The Bridal Shower Or . . .

It's not as if I want to talk about sexual assault or sex all the time, or exploitation, or homophobia. The big joke in my family is that we couldn't have a meal, we couldn't sit down together, even if there was company, without something embarrassing coming up. From me. Somehow I brought it up.

This gets huge laughs now, now that the kids are adults, at my expense. It mortified them then, of course, and I couldn't promise, in all seriously, never to do it again. 

And it's taken years to stop altogether, to avoid initiating discussions like these.  Writing has helped, teaching, too, talking to people who are looking for practice wisdom or the fruits of higher education.  People who feel like they're having dinner at my table. 

The irony is that I'll want to write about something completely different, maybe even personal, like what it's like making a bridal shower with my mother as a co-hostess, only to get distracted with a Yahoo story about the arrest of a guy like John Hopkins.  And there goes the bridal shower.

If you've never heard of John Hopkins, more power to you, because the story is a confusing soup of cross accusations about sexual slavery and Craig's list solicitations. A veritable He said.  She said.

Quickly:

Mr. Hopkins, arrested last week for allegedly tying a woman to a radiator, supposedly raped her for a week, made her call him Master.  The unidentified victim claims she answered his ad offering free rent in exchange for housekeeping and cooking.   But he bought her a ticket, picked her up at the airport, and then supposedly tortured her in his home, told her she was now his sexual slave.

He tells us, however, his rebuttal is that theirs was a consensual dom/subdom relationship. She wanted to be tied up, handcuffed, beat-up, and raped. It was a part of their deal. She all but signed a consent form.  My spin accepts that that could very well be true, maybe not.  We don't know.

So the story on Mom and the shower, all the things leading up to it, what we talked about in the car, will have to wait.  I'm sorry, you have no idea.

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