Duff McKagan Starts Speaking My Language

Dan Gibson | October 24, 2008 4:30 am

When he lived the rock and roll lifestyle by putting in time in Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver, the Duff McKagan lifestyle was inaccessible to me. But now, as Duff’s “loving parent” side comes out with pieces like the one in the Seattle Weekly music blog Reverb about broaching the delicate topic of sex with his daughter, I’m starting to feel some kinship.

Last week, I was faced with a hurdle every parent must eventually face. You see, my wife and I have two daughters, the older one just entering middle school this year. With middle school comes the sudden pressures of acting “grown up,” looking “cool,” and talking about. . . wait for it. . . SEX. The dreaded moment has come for me as a father: the moment for THE TALK…

I don’t know how many people read this column, and I also don’t know if anyone who reads this is a parent, but let me tell you guys something: Apparently, oral sex in middle school is approached as nonchalantly as maybe kissing was back when I was that age. There is no way my two angels are gonna be ANY part of that nonsense, believe you me! If iChat and YouTube are the new hiding places for extracurricular activities such as this, how do I find out? Fuck, my mind starts to go a million miles an hour thinking about the responsibilities and safeguards we “information age” parents have to juggle. I don’t want to spy on my kids. There HAS to be trust. They are dealing with so much more data than we did at that age. I will, however, shut down anything that brings harm to my daughters. If I were to find out that anything bad was happening, all of my Utopian hubbub would go out the window, and it would get real 1950’s in the McKagan household, and in a hurry.

I feel you, Duff. As a parent of two, those days are sneaking up on me more quickly than I’d like to admit, and the world is only getting scarier by the minute. And to think, you have the frightening example of the Celebrity Rehabbing Steven Adler hanging over your shoulder. I don’t have anything to match up with that, although the fear of having things go as wrong as they did for the poor Hudsons with their daughter Katy keeps me up at night.

The Birds, the Bees, and My Daughters [Reverb]