R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I spied her on a dresser in a friend’s bedroom. I was on my way from his restroom back to the kitchen, where several other friends and I were engaged in a pretty serious round of Acey Deucey. I was about 25 years old, working for peanuts at a municipal newspaper and living at home with my mom, the arrangement effectuated by the death of my father, her husband, a few months earlier. I was also waging a perpetual war against myself for: A.) feeling so lonely and B.) feeling so lonely because I felt I was addicted to porn. The soft kind. Victoria’s Secret catalogs and Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions mostly. And, if I lucked into a copy, because I was much too discreet to buy one myself, Playboy.

The woman on the dresser instantly ensnared me. Wearing only a tiny, red, velvet, white fur-rimmed micro-miniskirt and a tiny, red, velvet, white fur-rimmed halter top, she was basically all legs, a whisper of dirty blonde hair, and an intoxicating red mouth of blisteringly white teeth. Shown in profile on a fluffy all-white background, she sat with her red toenailed feet extended and slightly crossed and while cradling her knees. She grinned coquettishly from beneath a matching Santa Claus hat. Time, genetics, and no doubt a zillion yoga poses had shaped every inch of her –– from her muscular arms to her high arches –– into a sexually suggestive contour. What made her doubly hot was her convenient size: The covergirl of the Dec. 2-8, 1995, edition of TV Guide fit perfectly inside my waistband, right beneath my sweater.

Always taking myself by surprise, I had not stopped to consider potential escape routes until after I had stuffed the mini-magazine down my pants. Still hurtling toward the door that led back to the kitchen, my momentum fueled mostly by routine but also by the desire to not get busted, I glanced down at my waist. Will my friends be able to tell? They won’t be able to tell. My knitted Chess King sweater that looked like a black linoleum floor studded with multicolored wads of chewed bubblegum was roomy enough to make stealing away with “Téa Leoni of ABC’s The Naked Truth” a breeze. I didn’t worry that my friend would eventually notice the magazine’s absence. Like the rest of his crappy apartment, his crappy bedroom was a mess.

The cover would not have passed as pornography as I understood it, but to my admittedly warped young mind, that TV Guide and the average Cinemax movie were effectively the same. One entity may have explained (really, over-explained) the ins and outs of carnal knowledge while the other may have merely hinted at them, but both titillated. Both depicted “erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement,” in the words of Merriam-Webster. Both underlined the omnipresence and you could say the overwhelming power of physical pleasure.

I am no prude. I am no churchie. I am no buzzkill. I’m just a heterosexual man who wants to raise his young son to respect women in a culture that seems to see them as only mindless pleasure-bringing shapes. Am I “mansplaining” things? That’s a catchy term these days but one that is senseless not only rhetorically –– not all men are multi-handed, multi-tongued gasbags; some are actually pretty smart and kind –– but sonically. “Sexplaining” is better. (You’re welcome.) Secondly, and this is the old, softcore-addicated me talking here, but if women expect to not be seen as only mindless pleasure-bringing shapes, what does it matter what some straight guy from Fort Worth says about them? I could be talking about other straight guys from Fort Worth. Or ponies. Or a stack of bevnaps. We’re all nouns here.

Don’t shoot me! I now know that gender equality, as opposed to gender neutrality, is what we should be going for. This, I learned slowly over the past few years, like a steady, unavoidable series of low-voltage electric shocks. A few months ago, though, so secure in my feelings of egalitarianism, I made the mistake of plopping down onto the family-room coffee table the latest issue of Men’s Health. Any other month, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Any other month, there’s some ripped dude on the cover. This month was different. This month, in addition to a studly coverboy, the back displayed a gorgeous brunette in a silver one-piece bathing suit, her back to the camera, looking over her shoulder seductively and curving her torso just enough to accentuate the firmness of her derriere. Thinking, “Well, since my son’s seen enough half-naked men on magazine covers and hasn’t mentioned them, a half-naked woman isn’t going to matter,” I let this Men’s Health fall to the table gorgeous woman-side up. Bad move.

“Uh-uh, Anthony,” my wife said. “Little pictures, remember?”

“Little pictures” is what she and I say to each other to remind ourselves that our son, our wondrous, beautiful baby boy, is always watching and listening to us, and whether we want to believe it or not, we are always presenting “pictures” to him that he will store away –– and often manifest later. The other day when he dropped something, he softly said to himself, “Oh, Jesus.” We all know where he got that.

Slightly less than half convinced, slightly more than half curious, I balked.

“I don’t see what the difference is,” I said warily, dipping my bloody toe into shark-infested waters. “Half-naked people are half-naked people, right? We’re all equal.”
“Anthony,” my wife shot back. “Would you want him to see me that way?”

I swooped up the magazine and placed it on a nearby end table, gorgeous babe-side down.
We men and women don’t need to pretend we aren’t different. That we are should be a cause for celebration instead of what it often is: a ceaseless reminder that one gender has historically been physically and thus psychically larger than the other and that most members of the dominant gender are afraid that if they share their power (or, even worse, have it taken forcibly from them) they will be overtaken and, I guess, subjugated in some way? Accused of being perverted? Socially neutered? Deprived of football and power tools?