I definitely had periods where I felt a combination of sadness and frustration while rewriting this story for inclusion into the Spinning Heads series…
Like all of my stories in this anthology, this was written several years ago, back before there was such an irrational “fear” of any sort of portrayal of teenage sexual activity. I mean, there was, but it wasn’t in such epidemic proportions as it is today.
In the original version of this title, Lucy’s story actually started when she was 14. However, due to the fact that most publisher out there now won’t even dare touch a story like that, basically what I had to do was go through and either eliminate any reference to age, or rewrite it to allude to the fact that these events took place in the latter senior year of high school and the first years of college, giving at least the appearance that this all took place after she came of legal age. What that basically translates to is that I had to “pretend” that anyone under the age of 18 is completely sexless. I think most people would agree that trying to portray a person who didn’t discover his or her sexuality at all until the “magical” age of 18 is absolutely ludicrous to say the least. But, those are the “restrictions” to which I and every single other author in this country must adhere to if there is any chance at all of any publisher or distributor carrying our works.
Can you imagine??? Think about it… Using the restrictions in place today, books like “Summer Of ’42” never would have seen the light of day.
Consider this also… Most biblical scholars agree that the Virgin Mary was around 13-14 years of age when the immaculate conception occurred. Yet I can practically guarantee you that every single major publishing house offers The Bible among their selections! Apparently it’s okay for God to knock up a 14 year old, but not anyone else. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg as far as the Bible goes! There’s more sex and violence in the bible, including rape, incest, and bestiality, than you can shake a pulpit at, yet portraying a 14 year old masturbating in her bed at night is an unbreakable taboo. Let alone “exploring” her sexuality with another person!
Hopefully I made this story “work” despite all the restrictions that had to be placed on it. But I get so fucking tired of having to deal with all the factions out there trying so hard to “sanitize” this country to the point where we all have to pretend that sex doesn’t exist at all for a person until a certain magical age. Not only is it unrealistic, it is an insult to everyone’s intelligence to try to convince a reader that sexual discovery was practically nonexistent before that particular age.
This is just another glaring example of how “censorship” threatens artistic expression. It also threatens a reader’s ability to choose, as well as insults everyone’s intelligence in the process.
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