Good Vibrations Magazine

by Jameson

“Do you really pray for George Bush’s daughters to turn into lesbians?”Christmas 2006 — required holiday phone call to my father. This was the first sentence of the conversation that didn’t involve some sort of “Merry Christmas!” or “How’s work?” I had called him while walking the dog with my girlfriend, and his words froze my feet to the ground. The mood dipped quickly, from standard interaction into awkward and uncomfortable.

“Um. Well. How did you find my blog?”

Since June of 2006 I’ve been posting bi-weekly on www.gvsextips.com, Good Vibrations’ employee blog. My last entry was about an electronic prayer function of a conservative website. I wrote about how I prayed through email that GWB’s children turn homo, but most often I write about sex toys, sex opinions, and sex positivity. I write about sex questions customers have, and sometimes I write about sex with my girlfriend. Basically, I just write about sex; articles which my father has apparently read.

“But don’t worry, James. I skipped most of it. Whenever you started talking about yourself I just skimmed down until you started talking about what you thought, and not what you do. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry. This is what I had to tell myself when he found my Myspace blog (where I also write about sex and porn) the Thanksgiving before.

He will still love you; you’re an adult now; this is a part of who you are; doesn’t everybody like porn? Don’t worry.

I was right. I shouldn’t have worried. He still does love me, and yes, I am an adult. He recognizes who I am (for the most part, most of the time), and even if everybody doesn’t like porn, most people do, and that’s close enough. No matter how much I told myself not to worry, though, no matter how many Thanksgiving glasses of wine I consumed, the whole idea of my father reading my sex writing never sat well in my stomach.

These past holidays have taught me much about the unique interactions technology creates. On Thanksgiving of ’05 my emotions started and stopped at uncomfortable. How would you feel if your father read a blog entry entitled “Cum Shots and Eggnog”? Slowly, however, I realized that I had two choices: either censor myself out of fear and insecurity, or write what I will, write who I am. My choice is now obvious, but never was it easy.

This Christmas I tried to move past uncomfortable, and into acceptance. In realizing that I am an adult who is free to live her life as she chooses, I had to admit that my father is an adult as well, and could always choose not to read my blogs. I had to accept that I am both my father’s daughter and my own person, whole and worthy still of his attention, no matter how many adult movies I review or tattoos I get. I had to accept that he deserves to know me as much as I deserve to be myself. This was scary; by keeping my sex writing somewhat of a secret, I was keeping him somewhat safe.

It’s an odd twist, isn’t it? When you reach the age where you feel the need to protect your parents? And not to protect them from disease or worry, but from you, their child, whom you’ve become. I didn’t want my dad to be uncomfortable or upset. I didn’t want him to think of me differently. But I am different. I am not a child anymore. Perhaps posting porn reviews on the Internet wasn’t the gentlest way of communicating this fact, but that’s how it happened. Even if the method was less than ideal, I’m glad the task is done (as much as it can be, for now).

I’m starting to see how there are no rules for this part of the game. You can’t Google “Internet etiquette for young adult children and their parents” (and if you do — as I did — you find two things: courses on table manners for kids and courses for parents on how to keep their kids safe from sexual predators on the internet). Guidelines for how we conduct ourselves on the Internet, what we show, do, and say, have yet to be written. And if they were written, what would they tell us? “Create a separate Myspace account for each area of your life”? “Don’t put any personal information, opinions, or ideas on the internet! Ever!”

All we can do online is all we can do in our “real” lives: be who we are, as well as we know how. Lying about liking porn might have made my life in relation to my dad a little easier, but maybe my girlfriend wouldn’t have responded as quickly to my profile when I seduced her via Myspace. Yes, we met online. The same site that introduced me to my girlfriend also introduced my sexual ideals to my father. Funny that. Funny and awkward, that, but true, and useful.

Technology today has the potential to integrate the multiple facets and priorities of our lives. Not only can you listen to your entire collection of music while checking your email on your cell phone and riding the train to work, but you can also weave (with a delicate and deliberate hand) your personal, family, work, and dream lives. If you don’t do the mixing of these layers, someone else will do it for you, out of nowhere, abrupt. Maybe your boss will find your drunk and stoned party pictures. Maybe your lover will check your email. Maybe your father will find your porn blogs. Don’t think people aren’t searching.

Insomnia found me looking through single San Francisco girls on Myspace one night last December. Now, over a year later, I’m still with the one girl who stood out. Her page was dorky and sweet (she likes bumper boats and math), and her pictures were adorable. My dad says that he went searching on the Good Vibrations website for my writing because he likes my opinions, likes my style of writing. He likes my voice. Sometimes — again, with the help of Myspace and Friendster — I spy high school classmates, judging old flames and missing lost friendships.

Sometimes I stumble into Fleshbot, or wired.com’s Sexdrive, and read sex news and celebrity gossip. Sometimes I go to my dad’s Myspace page and look at his girlfriend’s pictures of their life in Florida. The two of them have put up shots of the kids, the new dog, the house. She writes about her daughter’s soccer games and dance recitals. They use the Internet to keep in touch with their scattered relatives; I use the Internet to spread the gospel of sex positivity and porn.

And, way down in southern California, the Traditional Values Coalition uses the Internet to send prayers to the President of the United States of America. Sometimes, happily and prepared or not, we all collide.