The Number One thing in the whole entire world that is funny: My friend Tom. And all his crazy butt sex hair gel E-day talk. (It's a lucky thing I love him so much and will not put his full professorial name here for his googling undergrads to find.)

Anyway, celebrate Smart Bitches Day!

with
Doug!
and
Bookseller Chick!

and a ramblin me.

Pregnant Silence

Okay, so this weekend I read To Love and To Cherish by Patricia Gaffney. Why, you may ask? (And you may.) Because I read the other one, that To Have and To Hold, and I liked it, which I said somewhere in some old SBD.

This one is about a vicar and his best friend's wife. Their marriage is hell, she develops a fab friendship with the vicar, and what with one thing and another: nookie. Well I mean that can't be any surprise - it's a romance novel. Nookie is inevitable.

So I liked it okay, though it was all so terribly pleasant and civil. Except where it became incongruously melodramatic. And I think the characters could've been more finely drawn. But the best things in this book were
(1) that the village of Wyckerly was so very alive and real, and
(2) that it was very clear what these two people saw in each other, because they actually talked. And I don't mean that usual romance novel brand of "talking" (do the air quotes - it's totally necessary), but actual friendly-like talking and getting to know each other and opening up and - well, like when you make a new friend? Those few times in life when you really, really, really connect with someone. And you just can't wait to talk them again so you can share the little tidbits of gossip and the handfuls of thoughts and see what they think of this or that and what's been going on with them. On and on until that person's so much a part of your life that imagining them not in it is just unthinkable. That kind of talking? They do that in this book. And it makes for a really realistic romance, the kind based on affection and respect and friendship. Ya know, as opposed to rock-hard abs and heaving bosoms.

But anyway, yay for that and not-so-yay for some other things in it. This is not what sticks most in my mind. What sticks most is how these two had an affair for - oh, I dunno. A couple of months? Maybe 6 weeks? And he's the vicar. And she's a prominent and (SPOILER!) recently widowed lady of the manor. They know they have to wait like at least six months (preferably longer) for her to be out of mourning, in order for them to get married, right? Because those are the rules of the time. But they can't wait so before they can get married, they go ahead and indulge in an affair.

Here's what bugs me: Never once does it cross their minds that having sex is how you make babies.

I'm not gonna rant about how fiction should be more responsible and discuss consequences, blahblahblah. I don't care about that at all. I'm not gonna bitch that birth control options of the time should've been researched and cleverly mentioned in the narrative somewhere. No no no - all I'm asking here is that there is some acknowledgement by these highly intelligent people that what they are doing could potentially completely fuck up their lives.

That's it. They don't even have to DO anything about it, but they should at least acknowledge the fact of it. Just show that they know they're playing with fire, that the really obvious reason for not having nookie out of wedlock in 1854 is because if you get pregnant, you're toast - so this is something that should maybe come to mind every now and again, even if it doesn't weigh heavily on you or (heaven forfend) stop you. Margaret Sanger is a good - what, 60 years away? So women at the time would generally be conscious of what could happen in that pesky uterus, and you'd think someone as protective of his lover's reputation and as hopeful of their sunny future as the vicar is, would maybe give a thought to it as well.

But no. Not a hint of it.

Which just struck me as utter horseshit, that's all.