DOD27: The Talk

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that wants you to have a good time, but never tell us the details. I'm Tom Curry, I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello gentlemen,

0:00:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:38 Eli: Maybe you don't want to hear the details, Tom.

0:00:40 Tom: No, there is no way you're going to want to hear the details, my friend. I am lived.

0:00:43 Thomas: I want to hear the details of you guys having a good time, feel free, you know, share that

0:00:48 Eli: Yeah,

0:00:48 Tom: Is there anything more boring to hear about though, honestly, than somebody else's sex life?

0:00:55 Thomas: Was absolutely, joke, I never discuss This with anybody, that is so funny. I wonder if I've actually been meaning to bring that up as like a masculinity topic. I don't understand it, is there's a lot of dudes who would love to just brag about whatever, and I'm always like, I, why, what is this to me? Does does that, do I, why would that be anything? Does that do something? If I brag about someone I fucked, does it happen again? Like, did I, am I, am I fucking or am I just telling a dude about it? Yeah.

0:00:57 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:01:23 Tom: I'm gonna come again, hold on a minute, it's happening, yeah, you're like weaving a tail, like you're fucking

0:01:27 Thomas: What is my goal of that? Am I trying to get the dude hard? Like, am I trying to, in the locker room talk? Yeah, like, what is that?

0:01:32 Eli: You're providing a little, you are providing a little porn for your homie. Just a little porn starring,

0:01:40 Thomas: Is that really what it is? Like, I genuinely don't Know. No,

0:01:41 Tom: You're Just you're

0:01:41 Eli: Yes, starring you. Starring you.

0:01:44 Tom: Telling, like A Tropic of Cancer-esque tail, and just, like, with those massive details and dear Penthouse letters,

0:01:50 Eli: Locker Room locker room talk is just turn into your bud, your pal, and saying, "Hey, would you like to picture me erect and thrusting?" Because I'd love to weave you a tale about that.

0:01:59 Tom: I have never, never liked that. I've never engaged in that shit.

0:02:02 Eli: Okay.

0:02:04 Thomas: Absolutely Me neither, and what it really is, is just, like, some attempt to, like, brag, or it's to about your worth as a man, I guess, and that's a way, but that's one of those things where I am not at all interested in puffery, I'm just interested in the bottom line. No amount of me talking about anything made anything happen more. Or do you know, like, it's, it is the bottom

0:02:25 Eli: Now, now it sounds like you have a fucking spreadsheet, Thomas. I'm not gonna lie,

0:02:28 Thomas: Oh, I do. Yeah. No, I'm not seeing this balance go up by me talking about it with

0:02:30 Tom: Hey, other, other guys have notches on the bedpost and Thomas has an Excel spreadsheet that he's keeping. Hang on. I gotta update this. There's a pivot table.

0:02:41 Eli: Yep, there's a sheet for each partner. Yeah.

0:02:44 Tom: It's a whole thing.

0:02:38 Thomas: Macros. Yeah, oh,

0:02:45 Eli: Oh, you guys, you, you guys have a pivot table? That's awesome. I saw those on Adamandeve.com, but they're so expensive, you know, even with the free shipping.

0:02:47 Thomas: It's so weird. Pivot table is a really great name for something like that, actually. Oh, man. So anyway, no, that is kind of the topic.

0:03:01 Tom: So yeah so Yeah, so that, that we're actually on topic for a change is why nobody knows what the hell to do and how to intro back into the topic. I love that, that's, that's our point of digression is like, wait, are we, are we on track?

0:03:10 Eli: We

0:03:12 Thomas: Yeah oh, the room is spinning, man, And I don't know what's happening right now. We're already talking about the episode.

0:03:17 Eli: Have to talk talk about allowance. We have to talk about allowance, it's the format. Oh,

0:03:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:23 Tom: So, did you, I am, I am curious, like, we're gonna talk about sex and talk about talking about sex, like, with the kids. So did you guys get the talk, like, from your folks who gave the talk in your house?

0:03:36 Thomas: Eli, do you want to start or?

0:03:37 Eli: I was, I thought, figured your answer would be short, Thomas.

0:03:40 Thomas: Oh, that's a good point. I wasn't sure if my short answer should be. Here, I'll give a quick short answer. Absolutely not. Zero was ever said about it of any time of all time. I'm not. What? What in the world? No, my mom is, if anything, way more fucking weird about that stuff. Stuff, she's like incredibly, I what's the word, prudish, I don't know what the word is, she can't handle anything like that, like she gets so uncomfortable and embarrassed, my dad actually doesn't, but also didn't, we just didn't have any interest in like talking about it, so no, no conversation with anybody about any of that

0:03:49 Tom: Mom didn't even do it. What?

0:04:15 Tom: About you, Eli, your parents obviously drew you pictures, your mom wrote a Lee Bennett Hopkins award-winning book

0:04:15 Eli: Yeah yeah I book about it, yeah. No, I got the talk, I don't remember the, like, like, birds and the bees talk. I remember the only talk that I found very upsetting was, at one point, because I can ask my parents anything, at one point I had found porn, seen porn, heard about porn, but I was still super young, and it's that, that young lens of porn where just, it hasn't clicked as an adult yet, and I remember asking them at dinner, how did the porn actors pretend to be having sex? Do they just like, are they just under the blankets the whole time? And my dad was like, no, they, they actually have sex in porn, and I was like, they actually have, are they all married? And my dad, he was like, no they don't. I could see my parents being like, uh, we have failed him in some, what?

0:04:21 Tom: Uh yeah when

0:05:10 Thomas: Yeah

0:05:10 Eli: What Lego did we not click into place that our son is over here being like, I guess all the porn, porn actors are married to each other.

0:05:17 Thomas: Yeah

0:05:17 Tom: When I was a kid, I remember, I mean, I was just pretty young, but like, I remember thinking that like dirty movies, which is how I thought of when I was a kid, I'm everything like dirty, movies were just entirely regular movies, but everybody was naked, like, like it's just like Top Gun or whatever, but just everybody, right.

0:05:17 Thomas: What

0:05:38 Tom: It's just everybody's net that that's, they just like made a movie, but nobody wore their clothes today. And that's what a dirty movie was.

0:05:43 Eli: No.

0:05:36 Thomas: Yeah godfather yeah that's funny oh that's another thing that I think we've talked about is I wasn't allowed to watch fucking anything so that's a way to help it not come up at all is if you can't watch any rated anything movies so that was a way to have it never be a conversation

0:05:54 Tom: So my dad, I will, I will say like to his credit I remember asking my dad and this is so funny because I wasn't trying to have the conversation and I remember I was probably in third or fourth grade because I know what house we were living in and we were still in Chicago and do you guys remember the show the Facts of Life no Okay all right well you're Not old so There was A TV Show Don't

0:06:12 Thomas: I'm not 50

0:06:15 Eli: Tom, I'm to need you to Google when the facts of life went off the air and feel very old.

0:06:19 Tom: Do It don't Look It up Because now it's going to be embarrassing it's probably god damn it all right so there of life and I remember like there's a there's a song there's like a theme song for the show and it's Called the facts Of life and it was a very popular show at the time and I remember thinking like well there must be some facts of life that I don't know what they are so I asked my dad, I'm thinking only of the TV show right and I'm like dad what are the facts of life and he says and He gets out a pen and a paper and No Shit we had the sex talk right there was a a very anatomic but He drew Pictures He Drew Pictures He grew fucking Pictures my dad drew pictures of like a woman's anatomy like I mean Fairly crudely And

0:06:32 Thomas: Sure oh my god what was the pen and paper for tom what was no no No, no, no. This is, this is the worst thing I've ever heard. I cannot believe this happened.

0:07:11 Tom: I And I Was just staring at him I'm like eight or nine and I'm just like why Is Once

0:07:15 Thomas: Your dad was like, all right, when a man likes a woman, kind of a little bit, they see each other once a month. The diagram, the diagram, he Drew was actually just like a man's hand and a female hand, like shaking, like that's shaking him. All right, Here's How it Goes, he's Like

0:07:21 Tom: A week

0:07:22 Eli: But she's paying and he's a man of his word. Is of two houses and then all the space in between them.

0:07:38 Thomas: This is gonna look really gross, but your hand goes in her hand like this, and oh yeah,

0:07:43 Eli: But only at, like, Christmas and stuff, son. You don't have to do that. More of an, yeah.

0:07:46 Tom: Now, on his birthday, the hand might do something special, but.

0:07:45 Thomas: Do That little finger thing where you like caress the palm, that's the, that's as far, that's too freaky though, I

0:07:56 Eli: I'm picturing Tom running into his brother and being like, dude, whatever you do, do not ask dad who's the boss. You do not want to know who is the boss!

0:08:08 Eli: We just got to leave that up to the show, man. And by the way, for those of you curious, listening at home, Facts of Life went off the air in 1988 when I was one years old.

0:08:18 Thomas: Was two, two years old.

0:08:19 Tom: Okay. All right. I was 10. So whatever. So that was, that was the, and that was the, I, but it's funny because that was the only sex talk that I ever got until I was 18 and my dad.

0:08:20 Thomas: God. That's the worst, dude. The drawing the pictures, that this is fucking me up, like I'm scarred by. By you telling me this story.

0:08:37 Tom: Yeah, no. And well, I was just baffled why we were having this conversation. That was the part I still remember being like, and it was a long conversation. And he's like, yeah,

0:08:39 Thomas: Oh, if it was two minutes, it would have felt like eternity. There's no way.

0:08:51 Tom: I Think part of me is still having that conversation. Like I never escaped from it. And then I, and then we never talked to, so that was, that was so I was maybe eight or nine. And if you told me the kind of like the, the, the anatomical details about what sex was and like how women's be built and then nothing at all until I was 18. And I was in my room after graduating high school. And there was a girl in my room. There's a bunch of people in my my room. Um, and it was like a graduation party thing. And there was a girl in my room and she was standing real close to me and we were kind of being a little flirtatious or whatever. And my dad said, "Can I talk to you for a minute?" And I said, "Sure." And I went into his room and he said, "All right, so if something happens, you're going to need to be careful." And I'm like, "I got it." I got, he's like, "Okay, okay."

0:09:37 Tom: And that was the second time we talked about sex. And And that was the only other time sex ever came up in any context at all in our house.

0:09:46 Eli: The sweat-soaked Trojan in your dad's hand never got unveiled, but damn did he have it. He was like, I'm gonna...

0:09:52 Thomas: And he had, he also, in his other hand was a piece of paper where he'd drawn how to put it on.

0:09:59 Thomas: It's like, thank God. I never had to whip that out.

0:10:01 Eli: I've been working on this since you were 10 years old, there's a lot of really good pencil work on it at this point.

0:10:04 Thomas: There's like like water colors. Yeah.

0:10:06 Tom: That was. Now, I've I've made it into a flip book. You might.

0:10:10 Eli: I took that pottery class

0:10:11 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:12 Thomas: I also had, like, a precisely one time anything ever came up, now I think about it, kind of similar but slightly different. I remember in maybe when I started call, I don't know what it was. Okay, here's an uncomfortable and kind of sad truth: my dad didn't like, I wouldn't say didn't like, but, um, in my dad's mind, somehow, I my girl, high school girlfriend, I I was like somehow out of her league in his mind, and I'm kind of still mad about him telling me this to this day, um, because he just, like, told me, like, you should be dating someone better looking, essentially, like you just, like, yeah, and I was like, I I don't even know how to deal with this, uh, this is fucking weird, and that my favorite thing about it was this idea idea that my dad was going to, you know, absolutely decimate any sense self of self-esteem I had or confidence, but then all of sudden be like, yeah, you should have just also somehow figured all this out and be dating someone hotter. Like that should just magically fucking happen. Yeah.

0:10:46 Tom: What? What? But

0:10:48 Eli: Boo that's what I was gonna say

0:11:07 Tom: That is what? Everything about that is a problem. Like, it's a problem from every angle that you approach that.

0:11:13 Thomas: And the and he didn't tell me that until later, but in retrospect, that's where I think this conversation was coming from. The one time we talked about sex, sex he it wasn't even no explicit terms he just said like when very traditional gender-based advice he was like yeah keep in line like women will get really attached when you do that so and I in retrospect I think it was it's just him not wanting me to be with this girl

0:11:16 Tom: Holy shit.

0:11:40 Eli: I'm just picturing your mom yelling from the other room like no they don't not every time and my dad had a bunch of sex talks the largely about like consent consent yeah we were trying to figure it out for ourselves um but large

0:11:40 Tom: Holy shit!

0:11:43 Thomas: No, we

0:11:48 Tom: That's because you guys were dating.

0:11:53 Thomas: Communication is important in a relationship I did

0:11:59 Eli: Thank you yeah uh it was largely about like consent and stuff like that but like this is gonna sound like a super ignorant question were when you guys were in hot did you guys have sex in high school so did how you and your girlfriend figure out birth control on your own how did you get birth control

0:12:12 Tom: No.

0:12:12 Thomas: Yeah, oh my God the stories of trying to get condoms have you not talked about this on the show oh my God, I so we would I'm in shit town USA with three people in it. And fortunately she could drive, even though I wasn't supposed to be driving with her, we'd find like little times, you know, like go somewhere and to hit up a, you gas station, Seven 11 or something. And it was the most uncomfortable thing of, I would go in and try to buy condoms and just pray, just hope and pray nobody in there or the person working there knew me or knew my family or knew anything every single time was uncomfortable and I hated it and it was like I don't know why I didn't just buy 400 at once and get like rip the band-aid off you know just be like all right I'm buying a fucking box of these things to not have to go through this interaction every time this uncomfortable thing but that's how we did that is I just have to yeah

0:12:20 Eli: No sure

0:12:22 Tom: No? No? Ha.

0:12:43 Eli: Did buy buffer products I remember buying buffer products right need

0:13:09 Thomas: Yeah yeah you gotta have the other oh I also oh I'm thirsty I I definitely need a Gatorade too.

0:13:14 Eli: A gatorade no that makes it look like I'm need that for the sex um I also want these chili sex

0:13:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Safe thought process.

0:13:18 Tom: Ha ha I'm gonna sweat on her a lot so I'm to need this gator

0:13:21 Thomas: Exact safe thought process, you have to get a filler product, but it can't be anything that could remotely be related to sex, totally,

0:13:23 Tom: Yeah

0:13:27 Eli: Related right it's uh I'll have this box of cereal which I'm which I I'm not gonna come on at all totally uncom related

0:13:38 Thomas: And in reality, it does not matter, it was some, you know, like old lady at the gas, or somebody, you now, somebody who just, if

0:13:43 Tom: They're just ringing up a product man they don't give a shit

0:13:46 Thomas: Somebody's working in a gas station in Angels Camp, California, the last thing they give give a fuck about is any of this they're just trying to get their next hit of meth or whatever

0:13:54 Eli: Exactly

0:13:53 Tom: They just don't want you to use it and throw it on the floor of their bathroom that's all they care about right

0:13:57 Thomas: Yeah

0:13:57 Eli: Yep that's all all they I had I remember because I when me and my high school girlfriend started having sex I did not tell my parents about it right away because I was so nervous about it so

0:14:10 Thomas: Right I love the right away as though like yeah no I should have told my parents about my sex having immediately but I waited

0:14:12 Tom: Away I

0:14:16 Eli: Absolutely you gotta tell your parents

0:14:17 Tom: Didn't ring the bell my my dad put a sex bell by my bed I'm supposed to ring it every time but he didn't

0:14:21 Thomas: I still haven't told my appearance that lydia and I have had sex I've I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna hope they think it was artificial insemination or something.

0:14:26 Tom: Oh

0:14:25 Eli: I I hope that max feels comfortable to talk to me when you have sex but I didn't so I bought the wrong kinds of condoms I bought because I I I don't know I had a commodore 64 so I looked on the commodore64 I was like what is the safest condom and the safest condoms I don't know if you know this are ones with yeah are the ones with spermicide if you google that they'll be like yeah the ones that are yeah what but that's what google told me yeah no the google was like oh hello you're looking for the most effective condoms so you want spermicide and I don't know if you've ever used condoms with spermicide before but they make everything around them smell like a nurse's office because they're just smell your your privates and the car and everything you've ever been around smells like disinfectant so you would do stuff and then an adult would get in the car and be like hey did you um have this car cleaned because there was a dead body in here and you'd have to be like I

0:14:37 Thomas: Oh, there you go.

0:14:48 Thomas: Safest. Oh. You mean, oh, so most effective. Okay. I was like, are you worried about an accident or something? Worried about it taking your dick off? Yeah.

0:14:52 Tom: Yeah right

0:15:33 Eli: Don't smell anything we got a few months into having sex and then I was like we should really get on the a pill. So I talked to my parents and my parents were cool. I got another consent talk from my dad. I got a lot of consent talks from my Dad, which was useful. It was good and useful. I think it was a little extreme. It worked, so that's good. But my Dad's rule, what he repeated to me genuinely over and over again, was that if you ever hear anything that's not a yes, you get up and you walk across the room which means that several times throughout my life I have for instance leaned on someone's hair and then vaulted myself out of the bed as though she were a spider I just uncovered and been like I'm over here you can't I I can't get touched not touching can't get bent um which

0:15:33 Thomas: Like kind of. Yeah. Oh good.

0:16:24 Thomas: That's fair.

0:16:24 Eli: Again most of my partners have been you know relatively charmed by although a few of them have just been like what and I've been like you you didn't say I don't know what you you said so I'm I'm over here now uh but yeah but yeah they decided that we were gonna go to planned parenthood she was gonna get on the pill um so she got on the pill that was also my first exposure because you know I grew up jewish and in upstate new york so I just like wasn't aware of a like a planned parenthhood protesters and so I got someone handed me a pamphlet on the way in and I just assumed they worked for planned parenthood so we're sitting there waiting I was like god why why does planned parenthood tell you about

0:16:38 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:05 Tom: They seem to really hate their work man

0:17:07 Eli: Yeah there's a fires of hell because I remember it was a jesus pamphlet about the fires of health and I was just like this is a weird thing for them to give you on the way in there's um and

0:17:10 Tom: Yeah

0:17:18 Thomas: I'd never heard of a Planned Parenthood and I had no idea what that was until, I don't know, way later. We don't have any of that.

0:17:19 Eli: Not in angels falls no it's just parenthood or Not

0:17:26 Thomas: No yeah But

0:17:27 Tom: Planned Parenthood was off my radar at the time

0:17:28 Eli: Yeah sure

0:17:30 Thomas: What I find interesting about my stupid parents is I don't think it's not like my dad or my mom was super religious well I guess my mom kinda but it's my mom and dad were never like you should never have said they just never would talk about it. But as a result, I never had any conversation of consent for one, but like no, no conversation of like, yeah, don't get someone pregnant. Now I didn't need to hear that. Like I, I knew that I should not get someone pregnancy and I should, you know, but they never, we just never talk about any of that. So it's kind of, it's a weird thing. Like they're so uncomfortable about everything. It could have resulted if I didn't just, you know, know all this on my own it could have resulted in some ignorance that could have led to bad consequences I don't know no

0:18:17 Eli: Yeah I mean I it was the wild west I in the I remember just the things learning things from random friends who were having sex I mean all that stuff you know the I don't know if you guys had this but like did you I don't want to this is going to sound silly did you learn how to have sex from your friends bragging about sex oh how'd guys learn how to have six sex self-taught really

0:18:37 Thomas: I I just just self-taught yeah

0:18:45 Tom: Is error An error or something, thing is, there's this trial and is it just Error and error, what's error and I

0:18:45 Eli: Yeah You

0:18:51 Thomas: Never, yeah There's no part of me ever that that sought that information

0:18:54 Tom: Even know what that means

0:18:54 Thomas: Yeah I don't either, did You have A Friend Telling You to do things, I don't Well

0:18:55 Tom: Really

0:18:56 Eli: Didn't Ask Your Friend Friends Not Telling, not telling, telling sounds like A like A scary, sad after-school special, no, but you would You, you had Older friends in, I had, let me, I'll just use my own personal experience, I had, I was a drama kid and the drama kids of course are all sleeping with each other, so The older drama kids were, were sleeping with each other and so you'd be like, oh, what's that like, what, what do I do, how, how does it go, and then the older kids would tell you

0:19:02 Thomas: Yeah but Whatever, I mean Instructing You, yeah What What was unclear? I don't know, it's a pretty basic procedure This

0:19:34 Eli: Do everything For me Absolutely 100 Of It was

0:19:36 Tom: I Love It, I Love Eli's response What do you mean, what was Unclear

0:19:39 Eli: On They hit, God handed me a dowel and was like, all right, you're all set, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this dowel, I don't know, I'm just gonna put it on my own knee and then I do a somersault onto you. What is that? I had no idea.

0:19:51 Thomas: Is I Don't Know what the fuck, this is confusing, I don't even know where to go with this Tom, am I nuts What did You I'm Sorry I'm Not

0:19:58 Tom: Yeah I know I'm Sorry I'm Trying

0:19:56 Eli: I'm feeling very vulnerable and gaslighted right now that I'm the only one who didn't know how sex worked. Yeah.

0:20:01 Tom: I'm I I

0:20:01 Thomas: Yeah I, I think you were I, are you talking about doing it well, or just like doing it?

0:20:11 Eli: I understood.

0:20:05 Tom: Wait You're supposed to do a good job, wait I gotta I take a Lot of notes from this show, do it well I

0:20:13 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:20:13 Eli: I understood that The penis went into the vagina, but I also understood that there was supposed to be a lead up to that And That she was also supposed to enjoy herself and that was what I wasn't getting, you know, lessons on.

0:20:21 Thomas: Ah, man. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I guess part of it, I guess so. I think,

0:20:29 Eli: Just Intuited It

0:20:31 Tom: Love How Mad you are About This I Love how mad You are about This, I The

0:20:32 Eli: I'm So Bad I Literally Learned oral Sex from a Sam Kinison stand-up routine, that's how I learned To do It, I was like, oh fuck, I don't think this guy's particularly funny, but I'm gonna try the alphabet, that's fucking a good idea

0:20:41 Thomas: I mean.

0:20:41 Tom: Alphabet Well Wait a minute, you can't just say the alphabet and say yeah, I don't whether you, what, what

0:20:50 Thomas: Yeah, do

0:20:49 Eli: Yeah Sam Kinisan Had You're Supposed to Do the alphabet with Your tongue Yeah, he had a Whole bit About that, where it was like, and then if she enjoys it, that's when you stop And do this See

0:20:54 Thomas: The alphabet with the, ah, come on, Tom. Um, I

0:20:54 Tom: Oh Okay, all Right Wait Cursive, Or Standard capitals, like, I, what's the I

0:21:09 Eli: Okay, so I think Tom just needs this Conversation, this Is What's going on

0:21:12 Tom: Just

0:21:10 Thomas: Know. I don't, I mean, I just, I don't know what to say. I w I had the one longtime girlfriend and I dunno, I'm just a talker. I guess I always, we always talked about everything and I dunno. Didn't need, I, there's no, I can't think of a question question that I had for anybody.

0:21:34 Eli: That's Perfect, I will say, because Thomas, you're a fantastic interviewer, like I was listening, I had a long drive the other day and was telling you this off air, but like I was listening and I always am impressed at what a great interviewer you are, and now I'm picturing high school Thomas being like, now that's, that's really interesting, now when you say that, that feels Good, what do you mean by that? Like, uh, not to be the negatron Here, but if it stopped to feel good, uh, what would, like, you just interviewed Your way into being good at sex, uh

0:21:53 Tom: It's Serious Cunnilingus Only.

0:22:00 Thomas: I, I don't I don't know that I was good or bad. It just didn't ever, none of this, I had none of these thoughts or concerns. It was just like, I felt like what mattered in terms of what I needed to know was something that my partner could tell me. Right. I mean, like I, if I, if I was doing something wrong, I would learn that from my partner, not from like some friend who was telling me to do the alphabet, you know what I mean? Ah.

0:22:24 Eli: I see, I always felt like you were supposed to, I don't know, as a young person I felt like you were supposed to show up with all the knowledge and That, that, like, communicating with partners, I didn't learn that until I was much Older

0:22:31 Thomas: Yeah, well Here's Here's Another way that helped, because I could never actually get any alone time, you know, and it was everything, oh my god, I have to tell, I, okay, now I'm just going nuts because I can't remember what stories I've told, have I told the story of us, of the car fucking dying on the driveway I am, okay, I'm so sorry, I think it's because I'm så tired, because, you know, I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I have this fucking son who wakes us up at 4:30 AM every month. So I'm, I'm terrible, terribly sorry if I've already told the story, but it's really fucking funny.

0:22:36 Eli: No

0:22:52 Tom: No.

0:23:03 Eli: My Son Soon we Hit the Patreon Goal

0:23:03 Thomas: Um, it is, it ist Really funny. So the only times we could ever find, you we had to be fucking, I don't know, Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible, trying to find the, the, in the, the innovation that the human brain can display when trying to figure out how to fuck your girlfriend when you're, you Know, 17 Or whatever, yeah It's, I could have, if somehow what had needed to happen was I had to solve cold fusion to fuck my girlfriend, I would have solved cold Yeah That's what they should Do, they should be like, yeah, your girlfriend Yep, she's naked right behind this door, just plug in the formula for cold fusion right there

0:23:05 Eli: Oh Absolutely Yep Hundred Percent Yep Gold Fusion Yeah A C student would Have it done in 10 minutes, yeah

0:23:41 Tom: Yeah,

0:23:41 Thomas: I Yeah I will do it, and uh, yeah, if I get it done early, do I get more Time, yeah, yeah, totally would Have worked

0:23:46 Eli: Yeah Yeah, so It Turns out Einstein was wrong, um I figured it out, I

0:23:48 Thomas: Uh Yeah After You come back, so what can you tell us, more, what, I don't even remember what you're Talking About What Yeah, so There was, so we would figure out the times and what I figured out was, you know, when we were supposed to be coming home somehow, because she was such a, like, good solid person, I think they let me drive with her, like, senior year, because is why we weren't ever allowed to drive with anyone. I've told the story because there was a big accident, some kids died, and my parents, and this is a rule I agree with, we're not allowed to ride with anyone under the age of 18 ever.

0:23:57 Eli: Don't Remember Anything It Was good, I guess

0:23:57 Tom: I didn't.

0:24:27 Eli: Yeah I'm

0:24:28 Thomas: But I think By the time, and this was true of many things with my parents. They were so fucking exhausted by the day that they put through three kids, and I was there and they just barely cared. And so in senior year of high school, they let me ride with her, mostly because also they were lazy and wouldn't pick me up or take me anywhere. And so those things combined to be like, like, all right, she can drive you home sometime, you know? And so I'd figure out, the benefit of living in the middle of nowhere with a massive driveway in the forest is when we were going to come home and park the car, park the card down the hill a little bit, you know, out of sight. And we'd

0:24:29 Eli: Saying Perfect Yeah

0:25:04 Thomas: Get, get stuff done in the car. That was the way to get stuff done. I have had so much sex in confined spaces. You'd think I was like a circus performer, performer, like I've learned how To like put my own leg around my neck to be able to just squeeze in enough, you know, it's just nuts, like, there's the, the space, and it's, here's what they don't tell you, here's what the, no One who tells you about this doesn't tell you, um, it's so fucking hot, so Fucking Hot, we, and, and sorry, not in a sexy way, like fit, like, temperature-wise Apologies

0:25:12 Eli: Yeah

0:25:13 Tom: This

0:25:24 Eli: So Hot, it's So hot You're Dying And you were in California I was in upstate, you were in the fucking desert, you were being baked like a baby in a car.

0:25:34 Thomas: Yes Yes. Yes. And it was complicated. We'd have to get like the car manual out to figure out like, okay, if we, can this seat go down here? Like maybe this one can, you know, to find the room. There was never enough room to stretch out. One time we tried doing like, okay, what we'll do it with the trunk and the back seats down. So that gives us a little leg room, but that was, we were sweating so bad. We get done and we're just completely drenched in sweat. I was like, we're not doing that again, that was awful, that was so warm, but anyway, the driveway story, so one night we do this and then the car won't start back up because the battery has died and it's, it's, this is, and by the way, this is not

0:26:21 Tom: Feels like A humble brag about how long you lasted as a teenager.

0:26:22 Thomas: No. No.

0:26:24 Eli: Sure.

0:26:25 Tom: I'm just saying.

0:26:25 Thomas: This is This was pure terror because this is not Eli's parents, this is my parents, and now the car is in the drive, like stuck in the bottom of the hill, um, not starting, and it's pretty fucking obvious why it would be stuck down there. And so I am, again, I'm going into Einstein mode, I'm just like panicked, so I remember that my dad has this like battery thing, you know, one of those like portable batteries that can help shut your car.

So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna run up, by the way, I'm running up this quarter mile straight uphill, is exhausting, I run uphill, I bet you also turn into Usain Bolt when you got to do these things, I run it uphill, I get the thing, I'm, okay, I couldn't figure out how it worked though, I was like, you know, I didn't know anything about cars. Like I know you, yeah, you put it on the battery and I was like, okay, I think the black clamp goes on that one. The red clamp goes On that one, but something about the black clamp to this day. I don't you don't put it On the black part of the battery. You put it ON like the

0:26:25 Tom: Yeah.

0:26:29 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:47 Eli: Of course Yeah. You gotta sneak Yep. Hmm. Sure.

0:27:04 Tom: You're a teenager. You

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah, something that's ground And that I had no understanding of that, that was the part, and so I did, I put them on the battery and it wasn't working, I was like, oh my fucking God, come on, and so I couldn't figure it out and eventually I had to give it, because she also had to get home, you know, it was like, I I eventually, like, fucking, all right, we'll go surrender and just hope they don't fucking kill us, you know what I mean, like I just had in here, like, all right, and I just was like, I came up with a lie, but I was like, there's no fucking way this is gonna work, I'm just gonna go up and say that you, you almost hit a deer and stopped, and then it wouldn't start back up again, and I went and did this story to my dad, and um, I think he either, either bought it, which I doubt he did, cause he's, you know, he's pretty smart, or just, you know, it was like, not willing, he was like, fine, whatever, you know, like not wanting

0:27:17 Tom: On a ground somewhere. On the car. Yeah.

0:27:32 Eli: Yeah. Right. Right.

0:28:06 Thomas: To get into it, because he, pretended to buy it, at least, and then I watched him take the fucking same battery thing that I had tried to use and do it correctly and start up the car, and I was like, and you know what, I also couldn't say what I also can say was, Oh, I already tried that. That doesn't fucking work.

0:28:20 Eli: Hey.

0:28:23 Thomas: So I was watching him.

0:28:22 Tom: Yeah. Right, you couldn't even have like a revelatory moment, you're like, oh, like that that's how you fucking do it, okay.

0:28:26 Thomas: Yep. Yep. I was just like oh I could have just clamped black thing on part of the hood, I was so mad, I coulda gotten out of it, I was so close.

0:28:32 Eli: Dad. I'm just gonna take a couple of pictures of you on my cell phone because I love you so much right now, just real quick, uh now, Tom, this brings me of course to my questions for you, because of the three of us, you are the only one who has kids, who I assume you have given the talk to.

0:28:39 Thomas: Oh god, I mean We all know that Arlo fucks, but yeah. We'll go, okay.

0:28:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:28:55 Eli: Right. What? But Arlo is an ungenerous lover's

0:28:57 Tom: But very ungenerously He's gonna need a second talk.

0:29:00 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, I will be that when we switch kids, which we just hit the Patreon, my first thing is I'm going to take Arlo, and I'm gonna take a mango, I'm gonna slice it, and I'm gonna show him the right way, we're gonna watch some Sam Kinnison.

0:29:13 Tom: Yeah. It's funny because I have had, it's funny how the talk happens now, I, it, I've got two boys that are, uh, you know, in their mid-teens, but only the one of them, my, my stepson, um, he's dating, my biological, my son has not had any, any success, he's not really dating, um, he's asked a few girls out but it hasn't, it hasn't really worked for him so far, so, um, it's not to say that he doesn't, he shouldn't have a conversation, we, he's very much, I've checked in with him on that, his mom has spoken to him about that, when he starts having a relationship with someone I will be sure to check in much more intensely with him, but I've had a number of conversations with my stepson since he's had a few girlfriends now, you, it's interesting how it's, how it is done now, so like, I will say like a lot of stuff is done via text instead of like sitting down. He prefers to have serious.

0:30:02 Thomas: Oh Sorry. You, you texting him about it, okay.

0:30:07 Tom: Yeah. Well, text would be in the other room, but

0:30:09 Thomas: I wasn't sure if you were, like, a lot of the sex that kids are having is virtual.

0:30:12 Tom: Oh yeah. Well, that's probably true too. But like, as far as the sex talk and talking about sex in general, a lot lot that stuff, like he prefers to, and he'll go to his mom as readily as he'll go to anyone else. In fact, I think he goes to his mother much more readily than he goes to anyone else, but I've reached out to him a number of times via text. I wrote a blog for him, unsurprisingly, on when to begin intimacy and kind of like what to watch out for emotionally as far as that's concerned and consent. And I sent it to him and asked him to read it.

0:30:14 Thomas: Oh, and Tom, I saw you gave him that 50% off your course coupon. I thought that was

0:30:48 Eli: Yes, use

0:30:48 Tom: I did. I I did, but he didn't take me up on it, which I thought was rude.

0:30:50 Thomas: Generous. Yeah.

0:30:51 Tom: It's a waste of a discount code.

0:30:49 Eli: The code I'm your son for 50

0:30:53 Tom: So look,

0:30:53 Eli: Off Tom's

0:30:55 Thomas: It's not comped. I mean, he's not going to give it to for free, but like, you know.

0:30:56 Eli: No obviously yeah yeah

0:30:58 Tom: He's a stepchild. He's not, I mean, he'S getting 50% off. That's not it's that's the best I can do.

0:31:01 Eli: Tom paid a hundred percent for those pictures his dad sold him so

0:31:04 Tom: I got it. But I did I did buy him condoms and I into came his room and I was like, all right, you know, I'm in here's I bought you this and I bought I was like, look, here's the deal, man. Like you get as many as you want. You have an unlimited the kids, the kids have talked to them all like give an unlimited condom budget. You have an unlimited abortions budget. Like, that's it. Like, you, I'll buy you all the condoms you want. If you make a mistake, all the abortions are on me, like a hundred percent of the time. Like, you come to me if there's problems.

0:31:06 Thomas: My God. Wow.

0:31:33 Tom: You come to me if there's concerns. Yeah, I get a bogo over here, but we got a punch card.

0:31:33 Thomas: There's even a buy one, get one free. If

0:31:39 Tom: The curry punch card, but

0:31:39 Thomas: You only want 25% off of the class, I'll give you an extra few abortions. We can work it up, you know, the haggle with me. Well,

0:31:43 Eli: Yeah, you don't

0:31:44 Tom: Yeah, we've it's, we've had real serious talks about it and and it's, it's resulted in, but they're not like, they're a little more awkward for me because, uh, it's fucking weird to think about your kids having sex. Um, we're not really like, we don't really facilitate it in the sense that like, we make them keep the door open when they're like together. I don't, we're like not like, yeah, just go and do whatever you want, you know, our house is a fuck zone, or whatever like, we don't do that and

0:32:07 Thomas: That's weird. What? Okay.

0:32:09 Eli: Want to be the fuck zone. Because there was always one set of fuck zone parents in the neighborhood.

0:32:12 Tom: We're not the fuck zone man Yeah.

0:32:13 Thomas: Now, What, now you're fine with you're literally providing the the fucking paraphernalia for sex, but you can't do it here? I don't

0:32:14 Tom: I don't WANT THEM HAVING SEX, yeah, of course, yeah, absolutely. Well, I know you can't. I know they're fucking in my house first of all. I, I know THEY'RE FUCKING IN MY HOUSE BECAUSE, RIGHT, and I am a hundred percent certain of it because they get together rather 95%.

0:32:26 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:32:30 Eli: That's mostly what the talk is, I know you're fucking in my house.

0:32:34 Tom: Yeah.

0:32:33 Thomas: But then why don't you just be like, please close the door, just for the love of God, please close the door?

0:32:37 Tom: Because I want them having less sex. I absolutely, I don't want to make it easy for them to have sex. They're teenagers.

0:32:38 Thomas: Hmm. This this is interesting, yeah.

0:32:46 Eli: Yeah, I'm very torn here because I'm 100% emotionally team Tom But then intellectually I'm like, okay, but where do I want them to have sex?

0:32:46 Tom: Yeah.

0:32:54 Thomas: It's sort of like the weird thing, like, it's fine as long as you don't do it here, just feels like contradictory. To me

0:32:59 Tom: Yeah, I tell them it's not really fine. Like, I don'T think they're ready to, I DON'T think he's ready to have seX. I DON't think, emotionally speaking, and, you know, like, I know that teenagers have sex, right? Most teenagers teenagers have sex. I get that. I totally understand. But I,

0:33:00 Thomas: Okay. Oh, well, yeah, is how old are we talking? Isn't he still pretty young? Oh, okay.

0:33:15 Tom: 16, it's normal age.

0:33:17 Thomas: 16? Yeah, yeah. No, that's about yeah, so

0:33:18 Tom: It's pretty, pretty, normal age, but I also, like, I think that it's not normal, but despite it being normal, I also know that I don't think that he's emotionally or intellectually equipped to deal with any of the potential fallout from that activity, all. So I've got to get the kid condoms because otherwise he's going to impregnate his girlfriend because he's an idiot, you know, know because he's a 16 year old boy and they're all idiots but maybe

0:33:34 Thomas: Sure. Here's what I want to know, Tom, because I've had, this same thought where I'm like, yeah, they need to be old enough to deal with all that. And then my next thought, and this is what I want you to, both your thoughts on, is, wait a minute, but is there really that much to it, absent, absent the Christian bullshit, the, all the, like the puritanical bullshit, all the baggage that I know I had from my upbringing, if you take all that away, and that, and, and you're left with a healthy attitude towards sex, is it the kind of thing where, I don't know, maybe it isn't that you're talking like it's this big thing that your son needs to be emotionally prepared for. And it's a massive thing. If you take away all that baggage, maybe what's left is it's not that big of a deal.

0:34:22 Tom: I don't know I I don't HAVE ANY IDEA HOW TO PULL AWAY I don't know HOW TO I DON'T KNOW HOW to divorce myself of my own baggage around it right like I have I I can I can intellectualize around it but I can't strip myself of of my feelings around it I think there is a a real biological danger to impregnating his girlfriend that has nothing to do with values that I'm worried about you if he impregnates his girlfriend and his girlfriend decides to not terminate that pregnancy then

0:34:53 Eli: Yes, that's

0:34:26 Thomas: Yeah. Ooh, that's a huge one.

0:34:54 Eli: A that's a big, that's a big thing, um,

0:34:55 Tom: We are left with the financial and lifetime fallout from that bad decision we are all left with that as a family

0:35:02 Thomas: Oh, that'S a very interesting question. I just realized for we have Eli here. So I feel like we can Ask Eli, being raised with like more of an open attitude toward all these things. Did you feel like, it was that big big of a deal that you needed to be emotionally prepared for having, what mean, do you feel like it was different for you than it would have been for like me?

0:35:07 Tom: No

0:35:21 Eli: Yeah, it was definitely different. There was sort of a understanding that I was gonna have sex, that it wasn't a huge deal. There was a lot of emphasis on consent, um, there was a lot of emphasis on like how to not get pregnant, um, and there there were situations that arose where that had to be dealt with, um, and my, my parents, uh, yeah, my parents came through in those scenarios, yeah.

0:35:43 Thomas: Wow. Really? Wow. I didn't have any of that.

0:35:46 Eli: Yeah. No. That, of, one of my high school girlfriends did get pregnant, uh, ended up needing an abortion. Her parents were very strict, um, pretty religious, um, and so we were, yeah.

0:35:51 Thomas: My God. I would have been murdered. I never would have seen the light of day again in my life.

0:35:55 Eli: Yeah. She was living in a Thomas world where basically like this was not not. I'm sorry.

0:36:00 Thomas: Oh. So you never heard from her, you never heard from her again then after this

0:36:04 Eli: I was going to say, I shouldn't say she was a Thomas World. She was adjacent to, she was in the same galaxy as Thomas World, so we went to my parents, and my parents and I went, and it was taken care of. And it was actually, it was actually a really positive experience, experience. I know that, uh, there's a lot of like onus around abortion, um, but she has since publicly spoken about this, about like what a positive experience it was, and has then, uh, become like a Planned Parenthood volunteer because she had, like, I this is gonna sound so weird to say, but like the incredibly positive experience that we had at Planned Parenthood fundamentally changed my view of sex. I realized that it wasn't, we hadn't done anything wrong. All the adults involved were like, hey, this is a thing that happened and like explained the science to us. And was just I was we were just like, yeah,

0:36:35 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, so that's kind of what I'm talking about is, if in that attitude, in that, in world where we have that healthy attitude, which is what I want to instill with my kids, I don't know that I feel like there's, you're like, oh, you have to have this incredible maturity to be able to deal with this thing, I think it, you know, maybe it can be less of a big deal.

0:37:16 Tom: I don'T KNOW LIKE THEY HAVE TO BE MATURE ENOUGH TO COME TO YOU WHEN THERE'S A PROBLEM UM AND NOT EVERYBODY'S GONNA DO THAT EVEN IF YOU'VE SET UP EVERYBody'S DIFFERENT BUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH WORK YOU DO TO SETUP A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR KIDS WHERE YOU TELL THEM THEY CAN COME TO you for everything there is something that is qualitatively different about sex that we all implicitly understand, right? It is an activity that is not the same as any other physical, hands-on activity with other people, and right, the example I would offer is, I like could give my dad a back rub but not a hand job, like, one is acceptable, the other is fucking weird, right? Sex is qualitatively different than other things, and people have feelings about sex that are just related to those qualitative differences.

Kids need to be mature enough, and and they have to have established a relationship that, like, they problem. And you can trust that they will come to you, and they'll come to you early enough, and that they'll, it's not a matter of like puritanical baggage. It's, it's really just a matter of like, is this, there is this activity you can do with your body that can have real consequences. Like, it can have disease related consequences.

0:37:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. That's fair.

0:38:18 Tom: Can, it it involves parts of your life and parts of your body that you otherwise keep very much private from your family, and like, in order for you to have and seek advice on this subject, you have to be able to be comfortable breaking down that barrier and saying, hey, I made a mistake and, you know, impregnated my girlfriend, or I think I've got genital warts or whatever fucking happens, like, there's, that's like a level of maturity that, that you can't count on a 15 or 16 year old person from having, yeah.

0:38:44 Thomas: Yeah. Well At the very least, though, I think you would agree, so, like, the traditional conservative thought would be like, if you're not mature enough to be a parent, then you're mature enough to have sex, and surely you don't agree with that, right? Like, I feel like, a because I know Tom doesn't think anyone should ever be a apparent, so I think he should I'm pretty sure Tom's committed to the idea that you can have sex but not want to be, be a parent. But like, I don't think that you need to be mature enough to have a kid to be able to have sex. I don't think that should be how it is.

0:39:03 Tom: Well, No. What I what I wrote to what I write, to to Donovan, when I wrote about this, is, I really don't think that you are ready to have sex until you are mature enough to buy condoms on your own, right?

0:39:25 Thomas: That's fair.

0:39:25 Tom: So that was, I, I created, I created two sort of litmus tests, and then I broke them, realizing that, and I don't think you're mature enough to have sex until you're comfortable having a conversation with your partner about sex and consent, so I

0:39:38 Thomas: And I think I'm going to be like. You're, I, not mature enough. So, I have sex until you're willing to call the sprinkler guy for me and talk to him about what's going on in our yard. I mean, it's just a baseline level of maturity that you need to have.

0:39:42 Eli: See,

0:39:50 Tom: But I do think a lot of kids start having sex before they're comfortable talking about sex because, because our bodies are tuned to do it but like with

0:39:56 Thomas: Well, talking about out with who? Cause I'm still never to this day comfortable talking about sex. Oh, with their partner.

0:39:59 Tom: Their partner with their part

0:40:03 Thomas: What the fuck?

0:40:03 Tom: I think a lot of people are still, I, I think a lot people are very uncomfortable having, you know, you got to pull yourself out of the equation you got you got a but

0:40:10 Eli: Yeah, no.

0:40:08 Thomas: This is so weird to me. Yeah. I can't, I, this is the, I literally cannot understand this where

0:40:13 Tom: You know other people, like, you know, that, like, we live in a world where most people are, I mean, many adults are, are

0:40:19 Thomas: They have sex, but they can't talk about it.

0:40:21 Eli: Yes, I want to.

0:40:23 Thomas: Whatthefuck?

0:40:23 Eli: Yeah, I wanna.

0:40:23 Tom: You you what are you kidding? Look at any survey on sex and sexual attitudes. Married couples have a difficult time talking with each other about sex.

0:40:31 Thomas: All Okay. I get it. But I guess I was assuming that none of our kids are going to be Christian, you know, know, fucking fundamentalists or something

0:40:38 Eli: No,

0:40:38 Tom: But I don't think that's the issue. I think that some people are really just private.

0:40:39 Eli: But it was me. Me.

0:40:42 Tom: It

0:40:42 Eli: I wasn't private, but I, I remember being so afraid to talk to my girlfriends about whether or not I was good. It's, it was truly not until I, I, because there was, there was a very transformative moment, I had a relationship with an older person which in respect wasn't awesome, but That's a different story, um, in college, and that person talked to me about like communication and all. All the questions got answered in that partnership. But before then, yeah, I remember like as much as a stereotype as it is, I remember a lot of high school being the like, did you come? And then being like, what? And me being like. You know, that's the words that someone says.

0:40:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:21 Tom: I will say like I want to like like I think there there's... there's an idea in the atheist sort of like secular community that all sexual discomfort and baggage comes from religious underpinnings, and that's nonsense. Some of it comes from people just being, well, yes, the idea that all of it come from that, I know you're not saying that, but there's a pervasive idea that that's the bulk of it

0:41:24 Eli: Fuck you, Thomas.

0:41:37 Thomas: I wouldn't say that. No No, sorry, I agree with it sorry I grew with the statement you're saying, I'm saying that's not my view, apologies. I yeah, I, I should

0:41:48 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:48 Tom: Yeah right. So but I think that, like, there's a lot of people who are uncomfortable talking about sex because it's private, or because it involves their body, or because it revolves parts of their bodies that they're not personally comfortable with or performance issues

0:42:03 Thomas: But with their part, that's the part I'm hung up on with their partner that I can't physically, I just can't physically imagine that what if she says you're bad then

0:42:05 Tom: Yeah right what

0:42:08 Eli: What if she says you're bad? What if he's like, oh, no, this is terrible. I hate it.

0:42:13 Tom: Yeah

0:42:14 Thomas: Great, then you'd be like, oh, okay, what do I need to do, let's get, let's, uh, let's improve my performance here. I don't understand.

0:42:18 Tom: But some people have emotions and aren't robots, I guess would be the thing you

0:42:20 Thomas: Oh, I have emotions, but

0:42:21 Eli: Some I This is why Thomas doesn't want to talk about sex, because he was naturally good at the fucking first time. This is your interviewer skill all over again. God damn it.

0:42:22 Thomas: I, I, I don'T understand. I'm true. I'M NOT TRYING TO DO A BIT. I GENUINELY HAVE, I'M LOST. I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE.

0:42:36 Tom: You, that doesn't, that doesn't sound, not like you, but that doesn't sound, none of that sounds like other people, knowing that many married couples are unwilling to talk to each other about sex.

0:42:46 Thomas: I am ABSOLUTELY FAMILIAR WITH THE FACT THAT SOME PEOPLE'S JUST REALLY DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT IN POLITE CONVERSATIONS, WHATEVER, YOU KNOW, BUT LIKE, like I'm not privy to people's conversations with their partners, and it would be insane for me to find out that a lot of them were never discussing sex in any way. I don't know how that would work. I'm, I'm baffled. I'm going to walk around the world with a new mind now. Like I don't, this is the weirdest thing.

0:43:05 Eli: Now Thomas becomes the guy who wants to talk about sex, he's just sitting in the hockey locker room. You guys are talking to your partners about sex, right? Because we're

0:43:17 Thomas: Yeah. I don't want to talk about sex. I want to talking about talking to your partner about sex, yeah,

0:43:22 Eli: All talking to our wives about fucking, okay, because my, my podcasting partners are gaslighting me, and I just need to know we're all we're all doing will want won't lists. I'm

0:43:25 Tom: Well

0:43:26 Thomas: I, this This is so, okay, here's maybe part of it. Maybe it's worth finishing real quick. The thing I was talking about with what made me think of the driveway story, what made me think that was, because we could never have sex, we did a lot of phone stuff. And so maybe that opens up the conversation a little bit, because we're always doing phone stuff. So it was like, oh, let's, you know, we would kind of take turns, like, okay, you do this time, you do a little bit of, you know, fancy stuff, and then next time I'll do it, and maybe that helped, like, I don't know, like, just, I'd never, I was, I was always pretty conscious of what was going on. I don't know, I'd, oh

0:44:05 Eli: I'm trying to think of poor, if someone would be like, hey, 17-year-old Eli, it's your turn to do dirty talk, I would pay infinity dollars for the recording of him being like, I'm gonna, gonna punch you right in the boobs, sure

0:44:15 Thomas: My god oh it was, it was terrible, don't get me wrong, but like, it was still, but what mattered is it worked for us, like, it was yeah, like, it, it was definitely not mature fucking, you would not want this published, if this was, you know, the old horror about the poetry you wrote when you were a kid, yeah, this would be, if this was uncovered, I would jump off a cliff, like, I would die, but no

0:44:26 Eli: Yeah the erotica is way worse okay so now we have three things to find, we're gonna get, uh, the diaries and Thomas's erotika

0:44:48 Thomas: My god, but it worked. For The important thing was it worked for us, like, we was, and that, that's the part where it's like, as long as she was happy and I was happy, then whatever fucking weird immature stuff we were saying was good, I don't know, this is just blowing my mind I don't understand it I

0:45:00 Eli: Sure this this I'm I have I've

0:45:04 Tom: I I I'm I'm amazed that you're amazed, like, even if it's not like this

0:45:08 Eli: Never felt more attacked, like, I'm feeling the cognitive dissonance so strong, I'm gonna start crying and accusing Thomas of murder, I no I actually I actually think that, like, I, this is my guess, this is my gander, um, and I think it's actually really sweet, I think it's actually that you're just such a sensitive person and such an other-concerned person, that like, the idea of, like, not checking in with a partner, not talking to a partner, that's just a toxicity you never got

0:45:13 Tom: Is such a weird conversation this is the weirdest one we've ever had. Mean,

0:45:17 Thomas: Yeah, I, this, I'm just, I just misunderstand? Am I misunderstanding something? Yeah, but you're talking about even talking about it at all. Let alone talking about how how to be better for your partner. Even you're saying people don't even talk about it all with their married part with their spouses.

0:45:52 Eli: Yeah I

0:45:53 Tom: If you look at any blog writing or any advice from almost any therapist on sexual issues with married couples, the advice that is most clearly and unequivocally given as first advice is to communicate with your partner because it is not assumed. Well, but if everybody, Thomas, was already doing that, then we wouldn't have that advice as the primary piece of advice for married couples, it's it's

0:46:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that'S fair.

0:46:19 Eli: Do it now, by the way, I do, do it now in case anyone's wondering, I talk all the time, you, man, I talk all that, I ask for feedback I have a survey so

0:46:21 Tom: You know it's because people don't do it

0:46:24 Thomas: Well yeah, you could always do it more, I guess, I'm just talking about the baseline level of, like, do they pretend it's not happening, do you go into some mode where you, like, are agreeing that you're in a fucking fugue state and, or something, I don't understand, I gonna be really embarrassed by this being released, like, is this gonna be, well, then

0:46:42 Eli: Thomas

0:46:44 Tom: I can't see why you would no I think

0:46:45 Eli: I hope so because if everyone is like, you and Tom are crazy, I quit the podcast, I quit, I started a new podcast called My Penis, this works great, thank you, I have a great penis and I use it super good

0:46:46 Tom: Yeah I, yeah I mean, like, with it, I'm not going to go into, but like, also, like, some people, and I'll raise my hand, some people as young people particularly, and then they don't have positive experiences. Their sexual experiences may not be joyful or positive. And so that also can create a tremendous amount of reticence to talk to the person that they're having these negative experiences with about sex. So there's a lot of reasons why people are uncomfortable talking to each other about sex. And so I think that's just like, like in my mind, when I was thinking about what advice I wanted to give to my stepson about what are like, at what point do I think that you've reached a level of maturity where I think, yeah, like sex, sex will be a positive force in your life and you'll be able to have good, healthy, positive sex in your life.

0:47:52 Tom: Well, I think it's when you're able to, you have comfortable, open conversations with your partner. And if you can do that at 17, fucking, that's great, you know and if yeah

0:48:00 Thomas: I guess I agree yeah, under the idea that that was a possible thing, you wouldn't, do. Do. Sure. Yeah.

0:48:02 Tom: Yeah yeah right, so, and you know, I think if you are able to go by your own contraception, like, without, like, feeling like you have to, like right

0:48:06 Thomas: No. If you're able to talk to my sprinkler guy and get that done for me, I can't wait. I'm going to get my son to do so many things for me. Yeah, no, you got to be able to fucking, you gotta, clear off all the, uh... the leaves out of the driveway. It's the only way that you're mature enough to...

0:48:15 Tom: No

0:48:25 Thomas: To do it.

0:48:19 Eli: Absolutely yeah it's like contract dad on TikTok, have you seen this guy? Oh, He's got like a four-year-old daughter and he just has her sign very funny contracts for like candy and desserts, right?

0:48:28 Thomas: No, what is it?

0:48:29 Tom: Oh

0:48:36 Eli: So it'll be like I will never go to Coachella, it's a 30-year contract Contract and it's for a donut I I

0:48:37 Thomas: That's funny.

0:48:36 Tom: I've seen that yes I saw that she gets like a rhesus for it or something something

0:48:44 Eli: Will not have a location where and they're all really healthy and cool, like none of them are like I won't fuck boys or yeah, none of them are uncool, but they're like, I won't have a location wedding the dad has to fly more than four hours to be at. It's very oh

0:48:44 Thomas: That's funny I was gonna say yeah

0:48:54 Tom: Sure

0:48:56 Thomas: So Here's something, I, I am realizing though, I wanted to mention now that I think about it, though, as open as I want to be, and like, I honestly, I think I probably will end up being the house where people fuck it, because I can't, I can't deal with the hypocrisy of yes, have sex, but not here, I can't deal with that, I feel like, I, safe place, I'd rather here than like, like fucking in a public place or some shit, you know, I don't know. But anyway, the thing I'm realizing is I might tell Arlo, if your partner, if assuming he's straight, if you have a girlfriend and she is pro-life, you can't have sex.

0:49:28 Eli: 100, and that that message was sent really hardcore to me, which was like, you need to sit down and you need to have a conversation because that was, you need to have a conversation, you cannot ever have sex with someone who is not 100 sure that they don't want a kid, um, and I know because in college I had the opportunity to have sex with someone and I was like running through my checklist, and I was like, obviously, and they were like, actually no, I'm an adopted kid and so I don't believe in abortion, and I was like, how about some hand stuff and they were like, because, but yeah, no, I think that's super duper important, Tom, I have a question for you, I actually have a question for both of you, because my worry is, where does the sex talk stop, right?

0:49:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:50:05 Tom: What?

0:50:12 Eli: Okay

0:50:13 Tom: Do you mean, what, what do you mean?

0:50:14 Eli: So like obviously you do the anatomical part, the boys and the girls and the penis and the vagina and I

0:50:20 Thomas: Doesn't. OK, don't you rely on sex ed in school for that, though?

0:50:23 Eli: I don't really, are you kidding? Did you have sex? I had sex then miss Miss Yvonne told us that if you hung out at a gas station to get high, when you went home to make a can of soup you would light on fire and explode. Load I'm nothing that that woman said was useful, yes, that was the one of the first days she was like and, and if you do meth, if you du MDMA, you'll die the first time you do it, like, there's that woman, yeah

0:50:24 Tom: Yeah yeah

0:50:25 Thomas: Yes I had sex ed that's fair, yeah no, we had a lot of that, but this but the sex, this is interesting, the sex ed curriculum was decent, and I don't know if it's a California thing, like, I think even though I'm in Shittown USA, I think that the curriculum they're required to do was actually pretty good, it

0:50:49 Eli: I'm not oh ours was terrible, yep

0:51:02 Tom: I don't remember much of ours, I remember it was very disease focused, so ours was super super disease focused, lots of pictures of like, you know, boiled dicks or whatever happens and just all this crazy shit so it's just but

0:51:07 Eli: Yes but

0:51:14 Thomas: Could get boiled geez, glad I avoided that one, yeah

0:51:19 Tom: Like, I, I don't remember any, here, here, here's what I think the truth is, you don't really have to have the anatomical conversation, the the reality is that your, you're not going to believe me on this, but your kids are going to have a cell phone before you think they're going to be anatomic they will have figured that out before you think they figured that out they

0:51:26 Thomas: I, I don't think so. Oh, fuck.

0:51:35 Eli: I'll know that they googled it because I have have a clone

0:51:37 Tom: They will have figured out that part, the part you're going going to have to talk to him about. You're going to have to the kids about pornography and ethical pornography. You are going talk about sex, consent, what's realistic to do as far as sex is concerned. You have to tell them, hey, the stuff you see online is not the stuff you are going to want your girlfriend to do. That's not the kind of stuff people generally do. Here is how you manage expectations around sex that may differ from what you have seen online. Because Cause again, these are like, you know, I'm watching a bunch of fucking varsity level shit on fucking, you know, porn hub.

And then trying to replicate that fucking day one out of the gate. You have to have that conversation with them. You Have to have conversations that go beyond consent with them to talk about like, Hey, look, you're going to want to let her lead, right? Like she's going to be, this is what we did for, for Donovan, for example, like she gets to decide what you guys do, that's that's how that's gonna work, like you're young, you guys don't know anything, you're both a couple of knuckleheads, like you don't push for things, you don't, she like gets to decide

0:51:37 Eli: Yeah yeah

0:51:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:52:45 Tom: The pace and the activities, and if she's not having fun, you guys are done, that's it. And that's how you manage, like, your sex life and you, that openness that you want to have.

0:52:45 Eli: You don't push for things, it's so important right but like here's the thing that's the question is like, you know, how much do you explain about lube, you know, see

0:52:58 Tom: It's well it's not, I, I mean, you just, I, lube is useful, use it on anything that is going to go inside of your girlfriend, ask her her thoughts on it, no

0:53:16 Eli: This is why I need you, Tom, because I 100 with what, with my purest of hearts, would have talked about putting stuff up my own ass, that's, there's no way I wouldn't, I because I would have been like I would been like lupus for putting anything inside her, or you, if you want to put stuff inside you, that's also a thing, and then I'm, then I'm googling pictures of an entrainer to send my son this is I know thank

0:53:24 Tom: You would not, you would Would not.

0:53:37 Thomas: Here is here is my conundrum. And I think it's it's the same as Eli, but for different reasons, because as I've described to you, so much of my life and becoming a better person and healing from the massive amounts of crap that I was given is uncomfortable. So many things are uncomfortable to me because naturally I, my first reaction is shit. So my first react to going outside my house is like, well, fuck that. Why would I ever leave my house?

You know, like I just have all these things that are kind of my baseline is like, well, that's a discomfort that I need to work through because that sucks and I, I don't want to suck. And so therefore, with something like this where it's like, well, what's the proper amount of talking sex with your kids, I cannot rely on my personal feelings to at all tell me what's appropriate or not. So I'm very scared that I'm going to do that, what you're talking about, Eli, where I'm like telling my son, like, yeah, no, you put something up for your ass, you know, maybe some people are into that, you might. And that then, like, I'll be reported to the police or something. Like I, I literally,

0:54:21 Eli: You yes exactly

0:54:36 Thomas: I don't know.

0:54:36 Eli: Or your or your poor kid just wants to know about the facts, fucking, of life he's just like, I just wanted to know, friends were in, friends who the

0:54:45 Thomas: If we could buy a DVD, I dunno.

0:54:46 Tom: What?

0:54:49 Thomas: Don't, that I'm very unclear on. I just have no concept.

0:54:48 Eli: Yeah and then also you gotta handle, you gotta do, you say when do you say the monogamy stuff, you can't say it when they're too young or they're a weird kid at school, right, you can, you can so here's what I'm saying, right, Tom, I need you to be my guide, when, you're when they're too young you can be like monogomy and slavery because they'll be nine and they'll say that, but, but at some point you do have to take them aside and be like, hey kiddo, just so you know, monogony is sexual slavery, slavery, and they but

0:55:03 Thomas: No, I hear you.

0:55:19 Thomas: I don't think Tom subscribes to this view. I do, but

0:55:22 Eli: It is every

0:55:22 Tom: Yeah, I don't hold to that view, so I don'T think that's come up.

0:55:25 Eli: Everyone actually subscribes to this view, They

0:55:25 Thomas: No, Like in seriousness, Eli, I am not sure how I would broach that, because I, yeah, I don't really, but maybe we don't need to

0:55:29 Eli: But that's well

0:55:32 Tom: But do you have to broach that? I mean, isn't that a determination? Well, hold on a second like I know it's a separate conversation, but isn't that a determination like whether or not somebody is straight or gay, or like whether they're monogamous or non-monogamous is going to be something

0:55:33 Eli: Because young kids that's a lot of drama or

0:55:34 Thomas: Yeah well a no, Tom it's not about telling someone how they should be. It's about explaining that the possibilities are there, like, I think a lot of what, what was the problem with our generation and and stuff is just having no fucking conversation or education, so we didn't really know what even was in in the playing field, like we had no, you know what I mean, so at least telling, telling them like what things are, at least possible orientations that someone might have, I think is useful. Even if you're not telling them, you must believe this thing.

0:56:11 Eli: Or jealousy like I know that kids a big thing for their drug, I mean at least for me in high school was jealousy, right? My friends were, oh he talked to her at lunch. And I heard that they hung out and like, well, actually he's in her science class, and I know, I, Tom, I know that the answer is not for me to be like, well, that's sexual slavery, son, I don't really, you just gotta get over that emotion I know you feel bad but you gotta get over streetcar

0:56:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:56:33 Thomas: Well, well, that's

0:56:32 Tom: Well but see I don't I I think that's an entirely, we should talk about that in another show

0:56:38 Thomas: A slightly different thing. Yeah, but I, I actually, Eli, I believe very strongly that I would at least try to communicate the intellectual reasons why that shouldn't bother you because I'm with you. I think it's a hormone thing. I, the jealousy stuff was so intense in high school, you know? And you're just like, even if it wasn't expressed, like, I'm not saying went like streetcar name desire on anybody or anything like that. But even the fact that I would have these like really intense, jealous feelings and not talk about them just being, I very much would want to try to like arm my kids with a lot of those thoughts. I almost said arguments, not really arguments, but like, hey, here's why you really shouldn't want to try to monopolize your partner's every attention. That just isn't healthy in a way

0:56:39 Tom: Yeah

0:56:59 Eli: Feel like Tom has a good American way to say that where we don't have to talk about non-monogamy, I feel like Tom's like, "Listen, kid, a woman is like a stump and everyone can have a picnic," and and we don't have to be like, "Okay, so I'm gonna just read you this opening passage from The Ethical Slut, what you can do your homework later," just listen to daddy also like, okay, here's another question, Tom, again, you're my, do you talk to your kids about kinks, because that's a really important part of your sex life, but you talked about it now

0:57:31 Tom: Yeah no

0:57:40 Thomas: That... Nah,

0:57:54 Tom: No

0:57:54 Thomas: I might draw the line there. I don't know if I could do that.

0:57:55 Tom: And I I I mean I wouldn't talk to my kid, here's, here's my thought, keep is that channel of communication open so they know they can come to you, so they can ask you the question about, hey, what's lube for? Or, hey, I think I impregnated my girlfriend, what do I do? Or whatever. Whatever, and then when those things come up in their life, as they organically begin expressing and feeling, you know, hey, maybe monogamy is not for me, or, you know, like, how do I handle these jealous feelings, or, you know, hey, I want to stick a fucking railroad tie up my ass, or whatever you're into, like, then they can come to you about those things. I don't think there's necessarily a need or even a very useful reason to be like to try to be proactive about every possible eventuality. I, I just don't know that that's necessary?

0:58:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I'm also really happy you said the thing, Tom, earlier, I was going to say this about the text thing. Cause that's so much more comfortable. Like I, you know, we didn't, we didn't have the equivalent of that. Like could have written letters or something, But like being able to not face to face, like have to talk to your parents about it, look into their eyes and to ask them about butt plugs or something, like being able to just be able to like text and be like, "All right, what's this?" And then, and then like, it's, I get it. It's still uncomfortable. And I agree with you, Tom, that's not all because of Christianity or some shit, but but like there's some level of discomfort that's just natural, I think, on these things. And being able to just kind of deal with that in text format and then not really have to go there or address it personally would be

0:58:49 Tom: Yeah Oh god, I hate it

0:59:28 Eli: Now, I'm picturing my poor parents trying to read my texts about sex. "Son, what the fuck is a beef nurse? I don't know what you want, I'll literally fuck your mother in front of you if you come in here and tell me what this sentence is, I have no idea. All All right, gentlemen, what should you be afraid for the calendar? Because

0:59:28 Thomas: Nice. Yeah, man,

0:59:35 Tom: Why?

0:59:59 Tom: Oh

0:59:59 Eli: Its days are numbered. All

1:00:01 Tom: God I

1:00:02 Thomas: I like that one.

1:00:08 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

1:00:46 Eli: I'll have this box of cereal, which I, I'm not gonna come on at all.