Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Snorkeling? WTF?

When Larry King very reasonably asked Eric Massa last night if he was gay, Massa shot back, indignantly, that King should "ask my wife, ask my friends, ask the 10,000 sailors I served with in the Navy." Well, a few of those sailors have now come forward, and they're not helping Massa's case. Peter Clark, a shipmate of Massa's in the Navy, tells The Atlantic that "Massa was notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates." There were his patented "Massa Massages." There was the time another shipmate, Stuart Borsch, awoke to a possibly drunk Massa groping him. And there was the night that Massa's roommate, Tom Maxfield, awoke "to Massa undoing his pants trying to snorkel him."

Wait, snorkel? We're not really sure what this is supposed to mean, and the article doesn't elucidate it for us. Is it simply a PG-rated way of saying blow? Is it Navy slang? As we usually do when we encounter sexual terms that we're unfamiliar with, we turned to Urban Dictionary for answers. One entry defines snorkeling as a sexual act literally involving a snorkel mask and fins, so that's out. Another calls it a "maneuver ... performed by placing your testicles over the eyes of your partner, forming a mask. Then the breathing apparatus is formed by placing the end of your penis into the receiver's mouth." This is definitely a possibility, although, from the quote about the incident, it's unclear whether Massa was undoing his own pants or his roommate's pants, so it's difficult to say. Either way, it was not something overly heterosexual in nature.

2 comments:

Kelli Russell Agodon - Book of Kells said...

I love learning new terms!



Word verification: to ends (hmmm)

Peter said...

Hi Kelli: It is such a bizarre story! It boggles the mind.