talkin 'bout my generation

Welcome back comrades!

I sent my sexy prisoner a love note this week, the first in months. Feeling a bit carried away, and an unscrupolous desire to take this creative edge one step further, I am enlightening you dirty dogs with a blog.

I’ve been a smidge indifferent about music this week. Generally speaking genres of listening election are dependent upon my mood. Radiohead is good for those days you wish to reflect - or slit your wrists. Hey now, that was a joke. Radiohead feeds my creative soul. Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, on the other hand, is great for those 4 am moments you find yourself in water next to a skiboat on the middle of the lake swimming in cut off jean shorts.

This week I suffer from a '50s itch. Some like to refer to them as classics, “oldies” if you’re nasty. This caliber of rock-n-roll is an extreme contrast to my preferred indie post punk genre (I’m cool like dat). As a young tomato, my father liked to entertain me with the notion that I should have lived during the 1950’s. You see, everything about this era fascinates me but ultimately what I fancy is the simplicity. Understated clothing, incomplex song lyrics, pristine television shows. Today lyrics are weird, disturbing, risqué and complicated. What happened to “ABC easy as 123”. Kindergarden basics, folks!

With less options life was easier during the ‘50s. Families lived as families should. Marriages were the real deal. People were easily pleased and led happy lives. I could easily be Betty Crockeresque. Pull the hair back with a ribbon, grab an apron, paste on a permanent smile, and employ the use of “dear” in every sentence. Cuttin’ a rug was easier back in those days, too, I am sure. Bopping, twisting and shaking all about. I don’t know what to do when I find myself on a dance floor these days. I know that Jess points down and I point up. For the record, only few know what this means and for this I am grateful.

Everyone has one. Those songs that, without a doubt, make you tear up and ultimately cause an all out boo hoo session? You can be in the best of moods yet something within your subconscious mind triggers this breakdown. One of those for me is Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel. This fine tune takes me back to when I was 12 years old and my family moved to the state I now call home. My parents played this tune relentlessly. I guess you can say it makes me sad for them, even today.

The things that entertained us for hours upon hours as children require inebriation nowadays before they begin to sound remotely entertaining. Standing on the pool table - poolsticks doubling as mics and guitars - interpreting the Go-Go's is rarely an option between my friends these days. There was always a 100% chance of an argument over who got to be Belinda Carlisle. Or sometimes, as if we didn’t get enough of the real deal, we’d rush home after school to play “school” – always bickering over who filled the teacher role. Sometimes, probably when we craved some form of personal spiritual release, we played “church”. Saltine crackers served as the host for Communion. Having attended a Catholic School for years, requiring us to attend Mass a couple days out of the week, enabled us to memorize every detail of the liturgy.

Today’s generation of kiddos are so removed from mine I don’t know what entertains them outside of meth and sex. Disturbing. I can promise you that I didn’t have the slightest clue what sex involved until I reached my teen years. My knowledge was limited to a man lying on top of a woman while unitedly moving the lower half of their respective bodies mixed with a little thrusting. p.s. - you're naked. GASP! The Catholic school I attended liked to keep us sheltered this way. Ms. Morrison, my 8th grade religion teacher, didn’t go into specifics during the sex education class she was painfully responsible for teaching – incidentally during religion class. The premise of intercourse was vaguely limited to something like “the engagement of a special act of love between a husband and wife”. My classmates and I clung on to Ms. Morrison's every word anticipating the 4-1-1 on the goods, but nothing. I flipped through my sex ed book only to be disappointed with pictures of blossoming flowers and shit. I remember finding the term “wet dream” in the glossary located in the back of the book. One fine Saturday afternoon I mustered up the nerve to delicately ask ma “mother, what is all this wet dream talk.” Without a word my mom nervously tip-toed out of the living room, walked outside where she found my father and whispered something in his ear. After humiliation numbed a bit I vowed to never ask the parents another sex associated question. To add insult to injury I am 32 years old and no one has explained to me what a wet dream is.

Years later my father uncomfortably confronted my sister and I with a half-assed “if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask.” My dad, a smart one he is, knew that we knew we were required to live and learn.

When I was 17 years young my “sex talk” came in the form of my father sitting my twin sister and I down and forcing us to intently listen to “Dashboard Light” in an attempt to scare us from men and sex. If my memory is correct, we were required to take notes and pass a quiz later. You might say it worked. I immpatiently waited to have sex for the first time until a week before my 18th Birthday. Opportunities were plentiful, but in the end I was a scared. I couldn’t escape the embedded fear that once I had sex I was no longer a young girl. I didn’t want to disappoint my dad, guilt ridden and all, even though he would never have known. In fact, I suspect my parents would be shocked to learn I was sexually inactive during my high school years.

My final sex talk, occuring right before I flew out of the nest, dear daddio tells the sis and I “If Mr. Brady can die of AIDS so can you. Wear a condom”. I will pass along this same wisdom to my children some day.

In typical Josie fashion, that was a tangent and a half. I am looking forward to the possibility of inclement weather and englufing a mouthwatering hot dawg tonight! Easy to please…just like Betty Crocker. CIAO BABY!