The Guide to Getting It On (73 page)

“
D
ear Paul,

I just graduated from college and had to move back home with my parents. Everyone says I need to get on with the next phase of my life, but I have no clue what that should be. I’m so depressed I don’t even want to have sex. But if I did, I still wouldn’t feel comfortable bringing a woman home to have sex here. I feel like I’m eleven instead of twenty two. Do you have any advice? —Mike from Manitoba

Dear Mike,

After I finished my undergraduate work, I moved back home with my parents. I was depressed, dejected and had no clue what the future would bring. During my years at college, I had ducked tear gas canisters from antiwar riots on the way to class and I worked long shifts at night in a mental hospital to pay my way through school. I had coached a winning football team and was on the staff in the dorms for two years. I was not sheltered or lacking in initiative.

Yet when I moved back home with my parents, I had no idea how to be an adult in their household. I quickly returned to being the same son that I was when I was in high school, and they became the same parents.

It wasn’t until many years later, after my dad started to lose his mind from dementia, that I was able to be an adult in his presence. And it wasn’t until my mom could no longer manage on her own that I learned to be an adult in her presence.

I don’t envy the task you have in changing your family dynamics. I totally sucked at it myself. And I understand how challenging it can be when the structure and safety net of college disappears.

Hopefully you’ll find some of the things in this chapter to be helpful while you are ending one stage of your life and trying to begin another.

From Rusty Parent-Child Dynamics to Squeaky Bed Springs

If you want to have a sex life while living in your parent’s home, you’ll need to find a way to be an adult when you move back home. That’s how parents begin to accept their children as sexual beings with sexual needs.

The first part of this chapter is about getting your parents to see you as an adult. With some parents and some children, this won’t be difficult. With others, it can be a challenge. But even if your parent-child dynamics get rearranged in all the right ways, you still might not feel comfortable having sex in your old room. And your parents might not feel comfortable when the child they used to read
Goodnight Moon
to in that room is having sex with a lover whose name they hardly know.

The second part of this chapter is about the mechanics of having sex while under your parents roof—from how to quiet a bed with springs from hell to prepping your lover on what to say when they can no longer avoid having a conversation with your family members.

Boomer-What?

The media has invented the term “boomerang generation” to describe former college students who move back home. This is misleading, because when you toss a boomerang it comes back the same as when it left. That’s not true for someone who left home at eighteen and comes back after years of answering to no one. Worse yet, before you left, it was as much your house as your parents. And when you had friends over, it was usually just friends and not someone you were going to have sex with, or not someone your parents knew you were having sex with.

So it’s a different situation than the word “boomerang” implies. Expectations are different and adjustments need to be made.

You’re Not the Only One Who Likes to Walk Around Naked

If you were an only child or the last of your siblings to leave home, your parents have now had a couple of years to walk around naked, get a little drunk, have sex in the kitchen and learn to cherish their privacy. (Where do you think your “walk-around-naked” and “I’m horny—let’s fuck now” genes came from?)

Returning home might force your parents to give up some hard-earned freedom. Be sensitive to this and try to appreciate that they didn’t have to let you move back home.

Making Yourself a Grown-Up in Your Parents’ Eyes

One way to be a responsible adult is to help pay your share of the expenses. But you probably wouldn’t be moving back home if you could do that. So the next best thing is to calculate how many hours you’d have to work to pay your share of the rent, food, utilities, phone and Internet. Ask your parents what their expectations are of you and what you can do around the house to help make this work best for everyone. Here are just a few ways to earn parental respect and hopefully your sexual freedom when living at home:

• Help do the shopping
  
• Cook and do the dishes
  
• Be a work-out partner for unmotivated parents
  
• Clean the house and doing your wash
  
• Garden, paint, run errands, and chauffeur siblings
  
• Do the bookkeeping for your parent’s business, fix their website, or program their electronics and remotes
  
• Detail the car or help tutor a younger sibling
  
• Help your grandparents
  

It may be that your parents will never agree to your having sex with a partner in their home. But the way to give yourself the best chance is to be responsible and helpful.

Doing Yourself No Harm

The moment your parents have to start nagging you, you suddenly return to middle-school in their eyes. Middle school—wasn’t that when sex meant your own hand in your own pants?

Statements like “Oh crap, I forgot to take out the garbage” or “Sorry, mom, I forgot to pick up Davie from baseball practice” will not cut it if you’re trying to earn grown-up privileges. Being reliable will increase your standing in the eyes of most lovers as well.

Keep your parents updated about your plans and goals. Even if your chances of winning the lottery are better than landing a job or finding your way, keep your family in the loop. It can be easy to lose hope. Sometimes, just making the effort to fake it can be important in making progress or moving forward.

Hot Water and Bandwidth – Two Things You Should Never Hog

Even if you always take a shower the first thing in the morning, you don’t want your mom or dad taking a cold shower because of you. Nor does it matter if your younger brother drains every drop of hot water while jerking off in the shower. It’s unlikely he gets to have a lover spend the night, while you’re expecting a different set of rights.

What’s true for hot water is also true for Internet bandwidth. Don’t be downloading porn when your mom wants to watch a show on Hulu or your sister is streaming a movie. And as much as it might annoy you to cede bandwidth to younger siblings, it will not help your cause if they go whining to your mom or dad about how you are hogging the DSL.

Having Friends Over Now vs. Then

It’s one thing if your parents offer your friends beer or wine, but your friends offering your parents alcohol or drugs might not go over so well. In fact, if your friends walk into your parents’ house flashing six packs of beer, it’s no different than a terrorist walking into an airport with a bomb in his briefs. Double that if your friends bring acid, ‘shrooms, hash or anything leafy, white or powdery that might cause surveillance by the feds.

Even if it’s totally fine with your parents that you are having friends over, it’s wise to ask ahead of time. It’s different now than when you were in high school and everyone assumed your friends would crash at your place.

Social Before Sexual

When you were living on your own and you met someone new, you might have ended up at their place or yours for a night of sex. This doesn’t work so well when you’re living with your mom and dad.

The best solution is to first meet a potential new lover for coffee or lunch, or at a movie, sporting event, or museum. You won’t believe how much you’ll find out about a person when you are both sober and your clothes are on.

If you decide sex is a good next move, try making your first time at their place or at a hotel. Some hotels have a special day rate for this exact thing. They are known as hot-sheet hotels. Then, if you decide it’s not going anywhere, you won’t have to cash in one of your “here’s-the-latest-person-I’m-sleeping-with” chips with your mom and dad. And if your new lover is a keeper but screams with wild abandon while having orgasms, you can discuss acoustic sensibilities before making love in your parents’ home.

If your parents pester you mercilessly about meeting your new hookup, tell them you haven’t decided if he or she is family worthy. Plus, if your family is a bit odd, delaying a bit avoids scaring away a perfectly good lover before he or she is more invested in you and is more likely to weather your family’s unique habits.

Sharing Date Drama With Your Mama

It’s one thing to be living hundreds of miles away from your mom and phone her in tears about how terribly your partner has been treating you. That’s what moms are for. It’s quite another thing to have these kinds of conversations when you are living at home. How’s your mom going to handle it when you invite the loser over the next day for make-up sex?

This sort of thing makes parents insane, especially dads with guns. So if you are experiencing less than domestic tranquility with a lover, consider not discussing it with your mom unless you need moral support and are truly going to end it.

Explaining Friends with Benefits

There might be times in life when you have a non-traditional relationship that consists of really good sex but nothing more. Unless you have the most sexually evolved parents on the planet, finding the right words to explain this type of casual-sex relationship to your mom and dad is beyond the scope of this book or any other.

On the other hand, is it possible your lover isn’t someone you would want to admit to your family that you are spending naked time with? This might not have been so bad when all you had to deal with was the disgusted glares of your roommates. It could be that moving home will force you to set the bar a little higher when it comes to who you sleep with.

Facebook, Email and Sexting

It was one thing to be Facebook friends with your parents when you were twelve. But now? Even if you aren’t FB friends with your family, the Internet is an open book. Once you move back home, don’t put anything on it that you wouldn’t want your mom or dad to see.

And nothing will piss off parents more than when your little brother hacks into your email account and shows them your emails dissing them. If you don’t want your family to know exactly what you are thinking, don’t text it, email it or write it down.

Also, it is unwise to keep a lover’s sexts for posterity or masturbation purposes. Assume your mom, dad, or siblings will find them. An upskirt photo from a lover is unlikely to increase your mom’s opinion of her. And imagine having to face a lover’s father after he found your text to his daughter explaining what you’re going to do to her in bed—under his roof.

Younger Siblings

If the stork made a tragically late visit to your home and you have siblings in elementary school or younger, be sensitive to what an important figure you are in their eyes. Kids are always on the prowl for someone to look up to, and that might be you. When it comes to younger siblings, you are in the sometimes strange zone of being more of a parent than their brother or sister.

Siblings can also form strong attachments to your boyfriend or girlfriend, especially if your BF or GF is being extra nice to them. This is usually a good thing unless you decide to break up. It’s also something to consider when it comes to bringing casual hookups home. Just like a single parent who is dating, you need to be sensitive about the impact that a revolving door of lovers will have on your siblings.

Kids tend to be curious, especially about anything having to do with sex. So it might be wise to put a lock on your door for when a lover is over. You don’t want to risk having your third-grade sister or brother asking your mom, “Why does Amy have Trevor’s penis in her mouth?”

Under no conditions should you ever give siblings in high school drugs or alcohol. Not only is this dumb, but you risk being charged with the criminal act of furnishing a minor with whatever you furnished.