The Girl had listened to all of the stories. She knew she was from a family filled with wild women. She wanted to make an informed decision. The women had made a lot of mistakes. Her own mother had come of age at a time when the whole world was blowing up with cultural change. Her father let his hair and beard grow and went on “walkabout” in South East Asia during the Vietnam War. His own way of fighting the war was to make friends.
The Pill had just been invented and this provided women with a sure fire pregnancy prevention option. Girls were going nuts with the new found sexual freedom. Part of it was rebellion against the Old Status Quo and part of it was just bustin’ loose. The time was ripe for a party and the counter culture was takin’ it to the streets marching, fucking, smoking, burning bras and draft cards, screwing themselves crazy!
They were tired of the old values. It was like they almost wanted to destroy everything that had gone before and look at some new options like Eastern philosophies and religions, other culture’s values, literature and art, alternative ways of living life… like communal living, living off the land, building yurts and domes, organic gardening, and such.
Mama told her everything. There wasn’t a day of reckoning. She knew all the facts as soon as she needed to know them. There wasn’t a “Red Stool” moment where her mother surprised her with facts about menstruation or sexual reproduction. She wasn’t made to feel guilt or shamed about her feelings or desires. She was raised as a free strong woman with the information she needed to make responsible decisions.
Her mother and her contemporaries had experimented by saying “yes’ to every pill, joint, sexual option, and experience that came their way. Some of her mother’s friends had purposely screwed lots of different men and women just because it was the sixties and everyone was going wild. They didn’t want to do anything the same way as their fore-mothers.
She knew that her mom had been at the fore front of the cultural revolution. The women and men who came of age in the sixties made the change that was necessary to even things out. She knew that she had choices and that she was free to make them because of her parents and their generation.
She had listened intently to all the women’s stories. Quite a few of them told of doing it in a car for the first time. Someone mentioned a hay loft, the floor of the living room, in the garage standing up, at camp in the archery shed, a life guard station at the beach, an amusement park ride….
That was IT!!! Amusement Park! She was going to an amusement park! She would combine both the pleasure of her childhood and the pleasure of her womanhood into one grand adventure! She was going to do it for her first time at Disneyland!
Her mother didn’t even blink an eye when the Girl told her about the plan. Of course Mama would pay for the whole thing – the hotel, the airfare, the meals, spending money, the condoms, and the tickets to Disneyland! The Happiest Place on Earth! It was just perfect!
(First published 3/10/13)
