Sex, Lies, and Videos

I have over 39,341 hits on my blog. Thirteen were real people who accidentally landed on my blog, and after realizing their mistake, quickly clicked off. The other hits are non-human Internet crawlers looking for the word "sex" so they can send me spam about making my penis bigger. Tom reads my blog but I can't count him because it's his duty as a loving and supportive spouse to say, "Read your post today, Sweetheart. Good. Really good." When I ask him what his thoughts were about what he had read, he'll say, "Good. Very Good." Most of the time I just leave it at that, but on occasion when I feel I've written the best post ever in my life, I'll push him for more and he'll say, "Good. very, very good." He'll remind me that once he is done reading a book, it's history; he doesn't remember anything about the book he just read. He's got me there because I have the same memory problem, except mine is much worse than his. I'll be in the shower when the perfect title for a blog comes to me. I'll say it over and over while I'm showering, drying off, and brushing my teeth. Sex, Lies, and Videos. Sex, Lies, and Videos, Sex...uh...what was the second word? Sounds like flies. No. Pies? No. Ties? No, that's not it; it starts with an "L" I think. Before I'm done brushing my teeth, the title is gone. Never to come back again, except with "Sex, Lies, and Videos." It came back to me. Well, how can anyone forget sex?

SEX

Childhood:

Shhhh Sex

Sex is when a married man and woman do the nasty-nasty.

The nasty-nasty is when a "married" man and a woman take

their clothes off, stand in front of each other naked, and...

and...and...I don't know what they do next but according to

 Hazel, my stepparent from five to twelve, it's nasty-nasty.

Yuck!

Early teenage years

Sex

Sex is when a married man and woman lie down

on a bed naked. The woman lies on her back and

 the man lies on top of her. Then he puts his

thing in her thing.

Double Yuck!

Twenties

Sex

Sex is when a man puts his thing in her thing.

That happens only when the man and woman

are married. Period. If the couple is not married

and they do the feely, feely, touchy, touchy, 

YIPPIE! YIPPIE!

and his thing does not go in her thing

then they're are not having sex and

the woman is still a virgin and no

church rules have been broken.

Good pure maiden material

for a Prince on the prowl.

looking for virgins.

LIES

Why do people feel a need to lie? I lie because sometimes telling the truth doesn't work well for me. I lie because it makes my life easier; I lie because it makes your life easier--you really don't want me to tell you that your butt looks huge in the those jeans, do you? I lie because it's what humans do. We all lie. Oh, you can sit there staring at these words of truth and say, "Well, you're wrong. I don't lie." But that's a lie and your pants are on fire.

I only lie when I have a good reason to not tell the truth. Remember your big butt in those jeans? I'm not gonna be the friend to drop that piece of hurtful news on you. Remember that guy from the Holyoke Bar on Pendleton Pike you dated in 1972? I'm not gonna be the friend who tells you he cheated on you with the bouncer. Wait a minute! I just told you that. Sorry. But I will say, and this is the truth, I'm glad you and the bouncer found true love and are about to celebrate your forty-second wedding anniversary. 

Speaking of lies, where do we draw the line? If our lies are for good or benign reasons, i.e. do no harm and have no negative consequences, then are lies bad? Sometimes we lie and we are not aware that we are being untruthful. Like, for example, Bill Clinton said he "DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT WOMAN! " And he believed he was telling the truth because he didn't put his thing in her thing: he put a cigar in her thing instead of his thing. "Sex" did not happen. When you hear a woman brag about being a virgin until the age of twenty-nine--why are you looking a me? STOP LOOKING AT ME!--is she lying or just fooling herself? No man's thing ever went inside her thing, so technically she is a virgin. Good pure maiden material looking for a prince on the prowl looking for virgins. 

Speaking of princes on the prowl looking for virgins, that's a lie perpetuated by old white men in the post middle ages who wrote fairy tale books about women who couldn't make it on their own; women who knew they were less than, not as smart as men; women who needed rescued; pure as the driven snow women. Enter me. I was that woman until I realized I was lying to myself. I was none of those women in the fairy tale books, but I believed  I was supposed to be. And that's were my internal conflict warred on for decades. I was given a script as a child and at first I followed my lines perfectly. But when I  would go off script, guilt and shame would always bring me back to the script. I needed to follow the rules to be considered "good." I needed to be pure as the driven snow. 

On stage, in the play that was my life, I read my lines and played my role until I couldn't act out the lies anymore. And that's what they were: lies. Contrary to how I viewed myself, I wasn't a bad person; I just couldn't be pure as the driven snow. Who is? Are you? Because if you say you are, you're lying.

VIDEOS

I know what you're thinking. Sex tapes. Even if there was a sex tape in my past, I'd lie about it. Video taping yourself having sex with another person is definitely not behavior associated with pure driven snow. Unless, that is, you had sex in pure driven snow and you videotaped it. No, I have never videotaped myself having sex with another person. Absolutely not. No way, Jose. Nope! Never! Ain't never, ever done it! And even if I had, I wouldn't remember which pair of flannel socks I hid it in. It's my memory, ya know. Not so good anymore.

Pure Driven Snow