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Village Squire, 1978-10, Page 42P.S. It's kiss [or whatever] and tell time BY KEITH ROULSTON I have never exactly been a macho kind of guy. Heck for years I didn't even know what macho was. Back in the days before people even knew the word, let alone what it meant, I used to take part in quite a few sports. It was good clean fun except when the game was over and it was time to clean up and leave clean fun behind. There was nothing very clean about the locker room even though there was plenty of soap and hot water in the shower stalls. Nothing was ever so aptly named as the term "locker room language". Frankly, I found it rather embarrassing. Locker room sessions on Mondays were spent telling tales of conquests of weekend dates, often in graphic details. Tuesday through Wednesdays were spent speculat- ing on who was doing what to whom and which members of the locker room set could be most successful with which members of the female population. Thursday and Friday were taken up with discussions of planned strategy for the coming weekend. Most of it was just talk, of course. Frankly, if even half of the extracurricular activities discussed in the locker room had actually taken place in those pre -pill days, there'd hardly have been a girl in high school who managed to graduate before starting a family. Still, whether the details were real or imagined, I found them a little tiresome (some would have labeled me jealous). I figured if it didn't happen then it was maligning some' poor girl just for a few chuckles with the guys. If it did happen, then surely if it was as pleasurable as the teller tried to make out, it should remain a very private thing. That was back, of course in the days before the sexual revolution. Today locker room language is no longer relegated to the locker room. Bragging about sexual activity is no longer something done just among the guys, but everywhere. And it's no longer among just the guys either because nobody.seems to brag much more than the female part of the population these days, at least the ladies taking advantage of their new-found freedoms. It isn't even confined to the intimate little parties. Today the specialty is to tell ail in a big, glossy national magazine. This PG.40. VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1978. month's issue of Saturday Night features a cover story Sex Life of the Ruling Clas ,and inside a lengthy article chronicles how the sexual exploits of some of the top power brokers in Ottawa among the politicians. the bureaucrats and even the press corps. They all like to tell it like it is (or at least they'd like us to believe it is) and it doesn't matter whether the teller is male or female. They all point out that having power seems to make it much easier to have a diversified sex life. At least in the Saturday Night article. though the people telling their stories hide in anonimity. Last year in Toronto Life magazine a number of prominent women talked openly about the most intimate sexual details of their lives. The article not only gave their names, it also had pictures of them. How'd you like to walk down Yonge Street after that, knowing that thousands of people are probably looking at you and remembering all those things you said in that article? This new sexual liberation has of course now come to the homosexual world too. The word "gay" has been appropriated by the homosexual community to give itself a more flattering name thereby ruining a perfectly good word for writers who now can't talk about a gay party without having readers think that everyone there was holding hands with someone of the same sex. Now I have known people who were homosexual (possibly more people than 1 even knew I knew) and they were generally fine people. So. I guess it's a good thing that there is a new openness about homosexuality which should lead to a new understanding of the situation. Still I tend to agree with the character in one of the TV sitcoms who said to a homosexual: "You know, I wish you guys hadn't come out of the closet." You see I'm quite willing to let homosexuals live in peace but I get a little tired of them flaunting it, just as I get tired of heterosexual people flaunting their sexual exploits in public. Today of course there has to be at least one program in every television series that deals with homosexuality and it's a pre -requisite that the homosexual character be kind, gentle and badly misunderstood by "straight" society. I got so tired of the same theme last year that I turned off most of the programs as soon as I figured out what they were going to deal with. I mean after you've heard that story twice or three times, it starts getting a little boring. The fact is the militants of organizations like the gay liberation organization don't want us just to accept them, they want to rub our noses in it. They don't want us to just not discriminate against them, they want us to feel guilty or perhaps even a little jealous. Homosexuality is in fact one of the "in" things these days. To be a good seller on the modern paperback book shelves these days you not only have to get the hero (or heroine) jumping into bed with every woman (or man) in sight. but preferably getting at least two members of the opposite sex in there too so that they can do all kinds of indescribable things. r Now 1 don't think I'm really a prude (1 didn't even sign the petition to ban The Diviners) but 1 do look forward to the day when all this penchant for kissing and telling is passe. It will be of course. The media will get tired of it and move 'on. The graphic stories will go back to the locker room again (although it will like)S' be more evenly distributed between the men's and women's locker rooms next time). Hopefully we won't swing so far that things go back to the way they were earlier in the century. but at least far enough to get it off the feature pages of our newspapers and magazines. The Prime Minister once said that the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Equally. the bedrooms of the nation and their secrets have no place in the spotlight of our national media. U 14 rant to write? VILLAGE SQUIRE has openings for regular freelance contributors on such topics as *Music •Art •Business •Sports •Youth If you are interested send a sample of writing, name, address and telephone number and your area of interest to Village Squire, RR 3, Blyth, Ont. NOM IHO.