Over lunch recently, the new sweetie asks me about that morning. We’d been sorta cuddly, no obligations to be anywhere… and nothing happened. Had I been in the mood? Did I think she wasn’t? Didn’t I want to ask?
I took a deep breath. (The kind of breath from the beginning of relationships when you don’t actually know how thick the ice is that you’re about to tread upon.)
“It’s NPR. It makes my weewee go down.”
I know how she loves her NPR, so I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her morning ritual when the radio came on with the talk show at 7:30. It’s just that at that point, I feel like I’m in a civics class, not a warm bed. I’m hearing people talk about ideas larger than myself, things I should care about. There’s some smart and talky person in the room. My selfish carnal thoughts don’t survive that.
“Really! You’re not, um, the first guy to tell me that…”
(as I add an item to my long mental checklist of things to note about the Mars People vs. the Venus People)
the next morning, as we were waking, and starting to roll around, NPR switched itself on again. She got up, turned it off, and came back to bed. There was a sweeter start to that day.
The wife engages my mind in a drastically different way.
I can’t really focus on both at once. There’s a disconnect. And as you probably know, you really can’t stop yourself from hearing something if your hands are … engaged.
Well, I don’t know about shrinkage, but I will tell my story about how I got hosed by NPR … a story I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.
One of my favorite songs when I was growing up was a little bit of fluff titled “Morning Girl” by a group calling itself the Neon Philharmonic. I hadn’t thought of that song for years, but I was driving home one Sunday morning listening to “Morning Edition” on NPR and they were broadcasting a piece on the creator of this who had died recently.
It turns out his name was Tupper Saussy and he did most of the work on the song (and the album “The Moth Confesses”) himself. But, they said, there was a lot more to the man which prompted their short bio. And it went on to narrate how he had been in jail a few times, been broke, lifted himself up and yadda yadda yadda without letting go of any of his ideals.
Hmmm, I thought, this sounds like a really interesting guy and if NPR is doing a piece on him he has to have some really thought provoking viewpoints.
So, I do a quick web search on him and find he has his own website (http://www.tuppersaussy.com/). Oh look … under “writings” … it shows his top ten beliefs …
Is this the thread where I confess my love for Terry Gross? I listened to her for years before ever seeing her, and always found her voice very attractive. When I saw a picture of her, it didn’t really fit my mental image. So I guess I developed a Terry Gross fetish to work it out Sex and talk radio shows don’t mix, though. I’m not sure even Terry talking world issues would do. Depends on the interview subject I suppose. Maybe she needs a new kind of show…
Don’t get me started on Terry Gross. I’m sure she has her followers, fans, fetishists. God speed to you all. But there are a quiet legion of us who patiently await her well-deserved demise. Oh yes, we are out there.
My initial experience was easily recovered from, as I described above. However, hearing The Fresh Air Host would have been another matter. That obsequious presence introduced at just the right critical moment [shudder] would have been an irreparable trauma for my libido.
It depends on the context; I doubt that I’d have any trouble keeping up with Sarah Vowell in the room.
(That’s theoretical, though - NPR doesn’t find its way onto the clock radio this far north. I can keep pretty busy for the CBC, which is about the same, only more practically socialist.)
Terry Gross looks like Sandy Duncan in my head. Don’t ruin it for me. I don’t have a crush on her, though.
I find NPR kinda sexy, so I dunno 'bout the rest of you. Jerome MacDonald can be hanged by his thumbs until dead for his voice alone, but other than that (oops, and Tavis Smiley–me all Frowney when he is on. I don’t like his attitude), I’m good…
Intellectual stuff gets me hot. I watch the show Numb3rs just to hear all the sexy math talk. My boyfriend things that is a bit strange but he seems to deal with it well enough.
I listen to NPR twice a day and have no problem achieving a raging erection when circumstances warrant. However, I never try to mix the two activities under any circumstances. I think good judgment is the key here.
Sex and talk radio shows don’t mix, though. I’m not sure even Terry talking world issues would do. Depends on the interview subject I suppose. Maybe she needs a new kind of show…