1992:

The (extremely conservative Methodist 90% greek and I don't mean nationality) college I was going to at the time had three terms: a fall and spring term with a one-month mini term in-between where we focused on one class, took a sponsored trip, did internships, etc.

That January I'd gone on an "Art and Architecture of Italy" trip, led, oddly-enough, by a Classics and an English professor. The only actual art students that were on this trip were me - at the height of my I'm a big fag-hag Fluevog shoe and babydoll dress wearin', unnatural shade of red hair sportin', dance club goin' pretentious little pseudo-goth-industrial-dance art school girl days and my friend Will who was also a big Fluevog shoe wearin', dance club goin', unnatural shade of black hair mushroom cut sportin', pretentious little pseudo-goth-industrial-dance art school gay (but not admitting it yet) guy. The others were your average run-of-the-mill preppie Southern fraternity/sorority khaki wearin', Bush senior votin', beer drinkin', pretentious art major hatin' Birmingham Southern students. For the life of me I can't figure out what any of these people were doing on a trip about Italian Art and Architecture although I'm fairly sure one or two of those sorority girls were on a mission to have some old-school American woman in a Mediterranean country sex though the little hypocrites would never admit to it in a million years.

It was our last night in Italy. We were staying at what we'd come to regard as our home, the odd and lovable Hotel Ponte Sisto in Rome, and the frat boys wanted to watch the superbowl in the bar lounge. Now Will and I had been drunk pretty much the whole time we were there (the wine in Italy is, as you would expect, cheap, plentiful, and delicious) but this night we had a pretty good hammer going. We'd gone back to my favorite Chinese restaurant on the Campo del Fiore to get one more meal in and had celebrated the fabulousness of the Chicken Marco Polo in our usual wine-soaked manner. I have no idea who played or won. But we had a fabulous time giggling about homosexual overtones in sports. It's a wonder one of those frat boys didn't beat the crap out of us.

Important travel tip: don't pack your bags when you're drunk.

2004:

Cody was in Austin helping get the Tennessee lottery working. He wasn't coming home until valentine's day and I was about six months into my inability to drive without a panic attack. I was on a weird sleeping schedule, as usual, woke up at about six pm to discover that the coffeemaker had died.

Being superbowl night I decided that this was the ideal time to brave the drive to Wal Mart to buy a new one since most of the drivers and patrons that give me the heebiejeebies would be at home drinking beer, eating processed cheese products and, apparently, staring at Janet Jackson's boob.

So there I stood in the Wal Mart appliance aisle: bleary-eyed, having just woken up, and not had any caffeine, squinting at the various coffeemakers trying to figure out just how committed I was to the "pause n serv" feature when a young teenage vaguely Hispanic boy came up to me and started a sales pitch with his little notebook full of Carlson craft at it's most debauched cards. It took me a few minutes to realize that this kid was trying to sell me something for his church group. As far as I remember I was fairly polite to him but was giving him a very firm "no" while still giving my main focus to the black and decker coffeepots.

Then he gave me his big sales whammy that was supposed to make me jump so high my money would come pouring out: "The money from selling these cards goes to help fund an abstinence program for our school."

What's really weird is it wasn't the first time I'd been approached by teenage boys wanting to discuss abstinence until marriage with me in a hugely public place. In the summer of 1997, I believe, I was visiting my parents. This was when they were living in Atlanta and I had gone with my mom for an appointment to her neurologist at Crawford Long hospital downtown. While she was at her appointment I decided to walk across the street to Mick's for my favorite fried green tomato sandwich. On the corner I was approached by three Asian teenage boys who tried to make me sign some fucking pledge saying I wouldn't have sex before marriage. I think I laughed, probably very loudly, and informed them they were at least ten years too late for that one. Unfazed they said that I could decide to make the pledge now and my hymen would magically regrow if I put a leech on it. Ok, no they just wanted me to sign some pledge reclaiming my virginity and saying I'd wear an imaginary chastity belt locked with this piece of paper until the preacher handed my legal husband the key on our wedding day. To which I said "I think the man I'm living in sin with would have a serious problem with this. Sorry boys." And walked off. Which was true. I was already living with my would-be husband at the time and I think he would've taken serious umbrage if I'd signed some reclamation of my virginity in front of a bunch of fifteen year old boys on the street in downtown Atlanta. No matter how legally binding the contract would actually be.

So not only am I a plain old "Weirdo Magnet" which is bad enough, now I'm a "young boys wanting to discuss the absence of sex" magnet. And people wonder where this agora / social phobia stuff comes from!

Back to the poor little not-yet fifteen year-old boy in the Wal Mart appliance aisle. He thought this "abstinence program" thing was going to be his money shot, so to speak. That I would gladly buy the ugly notecards with the Precious moments twins and maybe even a few winter scenes with a deer to boot just because the money would go towards a class informing kids that sex is a bad, yucky thing to do and you'll go blind if you do it before you're married in a proper church. But he had no fucking clue who this woman was the devil had sent to test him with.

Uncaffeinated, mildly annoyed for being solicited while already in the process of shopping, but really annoyed now, I turned to that young boy and said "Then I'm definitely not going to buy those cards, honey, because I don't personally believe that abstinence before marriage does any good whatsoever. I think that sex before marriage can actually be a beautiful and fun thing when done in a responsible manner between two consenting adults. It can be a great way to develop intimacy with another person. And you know what? It's fun! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with sex when it's done properly - whether alone or with another person. I think this money would be much better served to go towards a sex education program that not only promoted safe sex but maybe provided some good young teenage couple counseling. I think programs that promote abstinence rather than explaining that it's ok when done properly not only promotes sheer blind ignorance but actually increases the likelihood of teenage pregnancies, shotgun weddings, and domestic violence because kids are going to experiment, that's a given. But to send kids out there without proper instruction in sex education and birth control is sending like sending a soldier out with a weapon he has absolutely no training in how to use!"

I don't know how long I lectured him in this vein. But as I kept going his eyes got bigger and bigger. I don't know if it was because no one had ever been this candid with him or if he thought I was some sex-crazed lunatic housewife who was going to jump him in the appliance aisle. I believe there was something thrown in there about how maybe he shouldn't accost people to sell these things amongst the aisles inside a store as well. Eventually he ran away in fear of my lascivious, discussing sex openly, appliance-buying ways. Which was perfect. I got to finish picking out my coffeemaker.

Is it ironic that I've since switched to tea?

Amazing isn't it though? Who are these people sending teenage boys out in public to not only discuss sex in general but to actually try to get other people to sign some abstinence pledge - or giving money to support an abstinence program? Why on earth do they think that's their business?

Wal Mart shopping trip tip: wear a shirt that says "The state of my hymen is none of your damn business" .

2005:

Diddled around with some wordpress plugins whose whitespace produced annoying header errors on the site I'm working on. Watched the first two dvds of Brideshead Revisited and ate Chinese food Cody had brought home the night before when he went down to Los Lunas to do some family tech support - sometimes it's easier to go down there and do the restore disk yourself rather than tell people how to do it on the phone. Spent my monthly thirty dollar itunes allowance. Went to sleep probably before the game had even started. Slept until two am.

itunes tip: Don't keep too many songs in your shopping cart. After about 300 you start getting unspecified error messages and the apple cs people will go in there and clear it out.

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Posted by: habitatgirl at February 7, 2005 5:52 PM

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