We don't talk about these things: #Sex, #Taboo & 90210

by Giselle Renarde

I'm loving everybody's posts this week. Taboo is such a great topic of discussion.

As I read Lisabet's post, I was reminded of something you're going to laugh at me for doing but I don't even care.

I've been re-watching Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD.

I just finished the first season and I'll tell you this: I remember watching EVERY SINGLE ONE of those episodes when they originally aired in 1990.

Yesterday I got to the episode that has lived inside my brain since I first watched it: the one where Dylan and Brenda have sex for the first time. It's been almost 30 years since I first watched this episode and I still remember tons of lines from the show. Like how after they have sex for the first time Brenda makes the hotel bed and when Dylan tells her she doesn't have to do that she says, "What will the maid think?"

That line has stayed with me all these years. I don't know why.  I just like it.  It would make a good book title, wouldn't it?  The butler did it! What will the maid think?

Okay, something else about that episode has stayed with me too.  Something more personal.

My parents knew I loved 90210 even though, being a preteen when it first came on the air, I was a tad young to be watching it.  Maybe not by today's standards, but I don't have kids so what do I know about today's standards?

Anyway, I've mentioned before that my mother worked nights and my father was always passed out by the end of Entertainment Tonight.  That meant I got to watch 90210 (and everything else that came on after 7:30) without parental supervision. And THAT meant I didn't experience the awkwardness of having my mom glaring uncomfortably in my direction as teenagers on TV discussed the risks and rewards of having sex.

Thank goodness for that, because sex was a taboo topic in my household. Still is. Nobody ever discussed sex when I was a kid.  Nobody ever discusses it now. I'm very close with one of my sisters. We've never talked about sex.  Not once.

My mom did give me "the sex talk" (which was more awkward than informative) but here's what prompted that discussion:

When my mom announced that she was pregnant with my youngest sister, I was mad as hell.  This wasn't your typical sibling rivalry or whatever kids go through when they're afraid a new baby will usurp their Favourite Child crown. I already had other siblings. I hadn't been upset about their existence.

This one was different. I was ten years old and already I had more than enough experience raising children.

You know, I had an epiphany a couple months ago. I heard the word "neglect" and started thinking about the way definitions shift over time.  When I was a kid, I would have defined child neglect as, like, taking off for two weeks and leaving your kids to fend for themselves. I wouldn't have considered myself or my siblings neglected. There was always an adult body present in the house. Now I realize that if that adult body is not conscious, it doesn't count. If one parent is out of the house and the other is perpetually drunk and you've got a 7-year-old running the show, yeah, sadly, that's neglect.

Ouch.  I hope my mom never reads this.  It would kill her.  She is such a devoted parent.  Being a mother is the most important thing in her world.  I know she did what she thought was best for us, always, but living in a domestic violence situation with an alcoholic made life really difficult for all of us.

Not only was I raising myself and my siblings, but I was babysitting a parent as well.  I remember that I always had to wake myself up during the night to go downstairs and check the kitchen. My dad had a habit of coming to late at night or early in the morning and cooking when he was barely conscious. He would put something on the stove or in the oven, then pass out again.  One of my responsibilities was to get out of bed at regular intervals to make sure there was nothing burning downstairs.

So when my mom announced that she would be having another baby, my little 10-year-old brain did its little 10-year-old version of screaming, "How dare you stick me with another kid?" I felt like she was spitting out babies for me to look after. I was so mad.

For whatever reason, my mom was convinced I was angry about her pregnancy because I didn't clearly understand where babies came from.

When I heard this theory, everything inside me did a little 10-year-old version of going: "You have got to be fucking kidding me!" Her theory seemed so juvenile and irrelevant. I had bigger fish to fry.

Of course, I didn't communicate to my mother WHY I was mad.  It would have hurt her feelings, for starters.  More than that, we didn't talk about feelings in my family.  That was a taboo even bigger than sex. I chose to sit through the awkward sex talk rather than admitting to my mom that, at 10 years old, I was already too worn out to take care of another kid.

A few days after that highly memorable Brenda-and-Dylan-have-sex episode of Beverly Hills 90210 first aired, my mom confronted me on the topic. She told me I wasn't allowed to watch the show anymore. Apparently that episode had caused an uproar. Moms across America (and Canada too, I guess) were pissed these two teen characters on a TV show discussed the possibility of having sex, had sex, were happy about their decision, and nothing bad happened.  Everybody knows that when teens have premarital sex on TV, their genitals are supposed to shrivel up and fall into a bucket of boiling lava.

Anyway, the hoopla around this episode was such that my mother heard about it and confronted me on the issue.  I remember her exact words: "I've heard that Dylan and Brenda have already had sex!"

And you know what I said?

"No they didn't."

I lied for them.

I lied for Dylan and Brenda.  I did it to protect their reputations.  No, that's not true.  I lied because I wanted to keep watching the show.  Mind you, one of the perks of being a neglected child is that, between raising someone else's kids and making sure the house doesn't burn down, you can really watch whatever you want on TV.

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, In Shadow, Cherry, Nanny State, Seven Kisses, and The Other Side of Ruth.
http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com

Library Voices

by Giselle Renarde

Once upon a time I was a teenager at the Toronto Reference Library.

A friend had introduced me to this edifice downtown, far from the wilds of suburbia, where books were housed, of course, but in addition to books they had all sorts of other media.  Oh sure, so did my local library, but the difference with the Reference Library was that they had listening booths. 

My friend showed me how to select a CD to listen to (a CD!  I didn't have a CD player yet!  This was really the future!) and check in with the lady guarding the listening booths and put on headphones and sit... and just listen.

We were both big on Broadway musicals, so we both picked out musicals to listen to.  I don't remember what she selected, but I picked out a musical called City of Angels.  I'd never even heard of it.  To this day I remember nothing about the soundtrack, but I remember the experience.

I wasn't the kind of kid (or teen) who went out with friends very much. I had too many family responsibilities, plus the cost of going out was prohibitive. To get to the Reference Library, I had to take a bus and a subway, and, while my mother covered the cost of my transit fare to and from school (I went to a high school that was out of area for me, a good hour from my house), any time I wanted to go anywhere that wasn't school-related it was my responsibility to cover my transit costs. 

Part of the reason I didn't go out with friends much is that the things they wanted to do cost money.  I was saving my money for university.

From the time I could write words on paper, every year at Christmas I would put the same one item in my letter to Santa: a university education. My parents hadn't gone to university.  My grandparents hadn't finished high school.  I would be the first in my family to get a degree.

You'd think a mom would be proud that her child had such lofty aspirations, but something else won out over pride with my mom--either pragmatism or crab-bucket jealousy, I don't know.  Every year she'd laugh at my letter to Santa.  She'd say, "If you want to go to university, you're on your own. I'm not paying for it."

I got my first summer job when I was 8 years old.  Picking berries. Same first job my grandfather had 58 years before me.  He earned half a penny per pint.  I earned 25 cents. Thank you, inflation.

But that money didn't last long.  Because the thing about living with a substance abuser is that sometimes they steal from you. Sometimes they steal every penny of berry picking money you earn. Babysitting money, birthday money. Addiction breeds desperation.

It's true what they say: life isn't fair.

And, you see, this is why it was a very difficult decision to go out or not to go out: can I afford to spend $1.35 on transit fare?  It'll take a lot of dollar-thirty-fives to add up to a university education.

So, more than not, I stayed home. 

But that day, when my friend invited me to the Reference Library, I decided to go out. Of all the friend-dates a person could go on, the library's a pretty good one.  And not just because it's free, although that's an attractive quality for sure.  It was more the fact that we could sit side by side at listening booths and just... listen.  No talking allowed. 

Libraries were different back then.

Not being allowed to talk can really be quite freeing.  People found me standoffish as a teen, but that's really because I had so much shame about my family of origin.  I didn't want people trying to get close to me and discovering what was behind the facade.  I didn't want people asking questions.

My friend didn't ask me a lot of questions. I didn't ask her questions either. I knew it was just her and her mom.  I didn't ask about her father because I didn't want her to ask about mine.  By that time my mother had a restraining order against him. He lived in a motel room in a small town, but he often swung by our place to break into our house, destroy our belongings, and threaten to murder us all.

One time my friend invited me to her place when her mom was at work.  She wasn't supposed to have people over, but her mother would never know.  It was kind of exciting for me to take the streetcar to her neighbourhood because she lived in a gentrified area with lots of quirky boutiques.

As it turned out, her house was one of the forgotten left-behind ones.  It was the tiniest house I'd ever seen, just two small bedrooms off one main living area that incorporated the kitchen. There must have been a bathroom somewhere but I can't recall seeing it.

The bedrooms had carpeting, but the main room was just a dirt floor covered in pine needles.

My friend transferred out of my school in Grade 10.  I heard she went to an alternative school, but I don't think she lasted long there. In Grade 12, I went to a university fair at the convention centre and there was my friend! I hadn't seen her in two years. I was overjoyed to see her again. I loved her in a way I still hadn't learned to express.

But she wasn't attending the university fair as a prospecting high school student. She was working it as a security guard. She'd dropped out of high school. She hoped to return at some point but she and her mom really needed the money and, well, you know how it is...

After working part-time and summer jobs throughout high school, I was able to afford my first year of tuition at the University of Toronto, but it was tight. Throughout university, I think I spent more time working than studying.

When I finally had that degree in hand, it was really a non-event. Aside from my grandmother, nobody in my family seemed to care much about my achievement.  But I never expected them to.

http://gisellerenarde.com

I was all right... for a while...

by Giselle Renarde

It was almost a decade ago that Filipino Roy Orbison moved into the apartment next door.

Cry-y-y-y-ing... over you...

My building had always been quiet before. As soon as this family moved in, every night was karaoke night. Microphone, massive speaker system. And, let me tell you, my neighbours are terrible singers.

Cry-y-y-y-ing... over you...

Crying was their favourite song. And SO LOUD the music came right through my wall. Dude's voice. In my space. Every night.

More Crying, more Crying, more Crying.

Everybody has those their own set of triggers. Loud music really does it for me. Some people can't stand traffic noise. I actually love it. I once had an apartment on a streetcar line, and every time a streetcar went by my medicine cabinet would rattle. I would feel the rumble through my floor, through my bed. I found it very soothing.

Other people's music--NO. Especially Roy Orbison. Especially karaoke.

I don't have anything against Roy Orbison. It's not like I hate his music. It's not like I even hate Crying. I don't. It's a very emotive song.

But here's the thing: I've mentioned many times that I grew up in an alcoholic household. My father is long dead, so I'll never really know why he drank, but I often think it had to do with his unlived life--the musician he was and never was.

My father told me he played in a band, when he was younger, with a musician who went on to become a Canadian rock icon. Sounds like total bullshit, right? I never believed it until my dad was mentioned by name in the guy's autobiography.

My dad's buddy went on to become a rock star while my dad landed an office job and a buttload of kids.

Dad drank to a schedule. Worked days, drank nights. Passed out on the couch during Entertainment Tonight. Sounds too perfect to be true, but I was there.

In the wee small hours of the morning, he woke up. And he turned on the stereo. And he brought out his guitar. And he sang.

We're not talking intimate serenade. We're talking cranking the volume to eleven and belting out--you guessed it--Roy Orbison.

Not ONLY Roy Orbison. Can you image? Mind you, truth is so often stranger than fiction. In fact, Elvis was my father's go-to guy. On Sunday afternoons, we'd watch Elvis movies on TV or on videos he'd checked out from the library. So, late at night (or, rather, early in the morning) he often played Elvis records and sang along. But Roy Orbison too. Crying was in the mix, but he particularly like Unchained Melody.

One of my sisters confronted him more than I did, I think. To tell you the truth, there are A LOT of gaps in my childhood memories. But I think it was mainly my sister who yelled at him and told him to stop singing and turn his music off because his children were trying to sleep.

I honestly have no memory of how he reacted to that. Not well, I imagine.

So fast-forward a couple decades and imagine my emotional state when Filipino Roy Orbison fills my apartment with his terrible rendition of Crying. Angry. Invaded. Total defeat.

But some stories have a happy ending.

As an adult, I didn't remain silent. I took action. I wrote to my property managers and they asked me to document what was happening and when. My building is NOT a party building, so they acted on it fast.

My neighbours and I have been living next to each other for nearly a decade, and I never hear a peep from them. See them in the hallway once in a while. The walls are concrete, so you really need to blast your music before it bleeds through. Could be that they're singing every night, unplugged, but as long as it isn't waking me up at 3 in the morning I don't care what they do.

No more karaoke machine.

No more Crying.

***
On a totally different topic, 2016 marks ten years as an author for me. I'm celebrating by giving stuff away--not only to readers, but to other writers. Established authors helped me so much when I started out, and they continue to help me to this day. At the moment, I've got premade ebook covers I'm giving away for free to authors and aspiring authors. The business side of writing can get expensive and I want to help people out in some small way. You can read more here: http://donutsdesires.blogspot.ca/2015/12/authors-premade-covers-are-up.html

The Way It Feels At the End

by Annabeth Leong

Angst - (in Existentialist philosophy) the dread caused by man's awareness that his future is not determined but must be freely chosen
--from dictionary.com

This is an excerpt from an unpublished early erotic story of mine, “The Way It Feels At the End.” The main characters, Siri and Liz, can’t get over their angst about the events of Siri’s drunken binge a year ago.

###

Siri ran her fingers down Liz’s now-naked calves, a light layer of stubble roughening the smooth curve of the muscle. She wanted to put every part of her lover in her mouth, but had refrained in the past from paying too much attention in odd places. Now, she swirled her tongue over the back of Liz’s knee, and pressed her lips to the swell of the calf muscle and sucked hard.

Liz swayed, gripping the shower curtain rod with one hand and a shelf with the other. Siri looked up. “Don’t move. Stay just like that.”

She rose to her feet, stretching the stockings out so they weren’t lumps anymore. “I’ve heard we should have some word to say in case something goes wrong and you want me to stop.”

“How about ‘tequila?’” Liz said, raising an eyebrow.

Siri dropped her gaze. “It fits,” she said, and busied herself with attaching Liz’s wrists to the bathroom fixtures. When she’d finished, she stepped back to look at her lover. Her chest felt contracted from the reproach in Liz’s choice of safeword. Still avoiding Liz’s eyes, Siri unbuttoned her lover’s shirt, tucking it open and watching the water hit her nipples. She pulled off Liz’s skirt and panties and dropped them on the bathroom floor outside the shower stall.

Then Siri stepped back and stared at the body that had been her object of desire for some seven years now. She knew the trail of beauty marks that went down Liz’s left shoulder. She knew how she’d gotten the scars on her knees. She felt the full force of all her mixed emotions, the build-up of lust and guilt, despair and love. She stepped out of the shower and closed the curtain to put a screen between herself and Liz.

“Where are you going?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Siri said, forcing her voice to stay light and teasing. She watched Liz’s shape through the filmy curtain. Not stopping to question her impulse, Siri reached back into the shower and turned the water all the way to cold. Liz screamed as the water changed, and the sound sent a shiver all the way up Siri’s spine.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Siri tore the curtain off the rod, ignoring the water spraying out of the tub. “Do you want me to turn it off?”

Liz jerked her arms against the restraints. “Jesus! Yes! What the hell?” The sight of her lover wet, cold, and struggling sent a sudden surge of desire through Siri’s body.

“You know what to say if you want me to stop,” Siri said. She pulled off her own soaked clothes and dumped them on the floor, ignoring Liz’s continued shrieks of outrage.

Siri stepped back into the shower, stifling her own shriek when the cold water hit her body. Liz’s skin, covered with gooseflesh, felt stiff and cool to the touch. Siri flicked her fingernails against the hard tips of Liz’s nipples. She kissed Liz hard, shutting off another shriek. Her mouth tasted flame-hot. A shiver rose from deep in Siri’s spine, half from the cold and half lust, and she didn’t know her own hands as they clutched and clawed at Liz’s back, arms, and legs.

Siri pulled back from the kiss, Liz’s panting breath loud and hoarse even above the sound of the shower water. She reached between Liz’s legs and pushed two fingers up inside. “Cold,” Liz gasped. “It’s cold. It’s cold.”

Siri lifted Liz’s chin and looked at her face. “Now tell me whatever it is that’s on your mind.”

“Are you serious?”

Siri shifted so the full force of the cold water fell on Liz again. She forced herself to meet her lover’s eyes and keep her gaze hard and her fingers inside Liz’s pussy harder.

Liz tipped her forehead toward Siri. “I never forgave you,” she said, the words coming out tight and sharp.

Siri closed her eyes and reached for Liz. “Say it all.”

“I don’t trust you. When you go away, I’m always afraid you’re not coming home. I fucking hate that you slept with another woman. When you touch me, I always wonder how you touched her.”

“Keep talking.”

“I left you because you were leaving me,” Liz said. “That’s what you never seemed to understand.” Siri slid her fingers in and out of Liz, toying with her body as the painful words flowed over her with a deeper chill than the water. The words began to slow as the sensations took over. Liz gave a full-body shudder and arched her neck back. Siri leaned forward and bit hard at the base. Liz went quiet. Siri felt her trembling under her hands.

“You’re wet,” Siri said. She continued to work her fingers in Liz’s pussy, and went in for a deep kiss. She rubbed her thumb against Liz’s clit until again she felt Liz surrender something. Her lover’s hips began to swirl, and the chill of the water faded into the background. Siri kissed so hard her jaw began to hurt. She stroked Liz’s tongue, the inside of her cheek. She wanted something from Liz that she didn’t know how to get--to be inside of her, to fuck her, something beyond just making her come.

###

If anyone would like to read the whole story, shoot me an email, and I'll send over the whole file!