Casual
_Casual Withholding the Facts of Life Ihave a new grandson with the and "seminal ejaculation." These admirable name of Nicholas boys had been trained in humor, Charles Epstein. Nick Charles,...
...These featured familiar comic-book characters in brief pornographic melodramas...
...Difficult—impossible, really—to imagine him instructing his eight sons in the intricacies of female anatomy...
...I hope, as I say, that my son will not make the mistake of sitting my grandson down and filling him in on the facts of life...
...What I wanted, of course, was to be as un-careful as possible...
...I rather doubt it...
...He had had ten children, which makes me think that no one had told him about the facts of life either...
...Nick Charles, light-irony division, and they moviegoers will happily recall, is would, I fear, have laughed their the name of the suave detective old man out of the house...
...I only hope—for reasons I shall go into presently— that my son has the good sense, in fact the decency, never to tell the boy the facts of life...
...To do so, we all agreed, was so awkward as to be quite impossible...
...Yes, Papa," says the boy...
...Meanwhile, sex education went on down the hall in print shop, where vocational students produced something called "eight-pagers...
...the boy asks...
...The problem was that the girls I went out with in high school turned out to be more than careful enough for the both of us...
...I thought about telling my sons the facts of life, but could not imagine taking them off into a room and, illustrated book in hand, starting to talk in a vocabulary that included such words as "pudenda," "labia," school we had something called hygiene that was part of gym class, in which we were taught—I use the word "taught" very loose-ly—the evil effects of alcohol and nicotine and the rudiments of first aid...
...In any case, I didn't have to worry too much about being careful...
...The next day he is walking through his estate with his son...
...It was a little unclear what I was to be careful about...
...We were all of a certain age—beyond, that is, 50—and hence born in a less psychological time than the one in which we now live...
...The only advice I can remember his providing on the subject was his invocation to "Be careful...
...You know, Anton," he begins, somewhat tentatively, "the time has come for me to tell you about the birds and the bees...
...He was a scholarly man, interested in Hebrew education in Montreal...
...Venereal disease, perhaps...
...Joseph Epstein...
...Take it easy, baby," I still recall Moon Mullins more than forty years later exclaiming in an eight-pager, "I wanna use this joy stick again sometime...
...A few years ago I was sitting in a Chinese restau- William Powell rant in New York with three intellectual friends, chatting away, as befits members of the chattering class, about this and that, when in the vagaries of conversation the fact arose that none of us, as kids, had been told the facts of life by our fathers...
...I wonder if my father ever considered telling me the facts of life...
...I look forward to that day for him, too...
...Perhaps not everyone knows about the Hungarian countess who asks her husband if he has yet told their fifteen-year-old son about "the birds and the bees...
...Well, Anton," the count continues, "you will recall that two weeks ago when we were walking along this same path we passed two beautiful young peasant girls...
...What about the birds and the bees, Papa...
...Yet three of the four of us had sons, and we each admitted that we hadn't told them the facts of life either...
...He dispensed philosophy, not sexology...
...In first aid, we were given large cloth bandages, which we used not for slings or tourniquets but to bind and gag one another in the back of the room...
...I believe he told me this one morning on the way out of the house...
...A friend, public education...
...In our family, after all, we have a tradition going back four full generations in which the men have been autodidacts in these matters, and traditions must be preserved...
...Well, my boy," concludes the count, "what we did with those two girls—it seems the birds and the bees do it, too...
...The count replies that he has indeed forgot, but will do so forthwith...
...He was a very elevated gent, who always wore suits with vests, a watch on a gold chain, and a prettily groomed goatee...
...He was a busy man...
...Maybe pregnancy...
...I can scarcely imagine my father's father telling him the facts of life...
...played by William Powell in the Sex education was no part of my Thin Man movies...
...In my high when told of my new grandson's name, said she hopes it won't be long before he's sitting around in silk pajamas and a Sul-ka robe, sipping martinis...
Vol. 2 • December 1996 • No. 15
