Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-27 03:58 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-27 03:58 pm
Memories...
I remember, in the 11th grade I once read aloud a little mood piece I'd written. The teacher had asked us to write about something, so I wrote up a night I'd had recently.
Two friends and I: my girlfriend and the guy I had a crush on, were hanging out at her dad's house. The grownups were in the living room talking, and we hid in her room with the lights turned out, talking. Someone started a tickle fight. There were some very delightful moments, just the joy in touching and being touched. After we were all giggled out, we lay on the floor there in the silence and looked up out through the window and at the stars.
I volunteered to read mine out loud, since I knew it was perhaps some of the best writing I'd ever done. Midway through, though, hearing the silence of the class and feeling my own response, I realized that this was, in fact, erotica. Not explicit by any means, but erotica still. So I started editing my reading. You could hear the difference: my words didn't have their same power, but it was still intense.
It wasn't so much that it was erotica. Sexually explicit materials are big no-no's in the classroom, unless part of something "educational" -- we got to watch Romeo & Juliet, and Hamlet, and both of those have some nudity. There was no nudity in mine, no sex, not even any explicit groping. It was just the emotion. I'd captured it, exactly. I don't think more than a few people in that classroom had any idea that words could evoke such a powerful response; of those who'd known beforehand, none of them knew that I could use words that way.
The classroom was unusually quiet for a long time after that. The teacher thanked me for sharing.
After me, a few people who might not normally have read aloud, did so.
Two friends and I: my girlfriend and the guy I had a crush on, were hanging out at her dad's house. The grownups were in the living room talking, and we hid in her room with the lights turned out, talking. Someone started a tickle fight. There were some very delightful moments, just the joy in touching and being touched. After we were all giggled out, we lay on the floor there in the silence and looked up out through the window and at the stars.
I volunteered to read mine out loud, since I knew it was perhaps some of the best writing I'd ever done. Midway through, though, hearing the silence of the class and feeling my own response, I realized that this was, in fact, erotica. Not explicit by any means, but erotica still. So I started editing my reading. You could hear the difference: my words didn't have their same power, but it was still intense.
It wasn't so much that it was erotica. Sexually explicit materials are big no-no's in the classroom, unless part of something "educational" -- we got to watch Romeo & Juliet, and Hamlet, and both of those have some nudity. There was no nudity in mine, no sex, not even any explicit groping. It was just the emotion. I'd captured it, exactly. I don't think more than a few people in that classroom had any idea that words could evoke such a powerful response; of those who'd known beforehand, none of them knew that I could use words that way.
The classroom was unusually quiet for a long time after that. The teacher thanked me for sharing.
After me, a few people who might not normally have read aloud, did so.
how sweet...
Also, on another note....I remember writing a short story for my English class in 7th grade. It was about a date with a guy I had a crush on (who was conveniently re-named, of course), and there happened to be a kiss toward the end of the story. It was quite innocent; no porn tongue, or anything. But, the teacher somehow found it extremely offensive, and called my mother. Despite my mother's arguments, she failed my story! I guess that's what you get for living in Missouri (I have since relocated), right in the middle of the Bible belt. Sheesh.
Re: how sweet...
I don't have the journal of the time with me; it's back home in Alaska. I do keep my journals, though, and that one's no exception. In fact, I think the only journals I don't have are the one that got lost last spring, and then the one that I lost the password to on my computer back freshman high school.