那些年，我和父親在一輛老福特車里談論性

Before his fingers had reached the volume knob to turn off Steely Dan, I already knew: My bookish and tightly wound father was about to tell me something I did not want to hear.

在他的手指碰到音量旋鈕，關(guān)掉Steely Dan之前，我已經(jīng)知道：我那書卷氣十足、緊張敏感的父親，將要告訴我一些我不想聽的東西。

I was only 14 but could recognize the signs: the ambiguous errand that required us to drive into Chicago from our suburb; the unusually tight grip on the steering wheel; the uncomfortable sigh as he turned off the tape deck (Talking Heads if I was lucky, Bob Seger if I was not); and — more than anything else — the acute sensation that I was going to vomit.

我只有14歲，但我能認出這些跡象：需要我們從居住的郊區(qū)開車前往芝加哥的一項語焉不詳?shù)娜蝿?方向盤被異常地緊緊握住;當他關(guān)掉磁帶播放器時發(fā)出的不舒服的嘆息(如果我幸運的話，Talking Heads，如果不走運的話，鮑勃·西格[Bob Seger]);最重要的是，我有要嘔吐的強烈感覺。

“You know,” he said, his eyes mercifully fixed on the road. “When I was your age, the nuns told us that mas-tur-ba-tion” — his was so uncomfortable with the word, he almost added an extra syllable — “was a mortal sin.”

“你知道嗎，”他說，還好眼睛看著的是路。“在我像你這么大的時候，修女們告訴我們，“自-慰”——這個詞讓他很不舒服，幾乎增加了一個音節(jié)——“是一種大罪。”

My face flushed, my head turned toward the billboard careering past us and I rolled my eyes so hard that the gesture was nearly audible.

我的臉漲得通紅，我的頭轉(zhuǎn)向從我們身邊掠過的廣告牌，使勁地翻著白眼，使勁到幾乎可以聽到我這個動作。

“Do you know what that means?” he asked.

“你知道這意味著什么嗎?”他問。

“Yes, Dad!” I snapped, hoping that one of us would have an aneurysm.

“知道，爸!“我大聲說道，希望我們中的一個得了動脈瘤。

“I don’t mean mas-tur-ba-tion. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now,” he continued, as I prayed for the ability to time-travel, like I’d seen in “A Wrinkle in Time.” “I mean ‘mortal sin.’ The nuns were saying that mas-tur-bat-ing was on the same level of sinning as murder.”

“我不是指自-慰。我相信你現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)明白了，”他繼續(xù)說道，我祈禱自己有穿越時空的能力，就像我在《時間的皺紋》(A Wrinkle in Time)里看到的那樣。“我是說‘大罪’。修女們說自慰和謀殺是同一個程度的罪行。”

“Well, trust me,” my father said, “it didn’t take any of us long to figure out that that wasn’t true.”

“好吧，相信我，”我父親說，“我們沒多久就發(fā)現(xiàn)這不是真的。"

You know that scene at the beginning of “Lady Bird” when Saoirse Ronan throws herself out of a moving vehicle to avoid talking to her mother for one second longer? That was me in my teens, convinced that grave bodily injury or death would be preferable to what I was hearing from the passenger seat of the family Ford Taurus station wagon, doled throughout my adolescence.

你知道《伯德小姐》(Lady Bird)開頭的那一幕嗎?就是西爾莎·羅南(Saoirse Ronan)為了避免和她媽媽再多說一秒鐘，把自己從正在行駛的汽車上摔了下來?我十幾歲的時候就是那個樣子，相信比起我在家里的福特金牛座旅行車的客座上，以及在整個青春期一點一點聽到的東西，嚴重的身體損傷或死亡都還要好一點。

On puberty: “God gives young men the equipment for sex way before he gives them the knowledge of how to have sex responsibly.”

關(guān)于青春期：“上帝在教給年輕人如何負責任地做愛的知識之前，就給了他們性的工具。"

On pornography: “Hell, Shane, I’m not going to tell you that I never peeked at a Playboy in my day. But if you look at stuff like that, you have to remember that that woman isn’t a thing, she’s a person.”

關(guān)于色情作品：“嘿，謝恩，我不會告訴你我小時候從沒偷偷看過《花花公子》。但是如果你看著這樣的東西，你必須記住，那個女人不是一個物品，她是一個人。”

On sex and media: “If an alien came down to earth and watched TV for 24 hours straight, they would think that all we did is have sex all day and that it was the most important thing in our lives. Well, let me tell you: It’s not.”

關(guān)于性和媒體：“如果一個外星人來到地球，連續(xù)24小時看電視，他們會認以為我們整天在做的事就是做愛，這是我們生活中最重要的事情。好吧，讓我告訴你：它不是。

On “It’s Raining Men,” when it came on the radio and I changed the station to avoid seeming gay (which I very much was): “What are you doing? That song’s a classic! Paul Shaffer wrote this!”

關(guān)于《天上下男人》(It’s Raining Men)，當這首歌出現(xiàn)在收音機里時，我換了臺，以避免看起來像同性戀者(其實我就是)：“你在做什么?那首歌很經(jīng)典!保羅·謝弗(Paul Shaffer)寫的!”

I was a fat, closeted teenager who loved musical theater and hated my body, so hearing my father say any of this felt like a violation of the Geneva Conventions. My father — a Catholic baby boomer from Cleveland whose own father wouldn’t let him listen to the Rolling Stones because the music was too risqué — couldn’t have enjoyed these chats any more than I did.

我當時是一個胖胖的、沒出柜的少年，喜歡音樂劇院，討厭自己身體，所以聽我父親說任何這一切東西都感覺像在違反《日內(nèi)瓦公約》。我的父親——一個來自克利夫蘭的天主教嬰兒潮一代，他自己的父親不讓他聽滾石(Rolling Stones)的音樂，因為覺得它們太粗俗了——也跟我一樣，對這些對話不會感到自在。

And yet these exercises in mutually assured embarrassment continued for my entire youth. The only thing that stopped them was me moving out of the house.

然而，這些在相互都很清楚的尷尬中進行的練習持續(xù)了我的整個青春。只有等我搬出了家才停了下來。

But it turned out even that couldn’t end them. You can take the teenager out of the Ford Taurus, but you can’t take the unendurable sex talk out of the teenager. Sure, being an ersatz adult meant that I could do all the things my teenage id yearned to do — drink alcohol, take drugs and (try to) have sex — but it didn’t mean that I could forget the ordeals my father put me through on the highways of Chicagoland.

但事實證明，即使這樣它也沒有結(jié)束。你可以把這個青少年從福特金牛座里帶走，但是你不能把難以忍受的性談話從這個青少年的腦海中抹去。當然，作為一個偽成年人意味著，我可以做我十幾歲時渴望做的所有事情——喝酒、吸毒和(嘗試)做愛——但這并不意味著我可以忘記父親在芝加哥高速公路上給我?guī)淼恼勰ァ?/p>

And worst of all: I’m grateful for it.

最糟糕的是：我感激這一切。

Twenty years after ye old masturbation lecture, I marvel at how relevant — straight up zeitgeisty! — my father’s advice has proved.

在聽了關(guān)于自慰的那一節(jié)課20年后，我驚嘆于它和生活有多么相關(guān)——簡直就是時代精神!——我父親的建議已經(jīng)證明了這一點。

Long before our current understanding of consent and all that it entails, he imparted to me that we need to differentiate between what our libidos signal and what’s right for ourselves and our partners.

在我們就知情同意及其種種后果形成當下的認識之前，他早已告訴我，我們需要區(qū)分我們的性欲信號，以及如何妥善對待我們自己和我們的伴侶。

My father couldn’t have predicted how pornography would become more widely available and exponentially more explicit than the Playboys he mentioned, but he helped prepare me to consume pornography with a critical eye.

我父親不可能預測得到，色情作品會比他提到的《花花公子》更容易獲取且越來越露骨，但是他幫助我準備好用審辯式的眼光去消費色情。

Today I’m one of those queers who can find a narrative about sexuality in anything. But my father’s warning that sex was “not as important as the sitcoms would have us believe” has often reminded me that sex in America is as much marketing as it is a means of pleasure or self-expression.

今天，我是那種能在任何事物里找到性敘事的酷兒。但是我父親曾警告，性“沒有情景喜劇想讓我們相信的那么重要”，這一點經(jīng)常提醒我，在美國，性既是一種快樂或自我表達的方式，也是一種營銷產(chǎn)品。

I begrudgingly thank my father for these excruciating exchanges we shared in the 1990s. Today, when some men seem to confuse physical abuse with consensual role play, when teenagers are consuming pornography at a younger age, and when abstinence-only sex education is getting a renewed push, I look back and realize what a blessing it was to have a father who made me want to crawl out of my own skin every now and then. (Also, I spent pretty much my entire 20s embarrassing him back.)

我很不情愿地感謝我父親，在上世紀90年代與我一起做了這些讓我苦惱的交流。今天，當一些男人似乎把身體虐待和雙方自愿的角色扮演混為一談，當青少年在更早的時候就開始消費色情制品，當只提禁欲的性教育再次受到推動時，我回過頭來，意識到有一個讓我時不時地想要爬出自己皮膚的父親，是多么地幸運。(此外，我在二十來歲的時候，沒少做些反過來讓他難堪的事。)

And you know what? “It’s Raining Men” is a classic and Paul Shaffer didwrite it.

而且你知道嗎?《天上下男人》是一首經(jīng)典作品，保羅·謝弗寫的。

But I will still never forgive my father for making me listen to Bob Seger.

但是，我依然永遠不會原諒父親讓我聽鮑勃·西格。