Very grudging warning-this is a “blue comedy” treatment of a real story in my life. If you’re delicate and easily offended, don’t read it. Any complaints in the comments will be mocked, and you won’t like being the target. This blog is not for church ladies.
Story time!
Gather 'round, and bring a drink. This is a good one. Punchline comes at the end. To understand the denoument of this tableau, you need to know that I was an out gay, everyone at school knew it (how could they not).
I went to school at Sarah Lawrence College, the liberalest of the liberal arts schools. Yes, I was a young commie/queer/critical theory junkie.
My pal Melissa and I sat next to each other in our Gender and Sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa anthro class. Our teacher was Mary, a proper British lesbian anthropologist.
We had to read all these ethnographies—collected narrative descriptions of life among the natives, trying to get at how they thought about the world.
You know, lots of Margaret Mead shit with those people who make the !click-tock noises when they speak. Mel and I used to make these soft "tick tock" noises at each other and crack up. Professor Mary glared at us while trying not to laugh.
One day we had just read a slim volume about the life of these lady-boy prostitutes. You know, the skinny, effeminate sissy gays who dress up as women and ply their trade on "unsuspecting" johns.
According to this anthropologist, the ladyboys told her that the men were always fooled. How, the anthropologist author asked, did they manage such "realness?" How did they fool the menz?
The ladyboys claimed that every night before they went out to the docks, they'd open a can of Starkist tuna and rub the juices all up in their loins.
I'm not making this up. This book fucking said that.
Well. I may have been a dumb 20 year old Marxist, but I knew bullshit—and the beginnings of tuna casserole—when I smelled it.
Said I to the class while cracking up, "Oh, come on. Everyone knows pussy doesn't really smell like tuna."
Professor Mary looked at me, looked at the class, and responded.
"Right, Joshua Slocum. Everyone also knows that you’re an expert on pussy."
Got scolded once by a female friend because she wore a low-cut top and caught me unthinkingly looking at her cleavage.
Gay friend rushed to my rescue: "Oh come on, even I was staring at them."
Oh, how I wish you were right, my friend. Also: did the menz think the ladyboys had really long clitorises?