Thursday 27 September 2001

Pic of the day: This small waterfall lies in a secluded grove by the farm where I grew up. When I was a small innocent boy, I used to play here. Yes, I've been innocent too ... but it's a long long time ago!

Innocence vs shounen ai

On the AR board, I've got a (somewhat conflicting) explanation of the difference between "shounen ai" and "yaoi". Evidently most fans either don't know the difference or don't care, but that's par for the course. Even in English, lots of people don't seem to know the difference between love and sex, so you can hardly expect them to get it right in a foreign language. (And Japanese is a very foreign language indeed, if you ask me.) Anyway, "shounen ai" (which I suspect might mean "boy love") is kind of romantic or platonic relationships between young boys, while "yaoi" is kind of homoerotic. Kind of, because from what I see, it is a girl thing. The fans of this genre are girls, not gay men. Don't ask me what drives them. Anyway, that's not my point.

I thought back to my own childhood and puberty. Yeah, it's been a while. No, there was no yaoi. Shounen ai? Heh. No more than normal, I guess. It's such a stupid world, that boys tend to hang out with boys and girls with girls, instead of the other way around. Don't look at me, I didn't make it that way. So, best friends tends to be of the same sex. I didn't have many friends, so I guess I did value my best friend pretty high. Best friends can get pretty close around puberty, I guess. Well, we didn't hold hands or hug, so I guess we'd make poor shounen ai. But I can kind of understand those who did that, and more. It's a pretty confusing time, you know.

Anyway, thinking things over today, I came to a startling conclusion. I realized that the innocence of the very young is not their lack of lust, but their lack of cynicism. Let me explain.

***

I don't know when I started to experience sexual excitement, but I know it was early in childhood and I had no idea what it was all about. At the farm, I saw lambs and goat kids play at mounting, so I guess they also have it in them, so to speak. As I approached puberty, the things that turned me on grew more realistic. I'm not sure how much of this was thanks to some brother of mine who had helpfully stocked my room with cheap porn. Actually I still don't know who did that, but I can't avoid thinking it must have been my brother. Who else? Thanks, brother. Actually I guess the books I borrowed at the library were more useful – they were certainly more realistic – but if I remember correctly, the porn came first. And let's face it, most boys don't dare go ask the (female) librarian to help find some good books about sex. I did. But then again, I was a very innocent boy, wasn't I? :)

Anyway, it was a kind of gradual process of approximation to adult sexuality. Some of my first memories of erections were caused by things that were rather far removed from actual intercourse. Comics were a major inspiration. Not that I think you parents out there will somehow magically stop your children from having a sexuality by denying them access to comics. It will just find another starting point, as it probably does in most kids anyway. Dogs, for instance, have no shame. Do you really want the neighborhood dogs to be your kids' main inspiration when it comes to sex? Perhaps you should let them have that Donald Duck comic after all. Even if the ducks have no trousers.

So somewhere around puberty I read this comic version of Robinson Crusoe, and I remember that I thought that him and that Friday guy (it was Friday, wasn't it?) were like a bit sexy together. I think I hadn't quite pieced together yet that you have to be 1 male + 1 female. But then again, I didn't know many women at the time. When I got to know them better, I soon found out that they were way more sexy than boys. Now eventually that exploration too came to a stop, which it usually doesn't for most people, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is that for a long while, I didn't realize that sexy things were sinful things. A bit secret, yes. Not for sharing with everyone. But I didn't really know how serious it was until later in my teen years. Again, that's another long story.

***

So I've been thinking. For instance some 13 year old boy who, for instance, gets sexually excited when he's with another boy, or girl for that matter. Depending on how mature he is emotionally, he may still be innocent. He's not really experiencing it as sex, like we'd do. It's still just something that happens while he's playing. OK, 13 may be a bit late these days. Kids today grow up faster. But it's not all that unrealistic either. Do I get this point through? Innocence when it comes to sex is not about whether or not you react physically. It's way deeper down than that. Conversely, now that I'm over 40, I can completely dirty my mind without "suffering the masculine reaction" as Piers Anthony so poetically calls it. But that would not be innocent. You see the difference? It's when you learn to use another to satisfy yourself, you learn to use them for your own ends, that's when your innocence dies.

So I've wondered, is it even possible to describe that part of puberty and the time around there, when you're lustful but still innocent? Where you're innocent and you don't even know it, because you haven't yet experienced the guilt. Somehow I think that if we tried to describe it, we couldn't. To the adult reader, it would be recast in light of what we know, and it would turn to smut in our hands. Instead of shounen ai we would read yaoi, because we know too much, we would read what we know into what they don't. I guess that's how it goes: The way back to Paradise – innocence – is guarded by the flaming sword that turns every which way. In our hearts.