Friday, September 30, 2005
Eat at Your Own Risk
Catholic seminarian Jeff Geerling tells his blog readers how to enjoy "Venal Sin on a Tortilla."
Jeff is also the sound man and webmaster for the delightfully named Priestie Boyz. I wonder if they perform the great rap ode to the Eucharist, "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right to Partake."
10:34 PM
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I Am the Morning DJ on WOLD
Personal to every reader who remembers the Dive, Voxx Records, The Bob, USA Network's "Night Flight," or IRS Records' "The Cutting Edge": If you want to feel young, then, whatever you do, do not click here.
Hat tip—make that a big, throaty wheeze—to Saint Kansas. Did I tell you about my last operation?
11:11 AM
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For Better or for Verse
A Guest Post by Robert N. Going
[Robert N. Going of The Judge Report posted the following in the comments section of an earlier post. I assume no liability for damage to your computer screen from coffee or any other beverage which this may cause you to spew. — Dawn]
Once I rendered a court decision as a three page limerick, then thought better of it (Thou Shalt Not Get Too Cute) and converted it to much less-interesting prose.
From the archives of Family Court, Montgomery County, N.Y. (the Judge sitting as Acting Supreme Court Justice):
?Bob and Carolyn split. It was fate.
They divorced back around ‘98.
Their marriage a shambles,
They set out on new rambles,
To frolic, perhaps to re-mate.
The lawyer his file did close.
“Nothing left of this case, I suppose.
“All issues resolved.
“No problems to solve.
“It’s as dead as a case ever goes.”
Two years later, and now Bob is back
He has a new cause to attack
“The vows must be said,
“A new wife I must wed.
“And it seems a divorce I do lack.”
“But divorce you we did, I recall,
“We submitted the papers one Fall.
“The Judge took his time,
“But the papers did sign.
“You’re divorced! You’re divorced! That is all!”
“While from Carolyn I’m free from strife,
“It seems there was more to my life.
“I meant not to fool ya’,
“But there’s also a Julia
“With some claims of being my wife.”
She had troubles, it seems, of a sort,
And Bob, wishing to be a good sport,
Took a walk down the aisle,
Later left, single file,
Without an assist from a court.
So later, when Carolyn came,
He wished not to mention his shame.
So to Carolyn wed,
And with Julia not dead,
He was playing a dangerous game.
“So let’s get this straight,” lawyer said.
“With Julia undivorced and not dead,
“You then took the course
“Of seeking divorce
“From a woman to whom you’re not wed?”
“I guess you could say that is true.
“But tell me just what could I do?
“I couldn’t just tell her
“What kind of a feller
“She married. Now tell me, could you?”
So Bob must divorce number one,
With number two already done,
Was there any redress
For this whole freakin’ mess?
His problems had only begun.
So the file so carefully closed
Was summoned from its sweet repose
What could Lawyer do
With this sticky old goo?
“An annulment, I guess, I suppose.”
Since Carolyn didn’t yet know
That her wedding was only for show,
She hadn’t quite weighed
The Default she had made
With the true facts. She might seek more dough.
And Julia, with no thought of makeup
With Bob, might just start to wake up
To her property rights,
And might set her sights
On what Carolyn got in the breakup.
The Court, though amused, took its time,
And replied in Decision sublime,
“There’s nothing I’ll do
“Till the whole bloody crew
“Is before me!” (in Limerick rhyme).
12:01 AM
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Thursday, September 29, 2005
Follow the Leader
A Guest Post by Colin O'Brien
Belief in God, in His mercy, forgiveness, and love, is often looked at as the reward, the goal, or the thing that will bring us to happiness. In a world that holds up individual happiness as the objective in life, and which suggests that we make the right choices to attain that happiness, it is mistakenly believed that faith in God is a quick fix for the problem of attaining happiness. That attitude suggests that, once I have attained faith, I will find happiness, contentment, peace of mind, and fulfillment of dreams. God often, however, has other plans for us.
For that reason, I suspect, there are those who hold out the naïve hope that they can find happiness by other, less demanding means. As I have written before, I tried to find the freedom and happiness in all sorts of places, but was unable to do so. I explored the fulfillment of my own desires, and often attained that satisfaction; the terror of the life I lived was that of an insatiable hunger that grew all the time I tried to satisfy it. The very behaviors I believed would fulfill my longings and desires proved unsatisfactory, and caused me to despair of my ability to love, to feel security and happiness. I came to believe that love and joy were never to be mine, and that I could only escape the loneliness I felt at the time of my death. That I have been found by and reintroduced to God, however, does not mean that my life has suddenly become an easy, comfortable existence.
Although I have come to know great joy as I have grown in my faith in and love for God, I have by no means reached a destination, or a point where I can say, "I have faith now, and I can go about the business of getting happy." Where the world reminds us to work hard now and always plan for tomorrow's happiness, God reminds me, "Be still and know that I am God," (Psalm 46:11) and, "Put not your trust in princes, in man, in whom there is no salvation. When his spirit departs he returns to his earth, on that day his plans perish," (Psalm 146:3-4).
Any time I let my mind worry about what will become of me in the future, I walk away from God. Though I know this to be true, it is still easy to worry and to become afraid. Fortunately, God understands this and is always there to assure me, to save me, and to remove those things that come between us. The more this becomes clear to me, the easier it is for me to be still and to ask for His guidance and protection.
A simple metaphor can be used to explain why I do this. There was a time when I was drowning and found myself unable to swim away from the turbulent waters that surrounded me. My friend jumped in, rescued me, and pulled me to safety. I jumped in again countless times, and my friend was always there to pull me out to safety, and to tell me how to avoid the same calamity in the future. He never got angry with me, or grew impatient, or gave up on me. When I came to see all that He has done for me, I recognized the debt that I owed Him, one that I could never pay off. Fortunately, the only thing He asks of me is to follow Him and to trust that He knows what is best. Out of gratitude for the life He gave me, I gladly seek His friendship.
This post originally appeared on Colin's blog, Fallen Sparrow.
8:54 PM
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The Storms that Herald the End?
A Guest Post by Maclin Horton
The subject of the end times came up at dinner the other night, apropos of the recent hurricanes: it seems that one of my daughter’s teachers suggested that they might be a sign of the end. I doubt that, myself. For one thing, hurricanes of this strength are far from unheard of, although it’s true that these have been unusually close together in time, were unusually strong at least while they were still well out at sea, and have struck in unusually close proximity to each other. Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, and Rita were all very strong storms, and they all struck a section of coastline from the Texas-Louisiana border on the west to the Alabama-Florida border on the east, a span of roughly four hundred miles, perhaps an eighth (I’m looking at a map and guessing) of the coastline bordering the Gulf of Mexico. I think those of us who live in that area can be forgiven for wondering if there is some design at work here. Still, if the events have been unusual, they can’t be said to have been so improbable as to be anomalous, and the fact is that more and more severe hurricanes struck the United States in the decade of the 1940s.
There’s a simple reason why Americans are engaging in apocalyptic speculation: these hurricanes have affected us dramatically. I don’t remember hearing any of us talk this way in 1998, when Hurricane Mitch, a late-season (October 29) monster, struck Nicaragua and killed some 11,000 people.
I’m a resolute agnostic as regards the end of the world, and in fact tend to believe that the more widespread the belief that it is near, the less likely it is to be so. Sooner or later, of course, someone is going to be right in predicting it, but every age has provided ample reason for those living in it to believe that wickedness is so widespread that it meets the criteria of prophecy, that the end must be soon or else the world will be utterly given over to evil, and so I neither make nor believe any very specific predictions.
There is, however, one thing that gives me pause. The old familiar wickedness of the human race we know very well: the wars, the tortures, the oppression, the lust and the lying. C. S. Lewis once speculated that the quantity of good and evil in the world remains more or less constant, but gets distributed differently in every age: so (for example) our age is horrified by the brutality and cruelty of punishments once handed out for very minor crimes, but has positively encouraged people to abandon on a whim marriage vows made before God, and to throw over the whole concept of sexual morality. Perhaps it all adds up to equal measures of virtue and vice.
But we have invented a new crime. We propose to meddle with the very substance of human life. We propose to destroy human embryos in order to improve our own health. We propose to tinker with the genes of the newly conceived so that when they grow up they will look like we want them to look and behave as we want them to behave. We propose to grow duplicates of living people in a laboratory for purposes of our own.
Once, back in the 1970s when I was more or less testing the waters of Christianity after a long absence, I had a conversation with an Episcopal priest known for his “liberal” views. I had the feeling that he was trying to impress me, under the mistaken impression that I was looking for a modernized and contemporary religion, long on secular enlightenment and short on revelations and commandments. I only remember one specific thing from the conversation; as best I remember, he said something like this: “We (the Episcopal Church) don’t hold the sort of only-God-can-make-a-tree position that the Roman Catholics do. We would see nothing wrong, for instance, in genetically engineering people with gills so that we could mine the bottom of the sea.”
I was dumbstruck and horrified by this, not yet being aware of the apostasy happening within every Christian community at the time. Ten years or so later I related the conversation to a great-aunt of mine, who as far as I know had no religion and was in her late 80s at the time. She considered what I had said for a moment, then replied simply “Well, I suppose people will always want to have slaves.” She saw plainly what the Christian bien-pensant could not.
Perhaps our experiments with cloning and genetic engineering and all the rest of it will prove to be unfeasible. Perhaps they are just slavery under a new name, and perhaps God will let us get away with it, as he has let us, individually and collectively, get away with so much. But it seems to me that they have the potential to distort beyond recognition the elementals of human life: the bond between parent and child, husband and wife, brother and sister, one generation and the next. And I find myself hoping, if not expecting, that God himself will put an end to these obscenities, since it seems unlikely that we will voluntarily turn aside from this path, those of us who oppose it being, apparently, in the minority.
11:38 AM
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Pressed Into Service
A Guest Post by Colin O'Brien
 [Colin (left) is a friend I met at church who has written a beautiful testimony about his return to faith. You'll find it on his blog, Fallen Sparrow—start at the bottom of the page and read up. The following entry originally appeared on Fallen Sparrow. Expect more guest entries as I continue my retreat this week, including ones from Maclin Horton of Caelum et Terra and my stepfather. I'm thankful to have such talented readers filling the gap. — Dawn]
A man named Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was coming in from the fields, and they pressed him into service to carry the cross" (Mark 15:21).
What must have Simon thought as this happened to him? He had been working all day, minding his own business, when a group of Roman soldiers grabbed him and ordered him to carry the cross. He was probably tired and hungry, and possibly reluctant to get involved in the chaotic events that were really none of his business. It is not inconceivable that he just wanted to get home to his family and to observe Passover, but there he was, thrust into the unfolding drama of the Crucifixion by forces beyond his control.
I have often felt that my relationship with God is not unlike this. Much of the time, I simply want to go about my daily business, to keep my head down and work and be left alone, but God has other plans for me. Being called by God often feels like being pressed into service, because it entails setting aside my own plans and my own desires in order to carry the cross in some way. This is often inconvenient, and occasionally even unpleasant, but it is always rewarding. But, even more significantly, it is in those moments of being pressed into service that I come closest to God.
Why is that? As with Simon, whenever I suffer the pain of having to carry the cross, I am walking with Christ, who suffered still more for me. It is the suffering that draws me into the miraculous event of Christianity, and it is the suffering that serves as the reference point for the joy I feel at having come to know God's love, mercy, and forgiveness.
A dear friend of mine who, like me, suffered the eternal death of alcoholism says that he was given the experience of alcoholism so that he can share the hope and joy of recovery with others who still suffer. It is precisely because I have known pain, loneliness, suffering, madness, depression, and the desire to die that I now pursue joy, life, forgiveness, and love. Had I not known the one, I might not seek the other.
It is easy to look at our sufferings and inconveniences as evidence that God does not love us, or does not exist. But what if, as with Simon of Cyrene, we are merely being given a cross to carry so that we might know Him better, and be counted among His saints?
7:48 PM
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Thread-Letter Day
I would like to congratulate Buscaraons blogger Xavier Basora, as the guest post he wrote has officially spawned the longest-running comments thread in the history of The Dawn Patrol. It's now at 149 comments—most, I believe, from Philip and Tapetum, who are still going at it (politely, I might add) after nearly three weeks.
10:33 AM
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Read-Letter Day
Wonderful news—my lost e-mails have been restored. Thanks be to God—and Panix.
10:28 AM
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
How I Became the Catholic I Wuz—Part 13
Continued from Part 12:
During my college years and early 20s, I sought out sexual experiences with men as a distraction from the emptiness I felt inside.
The emptiness was self-defeating, I knew. I wanted desperately to love and be loved by one man, but I couldn't really imagine why anyone would love me. As a result, I was caught in the downward spiral of the addict, seeking to fill the empty space with something that I knew would leave me emptier than before.
My journals of that time are filled with self-loathing. All my problems, I believed, stemmed from low self-image. If only I could feel better about myself, I could conquer my depression. My need for validation—which I pursued through casual sexual experiences—would likewise disappear. No longer would I hunger hopelessly for a man I desired who would show me that I was desirable.
I voiced my feelings to anyone who would listen—family, friends, and a succession of therapists—telling them how I felt trapped within my low self-image.
They all told me the same message that I could find in every self-help book and women's magazine—the message of our feel-good consumer culture: "Don't be so hard on yourself. You've got so much going for you."
They would list my attractive qualities and tell me to count my blessings. I was just going through a hard time, they said. Things would get better. All I had to do was believe in myself.
And so, I would believe in myself—until the next disappointment came along. Then I'd feel like an even bigger failure.
Life had wounded me. I felt oppressed, impotent, painfully aware that there was nothing I could do to heal myself.
I was absolutely right.
My problem lay in how I perceived my own weakness. I was acutely aware of it, and longed with all my heart to be rid of it.
What nobody told me was that the answer was right in front of me.
The emptiness that I perceived as a black hole was what Christians call a God-shaped vacuum. The fact that I was aware of this, as painful as it was, actually put me at an advantage. Unlike those who engage in self-destructive behavior without any inkling of the consequences of their actions, I knew that there was no future in my in-the-moment lifestyle.
My mistake was in doing what I was told to do—believing in myself.
"Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay," wrote G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness."
Indeed, just when I thought I was at my strongest—the times when I most believed that I had the self-confidence to face life as a single young woman, with all its possibilities and pitfalls—I was weakest.
The reason for my weakness may be found in Chesterton's examples of self-confident individuals. Actors who can't act. Debtors who can't pay. They are people whose existence depends upon putting forth a front without the resources to back it up. The very nature of self-confidence is that it springs from within. It can't be put on. To put it another way, you can't transform a pair of $14.99 Fayva slingbacks into a pair of $600 Manolo stilettos with a mere coat of shoe polish.
The solution for my younger self, then, would not have been to put on self-confidence, but to remove my idea that lack of it was a bad thing. I needed what G.K. Chesterton calls "the good news of original sin." We are all fallen, whether we realize it or not. The amazing thing is that, in spite of our fallen nature, we are given a great grace: the ability to act as a force for good in the world.
Even at my lowest point, I had this gift that God gives to all—this treasure in an earthen vessel, as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 4:7. But in my darkness, I cared only about the value that men who didn't even know what was really inside me placed on this treasure—not the value that it would hold to a truly loving man some day. And I had no concept whatsoever of the value it held in the eyes of God. Labels: Wuz
11:45 PM
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Nuns' Hood
On the grounds of the prayer house where I am spending the week, there's a flight of wooden stairs. I went up them today on the advice that, a half-mile down the road, I would find the Delaware River. I did not expect that "the road" would turn out to be...
...this. A bicycle path with trees on one side and...
...a gorgeous, still brook on the other. It took my breath away. I thought of Psalm 42, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."
Speaking of deer, I'm told there are 26 on the grounds. There is also...
...a labyrinth. I plan to walk it tomorrow.Note to John R. and other readers who like Batman: One of the sisters here is a cousin of this man. She told me that he was very humble; at the time of his death last July, few residents of the small Connecticut town where he lived knew of his accomplishments.
8:12 PM
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Who Cares?
A Guest Post by The Raving Atheist
As part of its "Who Decides?" campaign, NARAL Pro-Choice issues a report card for each state based on compliance with the organization's abortion-hungry agenda. She's a demanding teacher. Even in this post-Roe era, over a third of her students have flunked and the average grade is only a D+. California, of course, got an A+, and New York an "A", but Miss NARAL decidedly does not grade on a curve. Not surprising, I suppose. But what baffles me is a statistic that's just sort of dropped in by way of an "Access Fact" box immediately beneath each grade. "98 percent of Kentucky counties have no abortion provider." "93 percent of Wisconsin counties have no abortion provider." What, exactly, is the relevance of the percentage? Who cares? Technically, NARAL doesn't. If you read its report card methodology, you'll discover that the number of facilities plays no part in the grade. They refuse to come right out and say that a state is "bad" if it doesn't have an aboritorium in every county. After all, it's all about "choice." If 98% of the citizens decide they don't like abortions, don't need abortions, and don't choose abortions, it shouldn't be so shocking that "98% of ______ counties have no abortion provider." But they throw it in anyway, just beneath the grade. And there it sits, ominously. Since the figure is over 90% for nearly half the states and over 80% in two-thirds, the intent is plainly to scare the reader into thinking "how terrible!" and into considering ways to get the numbers down to something respectable like 4% or 5%. (Perhaps we're were supposed to further consider whether the county is even the proper subdivision; maybe it would be better to have a clinic in every town, block, supermarket, or next to every ATM machine). Obviously there's some huge, untapped demand that isn't being met, some craving which, if "access" were proportionately increased, would ratchet the number of procedures up from a mere 1.3 million annually to a more proper 10-20 million level. No no no—of course NARAL doesn't want that. Yes, their grading methodology does subtract points for laws that "codify the state's preference for childbirth over abortion," and yes it does subtract points for laws that force people to perform abortions over their moral objections. But they still like their abortions "rare." It's just that when they use that term, they're distinguishing it from "medium" and "well done.
1:09 PM
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Prayer Request—Via the Raving Atheist
No, this is not the promised guest post from the Raving Atheist—that'll come later—and it's not a joke.
A Christian reader of the Raving Atheist's blog who goes by the name Prayer Tulip has put out the request for prayers for the salvation of her dying 20-year-old son, Matt. RA has posted her request on his blog, closing the comments section to prevent inappropriate postings. He is also approaching Christian blogs and asking them to ask readers to pray for Matt.
RA's atheist credentials are still intact, as far as I know, and I give him a lot of credit for spreading Prayer Tulip's request. If one of my favorite readers wrote to me and told me that an atheist's wish for her dying son would be fulfilled if only I would post her claim that there is no God, I don't think I could do it.
The following is the request in Prayer Tulip's own words, taken directly from RA's blog. (I've made a minor grammatical correction and changed "Rehab" to "Rahab," as I believe that's whom she meant.) James writes, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." When we pray, that righteous Man—Jesus, through his Holy Spirit— prays with us.
Prayer Tulip writes: As I sit here beside my son in this hospital, Lord, I know Your strength is made perfect in our weakness. You said in Your Word that the effectual fervent prayer of a rightous man/woman avails much. I know I, will never be perfect, while on this earth, and I know that when you see me you don't see my sin, you see The One who died for me, Jesus, and that makes me perfect in Your eyes. Please, Lord show me what you would like me to see/learn through all of these hard days of my son's sickness. I am holding him not tightly only loosely because he belongs to you. Show yourself strong Lord. You have made many promises and you do not lie. Please spare my son and allow him to use this for your kingdom, and give me strength to endure.
UPDATE
The purpose of these updates is for prayer for Matt's salvation. I believe that as long as there is breath in someone, that there is always hope. So far prayers have been answered in that Matt has death to think about right now. He has become resistant to Vancomycin AND is running a high fever. The doctor has changed his antibiotics and now he is on 3 different kinds all hours of the day and night. He stays nauseated. His blood cultures are all coming back positive.
As his mom [I] cannot just say, "He has made his choice to reject God", and just go on about my business. I do not know how anyone could do that, even in the face of his sin. There was hope for Saul, Rahab, Jacob, etc. Do we wrestle with flesh and blood? NO. When I see sin in someone's life, it's like watching a drunk on skid row moving slowly in the face of a Mac truck not realizing that he will be killed if he does not get up and get out of the way. Do I tell him the truth? Yes. Do I abandon him? NO. Do I fervently pray for him? YES. And, like David did for his son, I will stay on my face for Matt constantly until there is no breath in him, then and only then will I know that I did all that I could do. One of those things that I do is ask other people to pray.
joanie
10:12 AM
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Monday, September 26, 2005
Parental Guidance
"I asked a six-year-old boy, ‘If you were going to go to heaven, what would you take along with you?’ And he said, ‘My mother and father.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because I think they’d have more time for me up there.'"
— Art Linkletter on problems facing the family, via WI Catholic Musings
6:16 PM
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Whit and Wisdom
Kathy Shaidle explains in two short essays why you should read an 800-page book by someone you've never heard of—my hero, Whittaker Chambers: Part One and Part Two.
12:01 AM
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Sunday, September 25, 2005
Frigid Daughters of the Sexual Revolution
The Telegraph of London reports that women are trying to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization because they don't want to do it the old-fashioned way: Michael Dooley, a gynaecologist, obstetrician and fertility expert, said that in the past five years he has seen a 20 per cent increase in the number of patients seeking "inappropriate or premature" IVF treatment.
"Many of these couples are simply not having sex or not having enough sex," he said. "Conception has become medicalised. It's too clinical. There has been a trend away from having sex and loving relationships towards medicalised conception."...
Emma Cannon, who runs the fertility programme at Westover House, said:...Some people are horrified by the idea that they have to have sex two to three times a week." Cannon explains that her patients are commuter couples who don't have time for sex, but it's hard to believe that there aren't problems in the marriages as well. After all, if a spouse really want to have sex, he or she will forgo the extra trip to the gym.
The idea that there is a reason for the couples' lack of sex other than mere lack of time is borne out by another comment of Cannon's:"I told one of my patients who is going through IVF that another IVF patient had just conceived naturally. She said: 'What? She's having sex? Bloody Luddite.'" Another expert likewise suggests the couples' problems are more than just not being able to pencil sex into their schedule—testing, after all, takes time:Dr Tim Evans, the founder of Westover House and the Queen's GP, said: "People are increasingly trying to control it [conception]. They are testing, testing, testing when they should just have sex." So, this is what the sexual revolution has come to. Women get married at 35 or 40, having contracepted for their entire sexual lives, and they discover that they do not know how to have a marital relationship—one that by definition, so long as the two partners are capable, involves having sex.
And people think Catholics are backwards for using natural family planning (NFP), which they do either to combat infertility or to space out births?
I look at the observant-Catholic married couples I know, and say what you will, no doctor warns them that they're missing out on sex. And I don't just mean that from the number of little ones they bring to Mass. You can tell from their affection for one another.
Nor does one have to be Catholic for one's relationship to benefit from natural family planning, as Mormon fertility specialist Joseph B. Stanford, M.D., writes in his First Things article "Sex, Naturally":Sexual union in marriage ought to be a complete giving of each spouse to the other, and when fertility (or potential fertility) is deliberately excluded from that giving I am convinced that something valuable is lost. A husband will sometimes begin to see his wife as an object of sexual pleasure who should always be available for gratification. This tendency is reinforced by the dominant perspective on sexuality in our society, which idealizes unlimited sexual titillation and gratification freed (at least theoretically) from any consideration of pregnancy. Sterilization and hormonal contraceptives especially feed into this prevalent and highly distorted male perspective (which is also adopted by many women). Couples can also easily lose sight of why they have made a decision to avoid pregnancy and then not discuss the issue for months or even years, developing an approach to their sexual relationship largely divorced from even the thought of procreation....
[T]here is a strong "courtship/honeymoon" effect among NFP users, even after years of marriage. Abstinence from genital contact during the fertile phase evokes a sense of periodic "courtship," after which the couple enjoys a periodic "honeymoon" that increases the appreciation and enjoyment of the sexual union. Available research suggests that the overall frequency of intercourse among married couples using NFP is about the same as among most married couples using contraception, but that it is distributed differently. I have known couples in my practice using contraception who routinely have daily intercourse, but these couples do not have anywhere near as satisfying a "sex life" as those couples I see who use NFP. Simply put, NFP enhances marriages in a way that the use of contraception does not.
I find that the following benefits come to those couples who use NFP: 1) they come to a deeper appreciation of fertility as a gift from God rather than a biological phenomenon to be manipulated or a curse to be avoided; 2) they are usually able to consciously and rapidly achieve pregnancy when they so choose ("surprise" pregnancies are rare for NFP users); 3) they reevaluate their choices about fertility on an ongoing basis; 4) in their intimate relationship, each spouse sends to the other the implicit and powerful message: "I accept all of you, including your fertility"; 5) they learn to assume and to exercise joint responsibility for decisions about their fertility; 6) they learn that times of abstinence from genital contact can strengthen their relationship.
Most people who start to use NFP do not do so because they expect to experience the benefits to their relationship and spirituality that I have just described. Research suggests that a majority are initially interested primarily for the health benefits-the absence of medical side effects and the insight into the normal functioning of the body. Others begin use of NFP because of a prior religious commitment. Regardless of the reason for beginning use of NFP, most research has shown that, compared to other family planning methods, a relatively high proportion of users continue to use it. And after some months of use, most users will tell you that they have noticed some of the benefits to their relationships that I have described.
8:13 PM
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Friday, September 23, 2005
My mother just told me that she wanted to print up my blog for a nun she met, only she couldn't because the second word of it was "fart." Oh, well.
I'm most likely not going to be near a computer until Sunday. Have a great weekend. Be good!
4:26 PM
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(Taxpayer-Funded) Fart for Art's Sake
"My ancestors got the Pieta, and all I got is this lousy barbecue grill on astroturf."
—Saint Kansas
1:05 PM
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Jews' and Christians' Holocaust Suffering:
'A Covenant in Blood'
Some commenters were offended when, in honoring Simon Wiesenthal, I quoted Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher on why the Nazis' genocide should make Christians realize a kinship with the Jews that they have "too long forgotten." These commenters, in trying to make their point, stated that Nazis either were practicing Christians or mostly did not oppose Christianity.
I would urge such commenters to quit while they're ahead. If something offends you, just say so. Don't try to back yourself up by spouting falsehoods.  The following are excerpts from Patricia Treece's biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe (left), A Man for Others (Marytown Press, 1982). If others have similar stories of the persecution of Christians alongside Jews at the hands of the Nazis, I would welcome them in the comments section below.
Edward Gniadek was arrested by the Gestapo on January 12, 1941. In March, after being kept only in solitary confinement, he was put in a cell [at Warsaw's Pawiak prison] with a Jewish Pole he recalls only as Singer. He says:After a few days, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe was added to our cell. He was wearing a Franciscan habit and was clean-shaven. The presence of Father Kolbe, who differed so greatly from us by his calm, the things he told us, and conversation with him, calmed me and had the best possible effect on my nerves, which were very bad since each day I lived under the anxiety of being interrogated again—I had not only been beaten but had witnessed the torture of others—or being sent to a concentration camp.
About the second or third day after Father Kolbe joined us, one of the Gestapo men looked into our cell. He rushed in, somehow infuriated by the sight of Kolbe in his habit, from which hung the usual Franciscan rosary with its crucifix. I saw everything, but it was Singer afterwards who gave me the exact words, for I know no German.
The Scharfuhrer [platoon leader]—that was his rank—grabbed the rosary and, jerking on it, began haranguing Father Kolbe, who made no reply. Then the man pointed scornfully to the crucifix and snarled, "Do you believe in that?"
"Yes, I believe," Father Kolbe answered him serenely.
Aroused to a fever pitch,the assailant slapped the priest hard in the face. He grabbed the crucifix, again demanding, "You really believe, eh?"
"Yes, I believe," Father Kolbe answered calmly.
With each affirmation, the SS man became angrier and more violent (I don't know—maybe it was the priest's calm and determination). Anyway, after each reply he struck Father Kolbe in the face again and again.
But finally, seeing that Father Kolbe could not be shaken, he gave up and stomped angrily from the cell, slamming the door.
I must say again that, during everything, Father Kolbe showed not the slightest agitation. After the Scharfuhrer left, he simply began walking to and fro in the cell, praying silently. On his face were the red marks of the blows. My nerves were very shaken by what had happened and I said something—I can't remember what. He turned to me and said, "Please, I beg you, don't be upset; you have a lot of worries and troubles of your own. What happened just now is really nothing because it's all for my little mother (he meant the Mother of God)." The way he said this you would actually have thought nothing at all had happened.
That same day, one of the lower-ranking guards who was Polish came in with a prisoner's uniform, recommending that Father Kolbe put it on. He said that if Father Maximilian had been wearing the uniform, he would never have been beaten. Lots of prisoners wore their own clothes, but the religious habit drove the Nazis into a frenzy and provoked such incidents.
* * *
[This later section of A Man for Others takes place in Auschwitz, where Fr. Kolbe was transferred:]
To some extent, priests and Jews were lumped together in the SS mind. Mieczylaus Koscielniak, who became a good friend of Kolbe's, remembers an incident that explains the connection:In May 1941, we were working in a torn-down house when one of the prisoners found a crucifix. SS Storch got ahold of it and he called Faither Nieweglewski.
"What is this?" he asks the priest. Father remains silent, but the guard insists until he says, "Christ on the cross."
Then Storch jeers: "Why you fool, that's the Jew who, thanks to the silly ideals which he preached and you fell for, got you into this camp. Don't you understand? He's one of the Jewish ringleaders! A Jew is a Jew and will always be a Jew! How can you believe in such an enemy?"
Father Nieweglewski is silent.
Then Storch says, "You know, if you'll trample this Jew"—and he throws the crucifix on the sand—"I'll get you transferred to a better job."
When the priest refused, the SS man and the capo threw him a couple of times on the crucifix; then they beat him so badly that, shortly after, he died. Such martyrdoms were not unusual. Fr. Joseph Kowalski was doomed because he would not step on a rosary crucifix; Fr. Peter Dankowski, from Zakopane, was tortured and killed on Good Friday by a capo who sneered, "Jesus Christ was killed today and you also will perish this day."
* * *
[Continued from the same book:]
Jewish Auschwitz survivor Eddie Gastfriend agrees [...] that most priests managed to hold onto their ideals and not become brutalized. Interviewed by newspaperman Tom Fox, Gastfriend, a Pole who is now a merchant in Philadelphia, says:There were many priests in Auschwitz. They wore no collars, but you knew they were priests by their manners and their attitude, especially towards Jews. They were so gentle, so loving.
Those of us Jews who came into contact with priests, such as Father Kolbe (I didn't know him personally, but I heard stories about him) felt it was a moving time—a time when a covenant in blood was written between Christians and Jews...
4:27 AM
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Thursday, September 22, 2005
Fore!tune Teller
Jeff Miller has seen the Pope's future.
6:02 PM
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What 'Is' Is
According to Jon Sanders, Bill Clinton's had a change of heart. If only. As my great-grandmother would have said to him, Zolst leben un zein gezunt!
3:02 PM
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Carny Against Carnage
Part-Time Pundit John Bambenek, along with Pro-Life Blogs, has started a Carnival of Life, which, if you're not familiar with blog carnivals, is a sort of one-stop shopping for links to the latest prolife blog posts. The second Carnival of Live is up now on Part-Time Pundit. It's pretty brief right now, but I'm sure it'll swell as more of the hundreds of members of Pro-Life Blogs catch on.
12:27 PM
How I Became the Catholic I Wuz—Part 12
Continued from Part 11:
In the fall of 1985, when I was 17, I moved into New York University's Weinstein dorm, just off Washington Square Park. The next couple of years were too much, too soon.
I was shooting off in all directions, trying to gain a foothold in journalism and the music business. I did so many internships that I ran out of intern credits and simply worked for free, or got paid a few bucks that I immediately blew on sushi. For over a year, I interned as an editorial assistant for top-rated WCBS-FM oldies DJ Bob Shannon. I was also the production assistant (read: gofer) for the Washington Squares' debut album, which led to short internships for their record label—owned by future Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg—and their publicity agency, Susan Blond. In addition, I interned as an assistant publicist and booking agent for Tramps nightclub, New York's home of Chicago Blues and Buster Poindexter—even though I was too young to legally be allowed into the club. (Not that I would have gotten my employer into trouble—my alcohol intake at the time was limited to rum-filled chocolate balls.)
On top of all that, I was writing like a fiend. Desiring an excuse to sit down with cute rock musicians (like Athan Maroulis of Fahrenheit 451, brother of future "American Idol" star Constantine), I got my foot in the door at Jim Testa's Jersey Beat fanzine. Almost immediately, an interview I did with the Fleshtones for Jersey Beat was spotted by Greg Beaudoin, editor of The Bob, which was then one of the largest and most popular of the fanzines.
With my permission, The Bob picked up the Fleshtones piece and I became one of its regular contributors—a step into the world of professional rock journalism. Then, through Bob Shannon, I met Jeff Tamarkin, editor of the record-collecting magazine Goldmine, and became the youngest writer for that magazine—all while I was still in my teens.
The odd thing is, I wasn't a journalism major. I was in NYU's music business program, hoping to work in the artists-and-repertoire department of a record label, where I could inflict my musical tastes upon the masses. There, once again, I was trying to get onto a train that had left town.
Hoping against hope that someone will
tell me I look like Marianne Faithfull
Age 18 - 1986I was fast becoming obsessed with the music of the post-Camelot, pre-hippie mid-Sixties—the era of the Beatles, Byrds, Kinks, and like-minded lesser-knowns. Even the new bands that I liked were mostly revivalists from the garage/psychedelic scene that was dying even as I was rushing out five nights a week to catch its last gasps. All my favorite rock clubs closed during my first year of college—the Dive, Danceteria, Irving Plaza (which eventually reopened), Peppermint Lounge, and Folk City. As much as I would have liked to discover the next Beatles, I should have realized that the truth was— as a Decca exec famously told Brian Epstein—guitar groups were on the way out. Writing, on the other hand, came very easily to me, and I knew I did it well. But almost everyone in my family knew how to write—my mother, father, sister, mother's parents, great-aunt—so it didn't seem like any special skill. Besides, I wanted to get out into the world, meet people, and do things—not stay behind a typewriter. I do wish some wise adult had shaken me: "You're a writer, damn it!" Really, what I wanted to do was escape. I was terribly lonely, and I had the cyclical depression that had plagued me since my early teens, where I would be all right for a while and then spiral hopelessly downward. I used myriad methods to distract myself from the emptiness I felt inside: obsessing on the music of a bygone era, immersing myself in the record industry, interviewing and writing up rock bands, eating rum-filled chocolate balls by the half-pound, and, not least, searching for a boyfriend. Labels: Wuz
3:41 AM
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Remembering Who—and What—the Nazis Sought to Destroy
As we remember the great Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who died yesterday at the age of 96, I would like to recommend the late Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher's essay "Auschwitz, the Christian, and the Council," especially this excerpt: In 1938, I saw a photograph of the entrance to a German village that, like many others, had -- instead of the customary road sign or invitation to strangers -- a notice forbidding access to Jews: "Jews are not welcome here!" This dismal board was bad enough in itself. It may be that the village president had been told by higher authorities to erect the warning at the village gate, but certainly no one had commanded him to plant it next to -- a wayside cross. Obviously, neither he nor the other villagers were aware of the abysmal irony of this juxtaposition. Here hung the Crucified -- "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," the inscription above His head proclaimed --, imploring with arms wide open: "Come to me, all of you who labor and are burdened. I will give you relief" (Mt 11:28).There was the rejection, directed not only at Jewish passers-by but also at Him who, one might have thought, had found a lasting abode in the hearts of many villagers.
We must not read too much into a story like this. Yet, it shows how little the National-Socialist revolution was understood in those days. It shows how few realized that, to the masters of the Third Reich, Synagogue and Church were one and the same enemy. The really "final solution of the Jewish problem" was to be the doing away of the entire biblical heritage, of gospel and Church, of grace and mercy; the physical slaughter of the Jewish people was only a giant step toward this goal. To put it differently, Jews were made to "pay" for having been the instruments of God's revelation, Is it not appalling that rancor against salvation history should have made Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg and the rest pierce two thousand years of conflict between Christians and Jews, years of mutual recrimination and bitter hostility, to see their solidarity when, even today, there are still Christians as well as Jews who do not think or feel in terms of their common brotherhood? An inner mutual bond like this is not of our making, nor is it left to our choice. It exists whether we like it or not. For our own good, however, we had better like it.
I can understand that Jews find no comfort in the thought that the Nazis held them responsible for the coming of Christ, that the victims of Auschwitz were, therefore, unwitting martyrs for His sake. For centuries, they had been pursued as Christ-killers. Suddenly, they were attacked as Christ-bearers. Here is an antithesis, an irony a Jew cannot but find hard to take. It may even be offensive to him to think of his kinsmen tortured by the Nazis as forced witnesses to Jesus. A Christian, however, should go down on his knees. The thought that Jews were made to bear the Christian's burden should shake him into the realization of a kinship he has too long forgotten.
1:09 PM
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How I Became the Catholic I Wuz—Part 11
Continued from Part 10:
I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but sometime in the fall of 1984, when I was a 16-year-old high-school senior (having skipped a year in my haste to graduate), I hopped a train to see Steve at his East Village apartment.
Since I met him nearly two years earlier, when he showed up with his friend John Holmstrom—the former Punk magazine publisher—to meet me and my friends, Steve had stayed in touch via the occasional letter. I don't know what sparked my visit, or why it took me so long to make the trip to see him, as I'd been visiting the Village every Saturday.
I was somewhat in awe of Steve because he wrote for the ultra-hip fanzine Stop!, plus he worked for a major record label. But more than that, he knew his pop culture, be it the Sixties garage-rock that was increasingly becoming my obsession, or the underground cartoonists who were then like rock stars in the eyes of downtown bohemia's intellectual elite. I was terribly eager to learn about all the cool things I'd missed living out in suburbia, and I wanted to learn from him.
Steve had another side that I also found intriguing, in an edgy kind of way. He made a side income writing for pornographic magazines, including Screw and Penthouse Letters. (The "letters" were fictitious, Steve would later explain to me.)
I wasn't a fan of pornography and knew there were good feminist reasons to oppose it. Walking east from the PATH station to Steve's place, I passed the woman from Feminists Fighting Pornography who stood every Saturday at a table at Broadway and Eighth Street, shouting in her Noo Yawk accent, "Women! Foight back! Soign the petition!" Beside her was a giant blowup of the cover of Hustler that showed a woman's legs sticking out of a meat grinder.
At the same time, I knew that pornography magazines helped fuel the creative counterculture that fascinated me at the time. (The same can't be said today, when, as Traci Lords has noted, pornography is everywhere.) Magazines like Screw helped pay the rent of great cartoonists, including Drew Friedman (who would later draw for The Weekly Standard, among many others) and Pete Bagge. Likewise, porn mags supported some of my favorite up-and-coming rock bands long before they hit the mainstream.
But more than that, the idea that Steve was involved with the pornography industry gave his cornfed-Nebraskan demeanor an air of danger. It added to the pleasant sense of rebelliousness that I already felt going into New York City by myself to see a man who was twice my age.
* * *The only place to sit in Steve's studio apartment was his king-sized bed. We hung out for a while and brought one another up to speed on what had happened in our lives since the one time we'd met. Finally—and I must have known this would happen—he asked if he could kiss me. I knew for certain that I was attracted to men. More than that, I was capable of being overwhelmingly attracted, with a crush so intense that it virtually blinded me and made me swoon. I did not feel that way with Steve. But neither was I repelled by him. He was—there. Pleasant-looking. There was nothing particularly unattractive about him. And that, combined with my lack of a crush on him, made him safe. Ever since Gord had dumped me—because, I thought, he was put off by my prudery and lack of experience—I'd felt like I couldn't get arrested. Looking at photos of myself from that time, I see that I wasn't unattractive, but at the time I was convinced that I was chubby and plain. None of the boys I liked at school would have anything to do with me. There seemed to be some sort of "it" factor that I lacked. Steve fed my ego when I was at my most vulnerable. If he found me attractive, chances were someone else—someone I'd be crazy about—would too. In the meantime, I thought, I could gain some experience with him, so that boys I liked would no longer see me as goofy or—worse—uptight. But first came the uncertain moment when I told Steve that I was a virgin—and planned to stay that way. He assured me that he just wanted to "neck." Anytime I wanted, I could just turn on the red lights. I agreed. Steve went to his LP collection and pulled out the Flamin' Groovies' Teenage Head. He adored the idea of making out like a teenager. * * *
At Steve's apartment, with his stegosaurus
Photo by Steve/March 1985I visited Steve several more times during my senior year of high school. During that time, neither of us ever removed one another's clothing or touched one another under clothes. I was too quick with the red lights for that—and he would always stop, as he had promised. I told my mom that I was friends with Steve—I had a hard time hiding anything from her, because we were so close—but I didn't tell her we were more than friends. She later told me that she knew, but she didn't push it. A new Christian, she was just starting to walk the walk at that time. While she was concerned for me, I think she was uncomfortable at the thought of dictating chastity. I had mixed feelings about what Steve and I were doing. On the one hand, it gave me something exciting to tell the other girls about in my high-school lunchroom. On the other, it got to be boring after a while. I knew Steve wasn't the one, and it was pointless to take things farther. But I also liked the feeling of being a grown-up: getting away for a secret rendezvous at a real New York City apartment—not just somebody's parents' basement—and having a bit of suspense over how far things might go. * * *There are certain points in one's memory where time seems to stop. They're sticking points—a nexus between past and present—and one keeps returning to them. As I look back upon when I was sexually active, I keep returning to those afternoons with Steve. Not because they were sexually exciting—they weren't. Compared to experiences I had later, the Steve sessions were about two notches above a trip to the dentist. No, the experiences in that studio apartment on First Avenue stick in my mind because they represent a contradiction that is essential to nonmarital sex. It's something that I don't think purveyors of "sex-positive" culture will ever understand. (I think sex within marriage is positive, but I'm referring to the views of those who take it out of that context.) From the sex-positive perspective, the Steve sessions were perfect "outercourse," as safe as safe could be. Save for saliva, no body fluids were exchanged. There was no genital contact. But from a Christian and particularly Catholic perspective, I was doing the absolute worst thing that I could possibly do to my soul. It was, truly, unsafe sex. In a way, it was worse for me even than if I were actually having intercourse, because if I were doing so—as bad as that would have been for me—there would have been more of a chance that I'd realize what was going on. As it was, I was like the person who takes a little poison each day and eventually becomes immune. Poison is never good for you; having the ability to ingest it without dying isn't a reason to do so on a regular basis. In my case, I was learning to detach, to feel as though I could separate the physical actions of sex from its emotional consequences. I was also learning to be vicarious—to treat my partner as an object, to the point where my enjoyment consisted in seeing the effect I was having on him. It was a feeling of control, and it enabled me to further detach, so that I could move my partner without being moved myself. The advantage to all this was that I could have the excitement, ego boost, and physical companionship of sex—however temporary—without getting hurt. I always knew the separation would come and I'd be alone again. If I could limit how close I was to my partner in the first place, then the separation wouldn't be as pronounced, and I wouldn't crash. I was so afraid of crashing—with good reason. * * *February 1986. I was a 17-year-old freshman at New York University, and had long since moved on from Steve, but we were still friendly. He invited me to the book-release party for Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental, by Drew Friedman. At the party, Steve greeted me warmly. He wanted me to meet the publisher of the marijuana-lovers magazine High Times. As Steve brought me over to the publisher, he said, "Is it OK if I tell him about us? About how you used to come over, and we'd make out, and because you were a virgin, you'd put on the red lights?" For a moment, I was thrown off-guard. "Sure," I said. I never hated Steve for what he did to me. In his and my situational ethics of the time, he was a model of honesty and respect. But I think of what it meant to him, to be this pornography writer telling people about his experience with a virgin, and—like Jack Nicholson's character at the end of "Carnal Knowledge"—it seems terribly sad. Labels: Wuz
3:49 AM
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Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Radar's of the Lost Art
Jeremy Gerard, articles editor of Radar magazine, offers two more headlines for the Christian Slater story: Judge Sets Christian Right But Turns the Other Cheek and Judge to Groper Christian: Tush, Tush Jeremy's own headline-writing résumé is as impressive as they come. A veteran theater critic, he was Variety's New York bureau chief for five years, writing such headlines as this, when Bill Clinton first began courting the Hollywood crowd:Bubba to H'Wood: Don't Be Cruel And this banner, for the story of an outrageous box-office scandal involving Andrew Lloyd Webber and Glenn Close:Sunset BULL-evard He's also written a fine headline for a New York piece on "The Producers" and a great one for a piece about the growing influence of blogger theater critics, which you can see for yourself.
My favorite of Jeremy's headlines is the one he wrote for a Dallas Morning News piece years ago about the controversial plan to replace Shakespeare in the Park with a concert series:Bard Barred? Or Band Banned?
3:37 PM
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Thanks to my attempt to ban libelous Anthony from commenting, I appear to have banned everyone and my own mother, as the saying goes. Well, the part about my own mother is true anyway. If you tried to post a nonlibelous comment earlier and were banned, please try again.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Sigh.
12:32 PM
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Space Theodicy
Be the first one on your block to see this. Congratulations to Godspy contributor John Zmirak on his new book that the animation promotes, The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living.
3:18 AM
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How I Became the Catholic I Wuz—Part 10
Continued from Part 9:
As I got deeper into adolescence, my depression worsened. It was cyclical. I would be fine for days or weeks, but eventually I couldn't hold it back any longer, and I would crash—crying alone in my room at night, or trying to stick my wrists with something sharp. I never actually managed to hurt myself; I was too much of a scaredy cat. But I wanted at those moments to feel physical pain, to somehow bring the pain I felt inside to the surface.
I'm not sure where the depression came from. Part of it could have been genetic; my mother had suffered from it, as had her mother and other relatives of mine as well. I know too that having a broken home had a lot to do with it. And it didn't help that I was a brainy teen who wanted friends but had little interest in peers who didn't share my erudition—or at least my love of below-the-radar rock acts.
But it was more than that—I felt an emptiness, which wasn't answered by anything I could find at home or with relatives. Although I wouldn't say that a lack of religious observance in a family necessarily causes depression, in my case, it certainly didn't help.
My mom and I had long stopped lighting candles for Shabbat. With the exception of an aunt and uncle who were Orthodox Jewish and therefore in a completely different sphere of spiritual practice, none of my family believed in a personal God—at least, not a God who was directly and intimately involved with every aspect of our daily lives. Those who were religious believed that faith had its place, but they could go from one Shabbat to the next without seeming to acknowledge God at all. My mother was keenly interested in God, but until she received her faith in Jesus, she viewed Him with a certain amount of detachment—more as a source of ethics and tradition, than as One who had made promises and kept them.
To take my mind off the depression, I sought escape—through eating (I gained 20 lbs. in my first few months of high school), listening to music, getting away to Greenwich Village on Saturday afternoons, and—on those rare occasions when my stars were all aligned—dating.
My first "boyfriend"—that is, the first guy who lasted longer than a few yucky kisses—was a 16-year-old I'll call Gord, who I met at a Unitarian youth-group weekend. I was 14 and had gone on the retreat specifically in hope of meeting a boy who'd be brighter and hipper than my classmates. Gord was hip all right—a hardcore punk—and bright: He and a buddy founded a gang of pranksters that they called the UDL (Unitarian Defense League), a sort of "Clockwork Orange" for the suburban set. He was also cute, with his Johnny Ramone haircut, and would have been six feet tall if his smoker's slouch didn't take away two inches. It didn't bother me that the name of the rock band Gord played in was Johnny Saline and the Abortionz—I didn't know what saline did, and at any rate I was prochoice. (It will probably surprise no one to know that today Gord is a contributing writer to Salon.)
Gord and I dated for about three weeks before he stopped returning my calls. The last time we went out was the only one where we did a lot of kissing. We were at a double bill at the Rock Hotel on Jane Street: Borscht and Kraut. (Even then, I thought that was inspired. Come to think of it, I think the band that completed the bill may have been the Meatmen.) I had to leave early because my longsuffering mom was making the hourlong drive into the city at midnight to pick me up, so Gord took me for a walk around the block.
We were in the Meatpacking District, the empty streets lined with dark warehouses. Gord started kissing me. I was very self-conscious because I'd only been kissed a couple of times before, and those times by boys who obviously didn't know what they were doing. From the way Gord kissed, I could tell that he did know what he was doing, and I wasn't sure how to handle this new stage of our relationship.
I don't recall articulating to Gord my plans to wait to have sex until I was really In Love, but he must have picked up on it. At least, that was my guess. All I knew was that, once he saw me into my mom's car, that was the last I saw of him. He was experienced, and I was too slow for him.
As the months went by and I kept rehashing my dates with Gord in my head, the conclusion was clear. Even if I was going to save sex for when I was finally In Love, I had to get more experience. I'd show my dream man that I wasn't a prude. That way, I'd keep him interested until the magic moment when everything would fall into place. Labels: Wuz
3:04 AM
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Monday, September 19, 2005
Give 'er Enough 'Grope'
The story in tomorrow's National Edition runs something like this: Christian Slater turned down the real-life role of inmate Monday, taking a plea deal that will allow him to avoid jail time for grabbing and squeez | |
