For the Love of Books
Published June 08, 2005
My first reading indiscretion took place when I was eleven years old. My friend got a free copy of a Mills and Boon book along with a bottle of Laxme Lotion. At the time she wasn't much of a reader and passed it on to me. The name of the book was Counterfeit Bride, and while I enjoyed the romantic drama between the characters, the sex went over my head.
My pre-adolescent brain could not understand how a man could penetrate a woman and make shivers of pleasure shoot through her slim body. I thought about it for a long time, called up my friends and the girls could not understand either.
We decided to take the book to school and ask some knowledgeable girls, but they were as stumped as we were. The book became famous, and was passed around for a month before it was returned to me in a tattered condition.
Despite the skirmishes that we had with each other, being in a all-girls Catholic school, we were united in our decision to keep the book hidden from the teachers and parents. We debated over the ways a man could get under a woman's skin, and even the most ludicruous explanation brought us girls together as we tittered and giggled.
The words penis or vagina were not mentioned even once in the book. Being a book published in the early eighties, intercourse was generally explained in rather delicate, erotic manner in most romance novels.
The book and I, however, were destined to part company the very day I got it back from the last borrower. I had hidden the book in my messy cupboard and my mother decided to do me a major favor and clean my cupboard up.
I distinctly remember a shiver of fear chill my spine when she screamed my name in a loud, truly dissed voice. I had never seen my mother so mad. She quietly spelled out how deep the pool of shit I had landed myself in and threatened to call my friend's mother, the school teachers, and, worst of all, tell my father.
The book was confiscated for good five years before I became bold enough to ask for it. My friend and I had spent a whole week on tenterhooks. My mother played well on my fear by doing absolutely nothing.
No sex education was given, no calls were made to my friend's mother or teacher met. Instead I was given the silent treatment along with pointed looks. My father and siblings remained oblivious to the tension between my mother and me.
Time passed slowly but surely, and I finally received my sex education by pouring over the Britannica Encyclopedia set that I received as a birthday gift a month later.
- For the Love of Books
- Published: June 08, 2005
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Literature and Fiction, Books: Romance
- Writer: Deepti Lamba
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- Deepti Lamba's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Don't diss me, man!
diss, dis (-ss-)
verb {T} US SLANG
to speak or behave rudely to someone or to show them no respect:
Perhaps she was distressed, and after her scolding, I was dissed:)
Must read the Shute - haven't
What worlds our books weave!
After all these years, I finally get the inside skinny on coming of age in an all girls school. Thanks swingingpuss! Fun reading. :-]
Aaaah, a girls's first love.
I skimmed right over that and read dissed as pissed.
Why did the Nuns instruct about condoms. That's a Catholic no-no or ..... ?
Well read. Well told. Well Well.
Not only did the nuns talk about condoms but also other forms of contraceptives and before we passed out of school they had an OB-GYN come and talk to us and that lady was a hardcore feminist.
I later taught in another Catholic School for about two years and was told by the nuns there that my school nuns were rather 'forward and controversial in their thinking'.
And by the way Temple not every girl's first love are books:)
I was just riffing on the "fun" nun stereotypes and wondering.
>And by the way Temple not every girl's first love are books:)
Father ........... forgive me for i have sinned.
Lol, if you are gonna open the pandora's box... we had a Catholic Boys school next door and were used to seeing priests coming out of the nuns quaters early morning...obviously it was perfectly innocent, confessions followed by breakfast but then again we knew who the favorite priests were as some of them graced our assemblies too often and had beaming nuns looking up to them.
Pandora's box is very nice. Warm. Overflowing. Effusive. Easy to open really, I'm not sure of all the fuss.
...
Can there be a more hormone-charge area than a Catholic boys and girls school next door?
Give me nuclear radiation fallout any day instead. OK .. maybe not.
Nice piece, Puss.
(May I call you "Puss"?)
It's very interesting to see behind the Iron Curtain of Adolescent Gender Histories.
I can't remember my first 'dirty' book, (we liked to look at the lingerie ads in the Sears catalog, this was ca. early 1960s!) -- but I do remember the first stirrings in my loins:
Miss Powers, *third grade teacher, South Hills elementary.
(*Wow, is that too early?)
BTW: Some psychologist might find it significant that I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I can remember my third grade teacher's name and the precise shape of her butt as she wrote on the blackboard.
Oy.
Sure Shark, puss sounds just fine.
It is funny how hormones helps us remember certain memories down to the smallest details... I remember a whole bunch of first times...first crush when I was five, my first kiss and I even remember the date when 'it' finally happened ;)
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she screamed my name in a loud, truly dissed voice...
Did you mean distressed? Or that she felt "dismissed" or "disdained" by your choice of reading?
Not having had the advantage of attending an all-girls school [grin], I can tell you that my singular "forbidden" read was Nevil Schute's Trustee from the Toolroom. Once I read that, and could see no reason for it to be on the prohibited books list, I never looked back.