Holy Moley.

I think I might finally be getting over the fact that I actually have a blog; that is, enough to take a breath and temporarily move onto matters of real importance, namely Christian vampire fiction and anti-masturbation propaganda from the 1950s.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The theme of this post is really my extreme gratitude that I am not a teenager, mostly because I don’t have to do tiresome things like crystal meth or dressing like Kristen Stewart, but also because I can finally, categorically, and with authority state that being a teenager is not the best time of one’s life. I always suspected it was true, and now I know. Being a teenager is crap. And most of the benefits of adolescence still apply when you are an adult, with the possible exception of being able to leer at youths in the school pool* or spend hours puzzling over why one gets seasick when you try and focus on Miley Cyrus’ lips. (But even these are negotiable, provided you are okay with being the neighbourhood creep. Which really isn’t so bad once you’re used to it; plus I know a great game called Offer-Them-Milk-and-Cookies-and-See-How-They-Run. Come over and I’ll teach you sometime.)

Anyway.

Even teenage fiction is better when you are an adult. And, for that matter, teenage non-fiction. One of my more eccentric habits is collecting vintage coming-of-age manuals, including one ominously-titled It’s Time You Knew (for girls) and my personal favourite, the religiously-themed On Becoming a Man (for boys). The latter is by Dr. Harold Shyrock and was published in the 1950s. Gems include a number of technicolour plates featuring wholesome youths doing manly things like letting their mums measure their height or photograph their first attempts at shaving.

One of the captions actually reads: “What youth has not experienced the pride and delight of discovering the first downy fuzz on his upper lip?”

What youth, indeed.

But my favourite parts of On Becoming a Man are the passages on homosexuality and masturbation. Dr. Shyrock writes:

"A young man who follows a wholesome, ideal pattern of living does not experience ejaculation except as nature provides. Such a young man keeps his reproductive organs in trust, as it were, until the time of his marriage.
When masturbation becomes a habit, it tends to rob a young person of his incentive for accomplishment. He loses interest in worth-while enterprises, largely because his supply of nervous energy has been depleted, and he does not feel equal to the demands for honest effort. Being thus deprived of the satisfactions that a healthy young person should experience by way of the rewards of work well done, he loses interest in the lofty things of life. Masturbation can become a tyrant that robs its victim of the incentives for worthy accomplishments.
The young person who has been so unfortunate as to develop the habit of masturbation feels constantly let down and fatigued. He adopts an attitude of stupidity simply because he cannot muster sufficient energy to remain alert. Study no longer appeals to him, thus his mental development lags. Whenever two possibilities present themselves, he chooses the easier way."

And in case he hadn’t yet frightened all nerve out of any would-be deviants, Shyrock adds:

"There is a freakish manifestation of human friendship regarding which I should take this occasion to warn you. I refer to those relationships between members of the same sex that are included in the term homosexuality. This term is often surrounded with a bit of mystery. And properly so, for normal people with wholesome personalities find it difficult to understand how a bond of sentimental affection can develop between two men or two women.
It is only necessary that you be on guard against the early advances of some individual who, unbeknown to you, may have homosexual tendencies.
The first approach of a person with homosexual tendencies is usually in the nature of some manifestation of personal regard or even mild affection. He may write notes to his younger friend, and if this practice continues, the notes may actually take on a sentimental tone, so that he writes almost as though he were in love with the other person.
Other such manifestations include evidence of jealousy when anyone else seems to 'rate' with the friend of his choice.
You ask, 'Why the arrest in the development of a personality?' There is no accurate answer to this question, but our best information indicates that the homosexual tendency is but one of several evidences that the personality has not developed symmetrically."

Ah, yes. If we could only rid the world of those pesky homosexuals and masturbators!

I always love the wonderfully unscientific moral backlash that strikes teenage literature whenever some left-of-centre sexual trend threatens to become acceptable; as though the world’s moralists realise there is only one sensible course of action, and that is to catch the youth before the gawd-daym competition does.

The latest manifestation of emergency adolescent re-socialisation is Christian vampire fiction (yes it’s true), which is presumably a response to the phenomenal success of Twilight. Despite PublishersWeekly.com claiming it is the result of Rose Fox’s random genre generator, it is in fact catching on fast and is – allegedly – extremely marketable.

As a matter of fact, I think the Twilight series is already sheer genius when it comes to moral positioning. Unlike Sweet Valley and Sweet Dreams, the protagonists here are pure not simply by virtue of being thin, blonde and disapproving of smoking**. Twilight offers no such sanitised beach babes. Cunningly, it manages to combine equal measures of chastity and deviance in a suitably angst-ridden, sex-laden and wonderfully plain-Jane package, without once allowing the characters to do anything even remotely risqué. There’s all that appealing bad-boy sexual hunger, hidden beneath a layer of innocence so thick it would take Belle du Jour ten years to get to the bottom. Your sexual urges are perfectly normal, children, it says. But if you act on them, you’ll DIE.

And then, because a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down: Here, have some sparkles.

This, apparently, isn’t enough for our intrepid moral army, witness the rise of hardcore Christian vamp romances designed to wipe out the tainted alter ego in one bloody, metaphor-loaded battle. I quote Jezebel.com:

“[T]he vampires here apparently represent ‘demons anyone must overcome’. Thirsty, a Christian vampire tale from Tracey Bateman, will hit shelves in February, and will feature a vampire named Markus and his target of obsession, Nina, ‘a divorced alcoholic dealing with addiction.’ Oh, lord help us and save us said Mrs. Davis, as my mother would say. Somehow, Markus the vampire and Nina the drunk divorcee will lead the reader towards redemption and the idea that any demons, even those with fangs, can be overcome. Or at least that's what editor Shannon Marchese wants you to believe, saying: ‘These are themes that work in the Christian life. You have to fight to say, ‘Am I going to choose unconditional love and redemption or a life of following obsessions, a life with holes in it?’”

Well, I for one pick the holey over the holy. Partly because dinner with a drunk, divorced, homosexual masturbator sounds like a helluva night out. Partly because Jesus hung out with crooks and hookers all the time, and didn’t point fingers, and what’s good enough for Jesus is good enough for me. But lastly – and mostly – because if there were nothing for puritans to get hysterical about, the rest of us would have nothing to read.

Viva!

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* Unless you are Alistair
** Fnarr, fnarr.