ROFLMAO. You guys have GOT to read this.
Nature v. Nurture
Not too long ago, a student raised his hand and asked me if I thought homosexuality was caused by nurture or by nature. The question surprised me because it was asked in a complete sentence by someone who had, up to this point, sat in the back of the room and steadfastly exhibited the intellectual curiosity of ear wax for roughly 136 days of the semester. Oh, and also because it usually doesn't occur to straight people that when there's a debate about homosexuality, they should actually consult a homosexual person. Usually, they just decide for themselves. I can't really blame them. My guess is that they figure us gays have already been assigned a direct mouthpiece from God who will clarify all these issues for us anyway, so we don't really have a right to act like we're not in the know. Inject yourself into the debate and express your own genuine curiosity, and they'll usually just say to you, "Shut up with your questions. You'll know when God decides to have Pat Robertson tell you damnit. Now leave us alone."
I had some hope in this method for awhile and tuned in to the 700 Club regularly; however, in the past few years all I've really gleaned from Pat is that people like me are going to die of AIDS in the middle of a massive hurricane at the same moment that a divine lightning strike hits a monkey on the butt which makes him really angry and causes him to bite us and give us AIDS which we deserve 'cause, after all, we gave it to the monkeys in the first place. As you can see, this hasn't clarified the whole nature versus nurture thing for me yet, much less that other one about the chicken and the egg. On the other hand, I keep thinking it's possible, what with all of these gays dying terribly catastrophic deaths, that someone will ask the Almighty, get the answer, and then manage to whisper it down to the rest of us on the team here below. Sadly, deep down I'm resigned to the fact that if a gay person is allowed to question God before passing through the pearly gates, he or she will probably choose to engage in a much more profound and pressing theological debate, namely, "But seriously Father. To which animal did you give the least intelligence---the armadillo, the shoat, or the televangelist?"
Having been left bereft of hetero, divine, or televisionary guidance, I find myself relying on my own devices and have pondered the nature versus nurture question deeply for quite some time. After all, who hasn't at one time or other looked down and thought, "How the hell did I turn out like this anyway?" Through quiet and deep reflection, I've realized there's quite a bit of truth to support the "in-born" nature argument. As evidence, I'd like to present exhibit double D: my breasts.
The Theory of Hank
Now, there's nothing wrong with large breasts, it's just that generally, they look better on larger bodies. When your breasts stick out four feet and you only stand at five feet tall, this presents a slightly out-of-balance approach to life. My body is neither zen nor feng shui-ed. I prefer to think of it as f'd-up-shanghaied. Having such disproportionately large breasts on a small body and short torso has caused me considerable difficulties over the years. For example, there's such a short distance between my chin and my waistline, and my breasts take up so much of this space, that one time, after slouching for an hour in a church pew, I stood up to sing the final hymn with my parents and realized I couldn't stand up at all. It seems the elastic bra band under my breasts had gotten caught in my belt. It would stretch out just enough to allow me to rise part ways and then spring back, causing my upper body to bounce up and down like a yo-yo every time I tried to stand upright. I could hear the congregational mutters behind me as people stared. "Why's that Davis kid keep bowing like that and cracking her head on the pew? What does she think she's doing, some kind of Chinese Asian Kung Fu crap to get forgiveness? Does this look like a damn Mosque to you?" Miserably bobbing and bouncing, I reflected that the continued blows to my head on the pew didn't hurt nearly as badly as my mother smacking me with her hymnal, furiously mouthing, "I. Told. You. To. Sit. Up. Straight. In. Church."
So anyway, all this goes to say that I think there's something to this Nature theory, though to be honest, I have my own reasons for calling this viewpoint the Theory of Hank. See, the way I have it figured, Hank was sitting on the bank of some crud-encrusted pond in the middle of nowhere, fishing for carp with his buddies. Suddenly, out of the woods a woman comes flying down towards them, holding an unopened beer and running for her life. Before they can stop her, she runs right off the pier into the middle of the lake. A few seconds go by, Hank eyes his buddies for a moment, and then they all tear off into the lake to see who can rescue the beer before the lady drowns. In the ensuing struggle, Hank and his pals manage to make enough of a splash to propel the poor woman to the bank. On the other hand, poor old Hanky, trying for one more desperate grab at the can, knocks himself out on a submerged log and dies.
When he arrives at the judgment seat, the head angel takes a good look at Hank and says, "Boy, I gotta level with you. You're not that bright, you're not that good, and, to be honest, you stink. If it were up to me, I'd send you away right now, but rules are rules. That sweet woman whose life you saved is one of God's children, a faithful sister who's been attending The Holy Snakewater United First Church of the Nazarene her whole life. When you saw her, she was stealing the last can of beer from her husband in order to save him from eternal drunken damnation, and it says right here in the good book that whomever aids a little woman in the fight for prohibition gets another shot at life. Now, I'm about to go on lunch break, but you run over there to the assembly line, tell them to put you a body together, (I'd ask for more brains this time if I were you), and get back down there buddy. Go get 'em."
Hank thinks this is pretty good news, considering, so he does as he's told and goes to get his new body. But the thing about Hank is that though he's not too smart, he's pretty cunning, and he realizes this is his big chance. Sure, he'll ask for brains, but this time he's gonna ask for boobs too. And not just any boobs either Mister. Some gen-U-wine, Grade-A knockers 'cause he really didn't see enough of them his first go round at life. After dillying and dallying and hemmin' and hawin' for awhile, Hank finally picks out the biggest boobs in the boob-bin, and when the exasperated under-angel asks him what type of body he'd like to go with them, Hanky, staring at his new chest with a goofy, distracted grin, just waves him off and says, "Whatever. Surprise me." This, of course, as everyone knows, is what one should never, ever say to a tired, overworked under-angel. Smirking, the angel reaches into a box marked "Body Frames" and selects the one labeled "Midget."
As you can clearly follow from this succinct and logical line of reasoning, I'm gay because it's inborn. Hank got born in me. You may scoff, but, if you think about it, there's really no other rationale for how I could have gotten born with this body except that a sexually-frustrated, fairly drunk redneck picked it out. And now, having grown tired of carrying around his own boobs, my friend Hanky makes me stare at every other pair we see. Voila! Instant lesbian. Mystery solved.
The Pony Express
On the other hand, sometimes I do have to admit there's something to this "Nurture" thing too, that experiences we have in life shape who we are more than how we're born. Shuffling through all my many memories, I can't help but realize that one does stand out. The scene? Mrs. Dunlap's First Grade Classroom. The time? Some fateful day around 1980. I'm minding my own business, drooling, occasionally lifting a finger to flick Legos at the lobe of Randy McBrady's left ear, all the while eyeing Chris Miller eating glue through a straw and wondering if he could be convinced to share. Then, suddenly, there she was. To protect the innocent and the guilty, I'll call her Susie. She was tall. Tall enough to reach the pencil sharpener in the third grade wing of the building without even trying. Tall enough to look right over the top of my two foot, four inch soon-to-be-breast-burdened prepubescent body and never even see me. But see me she did. With a flick of her long blonde hair, she ambled over, stuck a hand on her hip, looked down at me and said, "I'm a pony."
All things considering, I think I took this announcement pretty much in stride. Ever the expert conversationalist when confronted by a beautiful woman with an identity crisis, I came up with, "Oh. Cool." Shyly, she lowered her head, butted me in the stomach, and whickered. "I said," she insisted, "I'm a pony, and my name is Pinky." Unfortunately, in her thick North Carolina accent, the words got a little slurred, and it sounded like she'd inexplicably named herself "Panky." "Holy Strawberry Shortcake," I thought to myself. "This chick is seriously whacked." After a few more weird head-butts, some whinnying, pawing, and snorting, I decided I'd had quite enough of this craziness, thank you very much, and did what any other self-respecting first-grader would do. I ran like hell. After a dizzying chase over three desks, two chairs, a life-sized papier-mâché doll of Christopher Columbus, the Nina, the Pinta and a death-defying end-run around the Santa Maria, I found myself cornered at last underneath the art table, panting for breath with no where left to run. And still, Panky came on.
Crawling under the table with me, the unstoppable pony pressed her face close to mine and stared into my eyes. Fearing the worst, I closed my eyes, pressed myself against the cinderblock wall behind me, and opened my mouth to say a prayer. And then it happened. With complete silence and time standing still, she leaned into me and kissed me right on the lips. Our mouths still incredibly close together, she hovered for a moment before whinnying and galloping away into the sunset. My mind reeling, I thought to myself, "My God. If it's that great to kiss a woman underneath a kitchen table, what would it be like to make out with one on TOP of the table?" No wait. Sorry. That was what I thought on my 21st birthday. Rewind. Back to the right memory: My mind reeling, I thought to myself, "Wow. I just got kissed by.. by.. a GIRL. And I LIKED it."
And from that moment on, it was all over. Panky the Pony did me in and made me a lesbian right there in the innocent pastures of Clear Creek Elementary School. So much for nature. This was nurture all the way baby. If only my mom had kept me home from school that day, who knows? I might be happily married to some big strapping dude by now, making my parents' every dream come true with each additional bun I popped out of my fabulously heterosexual oven. On the other hand, as I try to console my mother when she thinks back to that fateful day, considering that Susie was pretending to be a horse when she imprinted my impressionable sexual template, if I had taken her literally, I really could have turned out to be a whole different kind of freaky. You know what I mean?
So anyway, there you have it. After much soul-searching and a little bit of light drinking, it appears I have solved the mystery of homosexuality. It turns out there are two completely compatible and entirely logical theories to support a mixture of nurture versus nature. Not that it really matters of course. I'm gay either way, and the student who asked me has long moved on from our university to an online technical school to become a dentist. Still, now that I have this rare knowledge, I've been keeping the phone nearby just in case. You never know when Pat Robertson might kick the bucket, leaving only me to help the President with this whole gay thing, which it turns out is the most pressing matter of national security the country has ever faced. When he calls to get the answer from me, I want to be ready. "Hello? Mr. President? Why yes, sir. As it turns out, I DO know the answer to that one. No sir. It's not really that complicated. It turns out the whole thing has just gotten blown out of proportion. When you come right down to it, sir, whether you believe in Hanky or Panky, it's still just love between two consenting adults. Now that we've cleared that up, though, can we talk about the war?"
Not too long ago, a student raised his hand and asked me if I thought homosexuality was caused by nurture or by nature. The question surprised me because it was asked in a complete sentence by someone who had, up to this point, sat in the back of the room and steadfastly exhibited the intellectual curiosity of ear wax for roughly 136 days of the semester. Oh, and also because it usually doesn't occur to straight people that when there's a debate about homosexuality, they should actually consult a homosexual person. Usually, they just decide for themselves. I can't really blame them. My guess is that they figure us gays have already been assigned a direct mouthpiece from God who will clarify all these issues for us anyway, so we don't really have a right to act like we're not in the know. Inject yourself into the debate and express your own genuine curiosity, and they'll usually just say to you, "Shut up with your questions. You'll know when God decides to have Pat Robertson tell you damnit. Now leave us alone."
I had some hope in this method for awhile and tuned in to the 700 Club regularly; however, in the past few years all I've really gleaned from Pat is that people like me are going to die of AIDS in the middle of a massive hurricane at the same moment that a divine lightning strike hits a monkey on the butt which makes him really angry and causes him to bite us and give us AIDS which we deserve 'cause, after all, we gave it to the monkeys in the first place. As you can see, this hasn't clarified the whole nature versus nurture thing for me yet, much less that other one about the chicken and the egg. On the other hand, I keep thinking it's possible, what with all of these gays dying terribly catastrophic deaths, that someone will ask the Almighty, get the answer, and then manage to whisper it down to the rest of us on the team here below. Sadly, deep down I'm resigned to the fact that if a gay person is allowed to question God before passing through the pearly gates, he or she will probably choose to engage in a much more profound and pressing theological debate, namely, "But seriously Father. To which animal did you give the least intelligence---the armadillo, the shoat, or the televangelist?"
Having been left bereft of hetero, divine, or televisionary guidance, I find myself relying on my own devices and have pondered the nature versus nurture question deeply for quite some time. After all, who hasn't at one time or other looked down and thought, "How the hell did I turn out like this anyway?" Through quiet and deep reflection, I've realized there's quite a bit of truth to support the "in-born" nature argument. As evidence, I'd like to present exhibit double D: my breasts.
The Theory of Hank
Now, there's nothing wrong with large breasts, it's just that generally, they look better on larger bodies. When your breasts stick out four feet and you only stand at five feet tall, this presents a slightly out-of-balance approach to life. My body is neither zen nor feng shui-ed. I prefer to think of it as f'd-up-shanghaied. Having such disproportionately large breasts on a small body and short torso has caused me considerable difficulties over the years. For example, there's such a short distance between my chin and my waistline, and my breasts take up so much of this space, that one time, after slouching for an hour in a church pew, I stood up to sing the final hymn with my parents and realized I couldn't stand up at all. It seems the elastic bra band under my breasts had gotten caught in my belt. It would stretch out just enough to allow me to rise part ways and then spring back, causing my upper body to bounce up and down like a yo-yo every time I tried to stand upright. I could hear the congregational mutters behind me as people stared. "Why's that Davis kid keep bowing like that and cracking her head on the pew? What does she think she's doing, some kind of Chinese Asian Kung Fu crap to get forgiveness? Does this look like a damn Mosque to you?" Miserably bobbing and bouncing, I reflected that the continued blows to my head on the pew didn't hurt nearly as badly as my mother smacking me with her hymnal, furiously mouthing, "I. Told. You. To. Sit. Up. Straight. In. Church."
So anyway, all this goes to say that I think there's something to this Nature theory, though to be honest, I have my own reasons for calling this viewpoint the Theory of Hank. See, the way I have it figured, Hank was sitting on the bank of some crud-encrusted pond in the middle of nowhere, fishing for carp with his buddies. Suddenly, out of the woods a woman comes flying down towards them, holding an unopened beer and running for her life. Before they can stop her, she runs right off the pier into the middle of the lake. A few seconds go by, Hank eyes his buddies for a moment, and then they all tear off into the lake to see who can rescue the beer before the lady drowns. In the ensuing struggle, Hank and his pals manage to make enough of a splash to propel the poor woman to the bank. On the other hand, poor old Hanky, trying for one more desperate grab at the can, knocks himself out on a submerged log and dies.
When he arrives at the judgment seat, the head angel takes a good look at Hank and says, "Boy, I gotta level with you. You're not that bright, you're not that good, and, to be honest, you stink. If it were up to me, I'd send you away right now, but rules are rules. That sweet woman whose life you saved is one of God's children, a faithful sister who's been attending The Holy Snakewater United First Church of the Nazarene her whole life. When you saw her, she was stealing the last can of beer from her husband in order to save him from eternal drunken damnation, and it says right here in the good book that whomever aids a little woman in the fight for prohibition gets another shot at life. Now, I'm about to go on lunch break, but you run over there to the assembly line, tell them to put you a body together, (I'd ask for more brains this time if I were you), and get back down there buddy. Go get 'em."
Hank thinks this is pretty good news, considering, so he does as he's told and goes to get his new body. But the thing about Hank is that though he's not too smart, he's pretty cunning, and he realizes this is his big chance. Sure, he'll ask for brains, but this time he's gonna ask for boobs too. And not just any boobs either Mister. Some gen-U-wine, Grade-A knockers 'cause he really didn't see enough of them his first go round at life. After dillying and dallying and hemmin' and hawin' for awhile, Hank finally picks out the biggest boobs in the boob-bin, and when the exasperated under-angel asks him what type of body he'd like to go with them, Hanky, staring at his new chest with a goofy, distracted grin, just waves him off and says, "Whatever. Surprise me." This, of course, as everyone knows, is what one should never, ever say to a tired, overworked under-angel. Smirking, the angel reaches into a box marked "Body Frames" and selects the one labeled "Midget."
As you can clearly follow from this succinct and logical line of reasoning, I'm gay because it's inborn. Hank got born in me. You may scoff, but, if you think about it, there's really no other rationale for how I could have gotten born with this body except that a sexually-frustrated, fairly drunk redneck picked it out. And now, having grown tired of carrying around his own boobs, my friend Hanky makes me stare at every other pair we see. Voila! Instant lesbian. Mystery solved.
The Pony Express
On the other hand, sometimes I do have to admit there's something to this "Nurture" thing too, that experiences we have in life shape who we are more than how we're born. Shuffling through all my many memories, I can't help but realize that one does stand out. The scene? Mrs. Dunlap's First Grade Classroom. The time? Some fateful day around 1980. I'm minding my own business, drooling, occasionally lifting a finger to flick Legos at the lobe of Randy McBrady's left ear, all the while eyeing Chris Miller eating glue through a straw and wondering if he could be convinced to share. Then, suddenly, there she was. To protect the innocent and the guilty, I'll call her Susie. She was tall. Tall enough to reach the pencil sharpener in the third grade wing of the building without even trying. Tall enough to look right over the top of my two foot, four inch soon-to-be-breast-burdened prepubescent body and never even see me. But see me she did. With a flick of her long blonde hair, she ambled over, stuck a hand on her hip, looked down at me and said, "I'm a pony."
All things considering, I think I took this announcement pretty much in stride. Ever the expert conversationalist when confronted by a beautiful woman with an identity crisis, I came up with, "Oh. Cool." Shyly, she lowered her head, butted me in the stomach, and whickered. "I said," she insisted, "I'm a pony, and my name is Pinky." Unfortunately, in her thick North Carolina accent, the words got a little slurred, and it sounded like she'd inexplicably named herself "Panky." "Holy Strawberry Shortcake," I thought to myself. "This chick is seriously whacked." After a few more weird head-butts, some whinnying, pawing, and snorting, I decided I'd had quite enough of this craziness, thank you very much, and did what any other self-respecting first-grader would do. I ran like hell. After a dizzying chase over three desks, two chairs, a life-sized papier-mâché doll of Christopher Columbus, the Nina, the Pinta and a death-defying end-run around the Santa Maria, I found myself cornered at last underneath the art table, panting for breath with no where left to run. And still, Panky came on.
Crawling under the table with me, the unstoppable pony pressed her face close to mine and stared into my eyes. Fearing the worst, I closed my eyes, pressed myself against the cinderblock wall behind me, and opened my mouth to say a prayer. And then it happened. With complete silence and time standing still, she leaned into me and kissed me right on the lips. Our mouths still incredibly close together, she hovered for a moment before whinnying and galloping away into the sunset. My mind reeling, I thought to myself, "My God. If it's that great to kiss a woman underneath a kitchen table, what would it be like to make out with one on TOP of the table?" No wait. Sorry. That was what I thought on my 21st birthday. Rewind. Back to the right memory: My mind reeling, I thought to myself, "Wow. I just got kissed by.. by.. a GIRL. And I LIKED it."
And from that moment on, it was all over. Panky the Pony did me in and made me a lesbian right there in the innocent pastures of Clear Creek Elementary School. So much for nature. This was nurture all the way baby. If only my mom had kept me home from school that day, who knows? I might be happily married to some big strapping dude by now, making my parents' every dream come true with each additional bun I popped out of my fabulously heterosexual oven. On the other hand, as I try to console my mother when she thinks back to that fateful day, considering that Susie was pretending to be a horse when she imprinted my impressionable sexual template, if I had taken her literally, I really could have turned out to be a whole different kind of freaky. You know what I mean?
So anyway, there you have it. After much soul-searching and a little bit of light drinking, it appears I have solved the mystery of homosexuality. It turns out there are two completely compatible and entirely logical theories to support a mixture of nurture versus nature. Not that it really matters of course. I'm gay either way, and the student who asked me has long moved on from our university to an online technical school to become a dentist. Still, now that I have this rare knowledge, I've been keeping the phone nearby just in case. You never know when Pat Robertson might kick the bucket, leaving only me to help the President with this whole gay thing, which it turns out is the most pressing matter of national security the country has ever faced. When he calls to get the answer from me, I want to be ready. "Hello? Mr. President? Why yes, sir. As it turns out, I DO know the answer to that one. No sir. It's not really that complicated. It turns out the whole thing has just gotten blown out of proportion. When you come right down to it, sir, whether you believe in Hanky or Panky, it's still just love between two consenting adults. Now that we've cleared that up, though, can we talk about the war?"