Editor’s Note: The following is a collaborative effort from past Planet Waves’ staff, where they each contributed to breaking the taboo on discussing sexuality with their parents. To read it in its original format, click here. –RA
Devotion
I imagine my father came like Ixion,
in a cloud of sensation.
self-important,
proudly seduced by tendrils of need.
My mother came too,
through the illusion of her body.
seeding her soul,
crying with lightening fire her will for life.
I am their sacred creation,
fallen from the sky at sunset.
their double-spiraled legacy whispers in my blood,
a secret rain of dark proteins and alleles.
I am their cosmic child,
an ephemeral daughter.
smoldering fire and lost waters,
a necessary madness.
Denice Taylor
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I THINK IT’S imperative that we break the taboo of talking about sex with our parents. It is part of why we, as a culture, have such a fucked-up relationship with sex (pardon the pun). Prudish sexual behavior is a dis-function of the wealthy. Do you think there was any privacy in the hovels, huts, tents and other one-room living situations of yore? Hell no! Kids were conceived within hearing range of not just their kids, but the whole village! I would imagine as a parent of older kids (wouldn’t know right now, mine’s only five) that it would be very hard to have a relationship with someone when a whole piece of you (that is the Woman, as opposed to the Mother) is forced to be sanitized or omitted. My family (for all its pious Catholicism) is very open about its sexuality. Probably partially because we are very matriarchal and all the women in our family have a pretty strong sex drive. And as a woman, to think that your desire is hereditary instead of weird is a great gift.
maya