2.3 SIX SEX SCENES TOPICS
Adrienne Eisen describes her narrative this way: “A hypertext novella about personal memory, public history and sexual frustration.” -Adrienne Eisen (If you prefer see this interview click here)
For a start, everybody could make the question: What grounds do you have for saying that? So, I am going to corroborrate this from my viewpoint because after reading her work I am agree with her.
I am going to analyse this three topics and others that I have considered relevant which are in the undertone of this hypertext.
Just as you go through the story, you appreciate that the main character explain us her experiences and moments of her life and some chapters describes scenes in which she suffered sexual abuse or rapes by her father. So, this fact could be the motive of her sexual frustration because psychologically this type of assaults don’t make anybody indifferent. Anyway, she is not satisfied with Andy, her partner. The viewer can read it in “Therapy” where the couple go to the therapist because Andy doesn’t feel prepared to practise oral sex and she is obssesed with it. No doubt that the most striking feature in this scene is sexual frustration but it stages social concerns and issues from day by day. In instance, “…sex is a good gauge of intimacy between two people…”. Everybody knows that sex is a topic that concern us one way or another. So, the viewer is easily to take interest in this narrative because can feel identified with something.
Another scene where it is showed is in “My intimate relationships”. Here, she imagines her sexual desires fulfilled but then recognises that nothing is true.
“I spend the rest of the day distracting myself from food. I masturbate. I primp myself, and I wait for Andy to come home from work and carry me off to bed.
Then I’ll be free from the temptation of food and I’ll be able to do something productive with myself.
That’s such a lie. I’m just thinking it to see how it sounds. Really, when Andy comes home, he holds me, he comes, he goes to sleep, and then he’s as good as an empty chocolate milk container.”
“Vacation”: sexual dissatisfaction leads her to compulsive masturbation.
The protagonist is unclear about her sexual orientations and this scene “Social Functions” shows lesbian tendencies.
The narrator is obssesed with producing sexual attraction to her husband or in another men and at the same time looks like “a screamer in bed”: “What I look like”.
-THE MAN IS ABOVE THE WOMAN OR IS SHE THE BOSS AND WHO WEARS THE TROUSERS? WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
In this story we can notice this two positions at the same person,the main character. When she was a child she was raped and subordinated to the exigencies of her father. Nonetheless, in the scenes in which she is older, it seems as if she put her hatred out from years ago and the authority which her father had over her now she has it over her husband; insofar as she associate the sex with affection or love (the more sex, more love).
“…If you’re lying there expecting me to suck your dick,
you’re gonna have to give me more than just a little lick.
You better learn how, because it’s your turn now,
You suck…” Scene “You Suck”
“Independence” ; this title is contradictory with the content of the scene because the narrator ceases to be herself and acts as her husband wants her to: “Andy told me that I don’t need to wear it because it’s not attractive to him. Now I wonder if I even need to brush my teeth. I guess I’ll just have to ask.”
Nowadays many men are still reluctant to condoms or other contraceptive methods, and this is what happens to Andy, who prefers that his wife has an abortion on the odd occasion before avoid pregnancy with contraceptive methods. At first she accepts but finally she stands up to her husband:
“I’m not aborting anything else, so I want to be really careful. Condom, diaphragm, this will be a lot of work.” Andy nods an I-love-you nod. I put his hand inside mine; I hold on tight, and I keep it there.”– Scene “Pro-Choice”.
-PERSONAL MEMORY:
The main character is writting about her life every time and we can notice she is an unhappy girl, isn’t like other girls of her age. It could be because of the strange behaviour of her mother, perhaps the result of the authority of her husband, and the rapes suffered by her father. She describes her “ordinary” or bored life likewise:
"I thought my life was so ordinary that I wrote my sixth-grade autobiography about my cousin Jenny..."
“…After a while I noticed that the kids in school who had a lot to talk about all talked about TV. I told my parents I needed a
TV. Mom told me to call an electronics store and have them deliver one. This was the type of thing the spare Visa card in the
kitchen drawer was good for. The TV came right away, but I never remembered to take it out of the box.”
Scene “Bored”
“Christmas” is one of the few scenes in where the protagonist recalls a happy time in her life. “Hebrew School” is another example.
There is another scene, “Married Life” which could be included here because is a bad memory of her childhood or in the section “Violence”; since the main character remember her mother crying in a hopeless situation because of her husband,reflection of an abuser and violent person: “She tells us that Dad is a terrible father and a terrible husband and the most selfish person in the world and she can’t believe she married him and he’s coming home late tonight. “Too late,” she says.”
Family problems which mark her for life are present throught the narrative and this scene shows when her parents are thinking about divorce: “Staying Alive”.
-ADOLESCENCE:
The protagonist tells us without any shame some of the changes of puberty and she lived it:
“…Today there are no hairs poking out, so I have to look for hairs under my skin, and dig them out. I make a small, bloody hole, and at the center is the tip of a new hair, and I yank it.
Some days I go to school with scabs around my eyebrows. Once I sat for my school picture with no eyebrows. But people only asked what happened to my bangs, which I cut myself the day before.
My dad has been sort of watching me for the past twenty minutes while I tweeze. “You know”, he says, “there’s a saying. If it’s not broken don’t fix it…”
(in this last sentence we find that it’s not very normal in a father to contemplate this kind of intimate moments and that she is not troubled to hide.)
Scene: “Mum Says to aim for a nice arc”
“Purim” is another scene that reflects the concerns of that age and what is important for teens at that time. The main character or narrator remember how exciting one of the seventh grader boy-girl parties was.
“My Room with a view” shows how the protagonist isn’t a normal girl, no friends and their behaviour needs the help of a psychiatrist. This is the result of the passage of time and now viewers see the fruit of the bad and complicated education that she has received and her hard infancy. It seems she is in her second childhood.
-CHILDHOOD: Represented by toys.
"For my tenth birthday my parents buy me a doll house that is a replica of our house. Our cat, Rover, likes to sleep there, so I spend my time trying to keep things in the house in order."
Scene:"Doll"
-CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE:
“Sunday Afternoon” describes a rape perfectly and the psychology used by the abuser and rapist (her faher) to be the girl who feels guilty:
“I can tell there’s no blood because Dad’s hand runs so smoothly up and down my butt, in between my thighs. He is searching everywhere for blood. He won’t keep going if he thinks I’m hurt.
When I think he’s still searching, his hand smacks down. On my butt. On my thighs. He’s aiming badly because he’s hitting so hard. His whole body is moving with each swing, faster and faster and then, he stops. And rests his hand deep, in between my cheeks, and it feels good to cry, so I don’t hold back anymore.”
……………………………….
“He says, “Honey, I’m sorry this happens. I don’t want us to fight anymore.”
I hug him and apologize. I don’t want to fight anymore either.”
“On my fifteenth Birthday” shows the evolution of time during which the protagonist sees normal sexual relations with her father and likes it, even requiring him that only do it with her and not with her wife, in other words, her mother.
-VIOLENCE:
“Another Sunday Afternoon” reflects the main character’s family, which has a lot of problems and the family ties aren’t good.