Tag Archives: sex

The Legend of the Sex Couch

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Morris Plains, NJ, USA

The interviewee was a member of the local high school’s theater program and valued the legend as something to pass on, joke about, and even create a taboo of not touching the couch. 

“Ok so when I first joined theater there was like a faint mention of something called the sex couch. But there was like multiple couches so I didn’t really know which one it was. We used a green couch for [her 2nd show] and someone made a comment that was like “that’s the sex couch” but I knew we had just gotten that one from dumpster diving but later someone told me that it was the pink couch that was kept above the lighting aisle which was also used in [the same show] so I definitely just misunderstood whoever told me which one was which. It seemed like most people in the grades above me knew what the sex couch was and it was just like my first introduction to it was [this show]. People would talk about the couch in like passing and we had basically made jokes about it. [J], the head of lighting, even said that he himself had had sex on the couch, although I never knew if that was actually true or just him adding to the lore. One time during I think [her 5th show] [R] brought in a black light and we had like a big crowd gather to see if there was actually anything on the couch, and oh boy yeah there was on both sides of the cushions too. I think the sex couch is something that most people know about in the program and I definitely talked about it to new people and like told them what it was”

Though it may seem childish and silly, the idea of people having sex is a very grown-up idea for a freshman in high school. This legend was used to embarrass kids but also make them feel like a member of the club. An inside joke to share and whisper behind the director’s back. Upon further fieldwork, I discovered that many high school theaters have such couches. Besides passing it down as a story it is also considered an item of taboo or bad luck if you were the person in charge of retrieving or moving the sex couch. Nothing would happen from touching it but the humour and picking fun is relentless anyway. I believe it is important to have these jokes and these histories because it creates a glue that connects past and present as well as all the members to each other no matter where they are in their lives.

Jokes about Meat Substitutes

Text

AL – What do a dildo and tofu have in common? (Pause) They’re both meat substitutes

Context

I like to collect jokes, specifically puns, on various topics so that no matter what situation I am currently in, I can say, “Oh, I know a joke about that!” I have found that most people have a love/hate relationship with puns; they tend to love telling them and hate hearing them. I mostly tell puns to family and friends, and their anger and frustration fuels me. Though my friends groan and sigh every time they hear a pun, they will still send me any good ones that they find. I also find puns on various social media platforms, in books, and on the occasional popsicle stick. Any time that I find or am sent a pun that I like, I write it in a book that I keep specifically for this purpose. My very favorite kinds of puns are the ones that are long and drawn out, ones that are a paragraph, maybe two, and you get to the end and the last line is a clever pun that uses many elements of the story that came before it. My second favorite kinds of puns are the short rude/dirty ones, because in addition to the reaction you get for any other pun, you also get the shock reaction from the vulgarity. I save the more risqué puns for close friends, as I don’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of people that I don’t know very well.

Analysis

This is perhaps one of the vulgar puns the informant mentioned appreciating for the shock value. The pun begins with putting together very different objects and suggesting there is a similarity. The punchline depends on word play, as most puns do. Tofu is a food substitute for eating meat. And a dildo is a sex toy that substitutes for a penis, for which “meat” is sometimes used as a euphemism. The comparison of a dildo and tofu goes no further than the words “meat substitutes” themselves because the meanings of “meat” are respectively very different. As the informant mentioned, their goal with their puns is not necessarily to get a full-out laugh, but rather an eye-roll or a face-palm. I do not know how the informant collected the joke (online, in person, from a book…but probably not a popsicle stick for this one) but they tell the story to their friends who have a similar sense of humor, as it is an inappropriate joke and could be offensive to people they do not know well enough to know their sense of humor.

Sexual Bases

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Admissions at a private school
Residence: Durham, NC
Performance Date: 4/29/21
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant works at a private school, where one of her jobs s running a class about drugs, alcohol, stress, and sex. This class is for freshmen in high school, so when she speaks about the students, this is who she’s referring to.

LR: So, the only thing, well, so, obviously I think it’s changed since I was growing up, so in my generation, when people talked about getting to first base, obviously that was kissing, you know, usually it meant that you french kissed which involves tongue as opposed to just pecking or whatever. So second base was like going up, so see the difference is, I think, in my generation it all referred to the female and now I think it actually somewhat refers to the males, which is kinda weird. So my understanding was second base was like you got felt up, like under your shirt. Third was like down your pants, and then fourth was all the way, you had sex. But, in more recent I guess connotations was like more towards guys. I mean I think first base is still like kissing or french kissing or whatever, but I think second base now, for whatever reason, is like hands, like giving somebody a hand job, and then third base is essentially giving a blow job and then fourth base is still going all the way. But again the reference point is different because it used to be about the female body and now somehow it’s become male centric?

Me: Do you have any idea when that change happened? And who did you hear about the change from?

LR: I mean I feel like just hearing the students talking or just from reading more current books, um, maybe like that sex book, that book that was like pink, I don’t know if it was called sex. Anyway, but I know that that was very common knowledge when I was growing up, like the bases, and the whole baseball reference.

Me: And when would you say you first hear about it? Like at what age?

LR: I would say probably junior high, like 7th-9th grade. Probably more like 8th, maybe, 8th grade.

Me: And when did, for you, people stop using the bases to talk about relationships?

LR: Oh I still think they talk about it, I think it’s the most common metaphor but I don’t think it’s necessarily relevant or–

Me: Yeah, no but when you were growing up like kind of between what ages was it used to talk about intimacy?

LR: Oh I’m sure I probably heard about it when I was like 12, 13, like early adolescence and then maybe, I mean, obviously by the time I’d graduated from high school, I mean I guess people still talked about it that way, but I don’t know maybe 18. Um and then honestly I didn’t think about it any more until my daughter was an adolescent and I think I just started hearing things again and I don’t know if it was from parents, I mean I guess I just heard it from, well having worked around and been around adolescents in middle and upper school, I think you just heard things, I think I just started hearing these different reference points. I feel like there was this generational switch.

Context of performance: This was told to me over a Zoom call.

Thoughts: I think personally that both are used, that the bases refer to both men and women and it just depends on who is talking. I’ve never used this, I don’t know that tons of people do, it seems to me that people are more straightforward. However, using euphermisms or metaphors are still a very common way to talk about sex mainly, phrases such as “scoring,” getting laid” or “going all the way.” It seems like what hasn’t changed is the age this takes place in–adolescence–which makes sense to me because sex is a kind of taboo during this period.

Watermelon Seeds Make You Pregnant

Text:

Informant (C): Remember at Walton’s when we used to have watermelon and I refused to eat it and said I was allergic?

Collector (J): Yeah

C: I was never actually allergic and I actually really liked watermelon, but when I was at school some other dumbass kid told me that people got pregnant from eating watermelon seeds so I was crazy paranoid about like, being a child mother, and so I just avoided it like the plague because I didn’t want a kid.

J: Really?

C: Yeah, because, like, my mom was pregnant like my sister and the kid said “oh she probably ate watermelon” and I was like “what?” and they were like “well, like, she has a watermelon in her tummy” or whatever and my dumbass just fell for it. I thought that, like, if you swallowed the seed, you would grow a watermelon in your stomach and then the baby would form in the watermelon. Like now I know that’s ridiculous, but like it was believable as a kid because I didn’t know about sex. I guess that kid’s parents or someone told them that because they didn’t want to explain the whole “your mom and dad had sex” thing. But yeah, after I learned about sex I started eating watermelon again.

Context: C and J met at a summer camp (Walton’s). At the end of each camp session, there was a camp-wide barbeque where watermelon was served.

Analysis: Like the informant said, this belief likely started as a way to wholesomely tell kids how their mothers got pregnant. Instead of explaining puberty and sex, the narrative of having a woman swallow a watermelon seed is easier to explain to a child. It also makes physical sense, because a pregnancy belly does approximate the size of a small watermelon. The inside flesh of the watermelon also arguably could resemble human flesh, which is why it is so believable that a baby can be formed in it. There is also something to be said about the association of fruits and fertility, with the human and plant lifecycle often being associated with each other. The cyclical nature of life as both human and watermelon allow a further association to be made with the human gestation period. Overall, the idea that pregnant women are carrying watermelons and are pregnant because of watermelon seeds isn’t that far-fetched from the eyes of a child who has no knowledge of sex.

A Wart in Your Eye

Nationality: Salvadorean
Age: 56
Residence: California
Performance Date: 2019
Primary Language: Spanish

Main Piece:

I asked the informant if she remembered what she told me would happen to me if I stared at dogs having sex… She laughed and then: “Yeah, I told you you would get a perrilla on your eye.” I asked her to describe what that was, because to this day I have no idea what it is. “Well, I am not completely sure of what it is. When I was young my mother, in El Salvador, would tell me not to stare at dogs when they…you know…because a perilla would appear in your eye. I think it is a kind of wart, or something similar to a wart. I am not sure. I just knew it was not something I wanted to grow out of my eye!”

 

Context: The informant is a middle-aged woman, born in El Salvador. She learned this myth from her mother. She believes that this was a way to maintain a child’s innocence, and to stop them from learning about sex too early.

Analysis: I agree with the informant; I think this myth was created to stop kids from growing up too fast and raising questions about what sex is.