Good Vibrations Magazine

Thanksgiving has a great deal in common with crying in bed.

I am actually thinking of the origins of our Thanksgiving tale, those silly Pilgrims, that barren New England soil, frigid winter, and the kind Wampanoags who came to share, much to their later chagrin.

To be more specific than crying in bed I am thinking of crying during sex; and not the OMG-I-had-always-heard-about-sex-like-this-but-never-thought-it-would-happen-to-me-tell-me-your-name-so-that-I-can-name–my-first-born-after-you tears of joy.

If you’ve never experienced that… I’m sorry.

I am talking about tears of sadness, tears of being overwhelmed, a body gone limp, cheeks you want to call dewy because dewy sounds sexy but in reality they’re just soppingly, emotionally wet.

Having sex with women sometimes involves staying hard through tears. Can I get an Amen, brothers?

When I mention this phenomenon to gay men they look at me incredulous before going, “Nooooooooo!!??” When I nod my head and look real sad they go, “My god. Crying during sex. What a downer. You poor heteros. I am so glad I am gay.”

This invariably leaves me with an image of gay men all over the Bay having raucous, circus style sex every night. I have yet to determine if this is a brilliant propaganda campaign by Hollywood’s gay cabal or if, in fact, gay men are indeed having raucous, circus style sex most nights.

(You hear enough stories from the bathhouses and it makes you wonder. Like this guy I knew who was accidentally lubing himself up from someone’s bottle of GHB. He was hard for week. But I digress.)

My true thesis is that the origin of Thanksgiving is a similar story to women crying during sex.

If you’ve never experienced a woman crying during sex… Mazel Tov.

I assure you it happens. It happens for all kinds of reasons: she actually just broke up with her boyfriend, or she knows this is the last time with you, or she’s really stressed about her job and having to be sexy is too much, or you touch her the way her daddy used to. But you shouldn’t joke about incest.

Most often carnal tears come about because of the different way men and women view sex.

When men are confused…or upset, feeling disempowered, lost, unhappy, dissatisfied, frustrated…we have sex. Sex simplifies things, for most men at least. Sex cuts away the excess nonsense of modern life and gets us back to our most primal self. Our primal self is focused and unencumbered. It is our self without worries, a simple self.

My brother has long maintained that you will never find a man more clearheaded than in the first five minutes after sex. Mostly because those are the five minutes in which we’re not thinking about sex.

I would venture to guess that Newton did not conceive of gravity while sitting under a tree. Rather his moment of Eureka came as he rolled off his mistress.

In a similar vein I picture a young Einstein in his garret in Switzerland, elbows on the mattress, that hottie Mileva Maric beneath him, Einstein making the O face, and suddenly the fog of sex lifts and the nature of the universe is made clear.

Women are different. When women are confused…or upset, feeling disempowered, lost, unhappy, dissatisfied, frustrated…they do not have sex. Sex complicates things, for most women.

But most men don’t know this. When a man sees his lady upset he figures hey, let’s have sex, that’s what makes me feel better. It’s the erotic golden rule.

All too often a woman goes along because she doesn’t want to be that girl, the one who doesn’t want to have sex, the frigid one. Or she thinks maybe if she starts she’ll get into it. Or she figures she’ll get him off quick and then he’ll leave her alone. Or she thinks she can be like a man too.

Whatever the rationale, the sex begins. And if the a woman is not in the place to be having sex the tears are never far behind.

Crying while naked, while in bed, with another naked person beside you. That, my friends, is the definition of vulnerable. The horror.

That’s all well and good but what does that have to do with the origin of Thanksgiving?

Imagine the Pilgrims in the winter of 1620, cold, hungry, exhausted, cuddling under blankets and touching each other on Plymouth Rock. No, wait, that’s my Thanksgiving Day role play. Apologies.

Imagine the Pilgrims in the winter of 1620, cold, hungry, exhausted, in a word, vulnerable. And there are the Native Americans, the Wampanoags, cuddling under blankets, touching each other appropriately.

The Wampanoags had no reason to show kindness. They were wary of these newcomers. They knew other Europeans had come before as slave traders. They could have left the Pilgrims to their fate. But they did not.

They arrived with corn and sweet potatoes and jellied cranberry sauce in a can. They chose to show kindness. They did it because it made them better.

And so we come to the cold, harsh winter of a woman crying in bed. She’s hungry, exhausted, incapable of making anything grow.

And the man, all he wants is to cuddle under the blankets and touch her appropriately. He is not inclined to show kindness. He is inclined to say, “Can you just hold off for five minutes?”

It is in this moment that a man is challenged to show kindness because it makes him better. And so you see, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings. And every time a woman cries during sex we get a chance to play out the Thanksgiving tale.

This path is not without it’s own reward. Once the tears have subsided, once the man has shown kindness and care, his female Pilgrim will be all about giving thanks.

She will be spent, emotionally wrecked, too tired to have inhibitions. A good cry can be as relaxing as a good massage. From there it will be a raucous, circus style gay man’s Thanksgiving.

As Misty once so eloquently put it, “Sometimes all a girl needs is a good cry and a good fuck. They’re like peanut butter and jelly.”

Happy Thanksgiving.