Spring Forward

I guess I shoulda bought a lottery ticket, but instead I went to the library and checked out two old classic mysteries. When I got back to my room and looked over the first few pages of each to figure out which one to read first, both had early-on action taking place on my birthday, three days before Christmas. What are the odds? ("And Four To Go", a Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout, and "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler.) A cheap thrill, perhaps, but I'm a big fan of thrills.

And talking about thrills, of course by now you know about the new Brigitte Bardot five-film box set that's out. I first heard about this upcoming event on the news last year, that movies she's in that have never been available in the U.S. before will be here on DVD. I've been waiting to check them out at the library, but they've been "being processed" for several months now. (I take that to mean being watched by library employees before they hit the shelves.) I've had a babe jones of biblical proportions since my uncle played high-school football and I saw my first cheerleader, but I give a lot of credit to Brigitte Bardot and her exploits back in the Eisenhower years for giving me a clue that sex is fun and okay; I certainly wasn't getting that message anywhere else. I of course was too young to see any of her movies back then, and my mother used a razor blade to attack some pictures of her I had innocently taped to my bedroom wall, but what little I saw and heard of her I'm sure helped me to a healthier outlook on sex than the rest of the world was conspiring to allow. She was way beyond being just a hot movie star, she was a "sex kitten". She walked the walk.

And lucky me, I turned fifteen the year the birth-control pill hit the scene. (1960.) So I witnessed the dawn of the sexual revolution when I'd be paying the most attention, and before I'd had a chance to get too messed up by the standard-issue shame and guilt over my natural urges. Between Ms. Bardot, the early-Elvis/rock 'n' roll uproar, The Playboy Philosophy, and school dances, wasteful sexual abstinence or embarrassed hang-ups never stood a chance during those fabulous years ahead. I'm a sinner, and like so many others, a damn happy, satisfied one.

So it really seems so unnecessary when I hear every day of all the sexually abused little kids, the raped women, the thousands of "isolated instances" of clergy abuse, the legions of "registered sex offenders", most all caused by a failure of the righteous to allow a healthful channeling of a strong natural desire. Then the good folks blame their victims for the predictable results of their Puritanical restrictions. I know, I know, if everybody was sexually satisfied, then all the "buy this and you'll get laid" commercials wouldn't work, and horny people wouldn't be flocking to churches for forgiveness of their imaginary sin, but there would likely be a lot fewer little kids raped and murdered by folks who were taught that their natural need is shameful and bad, so don't know how to express it in an open, harmless way. I do realize that the economy and the offering plate must come first, I just wish the guilt-ridden didn't have to kill the women and kids so often. But I understand that a moral society can't just allow joyful, unrestricted sex to happen. What would God think?