Chapter One: Under Where? Underwear!

As promised, here is a short excerpt from my memoir that examines one woman's journey discovering and understanding her sexuality, her role as a woman, and herself.  In Chapter One, I talk about how we are often introduced to the idea of sexuality with a simple question: Where do Babies Come From? 

On Facebook I read a status update that my nephew was told by a friend of his that babies come from the great baby cloud. Since cloud computing is getting so very popular, I could not help but imagine Google being behind this operation, talk about Google+, with Apple on its heels for iTunes downloads. Picture this, baby souls stored in “the cloud,” being pumped with information from the Internet - twitter feeding the virtual soul fetus along with Facebook wall updates, and targeted advertisements.  Advertisers would be in heaven! Consider the potential of training a child to be a consumer even before he or she popped out of the womb!  Capital delight!

I also examine the sad truth that for many women, including many in my family, the first introduction to sex is rape:

Writing this memory down, I sit and wonder what my Mother must have felt or thought with my imitation of her eye drawings: for I now know this was her first memory, and the eye was what she focused on as she was being raped. She was a very young child when it first happened. This sexual abuse would follow her throughout her childhood, adolescence, and into the throws of young adulthood. Much of it stopped at thirteen or fourteen when she pulled a gun on her attacker, her Stepfather, and hitchhiked out of Fairbanks, Alaska, taking the Alcan highway. Maybe she viewed the single eye as not only a physical example of her attacker, but as the all-seeing Ra, a universal god.

Do the myths we tell our children about sex and sexuality eventually lead to larger misconceptions, such as the myth that women deserve to be raped, that it is the only thing that can control her? Or, rather, is this slippery slope argument without steam and substance?


Writing the Diaphragm Blues looks to the comic moments of sexuality, to the more serious consequences of sex and violence - all though the eyes of one woman, her experiences, and her efforts to better understand herself and her place in the world.