RE: My So Called Life & Salinger


Subject: RE: My So Called Life & Salinger
From: Lisa M. Rabey (lisar@net-link.net)
Date: Thu May 08 1997 - 21:32:40 GMT


At 11:47 AM 5/8/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>>She's lost her innocence (nothing at all to do with
>>>sexuality, not that kind of losing one's innocence, which I daresay if
>>>anything actually helps you get it back)
>
>>i beg to differ. sex has been the dominant cause of lost innocence in my
>life
>>and in many of the people i know. the awakening sex drive presents you
>with >a hunger that you feel a need to satisfy. sex is the doorway into
>adulthood.
>>once you've opened it, it's damned hard to get it shut. why do you think
>>holden never had sex, even with the hooker?--matt
>
>I guess I was lucky then, or rewarded. I didn't have sex until I was 17 and
>once I did it was only with people I knew well, therefore I never felt as
>if I was losing anything, or being too vulnerable too early, when in fact I
>was gaining a whole other perspective of a person I already knew. When I
>was a teenager the peer pressure was so great that I simply decided to wait
>until the situation was comfortable and relaxed rather than deal with the
>pressure. I think a lot of it has to do with one's concept of
>self-identity. Until you're secure with who you are you're only going to
>see it as an act where you lose something rather than share/gain something.
>This culture's attitude behind the act itself only underlines the fact that
>it is something which should either be used as a reward or a weapon which
>goes STRAIGHT back to the Puritans at the speed of light. No progress
>there. Will it ever be rightfully realigned with love in this culture? It's
>up to us. Hopefully now that the stigma is off of masturbation it'll free
>up a lot of energy previously dedicated to manipulation.
>
>I wouldn't say sex is the doorway to adulthood. Sex is the doorway away
>from the confines of the family (which is the doorway to adulthood), and
>love brings you back to the family.
>

I dunno though, think I am going to have to agree with Matt on this one.
Sex is the doorway to adulthood, amoung other things. Its repsonsiblities,
its precautions, its feelings, everything having to do with it in genreal.
When I write in my journals about my 'loss' of innocence, it always seems
to go back to a few things, mainly it was a: getting punished by the nuns
in fifth grade for knowing what a french kiss was b: kissing Nick Hill
behind the building in 8th grade (but the thought of him sticking his
tongue into my mouth at the time..ewwwwww) and c: seeing that the world
truely could be an evil and extrondiary place. When I lost my virginity
when I was 17, it was a combination of factors, and even then I retained I
believe my innocance about things. I think this is one of those fine line
morals that people will argue about forever. Such as, it is okay for a guy
to sleep around but its not for women. Sex brings out many things and means
many different things to many people. Everyones ideals and morals are
different from everyone's elses. It is what makes us all different and
special in our own unique way. It is such a grey area, that I am finding
it hard to define myself, even though I know what I want to say, the words
won't come out such as I want them to. Sexual awakening is quit different
though, as I have been reading Anais Nin's excerpts of her journals "Henry
and June", and in many ways, when she was sexually awakened, she also
gained her own innocence about love and the sexual act. A good read that I
highly reccomend.

And as for our own dear Holden, I don't think it was "innocence" per se
that stoppedhim from sleeping with the hooker or for doing more with any of
his females. perhaps, being the wise and worldly man that he was, he saw
sex more as a hinderment than what it could be, beautiful and truely
wonderful. He constantly talks about his brother BD whoring it out in
Hollywood, and maybe he felt, if he succubed to sex, regardless of how
trivial or meaningless, he would become, what he feared most. So perhaps
its not the loss of innocence, but more that he knew that if he broke
apart, and hit a home run, he would not be who he was, and above all,
giving a piece of himself, maybe he felt he wouldn't be as special as he
really and truely was.

ttfn.

Lisa

Lisa M. Rabey
NetLink Systems, LLC
Tech Support and Web Design
http://www.net-link.net/~lisar
*******************************
-
To remove yourself from the bananafish list, send the command:
unsubscribe bananafish
in the body of a message to "Majordomo@mass-usr.com".



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Oct 09 2000 - 15:01:33 GMT