Confession: Yeah, I freaking like it!

Last night, I reluctantly performed one of my more uncomfortable “duties”. Inevitably, this occasionally-required chore leads to conflicting feelings of a restless desire to move my hips, absolute and abject annoyance and a compulsive need to bathe.

No, this was not a marital duty involving canine-named positions: I chaperoned a high school dance.

And yes, Readers, high school dances are still everything you remember them to be: grand examples of excited exuberance, saccharin-sweet romance, and awkward Pretty in Pink social gaffes. It’s generally entertaining and endearing to watch hundreds of youthful bodies letting loose in frenzied movements via the age-old pagan release of dancing.

Or so I think.

Many others—namely my bosses, some members of society and all who believe “Rush is Right”—think it’s sexually charged, dirty, naughty and faintly nauseating. Actually, I’ll give them nauseating—that many sweaty teens who have not yet mastered the correct deodorant-cologne-bodysweat ratio crammed into a confined area is really stinky. But it is not the scent that we, as the adult supervisors, are supposed to be concerned with (unless it is the pungent aroma of marijuana…a scent I can detect like a bloodhound. Must be from all those college days in Seattle…).

The problem, as depicted so poignantly in Footloose, is sex. Dances involve music, music makes young bodies move, moving young bodies is ‘suggestive’ and that suggestion is sex.

In my experience, teenagers do not need sex to be suggested to them. They always want it. If the average, healthy adult male thinks about sex every 10 seconds, the average healthy American teen thinks about it every 0.10 seconds. And that’s during an algebra test.

In fact, I have it on good authority that they not only THINK about it, they DO it. All of them. All the time. All over the place.

I know this because they tell me. As a very short individual, I am a great spy in the hallways. Students don’t see me coming and don’t realize when I’m there and thus talk freely. OH, the things I hear! I’ve learned not to share these little nuggets of teenage reality with my friends who have young children as they inevitably decide that either A. they’re going to home-school their children or B. they are locking their daughters in a nunnery. Starting at age 6. So, if you’re horrified that teenagers these days are just as horny as we all were when we were teens, don’t read on!

That disclaimer done, back to sex. The students have it all the time. Before school, during school, after school. In their cars, in the closets, in the bathroom. In a bus, in the dugouts, in a tree...

No, I’m not exaggerating. Our grounds-keeper often finds condoms in the trees. I can’t decide if I’m utterly horrified or reluctantly impressed.

And, unfortunately, I’ve witnessed the dug-out love in person. Several times. My classroom looks out on the varsity baseball field. On one memorable occasion, I witnessed a couple furtively sneaking into the dugout during lunch and summoned the campus police and administration. As the ‘reporting party’, they made me accompany them. We tromped over the field (this was during a mid-January snowstorm) and made our way towards the home team’s bench when the classic ‘bow-chicka-wow-wow’ beat of Porn reached our ears. Upon our arrival, we witnessed a naked girl lap-dancing her boyfriend—who had provided visual stimulation via a portable DVD player.

Yup, that ‘abstinence only’ policy of school sex ed is working REALLY well.

At least they do all seem to be ‘abstaining’ from using a bed. Honestly, you have to be in horrified awe of their creepy creativity, blatant bravado and stunning stupidity. I just really wish I could stop having to witness it. Contrary to popular belief, I did NOT enter the profession of educating the nation’s youth in order to observe them creating the next generation of the nation’s youth!

Thus, you can imagine my disbelief that, with all of the sexual adventures taking place amongst our teenage population, the thing we are most concerned with is the method of (mostly-clothed) dancing amongst our students who actually attend school-sponsored dances?

We must carefully interview all DJs and monitor their music selection to ensure no potentially offensive songs are played. HA! I challenge you to find ANY song that is NOT potentially offensive. Even the Beach Boys and their ‘California Girls’ is full of sexual innuendo and geographic discrimination, to say nothing of danceable hits like “Low”. The existence of radio edits helps, as public education tries to assume that anything played for free over the public radio should be fair game.

This concern over lyrics is silly, of course; the attending students’ i-pods—usually purchased and endorsed by their own parents-- are full of the most offensive, dirty music available. But the impossibly unrealistic expectations of public education versus the stark reality accepted, and even pursued, by the general parenting public is ever the ironic dilemma of public education and a rant I do not choose to engage in at this time. I’d rather return to discussing sex.

The biggest problem with high school dances—beyond all of the regrettable fashion ‘don’ts’-- is Freaking.

And I don’t mean the geeks, goths, shower-curtain-wearing, strange-piercing-sporting, awkwardly-dressed-and-acting pimply-faced Freaks who have roamed the halls of high school since the dawn of time.

Freaking is dancing. Specifically, dancing by simulating sexual intercourse. Grinding one’s hips, ass, crotch and chest against one’s partner’s hips, ass, crotch and chest in time to the hypnotically sexual-act-imitating, pulsating beat.

And this is bad. It looks sexual (because it is!) It looks like it inspires lust (because it does!) It looks fun…

Oops. I mean, it is a phenomenon that must be STOPPED! Teenagers are unstable, hormonally-controlled, volatile creatures who cannot handle the close proximity of the opposite (or same) sex without thinking un-pure thoughts, desiring un-pure acts and eventually sexually combusting.

Wow. I thought Footloose was a fictional movie!

Still, I am a dedicated teacher and employee. I was given my “NO Freaking” tee-shirt (pretty damn funny, actually, as it has a crossed-out picture of stick figures goin’ at it canine-style on the front) and my instructions to reprimand and immediately remove any student engaging in this perverted form of dance.

Thus armed with my thin, short-sleeved, 100% cotton cloak of authority, I climbed up on the nearest table, took an aggressive stance, crossed my arms beneath my breasts and prepared to enforce the No Freaking Law.

Huh. Problem. How the hell am I supposed to do THAT? The first problem is that they are ALL freaking (except for the actual Freaks who are doing an intricate and super-lame Irish clog in the corner). The second problem is that I have no way to stop this.

The only possible method I can think of would be to climb down from my safe perch, go into the gyrating mass of humanity and physically separate the horny freaking fuckers.

I do not get paid enough to do that. So I choose to fall back on the old self-preserving teaching standby: Teacher Blindness.

Administrator: facing the teacher, back to the dance floor. “Do you see any students engaging in the deplorable act of Freaking?”

Teacher: perfectly straight face, watching a female student grind her barely-clad ass against her partner’s crotch. “Nope. The kids are behaving themselves tonight. That Irish dance performed by that girl who is wearing what appears to be a shower curtain held together by her nose ring is really quite impressive.”

Administrator: still not looking at the dance floor. “Good. You make sure to stop anything the moment you see it. Can’t have the kids doing disgusting stuff like that. It’s sexual harassment.”

Teacher: observing the boy slide his hand up under the girl’s skirt as her friend joins them in what looks like a ménage-a-tois foreplay, impressively performed perfectly to the beat. “Of course. Disgusting stuff. I’ll be sure to stop it immediately.”

Administrator marches away. Teacher goes back to ‘chaperoning’ the orgy-porgy on the dance floor. Both are perfectly satisfied with this arrangement.

Because here’s the truth: we don’t really care. We have to PRETEND to care, to be self-riotously indignant that young adults would enjoy rubbing their nubile young bodies together. In reality, we all did it. Some of us still do.

And there-in is my real dilemma. I freak. All the time. I’m a ‘YEAH! girl’, a ‘WOO!!! Girl’, a ‘party-like-a-rockstar-all-night! girl’ . You know, the kind of girl who likes to let her hair down, her hem line up, throw her hands in the air and party, dance, and sing in ways that will hopefully never end up on YouTube.

I don’t do this often. Most of the time my hair is tamed, my dress is conservatively fashionable and my hands are only up when I’m diagramming sentences on the whiteboard in my classroom. After all, I’m a teacher in a small town. The wildest I’m supposed to get is a second glass of chilly chardonnay on Saturday night.

Boring.

I love dancing. I love dressing like I’m 10 years younger than I actually am, going to a slick dance club where everyone IS 10 years young than I and dancing in a completely uninhibited fashion with my husband, my girl friends, my girlfriends’ husbands and any one else in the vicinity.

And I don’t clog. I don’t swing dance. I don’t do the fox trot. I do not maintain an appropriate bubble of personal space.

Nope. I freak. And I freaking like it.

Confession: I get waxed!

I get waxed. Not a Brazilian, as I draw the line at getting on all fours to have hot wax poured and then ripped off my ass (really, a girl has to have SOME standards!), but I do get a nice, tasteful French wax so that things are, well, ‘tidy’ down there for whenever I happen to be seen in public in bikini bottoms.


I sometimes compare my status as a cop’s wife to a bikini wax. So many things about it hurt, so badly it steals my breath, but the glories and the benefits are worth the repeated and habitual pain.

But tonight, tonight dear readers, the pain is sharp and hot and I’m struggling to remember the smooth and sexy reasons I put up with this. Tonight is like the moment the Helga-torture-bitch tests the hot wax she just spread liberally all over my bikini area to see if it is ready to be ripped off. In that moment, I KNOW it’s going to hurt. In fact, it’s going to hurt like a mother-fucker. And the only way to get that fucking wax off my sweet, soft, vulnerable vagina is for her to yank it—and the hair and top layer of skin—off in one brief, life-altering moment.

Why is tonight so hard? Because I love my husband. Because his job prevents me from loving him the way I want to, when I want to, how I want to. Because I’m alone and lonely and because I know he’d rather be here, too, than dealing with the scum of the earth. Because I’m selfish and sad and want my man here, with me, on me, in me, beside me where he belongs.

You see, if I had it my way, I wouldn’t be writing right now. If I had it my way, I’d be bent in some almost-impossible position, experiencing the transcendental orgasmic bliss only he can bring me. And then I’d press my cute little ass against him and fall asleep, only to wake in his arms sometime tomorrow morning.

Instead, I am here in bed, alone, with only the warm, soft vibration of my laptop on my crotch, my hair in a bun, a not-so-sexy nightie on my body and tear-tracks marring my cheeks, looking forward to being awakened by a little voice insisting, ‘Mommy, I want WAFFLES!!”

I hate sleeping alone.

Some nights, one or both of my girls ends up climbing into bed with me. While I don’t want to welcome them—for small creatures they take up an immense amount of room—I am secretly relieved. I hate sleeping alone. I hate the silence of it, the coldness of it, the ‘I’m all-aloneness’ of it. I haven’t had to sleep habitually alone for 15 years (yes, Mom, we slept in sin LONG before there was a ring on my finger!).
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those people who clings sadly to her little corner of the bed because it’s ‘her side’ or some such shit. Oh no...I sprawl. The 5 out of 7 nights he is gone, I sleep smack-dab in the middle of our king-size bed, arms and legs splayed full-length. In fact, some nights I sleep diagonally across the whole 25’ cubic expanse…just because I can. I LOVE the room…I just wish he was there to mold himself around my contorted frame.

And the most ironic thing is, the man snores! Loudly.

Seriously. He’s no peach in the bedmate department. For one, he's huge and believes in the 'law of proportions', which roughly translates to, 'the bigger person gets more of the bed'.  This results in little me clinging precariously to the edge of the bed, clutching the scrap of comforter he has left me.  He snores. He twitches. He gets up to pee more than I do…and I’ve had 2 kids! He talks in his sleep, thrashes about and once urgently shook me awake to inform me that he ‘doesn’t slay dragons!’

…Good to know.

But still, I miss him. When I’m alone, I don’t have anywhere to warm my cold ass. And my ass is COLD at night. One of my girlfriends, Janey, informed me she has “Cold Ass Disease”. I think ALL cop wives have “C.A.D”. We lack the warm male body upon whom most women warm that freezing cold hunk of fat.

In fact, I am now so used to sleeping alone that when we took the girls to Disneyland once in the middle of a graveyard shift cycle, I was shocked to awake in the middle of the night and find a full-grown, flesh-and-blood man in my bed. This was such a novel experience that I groped him, quite intimately, for several minutes to determine that he really was there, that this was not one of my better and more realistic fantasy-dreams in which Matt Damon magically visits me in the middle of the night and makes all of my secret fantasies come true. Unfortunately for Stuart, once I ascertained that it WAS a real man in my bed and that real man WAS my husband, I promptly rolled over, stuck my cold ass against his crotch and went back to sleep.

I just can’t sleep well without him. I don’t think I’m worried about an intruder or anything…I’ve got that one handled. I’ll just run out naked with my trusty steel Mag flashlight, screaming. I figure THAT’ll scare the living fuck out of them. If not, I’ll grab any one of the trusty guns hidden around the house and shoot the floor. I figure they’ll be so horrified by a) my aim and b) my sheer ballsiness in shooting a gun when I clearly have no sense of aim that they will hi-tale their intruding asses right on out the window before I accidentally shoot off their dicks while aiming for their heads.

And it’s not necessarily the sex I miss, either. In fact, if anything, graveyard shift HELPS our sex lives. It’s like we’re dating again. I eagerly anticipate the moments when we’re both awake and coherent and am so ready to go at those precious times that I go off like a freaking rocket the moment he touches me. The other morning we ‘met’ in the shower and, I gotta say, porn stars and got NOTHIN’ on me!!!

No, pure and simple, I just miss the presence of my husband. Graveyard shift is like the three days before a bikini wax: it’s just not pretty. Things are rather, ahem, ‘hairy’, and uncomfortable and undesirable. And while I know that soon they’ll be smooth and soft and sweet again, I also know the fixing process will be painful and awkward and faintly humiliating.

All of this reminds me; I’m due for an appointment. And as Stu has another four months of Graveyard Shift, maybe this time I will get a Brazilian: perhaps all that hot wax will cure my Cold Ass Disease until I have a man warming my bed on a regular basis again!

Confession: I’m loud!

As a teacher and former cheerleader and coxswain, it should surprise no one that I can be extremely loud. For a small person, my vocal cords pack a big punch. In my hey day, I could project my drill-sergeant voice clearly for 80 feet in dense fog (a feat often required while rowing on wet Washington mornings). In the classroom, I can vary the decibels from the barest whisper to desk-shaking screams. And often do. I find it keeps the students awake. My neighboring teachers have come to accept hearing my lectures through their thin walls, accompanied by the occasional Macbeth-witch screech or Raven croak. I am often asked to emcee assemblies—no microphone necessary—and am placed on prominent duty during all dances.

I’m not always loud. Every three months or so, my vocal cords go on strike with a bout of laryngitis, which I treat during the day with honey-laced tea and at night with tea-laced whiskey. At home, I soften my voice to calm the children, dog or husband. When chaos erupts—as it does with disturbing frequency—I abruptly sharpen back to the drill-sergeant commands.

When I’m completely relaxed, my voice will barely register above a whisper. My husband often complains that not only do I mumble in this relaxed state, but have the annoying tendency to leave my sentences unfinished. For this I have several responses:
1. I speak coherently—even eloquently—40+ hours a week as a career. He doesn’t want to arrest people on his time off, I don’t want to speak well.
2. After 15 years, he ought to be able to anticipate my thoughts and finish my sentences.
3. He’s not really listening to me anyway, so I don’t understand why he complains. This is, after all, the man whose favorite response to any sort of disagreement is to about-face and march out of the room.

I also have the disconcerting gift of saying exactly the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong tone of voice. Thankfully, I discovered this unfortunate talent early on and learned the perfect defense against my natural ability to be gauche: I simply shut up. In uncertain company, I remain (uncharacteristically, for those who know me) silent in order to avoid voicing a social gaffe. I have always hoped that people perceive this coping mechanism as innate shyness. I have, however, been informed that it is, instead, interpreted as supreme bitchiness. Ah, well. It’s a lose-lose: being snarky and witty by nature, the thoughts I would voice would also be supremely bitchy. At least when I’m quiet, no one can repeat what I’ve said.

In one area, however, I am completely unable to remain silent: the bedroom. Or the minivan. Or the kitchen table, the shower, the couch…anywhere we are having sex. I have heard that many women orgasm silently. I cannot fathom this. I cannot even LUST silently. My every sensation is moaned, groaned, sighed, panted or screamed.

Nor can I have a silent partner. Common knowledge states that men are visually stimulated while women are mentally stimulated. I am aurally-stimulated. I require sexual sounds and prefer dirty talk. The very feel of certain words sliding across my lips makes me tingle. The taste of an esoteric term melts on my tongue like the finest chocolate. Deputy Hottie, while teasing me once during dinner, said, ‘however comma’ and then grinned in mischievous delight when I couldn’t quite contain my rapturous sigh.

Not that I expect verbal acrobatics during every sexual adventure. I must, however, have sound. Sighs, groans, cries of delight. A silent partner will turn me cold instantly.

My need for sound, coupled with my inability to control it, has resulted in awkward situations. We have received complaints while at hotels and admonishments from house-guests. Perhaps more embarrassing is when we do not expect others to hear.

When our first daughter was a baby we, like most new parents, invested in a baby monitor. Looking back, I have no idea why any parent would feel the need to hear their child’s cries in surround-sound. At least, why we felt this need—it’s not as if our house was large enough to avoid hearing her commanding shrieks. Indeed, it was not uncommon for our neighbors to hear our daughters’ awesome lung power.

Still, the Babies-R-Us registry list told us we needed a monitor and all of the parenting magazines concurred, so we dutifully placed one receiver in the nursery and toted around the other wherever we went. I often took it with me outside when I stole a few blessedly quiet moments in the sun during afternoon nap time.

One afternoon, my husband initiated what was to become one of our most cherished parenting traditions: nap-time-nookie. Women’s magazines are full of articles about being ‘morning girls’ or ‘night time lovers’ and advice about how to match the peak of your sexual desire with your partner’s. My desire, apparently, peaks during the 12-2 universal nap time.

On this fateful afternoon, my eldest was blissfully snoring away when my husband came to fetch me and lure me into our sun-drenched bedroom. A long, lazy, awake (HMMs all know why THAT adjective is imperative to the new and sleep-deprived mother) love-making session followed.

And was broadcast to the entire neighborhood through the monitor.

We often laid Kate down for her morning snooze in our bedroom so that we could conduct morning chores—often involving cleaning the nursery or putting away endless tiny outfits---while she slept. Being attentive parents, we would place the monitor in our room with her so that we could hear her every snuffle and rustle as she slept.

On this day, I had forgotten to relocate the monitor back to the nursery for the longer afternoon nap. The receiver was left on our front porch—volume up full. I’ve been told the ‘broadcast’ was better than many pornographic movie soundtracks: several of my married neighbors smirkingly thanked me the next day.

But this is not the most mortifying loud experience. That occurred years later, long after naps were a thing of the distant past and had been replaced by that most blessed of weekend traditions: Saturday Morning Cartoons. One Saturday, while my children zoned out to Mickey Mouse in the family room, back in our bedroom my husband hit a particularly good spot—and I hit a correspondingly high note. A few moments later, a little voice called through the door, ‘Mommy, why are you screaming?” Mommy did not have an answer other than to bury her head in her pillow and laugh.

The girls now ignore all strange sounds coming from Mom and Dad's room. They've compensated by learning to turn up the TV. Aren't my kids smart?!?