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This guy walks into a bar and says... - May 13, 2005 - Printable Version
- Texas to the Rescue!
by Ken Shade
It should be obvious to anybody with more than a half dozen active neurons that there is a sizable portion of the American public that is obsessed with penises. The people I am talking about are not porn stars, sluts, satyrs, rapists or gender reassignment surgeons. Those people tend to view penises as what they are: bits of plumbing -- tools for a job. In fact, they're not really very versatile tools. They pee, they have sex, they....well...sometimes they think, but always to disastrous results. Baling wire and duct tape are far more useful than penises, in most cases. Once, the exhaust pipe on my car came loose and began to drag along Interstate 35. I was miles from anywhere, and alone. I found a roll of duct tape in my back seat, and I was able to make it to town by taping my exhaust pipe to the frame of my car. I didn't try to hold the pipe off the highway with my penis, but I'm sure the result would have been disappointing, not to mention painful.
No, people who understand penises as very limited tools are not the ones I am talking about. The people who are obsessed with penises are the ones who are fascinated with the sociopolitical penis. (By the way, "Sociopolitical Penis" is my suggestion for the name of the new Faulking Truth message board.)
There are way too many people who are concerned with pee-pee's that are not attached to them or their significant other. They are deeply concerned with the meaning of schlongitude. They lie awake thinking about trouser snakes that might be tumescent without authorization. They fret over the placement and activity of torrid tools they will never see. They fear for the future of a society in which people who have phalli may be allowed to touch phalli that are not their own. They worry that something, somewhere, will visually inspire a skin-flute owner to want to play his. They have strong ideas about where every prick should be, what it should be doing, if it should be hard, and whether it should be visible. They trust every citizen to be able to own and use an automatic weapon safely, but they don't trust those same citizens to be able to own and use their own pocket pistols without governmental supervision. They scan the horizon searching for something with the power to make soft things hard, then attempt to control or ban said stimulus.
Many of these people are legislators in Texas.
Texas is an interesting place. It's intellectually democratic in that all ideas, no matter how insane, are given equal hearing. Any bit of lunacy has value if it is proposed by a Texan. (This may be because it leads the nation in percentage of adults without high school educations.) In most places, men who do the thinking with their little heads usually admit that it was a bad idea, and express regret. In Texas, these people are civic leaders and policy wonks.
Now, I'm not talking about everybody who lives in Texas. I'm talking about people who buy into the mythology of Texas, and what it means to be Texan. I am talking about anybody who ever described the men who died fighting for the right to own slaves at the Alamo as "heroes." I am talking about anybody who ever said, by way of explanation: "It's a Texas thing. You wouldn't understand." I am talking about the members of the Texas House of Representatives who voted recently to protect the notoriously minuscule man-meat of Texans from the untoward stimulation of provocative cheerleading.
No, I'm not kidding. The Texas legislature apparently has nothing better to do than protect the citizenry from cheerleaders. By a 65-56 vote, the House gave preliminary approval to a bill sponsored by Rep. Al Edwards, D-Houston, curbing "sexually suggestive" routines by cheerleaders, drill teams or other public school performance groups.
The bill does not define exactly what "sexually suggestive" means, as it pertains to cheerleading, how it should be punished, or whether the aroused football patrons will be subject to arrest too, but that isn't the point of it, really. The point, according to Edwards, is to protect Texas, and by extension America, from what suggestive cheerleading leads to. That, of course, is poor scholastic performance, teen pregnancy, crime and the spread of STD's.
"I've seen it with my own eyes," Edwards said. "I've had people talk to me about it at football games. There was just a feeling that people were waiting for something to be done about it."
Now, take a look at that quote. I am drawn immediately to the part about the "feeling that people were waiting for something to be done about it." I am sure this bill was inspired by a "feeling," but I don't think it was the "feeling" that he describes. I believe it was a feeling born in the nether regions of Rep. Edwards, D-Houston, when he saw some nubile pleated skirt wearer grab her right ankle in her right hand, extend it above her head, and stand high atop a muscular gay guy's hand while the crowd contemplated the tensile strength of her orange panties. Something stirred in his legislative love lizard, and a law was born.
Mr. Edwards is a D-Houston. I am sure that anybody with the intelligence, stamina, self control and moral fortitude to become a D-Houston can restrain themselves, no matter how turned on they are by the amazing things women can do with their hips. Our society is safe, even if they sport boners 24/7. I'm sure Mr. Edwards isn't going to go shooting rampage because he was excited by a seventeen-year-old who thinks he's too old, creepy and disgusting to ever touch. Furthermore, he is confident and secure in his ability to remain a productive citizen in the face of even the barest midriff. After all, he's a D-Houston. It's not his own loins he's thinking about. He's concerned about all the people who aren't strong enough to become D-Houstons, or R-Planos, or I-Palestines. He's concerned about what happens when some lesser man, or younger man, grows turgid; some man who doesn't introduce bills when he gets a hard on, but might go on a groping rampage in the Shady Pines Rest Home.
Yes, Rep. Edwards knows that his response is the right response, and that only people of his economic, social and age demographics can safely manage excitement, or deserve to experience it.
So, he introduces a bill.
He should have introduced a bill requiring all males in Texas over the age of twelve to pass an NRA-style penis safety and indoctrination course, sponsored by the NPA. ("I will give up my penis when they pry my cold dead fingers off the barrel." "I support the right to bare penises." "The West wasn't won with a registered penis.")
Instead, he decided to ban erotic cheerleading.
I have an announcement to make to the Texas House of Representatives:
THERE IS NO OTHER KIND OF CHEERLEADING!!!!!!
IT'S ALL EROTIC, AND THAT'S ALL IT HAS EVER BEEN!!!!!!
I can hear the outrage now, in the whiny voices of teenage girls and sorority bimbos wherever they are: "It's not about sex! It's about school spirit! It's a sport! It's about supporting our school and its teams!"
Nonsense! I have been to hundreds of football games, at all levels, and I have never seen anybody inspired to greater enthusiasm by a cheerleader. I have never heard anybody say: "I wasn't excited about fourth and goal at the two yard line until those cheerleaders pointed out what a compelling situation it is by turning around, standing with their feet far apart and touching the palms of their hands flat to the ground. Now, I am not only pleased to be participating vicariously in this sporting event, I am also ecstatic to be associated with this fine institution of higher learning!" I'd go so far as to say that no cheerleader, anywhere, has ever inspired anybody to more profound loyalty to any team at any school.
That isn't what they're for.
The Romans had ritual virgins at gladiatorial contests, and we have cheerleaders at football games. (I'm sure seeing the words "virgin" and "cheerleader" in the same sentence cracks some of you up, but the point is what they represent, not what they think they represent, or if they are pure and righteous.)
No matter what mythology about themselves they swallow, cheerleaders must face the fact that they are there to represent an ideal of femininity; the just reward for those masculine young hunks who represent the school, city or state. Unless they have a rich father, cheerleaders are almost always selected for the squad not on the basis of skill, but on the basis of how they look. They are to be healthy, pretty ideals of young womanhood. They are to be desired or emulated. To the players, they are trophies. To the other boys at school, they are objects of unrequited desire. The girls want to be like them, or kill them, or both. To the teachers, they represent the fine, unblemished specimens that the school can turn out.
When I was in Jr. high, and on into tenth grade, I knew a couple of cheerleaders intimately. I knew them intimately because I was able to convince one of them that I was privy to arcane sexual knowledge that no other guy at the school possessed. Intrigued, she allowed me to demonstrate. Being a teenager, she was unable to keep a secret, and soon I was getting attention from her friends.
It all had to be a secret, though. I was not the kind of fellow that these girls were supposed to be seen with. I was not a jock. We could have all the fun we wanted in the woods, but at school, we had to pass in the hallway like two ships in the night.
That was OK with me, for a while. I knew, though, they would someday find out that I didn't invent those esoteric oral practices, and I would be history. I wasn't getting what I wanted, a real girlfriend, but I was having a temporary blast.
When we weren't playing grown-up games, I was able to talk to these girls who spent their time away from me at the top of the social ziggurat. I was able to find out what life was like in the rare air. One of the things they both complained about was that "The football players think we're there just for them."
"Look who you're all dating," I answered.
They admitted that I had a point. There were eight cheerleaders, and they were dating the eight best football players.
The two girls I was "friends" with were dating boys who abused them, but they felt powerless to escape. The pressure of being at the top of the sexual food chain was too strong, and the shame of slipping back would be too great. They were accepted, praised, adored, envied and above all else, desired. And this was long, long before the days of what Mr. D-Houston would call "suggestive" cheerleading.
In my school, the pep rallies were held in a foyer where the cheerleaders' saddle oxfords were right at eye level. They kicked up their legs, tossed their hair and shook their hips all while hundreds of boys were staring directly up their gray pleated skirts at their maroon panties. Hundreds of pubescent peckers stiffened. The girls envied. The cheerleaders were held up as ideals. The players showed what high levels of testosterone had earned them: those wonderful perky girls.
It was 100% sex.
If any of the women reading this think I'm the only guy feeling all this, ask a good male friend to confirm it. Don't ask your husband or boyfriend. He'll lie to stay on your good side. Just ask a good male friend about his experiences with, and feelings about, cheerleaders. Ask him what guys say about them when no women are around.
When he was seventeen, my friend, Kevin wrote a poem about cheerleaders. The line that sticks in my brain to this day was: "How can I describe the mixture of lust and rage you inspire?" The lust is because they're so perfect. The rage is because you can't have them.
Another friend, Steve, went to a Catholic high school. The nuns killed their senior comedy project because it contained the word "fart." Shortly thereafter, Steve was surprised to come across the cheerleaders practicing a nasty dance routine to Rick James' "Super Freak:"
She's a very kinky girl
The kind you don't take home to mother
She will never let your spirits down
Once you get her off the street, ow girl
She likes the boys in the band
She says that I'm her all-time favorite
When I make my move to her room it's the right time
She's never hard to please
That girl is pretty wild now
The girl's a super freak
The kind of girl you read about
In new-wave magazine
That girl is pretty kinky
The girl's a super freak
I really love to taste her
Every time we meet...
Steve's lust was because of the moves they were doing. His rage is because their standing gave them carte blanche to flout the rules. It never occurred to those girls that anybody would say "no" to them. They were queens in the castle, long before "suggestive" cheerleading, and it all started with being cute.
These girls will always have shorter skirts.
They will always have better bodies.
They will always have beautiful hair that they will toss around with insouciant superiority.
They will always be the official objects of desire.
They will always be rewards for some; dreams for others.
Trying to remove sex from cheerleading is like trying to remove punching from boxing. That's all there is to it. Take it away, and nothing is left.
I suppose I should be grateful to Rep. Edwards and the Texas House. I should appreciate the fact that they're worried about my morality. I should thank them for being concerned about my immortal soul, but I can't.
You see, I can handle it. I am not a D-Houston, but I have never gone on a rampage of perversity after a football game. I enjoy the show, say lewd things about the cheerleaders with my friends, and go home, like all men do. I have never been provoked to search out prostitutes. I have never lost my faith in God. I have never ceased to care about my ethical, moral or spiritual well being because of cleavage.
Hundreds of cheerleaders have danced in front of me. Hundreds of ridiculously attractive young women have held themselves up as sexual ideals for my viewing pleasure. Hundreds have shown me their colorful underpants. They were doing it long before Mr. Edwards felt so guilty about his own reaction that he had to respond by making a law against what excited him. They were always suggestive, even before the penis obsessed moralists became angry about it.
To support any law restricting it would be an act of gross ingratitude.
The Texas politicians shouldn't be saying "Stop it!"
They should be saying "Thank you!"
I know I am.
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