All you need to know about sex is--married people don't do it

For a safe place, go to http://littleselves.blogspot.com/ 


     Growing up, the message I got about sex was, All you need to know about sex is--married people don't do it, at least not with their own spouses.
    Allow, as Dickens would put it, that the father molests children (and a couple of young secretaries and at least one babysitter). Allow that his sexual preference is pre-pubescent girls. Allow that he is able to work it out so his job as a scientist involves studying the physical maturation of pre-pubescent girls. Allow that he has persuaded the research institute to let him photograph each subject naked and that, unknown to them, he (and a fellow scientist) have kept a copy of the exposed film in a safety deposit box.
     Allow that his third child is a girl.
     Allow that this scientist designs a boat to fulfill his dream of sailing around the world. Allow that he designs a separate cabin aft for himself and a "ladies' cabin" for his wife and daughter, as well as cabins for the rest of the crew. Allow that during the next four years, his daughter's prepubescent years, the trip her dad makes possible gives her a storybook childhood* as the "Pixie from Ohio" who got to dance in Bora Bora and watch sea turtle eggs hatch on Ascension and didn't have to go to school. Allow that during those years circumstances only align for him to be completely alone with her for any length of time on one occasion and that on that occasion he molests her.
     Now allow that by the absence of privacy on the boat, it is clear that nothing sexual takes place between the father and mother, that everything between them is above board. There is no sex between people married to each other. Married people are perfectly proper and respectable and do not do that sort of thing with their own spouses.  (Having screwed-up ideas about sex does all kinds of violence to one's understanding of the Bible text, "The marriage bed is undefiled--") The only sex of which she knows happens between people not married to each other. That is the modeling. That and a book he takes off the shelf and gives her to teach her about sex when she is 11--a novel about Eskimos fornicating in the snow. The female has to take the papoose off her back and lay it in a snowbank to make this possible. Welcome to Aberrant Birds and Bees 101.
     Generational sins of sexual immorality, fornication, illegitimacy, adultery, sure, doesn't every family have that? Even on the boat, we have various configurations of that. But--just a reminder--in our family you will never catch the married people having sex with their own spouses.  Just to be sure, they're careful never to be totally alone together. You would certainly know.

     I still find myself wondering what it would be like to feel safe on my father's lap, to have him read to me, sing to me, pray with me, counsel me, even tickle me, and know he loves me and has my best interest at heart. I wonder what it would be like as a 13-year old sitting on his knee in a car full of people and not feel his hand sliding up inside my shirt to absent-mindedly unhook my bra.

*See His Scribe

For a safe place, go to http://littleselves.blogspot.com/ 


 Today I am thankful for the indigo of irises and gold of daffodils.