many times three people to a seat.  And nobody was without baggage.  I had my backpacking backpack squeezed into the space where my legs were meant to go.  My legs had been displaced to the aisle where they were battling for space with a large canvas bag full of maize.  Two seats in front of me an old black man with white hair was carrying a live chicken under his coat, which he was wearing despite the 90 degree heat, and many of the women held children, or whole cases of fruit, on their laps.  Every minute a child started crying, or I would get a waft of body odor from somewhere further up in th bus.  But despite of this people managed to fall asleep in their seats, the most advantageous way to spend the four hour ride.

The bus came to a stop.  Nobody called out a name of the town, and there wasn't any sign outside.  And there certainly wasn't a flashing banner or string to pull in order to request a stop, but that didn't seem to confuse anybody except me.  Women, men, and children carrying drinks, baskets of mangoes, sugar cane, popsicles, and other local treats came running up to the bus, calling through the windows, trying to convince us to buy.  People who wanted something either got off the bus or handed money through the window and my feet were finding a hard time finding a place where they wouldn't be trampled as people got on and off.  I was hot and the popsicles were looking more desirable the longer I stared at them, but just as I was about to get up a girl across the bus from me decided to buy what appeared to be a fried bat from a vendor through the window. 

We'd been sitting at the bus stop for about ten minutes and I was thinking it was time to leave when two blind men walked onto the bus singing.  One was tall, lanky, darker that the other, and carrying a walking stick.  The shorter one was singing the melody (while the taller man sang the bass part) and took off his hat with which to collect change. They were singing in what I think was Shona, one of the many local languages, so I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I was immediately struck by their song.  I quickly searched through my backpack for my digital sound recorder, cursing myself for not keeping it in a more convenient location.

From my experience, aural memories carry much more weight than pictures or words.  It's almost scary how a sound recording can not only recall a moment so quickly, but also revive nostalgia with surprising vividness.  In short, I miss Africa. 

Moving on... to "hot plant sex"?

Recently I took up a part time gig at a plant nursery that specializes in an exotic and endangered plant called a cycad, and part of my job currently is to travel to assorted gardens in LA County in order to help these plants procreate.  This pollination process, or at least how it's meant to occur in nature, has had its fair share of recent media attention.  The New York Times and the AP both recently wrote articles about cycad pollination.  The AP article is actually quite entertaining and makes one wonder how bored science writers and editors must get: "Think about strong perfume and a threesome, and what do you get? "  From my own experience I can tell you that pollinating these plants is not as hot and steamy as the AP article seems to imply.  If anything, it's prickly (I have to push my way to the center of the female plant with a bottle containing pollen and water), painful and occasionally draws the odd drop of blood.  But maybe some people are into that.

Pictured above is a plant I'm currently fertilizing: an Encephalartos ferox.  It's not extremely rare, but I think it's one of the more striking cycads to look at.  The red part is a female cone, which is what this plant produces instead of flowers in order to procreate.  The male cones are smaller and orange.  To give you a sense of perspective, the cone above is about a foot tall.  But don't even think about eating it: cycads are part of the diet of some indigenous people in Guam and are thought to be associated with a neurological disease that plagues that community.  Scary.

Oh boy, it's Playboy.

Early this past spring I received an email from an editor at Playboy magazine inviting me to participate in a sex columnist round-table discussion about, well, you can guess what about.  And since I'm an optimistic person and enjoy taking things as they come to me I agreed to participate.  I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I was definitely  hoping for a free trip to Chicago, some good (free) food, a celebrity host (Dan Savage, please) and  a little undivided attention.  That bubble soon burst, however, as I didn't hear back from the editor for about two months after I agreed to participate.

In the end there was a discussion, although not around a round table.  The discussion was conducted via email, which of course meant no free trip to Chicago, no free food, and definitely no celebrity host.  Us sex columnists were left to discuss things as we wished with the occasional interruption by Rocky, the Playboy editor, with questions such as "Do you think Playboy is porn?"

I didn't participate much in the discussion.  This is partially because I was busy graduating from college, being irritated with Playboy (for reasons that will be discussed in a moment), and being "over" the topics at hand.  Not that the issues the other columnists brought up weren't things I cared about, but I'd just finished my stint as a sex columnist and was ready to move on to other things.

As for being irritated with Playboy, during the ongoing "round-table" discussion Playboy sent us each a questionnaire that we were meant to fill out and return to sender.  It included questions such as "How many times did you get laid during Spring Break?" and "How does that compare to the average college student's spring break experience?"  And so on.  Maybe I should have expected this sort of thing, after all this was Playboy, but I was honestly hoping this was going to be one of those "I read Playboy for the articles, truly" type of deals.  I was hoping they were going to be looking for a little more substance and a little less "oooh, college girls and boobs!!"  In fact, I was pretty offended by the type of questions that I was expected to answer.  After all, I'd put a lot of work into my columns and I hadn't written them to simply promote the idea that college is a four year long orgy.  But after sending Rocky a curt email informing him that I wouldn't talk about my personal life and a bit of debating, I returned the questionnaire with some silly sarcastic answers.

The fruits of our labor came out in the October 2007 issue of Playboy.  It was massively edited and didn't really sound anything like what had actually taken place in the email correspondence.  The editors had taken any personal story, anything related to lesbian hook-ups, and any mention of how girls really want it (it being any sexual act, just you name it) and combined it into a "discussion".  After reading it I was glad I didn't really participate that much. 

In total, in the final product, I say three things all of which were taken out of context and none of which I'm proud of.  The one that stands out the most is "girls make out with one another at parties all the time," which I can't remember saying, but almost makes me wish I'd attended more college parties while they were readily available.  Or not.  The other two quotes attributed to me are a little better in terms of intelligence and substance, but not by much.  Honestly, the whole article (to me at least) sounds ridiculous.  Just check out the catchphrase "Eight College Girls (And One Obnoxious Guy) On The State Of Sex On College Campuses Today."  Well, of course the guy who's getting laid and writing about it is obnoxious.  Otherwise he'd be a threat to the every male Playboy reader's masculinity and we wouldn't want that, now would we?

But if you still feel like reading "Students On Students", go right ahead. 

 

Ruminations of an ex-sex columnist.

For about a year and a half, from February of 2005 through June of 2006, I wrote the sex column for UCLA's student run newspaper: The Daily Bruin.  I wrote about anything and everything related to sex.  Unlike other columns, such as Berkeley's "Sex on Tuesday" when it was authored by Andrea Demaray (this is one of my favorites), I never delved into the detailed "how to", but rather stuck to the basic educational, the political, the general "why not?", and most importantly the "tolerate."  I wanted to try and help people understand the multitude of ways there were to express both sexuality and gender, and through understanding to try and keep people from being judgmental of sexual practices that were "different" as they figured out what was right for them. 

In some ways I felt I succeeded, in many other ways I didn't.  I definitely got my share of hate letters from both the student population and the surrounding community, but I also got a lot of positive feedback, mostly from girls, some of whom told me that because of specific columns they felt more empowered with regards to their sexuality.

Success or no success, being a sex columnist was definitely an interesting and eyeopening experience.  It isn't everyday when it's your job to go out and interview a stripper, a survivor of rape, or the creator of a  sex machine.  And while, yes, there were nuisances including the annoying, overeager, and assuming emails as well as the presumptions people made about me, there were almost as many emails asking legitimate questions.  The one that sticks out in my mind the most was from a 25 year old soon to be Stanford graduate student.  She asked me where her clitoris was.

Maybe it seems as if college sex columns are just a fad: the next generation thinking they're the first ones to discover sex.  But I think it's more than that.  I think sex columns are a reaction to the abominable state of sex education in this country, the lack of communication between parents and kids, and the want for more accepting attitudes.  I'm sure the 25 year old that asked me where her clitoris is isn't the only one that doesn't know; and I'm even more sure that there are people with questions that they will never be brave enough to ask.  People have insecurities and issues that they want more information about.  And while, yes, there is always the internet, children need information at a younger age than they know what keywords to type into a search engine.  So until people have ready answers for their basic questions from their parents and teachers, sex columns will be there to fill in the information gap.  And while I have a sinking suspicion that they might be here for quite a while longer, I hope that they'll be making their way out sooner rather than later; and that people of both genders will know where a clitoris is before they ever even get to college.

In the meantime, here are my columns if you're curious:)