"In heaven or hell?"
"I'm really not sure. You ought not to chance it."
"I'd better get busy."
"I wish you would."
-Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
I read this today. Lately I've been writing (one serious story but mostly rubbish), and this exchange sounds like something I'd write on a good day.
I've been reading and thinking a lot about sex lately. This may or may not shock you, depending on how and how well you know me. As a 'recovering fundamentalist' I do think about it, and how my views have been colored by what I've been taught and what I've observed. As a friend so excellently put it, "the church screwed* me now no one else will." I'm not brave enough to publish some of my own thoughts as I am still cobbling them together, but I have read that my feelings are not unique among female single Christians. I struggle with being alone, but mostly for the following reasons: a single income stretches only so far; wrestling a duvet into a cover is best attempted by two; it'd be nice to have someone drive me home when I've had too much to drink. I'm sure the sex is nice too. But I've gotten accustomed to being on my own (aside from a lovely roommate who can tell when I'm in a funk and so to tread lightly).
But back to the sex. It's everywhere. I've noticed it in books I'm reading about writing. So many writing prompts are about sex. Write how you felt the first time. What was the weather like? Write a sex scene but make it funny. There's a chapter in Her Fearful Symmetry that explains why the twins are still virgins. It's a theme throughout the book, this desire to couple but fear of leaving the other behind.
I wanted to write something else and the thoughts were there earlier. They're gone now. You're stuck with this. So am I. I think I want to write a pseudo-memoir about the kind of girl I was and the one I'm becoming. The one who grew up terrified of God but now embraces him/her/it and the mystery that is existing. The one who prefers questions to dogma. The one who swore she'd wait until her wedding night but now thinks if she can stand to let a man get close to her he probably will get lucky before he even puts a ring on it. (Somewhere in a parallel universe my university-aged self just died.) Names and situations will be changed to protect the very guilty and criminally naive. I joked once that I wanted to write a Christian fiction novel where neither main character was particularly attractive, some characters were not religious (and did not come to Jesus by the penultimate chapter), and one of the protagonists died or left the relationship and had a great life. The kind of book that features a female lead who is a sometimes potty-mouthed social drinker of faith (my caricature in the brilliantly moving and occasionally irreverent spiritual memoir of a friend, coming to bookshelves near you sometime in the next few years I'm sure). It'll have to include the curse I remember friends pronouncing if we pissed each other off- "May you die a virgin." Because we couldn't think of anything worse.
Or maybe I'll publish a tawdry bodice-ripper of an e-book under another name if I can ever bring myself to type the words "throbbing" and "member" in the same sentence. Oh, wait...
*another term was used but that may offend some readers
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