Sex

To be or not to be

Moriah

Offended.

I think I’m supposed to be. I’m told I should be. My neck twitches just slightly when I know I ought to be. But I don’t think I am. Am I?

Bodice ripper.

I just can’t muster up the outrage necessary to protest the term. I mean, there are seriously a bunch more important things to do in life and better battles to fight and more important wars to wage.

A friend of mine refers to The Proviso as a “Mormon bodice ripper.” To my recollection, no bodices were harmed in the making of this book, but a pair of shorts was. So…shorts ripper? Cause, that’s where the goods are, folks, and Some People’s Hero really needed to get to Some People’s Heroine’s goods. Right then.

Okay. Anyway.

No, sorry. Can’t be outraged today. Try me tomorrow.

Sex and money

Moriah

In this society, we treat sex like the Big Cheat. You know, when you go on a diet and you can’t have this food or that food or any other food you’d really like to have, so…you substitute. It doesn’t hit your spot, you’re still hungry, and you’re still craving what you didn’t allow yourself to have. So you binge. It’s at once the prurient attraction and the guilt-laden violation.

But money? Well, we treat that like it’s too sacred to be spoken of in detail and with clarity.

High School Sex EdWe teach sex ed in elementary and high school, but not money, not economics, not basic life/housekeeping crap like how to balance a checkbook, what credit is and how to control it, you know–stuff that if not managed properly can pretty much ruin your life for a while and sometimes, without money, you can’t get laid or worse, you don’t want to get laid because you’re too stressed about your money.

What, is money the sacred cow?

The Thing We Don’t Talk About To Our Children?

We didn’t talk about money in my house growing up. We were kids. It wasn’t our business. It wasn’t spoken of in public. It was just…gauche and undignified. I still feel like that with regard to salaries and such–no, it’s just not cocktail party conversation fodder. On the other hand, not talking about salaries amongst coworkers/colleagues does have its disadvantages.

I learned about checking accounts and your basic bookkeeping in high school (thank heavens or I wouldn’t have had a clue!). I didn’t learn about credit/charge cards until I got in over my head and didn’t know how I’d gotten there. Or how to get out. In short, I didn’t know anything about anything.

Dude and I plan to be as upfront with the money discussions in our house as we are the sex discussions. If that means we open up our bank accounts and break down our credit obligations, we’re prepared to do it. I shudder to think of my Tax Deductions going out into the world knowing what I knew about money, which was zero, zip, nada.

So I ask again: Why aren’t basic financial principles taught in schools, but sex is?

In which fashion pimps for pedophiles

Moriah

Yo, New York. Milan. Bentonville.

Roman PolanskiI’m tired of having to tart my 5-year-old FEMALE Tax Deduction up like a 63rd & Prospect streetwalker. There’s this thing called a waist. There’s this other thing called a waistBAND. The waistBAND should come up all the way to the waist.

A) I do not have the time nor inclination nor money to sew my TD’s jeans. I know how. Sorta. They’d look homemade and I don’t want my TD to come home crying because she got laughed at about her homemade jeans.

B) It’s not like I don’t want her to be fashionable. I just don’t want her to be Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears at 5 or until she can pay for her own damned clothes and the laundering thereof.

C) This is not out of some outraged sense of modesty or affront to church standards, either. She’s FIVE YEARS OLD. She’s a target just by being five. I spose the gender doesn’t matter much these days.

D) I’m not even saying get rid of low-rise, but SHIT! Give me an alternative, eh? You give me boot-cut and straight-leg and bells, but you don’t give me a choice on rise?

E) If she does want to tart up like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears in the future, I could deal with it better if I could point my nightmarishly teenager-girl-ish Tax Deduction to her contemporaries who have a waistBAND touching their actual WAIST and tell her where she needs to shop. And, oh, the thrift stores are no better because they’re backing up on the last 5 (that I know of) years of other little tax deductions who outgrew their 4- and 5-year-old skin-tight, low-rise skank makers.

Every time I go clothes shopping for this kid I get pissed off about this and then I forget about it–right up to the point I have to take her shopping again. I can find modest blouses, no problem. It’s the jeans and khakis that are giving me fits. Or not. If anybody has a source for high-rise jeans/khakis online, I’ll take it.

The DDJ

Moriah

Damned Day Job

Yes, I have one of those, albeit from home and entrepreneurial in nature. Actually, I have 2 money-making gigs. I also have 2 non money-making gigs: the Tax Deductions’ mother and this here book thing I hope will start paying for itself in a little while.

I have a DDJ for the usual reason: Books. Oh, uhm, roof and food. Right. And clothing. For the Tax Deductions. Dude and I go au naturel.

Now, between the Tax Deductions, the DDJs, and the fact that my editor just bled all over my imaginary friends (thank you, Lorna!), I will be busy with scissors and cheap tape for the next little while. Office Depot is my home away from home.

In the meantime, please visit Thmazing’s Thmusings where you will find installment number 2 of The Erotic in LDS Lit. I’m finding the development of this series very profound and I’m still unpacking it.

“Little Lion Face”

Moriah

Thmazing posted this poem by May Swenson (1919-1989), Mormon poet, in April. I don’t usually “get” poetry, but I sure as heck got this and it is…beautiful. I’m going to have to invest some time in her work.

Little lion face
I stopped to pick
among the mass of thick
succulent blooms, the twice

streaked flanges of your silk
sunwheel relaxed in wide
dilation, I brought inside,
placed in a vase.Milk

of your shaggy stem
sticky on my fingers, and
your barbs hooked to my hand,
sudden stings from them

were sweet.Now I’m bold
to touch your swollen neck,
put careful lips to slick
petals, snuff up gold

pollen in your navel cup.
Still fresh before night
I leave you, dawn’s appetite
to renew our glide and suck.

An hour ahead of sun
I come to find you.You’re
twisted shut as a burr,
neck drooped unconscious,

an inert, limp bundle,
a furled cocoon, your
sun-streaked aureole
eclipsed and dun.

Strange feral flower asleep
with flame-ruff wilted,
all magic halted,
a drink I pour, steep

in the glass for your
undulant stem to suck.
Oh, lift your young neck,
open and expand to your

lover, hot light.
Gold corona, widen to sky.
I hold you lion in my eye
sunup until night.