Salon.com > Benjamin Cheever

An antique institution

Tue, 14 Oct 2003 19:09:00 +0000

I've been married for 21 years now, and so the moment Salon approached me about an essay on sex and marriage, I rushed downstairs from my office and told my wife. She was making the bed. "I guess you know how to act," I said, "if you want to come out well in this."

"I hope you're not going to do that weary old take-my-wife routine," she said.

"It's traditional," I said, "to do that weary old take-my-wife routine. If a man alone in the wilderness says something, and there's no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

"It's also traditional," she said, "for the wife to not like it."

Twenty-one years is a long time. You'd think I might have something wise to say. Wisdom and sex, though -- they don't often go together.

God to Adam: I've got good news and I've got bad news.

Adam: The good news first, then.

God: I'm going to give you a brain and also a penis. The brain is capable of great intellectual feats. With the brain you can overcome many obstacles, plan a useful, joyful life. The penis, on the other hand, can provide the most extraordinary physical pleasure.

Adam: So what's the bad news?

God: You only get enough blood to use one of them at a time.

Let leaders lead

Wed, 24 Jan 2001 20:07:00 +0000

Jesse Jackson fathered a "love child." Ever notice how it's always a "love child" when Mom and Dad aren't married to each other? I guess married people only have intercourse because of the tax benefit.

Jackson got caught and made a statement. "I am truly sorry for my actions," he said. "I am father to a daughter who was born outside of my marriage."

The National Enquirer broke the news last week, running a picture of Jackson at the White House with then President Clinton and Jackson's then pregnant mistress. A damning picture in lurid color. A true story.

Good, though, to keep in mind how low on the news hog we're eating. This week's Enquirer stories include "Meg Ryan Dumped!" and "'Survivor 2' contestant to wed her son."

But that's a quibble. What worries me? We've developed a system guaranteed to keep the most brilliant people out of public life. And now we're perfecting it, tightening the net.

Papa don’t preach

Sat, 04 Nov 2000 20:30:00 +0000

George W. Bush said he'd kept his bust for drunken driving a secret because he didn't want his twin daughters to know. When the question arose if it wasn't better to tell children the truth, Dubya didn't answer. It pains me to say good things about George W. Bush, but I don't think I would have answered either. Not if the children were listening. Nor would I write this, if I thought they read Salon.

I used to be a full-disclosure father. I delighted my tiny sons with stories about shooting friends with BB rifles. I trotted out my nastiest and most obscene jokes. We laughed and laughed.

Then I heard that one of the boys had been repeating the jokes at school. He might easily have been suspended. "What if they don't find the BB gun stories amusing either?" I thought. "What if they find them instructive instead?"

Since then I've inhabited that anxious purgatory of half-truths and omissions where most of today's responsible parents with "youthful indiscretions" seem to dwell. Information is released in my house on a need-to-know basis. I don't want my boys to drink. If they do drink, I don't want them to be alone with their remorse.