A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation Read Online Free Page A
Author: Kage Alan
trip. Some people I knew were going off to work on boats in Alaska, others to Cedar Point or their parents’ companies, and still others abroad to foreign countries to help sooth the woes of those worlds. The woes of my world began with working at Kay-Mart, an experience in itself. Working for that company period is actually a bit of a joke.
Let me say something about the Kay-Mart philosophy. Forget all the commercials on TV with happy shoppers going down well-stocked aisles talking to cream-of-the-crop professional assistants. Actually, the workers are called asso-ciates. Notice the word ass hidden at the beginning, which pretty much sums up what corporate thinks of their employees.
Furthermore, for a while, the commercials boasted that associates were being retrained. It never happened! There was never any retraining, and not much general training to speak of, since they would never pay for it.
Dustin Hoffman said it best about a similar company in Rainman : “K-Mart sucks."
* * * *
Despite the bleak beginning, the summer of 1989 was an eventful one. I'd really hoped to get a second job, one that was five days a week in the morning and paid a hell of a lot more than what I was currently getting, but that wasn't to be. There was just too much going on.
A friend of mine, Jeremy, was hit by a car while riding his bike across an intersection. The woman driving said the sun was in her eyes and she never saw him. Apparently, she must have missed the red light, too. I visited Jeremy in the hospital once, but it was too depressing to see him hooked up to so many machines, conscious yet unable to recognize who I was. It scared the hell out of me.
It didn't help that I hated hospitals. For some reason, they reminded me of the way some guys talk about how women with fake breasts feel to the touch. They say there's something ominous and sterile about them, a real strange combination.
Jeremy once told me a story about how he used to think that women had their boobs filled with helium, and that was why some of them were so large. Where the hell people got these ideas about sex and the opposite gender is beyond me.
With the exception of a health course, I never had sex education classes when I was in high school. Once in grade school—sixth grade, maybe—we had a slide show presentation that didn't tell us any more than we already knew, which was very little.
"Your bodies are changing.” Well, no kidding! Tell me how. Show me some Polaroids. Let's see some people involved in one of those Kodak moments. How about letting us in on some of what we can expect to be participating in later on in life.
No such luck.
Instead of naughty little revealing shots of nudity and sex, we had a slide show and the only form of legal pornography available in the public school system: National Geographic . If Jeremy thought some of the women he saw had large breasts, he never bothered with this magazine. When not reading the standard Hardy Boys mysteries, the guys’ noses were all buried in National Geographic . Doesn't that paint a pretty picture for sexual awareness in the 70s and early 80s? It's a twisted way to grow up thinking that when a woman is naked she's also holding a blow-gun.
I sincerely doubt that I made a conscious decision to go the gay route because of that, however. If nothing else, it made me respect women all the more because they were just as capable of beating someone's ass as any man I'd ever seen.
Despite all the material presented to us, we still didn't know what sex was. Even after the experimentation I did with some of my friends, I never really knew if I was doing things the right way or not.
My father sat me down one night for “the talk” with “the books.” I think this was in fourth grade. Anyway, I knew what felt good when I was naked with another person—a guy at least—but I had no idea they had instruction manuals for it.
If I recall correctly, one of the books was titled Where Did I Come From?
Let me say something about the Kay-Mart philosophy. Forget all the commercials on TV with happy shoppers going down well-stocked aisles talking to cream-of-the-crop professional assistants. Actually, the workers are called asso-ciates. Notice the word ass hidden at the beginning, which pretty much sums up what corporate thinks of their employees.
Furthermore, for a while, the commercials boasted that associates were being retrained. It never happened! There was never any retraining, and not much general training to speak of, since they would never pay for it.
Dustin Hoffman said it best about a similar company in Rainman : “K-Mart sucks."
* * * *
Despite the bleak beginning, the summer of 1989 was an eventful one. I'd really hoped to get a second job, one that was five days a week in the morning and paid a hell of a lot more than what I was currently getting, but that wasn't to be. There was just too much going on.
A friend of mine, Jeremy, was hit by a car while riding his bike across an intersection. The woman driving said the sun was in her eyes and she never saw him. Apparently, she must have missed the red light, too. I visited Jeremy in the hospital once, but it was too depressing to see him hooked up to so many machines, conscious yet unable to recognize who I was. It scared the hell out of me.
It didn't help that I hated hospitals. For some reason, they reminded me of the way some guys talk about how women with fake breasts feel to the touch. They say there's something ominous and sterile about them, a real strange combination.
Jeremy once told me a story about how he used to think that women had their boobs filled with helium, and that was why some of them were so large. Where the hell people got these ideas about sex and the opposite gender is beyond me.
With the exception of a health course, I never had sex education classes when I was in high school. Once in grade school—sixth grade, maybe—we had a slide show presentation that didn't tell us any more than we already knew, which was very little.
"Your bodies are changing.” Well, no kidding! Tell me how. Show me some Polaroids. Let's see some people involved in one of those Kodak moments. How about letting us in on some of what we can expect to be participating in later on in life.
No such luck.
Instead of naughty little revealing shots of nudity and sex, we had a slide show and the only form of legal pornography available in the public school system: National Geographic . If Jeremy thought some of the women he saw had large breasts, he never bothered with this magazine. When not reading the standard Hardy Boys mysteries, the guys’ noses were all buried in National Geographic . Doesn't that paint a pretty picture for sexual awareness in the 70s and early 80s? It's a twisted way to grow up thinking that when a woman is naked she's also holding a blow-gun.
I sincerely doubt that I made a conscious decision to go the gay route because of that, however. If nothing else, it made me respect women all the more because they were just as capable of beating someone's ass as any man I'd ever seen.
Despite all the material presented to us, we still didn't know what sex was. Even after the experimentation I did with some of my friends, I never really knew if I was doing things the right way or not.
My father sat me down one night for “the talk” with “the books.” I think this was in fourth grade. Anyway, I knew what felt good when I was naked with another person—a guy at least—but I had no idea they had instruction manuals for it.
If I recall correctly, one of the books was titled Where Did I Come From?
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