adult content
it’s my website, and i won’t apologize. however, the answer is - yes, i’m a little uncomfortable with this.
tonight is the first meeting of my very first book club and i haven’t finished the book. partly it’s because it feels too much like homework, and partly because i really don’t care for the book. it’s a non-fiction discussion of the modern feminist movement and the girls gone wild effect, which the author insists is erasing all the hard work of our fore-mothers in womens’ lib. i’ve been to college. and i felt like i gleaned the content of the book from the introduction, and haven’t allowed myself much guilt over not finishing. it’s the type of argument that cfould go around and around insircles until we are finally exactly halfway between hugging and strangling each other.
anyway, to make up for being unprepared, and to aid discussion, on my lunch break i went out to buy a playboy magazine. i decided not to rehearse an explanation for my purchase, confident that the cashiers at the local, sprawling in-mall book store would be trained to be very discreet about customer purchases. when i discovered the place card indicating that all ’sophisticates’ are located behind the cash registers, i was delighted at the irony.
i asked for both playboy and playgirl, both for the sake of book club discussion, and so as not to convey any personal preference for either brand of lascivious pulp. as the man behind the counter, roughly my age and with appropriately hip mutton chops, bent down to fill my request, he said, ‘we don’t have the girl.’ it was already a little more involved than i had hoped , but i wasn’t embarrassed yet, so i said, ‘uh, do you have anything else with…’ and he kindly finished my sentence with, ‘guys?’ yes, please. they didn’t. so i bought two of the girl kind. and then, shockingly, the man asked why. i couldn’t believe it. aren’t we all supposed to unflinchingly accept, and simultaneously ignore, each other’s apparent vices? you’re not supposed to ask, are you? and, since you did, does that mean i don’t look like someone who would enjoy this type of literature? do i want to look like that person? i’m confused. i boringly told him the truth, the inertia of the moment vanished, and i became just a girl with an opaque bag.