This is about as unobstructed, unretouched photo of me as you are likely to see. There were a couple minor edits to obscure my face and protect my anonymity, but the body is all me.
See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!
Jill wishes you’d join her in front of the tree.
We hope this sexy image of Jill brings you much cheer this holiday season.
See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!
Those who know me well are aware that I’m a die-hard fan of the horror genre, and very well-versed in its tropes, variations, and subgenres. (More info can be found here.) Body horror refers to a subgenre of horror film and literature that concerns unnatural and often disturbing physical alteration of the human body through means including but not limited to disease, deformation, surgery, parasitism, mutation, transformation, assimilation, and mutilation. Director David Cronenberg, known for such films as Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986), and Existenz (1999), is considered a pioneer of body horror. As this month’s Sinful Sunday prompt is “transmogrification”, here’s what I might look like in such a film. (Kindly excuse the obvious edits; I’m a novice when it comes to making monsters.)
Below is the original image, which you may or may not find sexier than the above.
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On Fridays, I wear a particularly comfortable (and hopefully flattering) pair of boxer briefs as a reward for surviving yet another week.
See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!
I was probably twelve when I heard it. I was definitely in junior high; I distinctly remember the kid who told it. I’d met him that year.
I’d only beome aware of sex as a concept a few years earlier, and I was always somewhat repulsed by the subset of so-called dirty jokes centered around sex, as opposed to, say, racial stereotypes or jokes about physical disabilities. That is not to say that I found the other categories less objectionable, even as a youngster.
Despite what I assume was normal adolescent curiosity regarding sex – maybe an excessive amount of curiosity, but presumably not dysfunctional or harmful curiosity – I always found sex jokes crass and egregious. Sure, there was something delightfully taboo about saying, listening to, or reading things of which conservative parents in 1980s America would disapprove. But once I got past the novelty of hearing one of my peers say the word “pussy”, I found little if any value in any of it.
I’m not going to judge someone who titters at the word “tit”; to each their own. However, as sex jokes frequently seemed to involve wholesale misogyny, they were never going to be a great love of mine. That’s not to say I was a feminist at that age. In fact, I likely would have taken umbrage at the label. (“What? Feminist? Look, lady, I’m all man.”) And while I was staunchly opposed to such low-brow boorishness on principle, I’d be lying if I said I never flipped through a paperback copy of one of the notorious Truly Tasteless Jokes books while my parents were browsing a different aisle at the local Crown Books.
Some fun facts: Ashton Applewhite, who published the long-running Truly Tasteless Jokes series under the pen name Blanche Knott, is a woman. The categories found in a typical installment of the series included Jewish jokes, Black jokes, Polish jokes (of course), gay jokes, dead baby jokes, handicapped jokes, and Helen Keller jokes (which is technically an offshoot of handicapped jokes, I suppose). Currently in her sixties, Applewhite is currently an anti-ageism activist.
Anyway, back to that miserable day in 1988 or 1989. (Why miserable, you ask? Well, are your memories of junior high school/middle school/intermediate school/child prison pleasant? If so, good for you, I guess. Mine are horrendous, and I’m grateful it only lasted two years.)
I don’t remember where we were, so for the purposes of this post, I’ll take some artistic license by setting the scene in the boys’ gym locker room, because that’s where such hijinks, skylarkings, and tomfoolery often take place. For all I know, however, it could have been on the playground, in the halls, or even in a classroom. Though not in Mr. Kern’s class; he didn’t tolerate hijinks, skylarkings, or tomfoolery.
P.E. had just wrapped up, and we were changing out of our reversible green and gold gym shirts (so none of us would have to be “skins”) and way-too-short-even-for-the-’80s gym shorts. As I pulled my backpack out of my locker and replaced it with my gym clothes, one kid whose locker was across from mine walked over on his way out of the locker room. I’m going to call him Jimmy.
“Hey Jack,” he said with the kind of smirk you’d expect to see on the face of a kid who heard his parents fucking the night before and can’t wait to tell you all about it. Once he was sure he had my attention he went on: “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?”
It seemed a strange question to ask. Was he inquiring about carbonation? I knew an unopened bottle of soda would lose fizz at a faster rate than an unopened can, but I figured it had more to do with economics. Despite the more rapid loss of carbonation, it was probably cheaper to buy a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper than it was to buy an equal amount in cans. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure because my parents almost never bought cans, and as die-hard diet soda drinkers, they stuck to Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, or more often the store-brand equivalent.
Then it hit me: “Is this a joke?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not asking because you really want to know.”
“No, it’s a joke, you fucking asshole.” As he spoke the last two words he slammed his open hand against the locker next to mine, and the sound echoed off the walls. Jimmy looked around the locker room in the hopes of finding someone more likely to indulge him, but alas, the only stragglers left were even dorkier than I was.
I re-stated the question: “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?” Then he did as well. I thought about possible answers: Because it doesn’t come in cans. Except no, it totally does. Being twelve and completely controlled by my hormones, Jimmy’s use of the word “come” was not lost on me. I wondered if the answer had something to do with that. But how could it? Dr. Pepper is a drink. Drinks can’t ejaculate. I momentarily imagined the soda being “ejaculated” from a machine into empty bottles at the bottling plant, but realized I was overthinking the entire thing. That couldn’t have been it.
“I give up,” I said at long last. “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle.”
Jimmy kept me in suspense a couple seconds before unleashing the punchline with a confidence that betrayed his certainty that my mind was going to be utterly blown:
“His wife died.”
Jimmy gave a hearty guffaw and headed for the door. I hurried to catch up to him, and as we stepped out of the locker room and into the sunshine, I asked him, “His wife died? What does that mean? What does that even have to do with it?” I didn’t even touch on the remarkable contrivance of someone with the surname “Pepper” pursuing a degree in medicine.
“Think about it,” he said in a way that seemed cerebral and in control but thirty years later tells me Jimmy had no more of an idea as to the meaning of the punchline than I did. In fact, he probably had less of one.
“What?” I asked. “Was she cremated? The bottle is the urn where he keeps her ashes?”
Jimmy nodded. “Exactly.”
“That’s really…” My voice trailed off as I tried to find the right word to describe the joke’s nebulous, unsatisfying payoff. Reaching? Unnecessarily complicated? Flat-out stupid? Any of those would have worked. But my mind was full of questions, and I ultimately said nothing.
The following period was English, and I spent the entirety of our discussion of Steinbeck’s The Pearl contemplating why someone – a widower who just happened to be a doctor by the name Pepper – would jerk off into the urn where his dead wife’s ashes were stored. I admittedly didn’t know much about sex, but I found it weird and decidedly unsexy to do such a thing. In fact, it seemed to border on desecration of human remains.
It didn’t occur to me until years later that my cremation theory was probably flat-out wrong, and Jimmy, who was as clueless as I was, expected me to laugh at the punchline and not ask questions. I’m guessing he overheard his father telling the joke, overheard the laughs that followed, and despite not understanding why it was funny, decided to bring it to school with him in the hopes of getting some laughs as well.
In fact, when I Googled the joke this evening, I found the following explanation on Reddit.
Dr pepper is the name of a popular soda, but it can also be a person’s name. Dr pepper comes in (orgasms into) bottles because his wife died and he doesn’t get sex anymore.
I confess that if Jimmy had given me this explanation back in 1988, I would have been just as confused. His wife died, so he has no choice but to literally fuck a random empty bottle? Jesus, how thin is this guy’s member? I guess saying that the grieving widower comes in a wide-mouthed mason jar wouldn’t have worked.
Anyway, how does his wife being dead lead to him fucking a bottle? Can’t he masturbate with his hand? Bottles are made of glass and they can break, severely lacerating his penis. Anyway, is he never again allowed to date, and thus possibly fuck, an actual human being? I understand going through a period of voluntary celibacy following the passing of one’s spouse, but that just seems unnecessarily restrictive.
And why does the fact that he’s fucking a bottle mean his wife is dead? In theory couldn’t any single man who who can’t get laid fuck a bottle? I realize most of them aren’t going to bother with a bottle when they have two hands that our species evolved for that specific purpose. Anyway, I feel like this explanation is a non-starter, and that’s probably what led me to the “cremation” thing thirty years ago.
In retrospect, a better punchline would have been “Because he didn’t want to cut his dick on a can.”
We have been sex bloggers for a decade. To me that seems so unlikely, so absolutely impossible, that instinct dictates that I check a calendar in order to assure myself that I’m mistaken. Could we really have been doing this for ten years? That’s 120 months. 3,650 days. 5,256,000 minutes. One-tenth of a century. More than ten times as long as I was willing to volunteer on the PTA at my daughter’s school.
To give you a sense of how long we’ve been at it, when we launched this blog Barack Obama was a United States Senator.
Back then, Jill and I were childless, married just over a year, and looking for a means of expressing ourselves sexually. We got the idea of starting a sex blog from a couple of friends who had been sex bloggers previously, before we knew them. (The “Frisky” in our blog title was their suggestion; without them this blog might be known as “Horny in the 916”, “Aroused in the 916”, “Turned on in the 916”, or possibly even “In Heat in the 916”. [Okay, probably not that last one.])
It took a long time for our blog to find a steady readership; our first audience was made up of a very small handful of trusted offline friends, none of whom we currently hear from on a regular basis. As they gradually ceased checking in, we went from having a very small readership to having no readership – a hypothetical audience, if you will – in 2009 and 2010 – to having an expansive, dedicated fanbase during our most prolific period in 2011 and 2012 – and slowly back to that same hypothetical audience in recent years.
In that time, we made more friends than we can count, some of whom were (or still are) bloggers, while others resulted from our joining Twitter in 2011. We have met more of these friends in person than we ever thought we would. We have forged strong connections that transcend friendship with some. We have mourned the loss of others.
Though we have not blogged consistently (in one instance going completely dark for more than a year) it’s always been a valued outlet for Jill and I. Whether we are participating in weekly memes such as TMI Tuesday and Sinful Sunday, sharing original fiction we’ve written, or sharing deeply personal anecdotes, this blog has always been important to us.
In the last decade we have had and raised a child. We have completely upended our life, moving not only to a different part of California but also to a significantly smaller living space. We have become more politically aware and active; our writing here at the blog should be evidence of that.
We have made sacrifices, and experienced tremendous highs and abysmal lows, but generally speaking we have been well. On the blog front, we switched from Google’s Blogger platform to self-hosting in 2015.
Sexually we have seen the gradual changing of our sexual boundaries, eventually achieving a state of openness. When the blog launched ten years ago Jill and I were completely monogamous, with even occasional non-monogamy a seeming pipe dream. I have to give 100% of the credit for that to Jill; while I’ve probably always been inclined toward non-monogamy and even polyamory, Jill has not, and an open relationship is not something she foresaw as a part of her life. It was much more of a leap for her than it was for me, and I give her credit, and thanks, for taking it.
Which is not to say that this has been a total sacrifice for my wife. Being open has given her confidence and self-image a boost in a way that I don’t believe could have been achieved even with all the love and support I could possibly give her. Accordingly, she has seen many of her fantasies and unrealized desires become reality.
To close this post, I’ll share a couple highlights from the last ten years. Jill’s highlight is the time her short story “Open Box” was read by a fellow blogger as part of her now-defunct podcast. Mine is the time one of my posts received feedback from none other than pre-eminent sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
We thank all of you who have been a part of this journey, whether you are a long-time reader, or this is your first time visiting our blog. Thanks for taking the time to get to know us.
Welcome to sexy fun and playfulness at TMI Tuesday.
Our blog launched September 18, 2008. Yep, we’ve been doing this a decade.
Jack’s Answers
1. Which animal listed below represents your true sexual self?
a. Chipmunk – cute and cuddly
b. Monkey – all about being mischievousness
c. Tiger – I’ve earned my stripes
I’d love to think I’m a tiger – I’ve definitely earned my stripes – but whereas I see myself as fierce and in control, my partners may very well see a monkey. I definitely masturbate like one.
2. Your partner is in the mood for sexy fun and you are tired – what do you do?
a. Start snoring. There is no way I’m giving it up tonight.
b. Trade. You give me a massage… and we will see…
c. That would never happen!
C. Never gonna happen.
3. Which of these sexual descriptive labels closely matches you?
a. Dominant
b. Submissive
c. Top
d. Bottom
e. Switch
f. Kinkster
More than any of the others, I am dominant. I do not see myself as being a Top, and while I am pretty kinky I don’t know that I would identify as a kinkster; that seems misleading. I’m not submissive, really; at best I am a switch, but even that makes me sound more sexually submissive than I actually am. So I’m gonna go with “dominant”.
4. Would you rather have your enemy eaten by a shark or die in an earthquake getting swallowed up by earth?
Definitely eaten by a shark. I mean, it’s not even close. In theory if my enemy falls into a fissure in the Earth’s surface I may assume they’re dead, but if I actually see them eaten by a shark in a glorious frenzy of flesh and razor-sharp teeth, if I watch the gory spectacle from the railing of a yacht with a bucket of popcorn, then I know it for sure.
5. For the next year, would you rather be dressed like a mime every day OR look normal but not be allowed to talk?
Probably dress like a mime. While I feel like it would really trigger my social anxiety, which can be problematic even when I’m dressed in a more nondescript fashion, the truth is that I can’t go five minutes without speaking, much less a whole year. I mean, I saw that Twilight Zone episode, and the only way I can possibly pull that off is by cheating.
Bonus: What’s the most beautiful word in the world?
Impeachment.
Jill’s Answers
1. Which animal listed below represents your true sexual self?
a. Chipmunk – cute and cuddly
b. Monkey – all about being mischievousness
c. Tiger – I’ve earned my stripes
Honestly, it depends on my mood. Sometimes I’m cute and cuddly like a chipmunk, wanting to snuggle and caress. Other times I’m more likely to pounce like a tiger. Eager to be in control and please my partner.
2. Your partner is in the mood for sexy fun and you are tired – what do you do?
a. Start snoring. There is no way I’m giving it up tonight.
b. Trade. You give me a massage… and we will see…
c. That would never happen!
If I’m extremely tired I’ve probably already fallen asleep on the couch or reading to my kid while I try to get her to fall asleep. Although a massage sounds absolutely wonderful. Sign me up for that.
3. Which of these sexual descriptive labels closely matches you?
a. Dominant
b. Submissive
c. Top
d. Bottom
e. Switch
f. Kinkster
Depends on my mood and my partner. Sometimes I’m more submissive – I do enjoy being restrained – and at other times I’m more dominant and wanting to be in control. [Editor’s note: Can confirm.]
4. Would you rather have your enemy eaten by a shark or die in an earthquake getting swallowed up by earth?
I don’t really have enemies. But I think an earthquake seems less gruesome.
5. For the next year, would you rather be dressed like a mime every day OR look normal but not be allowed to talk?
Dressed like a mime. Their outfits aren’t too bad and it would save time getting dressed in the morning. Plus I saw The Little Mermaid and it’s frustrating to communicate without a voice.
Bonus: What’s the most beautiful word in the world?
Love.
How to play TMI Tuesday: Copy the above TMI Tuesday questions to your webspace (i.e., a blog). Answer the questions there, then leave a comment below, on this blog post, so we’ll all know where to read your responses. Please don’t forget to link to tmituesdayblog from your website!
Deja vu TMI Tuesday as these questions were originally posted November 18, 2014.
Fill in the blank
Jack’s Answers
1. When I can’t sleep I _____ .
I often analyze some aspect of pop culture: A recent television episode, a new movie I’ve seen, some comic or video game I remember enjoying in childhood (or conceivably even as an adult). This is usually so boring that it nicely does the trick and puts me to sleep.
2. My dream bedroom would be full of _____ .
Sexy women.
3. If I could wake up anywhere tomorrow it would be _____ .
The question is not anywhere, the question is anywhen. In other words, I have no problem waking up here, in my own bed. But I’d love to wake up earlier than 5:30 or six.
4. I need to _____ at night.
Sleep. And in order to do that, I need to decompress, often by watching something lighthearted on TV, catching up on Twitter, building something out of Legos, or just staring at the wall.
5. _____ would truly be a nightmare.
Failing to flip Congress in November.
6. Night time is the right time to _____ .
Sleep. For me, I mean. I don’t wish to slight anyone who works nights and sleeps during the day.
Bonus: Briefly tell us about your last dream–erotic or not.
I was running from the giant boulder at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pretty sure it caught up to me, too.
Jill’s Answers
1. When I can’t sleep I _____ .
When I can’t sleep I usually either masturbate or go to the couch and watch TV or read. If I’m feeling restless, masturbating usually helps relax my body enough to sleep.
2. My dream bedroom would be full of _____ .
Things that make me the happiest. I don’t have any specific examples at the moment, but I would want to walk into the room and just feel peaceful, relaxed, and happy.
3. If I could wake up anywhere tomorrow it would be _____ .
In Europe, about to embark on an amazing adventure.
4. I need to _____ at night.
I need to relax at night. If I don’t allow myself a little time to relax and decompress, I have trouble shutting down enough to sleep.
5. _____ would truly be a nightmare.
Losing people I love.
6. Night time is the right time to _____ .
Night time is the right time to relax under the stars next to someone you love.
Bonus: Briefly tell us about your last dream–erotic or not.
The last dream I remember, I was on a plane, leaving for vacation.
How to play TMI Tuesday: Copy the above TMI Tuesday questions to your webspace (i.e., a blog). Answer the questions there, then leave a comment below, on this blog post, so we’ll all know where to read your responses. Please don’t forget to link to tmituesdayblog from your website!
