Carl is at home with the babe; he has done the heavy lifting on this one. I am at work torn to shreds about the need to be at meetings but also to be at home. It sucks.
Meanwhile, flicking around the ‘net in frustration while waiting for the meeting to start, I have been fascinated by a discussion over at Ask Moxie around a parent who found out a mysterious something about another parent and now doesn’t want her child over there.
It opened up a whole string of memories for me. The top weird one that’s fit for public consumption (if just barely) was being at a cocktail party when I was oh, about 8, judging from the pants in the memory, and being left, as us “good kids” often were, to hang out in one of the rooms - this one a rec room down in a basement that had a walkout to a backyard that overlooked the ravine. There was an exercise bike in the room which was a big excitement and also a shelf of books - sort of light birch, modern. That kind of home.
And I remember picking out The Story of O (I mean it has a great title) and reading it there, pretty much cover to cover. I just remember the sort of shock and shame of it, and that my parents came in to check up on me and were glad I was reading without checking out what I was reading, and went on to party. I remember hiding the book while going to get cocktail wieners and some kind of puff pastry thing and then coming back and reading some more, all totally red cheeked. And I vaguely kind of remember a sense that those things did happen to other people and that they were in books. Some kind of mixed confirmation that they were okay but shameful, or something.
I remember slipping the book back into its low-lying spot on the shelf. I don’t think I had gotten to the end and knew that she died; I reread it later on in my twenties and I didn’t remember having read it before, just that it was familiar, and I do remember hurling it against the wall and being enraged for no really good reason.
I wanted to record that and might pick up on it later.
Me too. (Although I was about ten, I think, and visiting people for the summer rather than just one evening.)
I hated that book. I read it all at once feeling thrilled and vaguely uneasy as I read it until I realized that O was never to get her original master back. After that I read it with the kind of fascination with which one watches a car wreck. When she died I felt angry and hurt and never wanted to think about it again. I think this is one of the few times I have thought of it since then.
-Mia