Are You Ready For Me... Ralph?
I was always a few steps behind everyone else. I was the last kid in my class to own the J. Geils Band's "Freeze-Frame" album, I couldn't get my dad to buy me Tretorns until well after everyone else had them, and, as far as I knew, I was the last girl to run around the bases with boys. Perhaps this was because I was also the very last girl in my class to read Forever 
Fooling around was the biggest deal of all. It was, of course, what all of the other stuff—like record albums and footwear—eventually became about.
I didn't crack open Forever until two years after everyone else. This, mind you, was the same year I raced in to my sixth grade classroom one Monday morning, overcome with excitement at the thought of telling my schoolmates about the new movie Eddie and The Cruisers, which I'd seen that weekend. I found the cool girls standing in a circle quoting Eddie Wilson dialogue, spouting Michael Paré trivia, and singing "On The Dark Side." It was already old news. I was deflated. My timing seemed perpetually off. I knew there was something in this Judy Blume book about a guy who named his dick "Ralph," but I never even sneaked a peak at "just the dirty parts." I wasn't the best-behaved kid generally speaking (surprise), but somehow I didn't really think I was supposed to. Anyway, what was so interesting about a dick? What did a dick do? Was the dick special just because it was called Ralph? A dick was stupid.
I'm thinking about this because I just came across this bit about Blume's books and the current climate of teen sex. It seems there was a time when Forever was actually being used in some schools as part of sex education, in an effort to promote discussion about sexuality and responsibility. That was just before my time. That was, like, The Ice Storm time when there were key parties. But in my sex ed classes in the 80s, boys were sent out of the room to watch movies about boys, and girls stayed in the room to watch movies about girls. The one movie I remember everyone watching together was called Am I Normal? There was a kid in it who reminded me at the time of Juan Epstein. He climbed up and over stalls in the boys' bathroom and told everyone that if they "touched it too much, it would fall off." This is all I remember. This was all I knew about dick. Boys shouldn't touch it too much. Don't touch the dick!
Predictably, by the nineties Forever was one of the top ten most banned books in America. I can't imagine you'll find it on many official summer reading lists in between Eragon and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. But my precious, original copy still sits on my bookshelf. I look at it and I can remember being enthralled by the cover alone. Pray tell, what secrets lay between thy pages! I think it's the reason I had lockets.
These days, in my middle age, I enjoy a nice, romantic evening with a man—red wine and fine dining, and maybe a hayride. Later, we sit on my sofa by the fire. There is instrumental music playing softly. I read the dirty parts of Forever out loud. Then I ask him if he brought his friend Ralph. Then I touch the dick. I touch it and it doesn't fall off. It's very romantic.
