one of the larger parental debates between marty and i has revolved around bella and sex. marty's for it, and i'm against it. let me clarify that a bit. marty's open to that journey beginning in high school, and i think it has less to do with someone's age and more to do with their maturity or state of readiness if you will. marty's core argument, "what, you want to send your daughter to college w...

ok. so more than one person has asked why and how a doctor would ever come to tell a patient that she has the vagina of an eighty year old (to a patient that is far from eighty). that story happened over here in case you missed it. as with all such stories, there is a plausible explanation.

marty had just had her first child--miss bella. a few months after bella was born marty and i had the following exchange in bed.

MARTY
you know troy, i'm not really sure how long it will be before i'm in game-shape again.

TROY
uh. what do you mean?

MARTY
you know in that husband and wife kinda way. things just don't feel right. something is off.

TROY
hey i was in that room. i saw what happened. if your parts ever worked again the way they are supposed to, i'd be amazed. so please take all the time you need.

i also recall from that conversation talking about the long stretch of time in my teen years i had convinced myself no one would ever have sex with me. so first off, i was just thankful someone did have sex with me. and secondly, because of those years of desperation i developed a camel-like ability to store up sexual experiences that allow me to survive super-long droughts of action. further, i put intercourse-post-childbirth in the same category as i put the piano. if someone simply described the act of playing a piano to me i would say it was not humanly possible. for a person to:

1. do two different things with their hands
2. read two different lines of music with their eyes
3. WHILE manipulating a foot pedal with some form of control

if someone suggested trying to do that to me, i would recommend they give their time to something that is actually humanly possible. this is how i felt about post-childbirth-intercourse. because if the equivalant happened to me, that is, if i had to pass even something the size of, say a grape, i'd be done, like forever. given this, after seeing bella be born, i assumed i had had sex for the last time ever.

my two additional children represent the exciting sign that i was wrong and i got to have sex again (hows about an internet-wide woot-woot!!!). that a female's reproductive organs can return to their (mostly) original state after birthing a child stands as one of this world's great marvels to me. i mean that they are ever, ever functional again to any degree stands as one of our universes greatest triumphs (yes, sure the whole making a human thing is cool, but ...). and if someone described to me what takes place and said it would work again, i would argue they had obviously lost their mind and i don't debate people with such childish premises.

but they were meant to work again and marty was experiencing some temporary issues, something related to breastfeeding and estrogen and too much of one and not enough of another, that simply needed to be addressed. and marty, being the trooper and seal-grade badass, just thought it was another parenting related hill to be bested. but it was not, it was something her doctor needed to be made aware of and modern medicine once again came charging around the bend and put down her body's uprising.

and it worked again.

and it looked just fine again too.

and i'm still not showing anyone my penis.

as i said yesterday my most pondered question of 2015 was what should we do about our children's impossible-to-police and premature exposure to the open waters of internet porn. the parental measures offered by browsers and operating systems are more laughable than my junior high hair style. instructing a child to "steer clear" rivals abstine...

my most pondered question in 2015 was what to do about all of this internet porn. well, not in regard to you or me but in regard to these children we are bringing up. i come from a generation where most people HAD sex before they SAW other people having sex (via video porn). that era is more wrecked and faded than the playboy you dug out of the apartment dumpsters. for your average teenage boy how many examples of intercourse, both pedestrian and outlandish, do you think they might consume before they, themselves, first engage in the act? your options are (a) none, (b) a dozen, (c) 38,956. if you answered anything other than C then i suggest your pull your head out of the sand (or worse) and join the rest of us in the existence that is actually taking place.

you might say, not my problem, i don't have boys, i thankfully only have daughters. well, who exactly do you think your daughter is going to marry einstein?

and even if you do have daughters, i, like possibly you, thought they are immune and above such hi-jinks. i have since learned you may not be as safe as you thought.

the pre-youPorn generation likes to joke how a few "instructional" vids may have helped their game and social stock when they were figuring it all out but that joke is funny for about seven seconds which pretty much leaves the rest of your and your children's adult life to figure out how to fold their online porn conditioning into their own real-world relationship(s).

i mean consuming porn for adults who are already formed and broken and kinked in our own way is one thing but what in the world does a bottomless firehose of un-policed and un-curated and un-censored pornography do to a developing mind. fortunately for you, i know the answer: we have no idea. none. not even a start, an inkling. a fragment of a lead. all we know is it might be a good idea to nudge your children towards a career in counseling because next to tattoo removal, that is likely to be one of the most booming industries in the decades ahead.

i've got about seven months worth of things to say on this topic. i won't be starting seriously today but am giving you fair warning that this is a place we will be soon traveling so charge your phone and learn how to clear your browser history as we are going to visit in some dark, cringe-inducing and keep-you-up-at-night topics.

it was 6:27 in the morning. i was sitting at my desk writing (for you, for this). i heard marty's alarm go off twelve minutes earlier and then heard her shuffle to the bathroom. then at 6:31 i felt her hands on my shoulders. they slid down my chest as she leaned down to hug me from behind, my desk chair mildly in the way. i then turned and took my wife in, standing in nothing but a pair of cotton underwear and looking amazingly young and fit with her flat stomach (after 3 kids !!!) and tan skin. i stood up and stepped in to hug her.

TROY
you look amazing.

MARTY
you're not going to want to get fresh here.

TROY
what? me? ok. why not?

MARTY
i've got to go try to find the baby bunny we buried in the back yard last year.

TROY
uhh, like now?

MARTY
yes. i need it for school.

TROY
is that why there is a sheet of paper on the kitchen that says BUNNY BONES?

MARTY
yes. what did you think it was?

TROY
another one of your mother's recipes.

MARTY
nope. for real bunny. hopefully fully decomposed somewhere in the back yard.

ladies, for the record, there are few things, and i do mean few, that can de-rail the male libido in the early morning, but i can now attest, images of your potential partner digging holes in search of a tiny rabbit carcass definitely lives somewhere on the list.

ok fellas. we gotta talk.

i was recently at a reception and sat down with a friend i hadn't talked to in awhile. i asked him what was up. what was new. during our catch-up he remembered something, lifted a finger in the air and said, "oh, get this". he proceeded to tell me a story about how he, needing a computer quick, raised the lid of his teen son's laptop and found something on the sc...

another question my friend, the same from yesterday, asked me about in our last outing was why i worked so hard to lose weight and get in shape. his question, obvious as it was, took me a little off-guard and without much thought i told him, generically, so i could make sure i'm able to keep playing with my kids as i get older and don't have to be the dad that sits on the park bench reading the paper, shooing them back to play on their own when they call me in to share in their climbing and chasing games. later in the week, my sub-conscious, certainly un-enamored with my wanting response, pushed forth the real answer by replaying one of lester burnham's many great lines from american beauty. this particular exchange came when he caught up with the male couple from next door during one of their morning runs. if i were honest with my friend, and myself, this is the core reason i'm working as hard as i am. first and foremost i believe that if i achieve that goal, of looking good naked, many other pertinent and meaningful dominoes will fall, like looking good at the pool, having clothes fit me better, feeling energetic, avoiding doctors/hospitals (!!!), walking into speaking engagements with greater confidence, sleeping more soundly, biking a hundred miles with my daughter, getting out of a chair or off the floor without accompanying groans and moans, and yes, all that and being able to rawk the park with my youngins.

the biggest and most unanticipated benefit of getting my body back more like my college days was surprisingly not on my list: making my wife more interested in me. she had never discerningly reduced her affection for me over the decades as i added better than a pound a year to my frame but once the weight left my mid-section, there was a perceptible uptick in the attention i received from her. for instance, as i passed her in the hallway where before we'd politely skirt by one another without any antics, she might now hold a hand out as i passed and rake her fingers across my flat-ish stomach or she might come up behind me as i did dishes and send a slow hand down my side, leaving a tantalizing comment in my ear before peeling away. again, while this sorta stuff never fully went away, this sorta stuff wasn't happening with the same frequency when i was having to up-size my pants every other year. and even though this perk wasn't on my radar of benefits when i began the trek, i can whole-heartedly say it stands out (and up) as the best part of the view now that i've crested the hill.

marty and i were in bed, just waking up. the quiet of the house said the children were still tangled wildly in their sheets and blankets. marty leaned against two pillows reading. i had not yet come that far along achieving nothing more than sliding her way, pressing my naked back against her bare skin, in a when-you-think-about-it odd show of intimacy. eyes still closed but too awake to fall back...

marty took me by the hand into the bedroom. she was hoping to steal a saturday afternoon moment. presently our bedroom door doesn't have a doorknob on it. now that i think about it, it hasn't had a doorknob for probably over five years. point is the door doesn't latch and anthony and alex were playing in the hallway just on the other side of the door. anthony had a wooden dowel sticking out of his long-sleeve shirt pretending he had a wooden hook for a hand. during our moment we had to listen to anthony list to alex the things someone with a wooden hook for a hand could not do. you can't pick up a toy like this. you can't pick up a shoe like this. you can't itch your eye like this, or at least, you probably shouldn't.

while there was a time in my life i'd think of chores or math problems to ensure i didn't outpace my partner, i never thought of how impressively having a six year old animatedly enumerate the ways life with a dowel for a hand would suck could replace challenging division problems.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. thursday morning

these were the first words i heard saturday morning: if you're wondering what that is about, it is code talk between marty and i. if you're wondering what the code is, i'll give you a second hint. the code was born when marty approached me one night and asked if i had time in my schedule to fulfill my husbandly duties. and with that, a new lingua franca was born.

and, i'll let your imagination guess where graham crackers might fall on that scale.

i was awoken by anthony rushing into my room waving his fist above his head. he moved right next to me, either not realizing or not caring that i was asleep just four seconds earlier. undeterred by my addled response, he instructed me to ask a question. the easy manner in which he did this would have told someone watching that we were ten minutes into a conversation and not that one of the participants was just pulled from a deep sleep. compliantly, yet groggily, i asked why he was waking me up and not someone else. to this anthony vigorously shook his hand back and forth a few times as if making a cocktail, and then stared at his palm. after a moment a deep baritone voice said, "the magic meatball doesn't think so." at this declaration, anthony shrieked with delight saying, "ahhhh! he doesn't think so dad! you lose." dropping my forearm over my closed eyes i retorted in a partially involved voice, "you do realize anthony he didn't really answer the question i just asked, right?" like with the sleep, anthony either didn't realize or care that his sage failed him. nor did he seem interested in talking to his real-life father over this mindless plastic bauble which, by my count, paid as much attention to the actual conversation at hand as my overly self-interested college roommate did back in the day.

as this experience, and volley of questions, continued i found myself ranking this waking to my list of worst wake ups ever. bella's cannonball into the small of my back has proven to be a real gamer that no one has ever come close to matching. while finding this moment's spot in the list, marty entered the room and after a pert, already-showered hello said to anthony:

MARTY (with a mischievous glance my way)
ask the magic meatball if dad is going to get busy today?

ANTHONY (excitedly to the toy in his hand)
magic meatball, is dad going to get busy today!?!?

MAGIC MEATBALL (with bravado and confidence)
the magic meatball says YEEESSSS.

ANTHONY (even more excitedly)
aahhh! you're going to get busy today dad!

anthony's rejoicing at my imminent fortune had both marty and i laughing heartily. and i may have been hasty in my judging of the meatball. he seems ok to me. but, before we stamp any thank you notes, i should add that his prediction may not have been as prescient as he led on because at the time of this writing, i'm rather busy-less. and i assure you no one is bluer on that count than me. truly. in fact, i'm miffed enough to consider a rebranding effort for the magic meatball to something a touch more accurate. fortunately for me, he already mostly has the appearance of the moniker i'd been toying with.

UPDATE: so after i posted the above and before midnight, the magic meatball's promise of good fortune came to be. my apologies mr. meatball.

the scientific world has long said that the female sex drive resurges after forty and that it is age and hormone related.

marty says the return of the sex drive has less to do with age and hormones and more to do with the fact those women are no longer messin' with small children.

smart money is on the person wranglin' three of them.

it was sunday morning. the kids were strewn about the house getting their hour of screen time. marty and i were in bed getting our hour of husband and wife time. the serenity was broken by anthony running down the hallway on the other side of our closed door yelling, "i have to go pee!" (as has been chronicled here before). i acknowledged his call with a household version of "roger, copy that." fifteen seconds later marty broke the renewed silence by saying, "you don't hear that get called out in the background of porno movies too often, do ya?"

excerpt from Jim Harrison's novella The Man Who Gave Up His Name

marty calls slow, sensual marital encounters 'sexy sex'. she calls for this by saying, "i'm not looking for a mad dash here, i want some sexy sex." problem is, in a house with three children eight and under, that is like saying i want everyone to be fed today but i don't want any dirty dishes in the process. it simply doesn't work that way.

but still, the call for sexy sex gets made on oc...

marty learned something new about anthony last week. before falling asleep at night, anthony had a habit of reaching up and under marty's shirt. when this happened she would push him away telling him he already nummed (e.g. nursed) and they were done for the night. he would grunt and continue with his wandering hand and the grudge match persisted until he would finally fall asleep. what she has just recently discovered, somehow, is he wasn't looking to nurse, he just wanted to fall asleep while holding her nipple in his fingers.

marty told me the story while making breakfast the morning after she figured this all out. she concluded her revelation by muttering a sarcastic "freak" at the end. after a pregnant pause, i said. "yeah freakshow. how weird" to which marty quickly replied, "nice try. don't think i don't know where he gets this little proclivity from."

hey, at least he got to experience the tap directly. i was bottle-fed.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. shame on you

marty expressed to her older sister that she was surprised to already be fielding puberty-related questions from bella. marty thought she had a few more years of girlish innocence in her oldest child. to this, marty's sister said her own daughter, at thirteen, had bigger breasts than she, the mother, did so girlish innocence becomes girlish curiosity real quick.

the mom went onto share a detail from when her husband gave the talk to their son when he was around eleven. after explaining the hows, the whats and the whys of it all the boy sat there stupefied at this new intelligence. after a few moments of silence he turned to his dad and mustered the eyes-down courage to ask a single question, "so, just how long do you have to do that for?"

when marty recounted this to some girlfriends, she laughingly added that the only right answer is, at least four minutes. i told marty if she keeps bragging about my sexual prowess to the neighborhood ladies, one of them might swoop in and steal me away. through her belly-laughing marty was able to tell me she's willing to take her chances on that one.

while searching for something called a bike bra which is a protective cover used to shield a roof-mounted bike from bugs on long road trips, i learned a new thing about the world we live in: amazon has porn.

click to enlarge

something about myself i'm confident has always been true is that the phrase, "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" would have always gotten my attention. i mean that's a scintillating mouthful. even if the fabric comprising the collective ensemble is not.

say "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" five times fast and you have a good old school tongue twister on your hands.

"Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" sounds like the title to a feature song in the music man or chitty, chitty, bang, bang, or high school musical 3. and while we're on the topic, the movie chitty, chitty, bang, bang is a title that seems to have some cross-marketing possibilities as well. and with the high school musical franchise, if it hasn't already happened, it's only a matter of time.

"Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" is going to be my new password with all merchants that make me open an account with them. as an added plus, the phrase has both a numeral and piece of punctuation for the password sticklers.

if i owned a diner and had a special sandwich, it would be called a "Fishnet Open Bust 3 Piece Set Garter Top, Thong, Stockings" and would contain bacon somewhere in the mix. without doubt.

in closing i'd like to say, when i was fourteen, amazon was a long blue line drawn in the over-sized atlas in the family bookshelf. today it is a bountiful treasure trove of scantily clad women. if there is a good bit of news in the fishnet covered crannies of this discovery it is that when i was fourteen, women still had nipples.

** UPDATE **
it wasn't until after i made the post that i realized the item has 30 customer reviews!

N RAMJOHN wrote:
I bought this item a few weeks ago, and boy did I have a hard time in trying to figure it out. Its very delicate material, and if you have jewellery on, it could get caught up in the meshing and also make some pulls in it. the stockings are too long, the thong is a bit small, but I dont bother to wear the thong anymore....my better half loves it though....he likes to see me in it...and has me wear it regularly! what a good buy though...of all the other lingerie sets I have purchased in the past, this is the one he likes best!

my favorite part of that comment is the line stating that the "stocking are too long and the thong is a bit small". sounds like someone should read the sizing charts with a bit more precision.

i challenge anyone to find more entertaining comment threads anywhere on the internet than in the amazon lingerie product pages. it just ain't gonna happen.

This guy goes to the doctor to get his first prostate exam. The doc puts on his glove and sticks his fingers in to take a look. After awhile he says,

"Son, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is you don't have prostate cancer!"

The guy says "So whats the bad news?"

Doc tells him, "You'll have to stop masturbating."

"Why?" the guy asks.

Doc says, "Because it's making me nervous!"

via big ed

it was a weekday night. the kids were asleep. it was about midnight and marty and i both got into bed within five minutes of one another. this does not happen often but when it does one of two things happens. we talk or we experience one another, maritally, as in, sexually. this night was a sex night. while i enjoy talking with marty i more enjoy the alternative. mostly because we can talk in the ...

The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.

It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that "could copulate with hens all day long, day after day." Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.

The President thought for a moment and then inquired, "With the same hen?"

"No, sir," replied the farmer.

"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President.

via kottke ... via defective yeti ... via reuniting

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. eighteen years

sunday i took the kids to the country to visit my parents for the day. marty stayed back to run errands and have some time to herself. i returned in the evening spent. while shuffling the kids towards bed, marty leaned into my ear and whispered that she had a surprise for me.

the kids were finally down and i was checking some stuff on my computer. out of my peripheral vision i saw marty dash by. i turned to see her in the next room wearing something smooth and lacey. she was spun around reaching for something behind her. i squinted to make out what she was doing. it turns out she was trying to cut the tags off my surprise, a new lingerie-catsuit looking deal. seeing that i saw her, she sultrily strode my way.

you weren't supposed to see me yet.

i wasn't supposed to see you in this or i wasn't supposed to see you cutting the tags off?

yes.

oh sorry.

it's ok. you like?

i do like. but i don't think i have anything comparable i can wear.

that's ok. you're not supposed to.

as it turns out i did have an accoutrement to bring to the tryst. the day before, alex and i got dinosaur tattoos and mine hadn't yet entirely washed off yet. unfortunately, alex got to pick first and took the last tyrannosaurus leaving me with the less exotic brontosaurus. in showing it to marty i explained that what it lacked for in ferociousness it made up for in grandeur, being as long as six school buses, weighing more than ten elephants, and as tall as a two story building. or at least that's what alex told me in consoling me about getting the suckier of the two tats. by my estimation, marty was still impressed. impressed enough at least.