Vaginas, T-shirts, And Other Unrelated Things
9.20.09
There are no tables available at the bookstore today, so I’m sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair with arms and a high back facing the magazine section writing with my computer on my lap. I grossly underestimated the amount of people that would be in the bookstore on this frabjous day. It truly is nearly perfect outside. The clouds look painted with the whimsy of a painter’s knife, while the zephyr that cools the air pushes the uncomfortable moisture to another place; leaving a perfectly peaceful day with rays of sun that gently kiss each and everything, casting shadows of people and letting them be the ten foot tall aspiration they had as children. These fuckers should be outside seeing all that senselessly poetic bullshit and letting me sit at a table with an outlet. How rude of them.
I am not afraid of much, kids. Nothing worldly really rattles my cage, and supernatural things don’t do much either since they’re not real things. Least of all, I am not afraid of offending anyone. I have been confronted by people who look on my modifications as an offense; as something that I am intentionally doing to upset, disrupt, or shake the frames of the people that see me. I don’t have to tell you that this in untrue. I do have to tell you, however, that I don’t give a shit if I do.
Sometimes it seems as if people take offense to nearly everything that comes out of my modified mouth. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same in life. You’ll say something, or make a joke about something that someone in earshot will demand apology for because that joke touched them in some way. Like you had any way of knowing. You’ll wear a t-shirt that has an image of something that a stranger may find distasteful, and suddenly you’re on the defensive because the stranger is demanding an awkward reparation. Let me be less vague.
We here at Mystic Metals & Organics sell a t-shirt. Frankly we sell many t-shirts, but I’m talking about one specifically. It was either Dave or myself that developed the simple design, and our beautiful Mystic Mobster Marjorie executed it perfectly. The shirt reads, “Your girlfriend is pierced...Down there,” and features a rockstar silhouette of a dame with the tiniest little piece of jewelry hanging from her hoo-ha. My mother is offended by this shirt, and told me so recently when I wore it out of the house. Why she was offended, she didn’t articulate terribly well, which is uncharacteristic for her. Either that or my nighttime crazy pills made me too hung over to really get the gist of the story. I love my mother. I respect my mother, and I will execute her wishes. At the core, I don’t really care if I offend anyone. I feel as if the stranger is offended by what I’m wearing, that’s on him.
So the t-shirt is offensive. I imagine that speaking of a modded va-juice box could be, but there is perspective here. One element of this is that the t-shirt is telling a joke. The insinuation is that the dude reading it has an unfaithful girlfriend that has made me aware of her genital modification in one way or another. In the words of Ali G, “Your girl is a hoe and I know cause I is boned her.” That is inherently funny. You’re girlfriend cheated on you; that’s how I know that she’s modified. Laughter, and ruckus. If this offends the reader, perhaps it is his insecurity that is to blame, not my joke.
Another layer of the shirt is cotton. Also, the shirt is addressing an ancient shame. We are taught in our society, which is probably more of an American idea, that nudity and elements of the genitals are taboo. There’s a shame. I guess it comes from a predominately Christian society that says we need to cover up, we need to hide what is born from original sin. Strangely, baptism is designed to erase original sin, yet the shame of Eve and Adam (I just wrote that backwards to be an asshole) remains. How many nude beaches are in the States compared to European countries? Does that lopsided ratio speak to our kinship to our shame, or our aversion to let people do their own thing? Or both? I personally don’t let my crank shaft flibbity flop around as nature intended while I’m watching “Red Eye” late night on Fox News Network, but I also couldn’t care less if Dan does. We are so averse to the sense of nude shame in this country that even the Extenze commercials that we are all bombarded with late at night use the phrase, “certain part of a male body” instead of saying penis. I can only assume this is because saying penis would sell less pills. Why? Is it any different than saying elbow, or is it just different because elbows don’t make more people?
Then there is decency. Perhaps it is not decent to reference a vagina piercing on a t-shirt. Perhaps it is not decent to insinuate that the readers girlfriend has a problem with fidelity. However, so much is broadcast that seems to not be decent that goes unnoticed. Words like, “Juicy” on the ass end of a pair of cotton running shorts smaller than a pocket square adorned on the rump of a jailbait teen isn’t decent, and I would wager is less decent than drawing attention to jewelry in the vagina of a stranger’s girlfriend. I’ve said before (and I’ll say again), we don’t have laws against decency in this country, and that in part makes freedom of speech and expression work. There is a difference between decency and tact, and that is that the conception of decency is much more individualized and subjective, whereas tact has more of a universal understanding. I’m not going to wear the “Girlfriend” shirt to church or a family birthday party. That’s tact. I don’t find referencing a woman’s pierced va-ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead at all offensive or indecent. I often think the best comedy is that which exposes the insecurities and the thin red lines of what is considered acceptable, and as that front is pushed forward, the more acceptable we will find one another and the more comfortable we will be with other people’s decisions; decisions that affect us in no way, shape or form.
I respect my mother and love her very much, so I will not wear the shirt around her. Not because I agree with her, but because my respect for her trumps any opinions I may have about anything. I will wear the shirt. Perhaps on stage at a gig, perhaps at another book signing, perhaps to the bookstore. I will wear it because I don’t find the offense to be too great. If a stranger in line at the bookstore wishes to engage me in a conversation about my t-shirt, I’d be happy to discuss the elements of modern decency and shame. But if that stranger wants to think ill of my character because I am more comfortable saying the word vagina in mixed company, than his shame, decency, and tact is what is in question, and I probably didn’t want to talk to him anyway. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter very much at all what is on my t-shirt; so long as I’m comfortable in my own skin. Stay beautiful, kids.
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