Chapter 8 #3
One entire wall of my bedroom is naught but overflowing bookshelves from floor to ceiling. I even have a little rolling ladder to reach the top shelves.
He carefully enters as I stay plastered against the open door.
Once the tripod is set up, he examines every inch of the room, as if he’s committing it to memory: the paisley bedspread framed by sheer curtains over the windows above it; the tidy desk and chest of drawers that display several framed photos of my friends and me; the deep, red recliner under twinkle lights on its own circular rug in the corner.
He studies my reading chair and looks at me in question. “I call it the Cozy Corner,” I say.
He doesn’t respond, but he wanders over to the shelves and reverently runs his long fingers over a row of book spines.
When he turns back to me, his face is brimming with some overwhelming emotion I can’t name, and I feel my own complicated emotions rising up in response.
“I get it now,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.
“Get what?”
“How you were able to get out.”
“What do you mean?”
He drags a knuckle across his bottom lip.
“The ideological conditioning you went through practically from birth … that takes years and years for people to deconstruct, and most are unable to even if they attempt it.” He glances back at my wall of books.
“But you had all these other influences. You had other perspectives. You had empathy.”
I have never thought of it that way, but he is absolutely right.
My books showed me a world beyond the one I was born into.
They showed me humanity as it is; they showed me other ways of thinking and being.
There’s a reason many religious environments try to control what people read.
God knows my parents tried to control what I read, but they couldn’t control everything.
I still lived in this century. I still had to read all the classics in school, and most children’s and young adult books slipped through without too much scrutiny since they were given a blanket pass by virtue of being for younger audiences.
“Best of” essay collections also seemed dry and benign to my parents.
But my cognitive dissonance, to use Danny’s term, deepened with every page.
It was like I had two minds: one that was open to the complexity of the world, and one that was closed to anything that might jeopardize my salvation.
The former was only safe to explore in my books.
I think that’s why I became so obsessed with every book I encountered in school and then on my own: The real me was always there, beneath all the shame, desperate to be seen.
Desperate to collect the questions that would one day break her free.
When I finally experienced enough of an identity break to leave the toxicity behind, everything I had learned from my books was there waiting for me.
I don’t respond, but Danny watches me process the truth of his words with such investment and compassion.
When he once again examines the shelves, I can hear the grin in his voice. “I’m surprised it’s not organized by the Dewey Decimal system.”
I laugh and cross the room to join him. “I’ve developed my own organizational schema, thank you very much.” In the past year, my library has expanded to include a ton of pop science, cozy mysteries, and memoirs. And of course, banned books.
He carefully scans the shelves, trying to work out my system. “Will you explain it to me?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
He unfurls that slow smile at me, the one that’s a little lopsided, as if the one side needs more momentum to rise all the way.
I think I’m getting rather addicted to being his muse. I’m getting addicted to his relentless pursuit of seeing me, knowing me, unraveling me. I’m getting addicted to being the recipient of all his intensity.
When I come to the end of my intricate explanation that he could probably write out verbatim based on how intently he listened, he points to the center shelf. “It seems fitting for your book guardians to protect all the banned ones.”
The rocks and minerals we picked out together are indeed lined up right in front of a collection of banned books.
I dig into my pocket and gently set the blue-green rock at the end of the row.
He darts his eyes to me in surprise, as if he didn’t quite believe I really had it in my pocket to get me through the hard day.
I swallow. “So in the spirit of doing all of TJL together”—his grin flares; I know he thinks my pronunciation of the acronym is amusing—“there were a few things I checked off before we met. I read most of these banned books over winter break. Tennessee counties have banned a lot of books. Any here that you haven’t read? ”
He examines the titles, head tilted to read the spines, and points to a few. I immediately pluck them off the shelf and pat the stack. “So these are required reading, like, immediately. Get ready for a lot of diversity and witchcraft and communism.”
“Right,” he nods seriously.
“We were both at the pagan festival, so we’re all good there. But there was one other thing.”
“Mm?”
“I got a Brazilian wax.”
He doesn’t betray any outward reaction, but I think his breathing might be a good deal shallower than it was two seconds ago.
I try to stave off my smile. “You might need to go do that.”
His jaw is wrenched extra tight. “Does it hurt?” he finally asks.
“Honestly?”
“Always.”
“Daaaaaanny,” I laugh. “It hurts so fucking bad.”
He throws a hand over his eyes. “Fuck.”
I laugh some more and tug his hand off his face.
“Wait, why exactly is a Brazilian wax on the Jezebel List?”
I perch a finger on the back of my ear. “On what?”
He rolls his eyes. “Why exactly is a Brazilian wax on tee-juhl?”
I wink at him, then sigh. “Well, this is a real downer, but I was told waxed parts were a form of child porn.”
He sighs heavily too. “You haven’t shocked me yet. I’ve heard that, actually.”
“It couldn’t be further from the truth. I just feel sexy as hell. So smooth and soft and silky.”
And now his jaw is cemented shut. He may not be breathing. Maybe I shouldn’t have just described my waxed labia in detail.
I click my teeth twice. “We are talking openly about topics that are usually deemed taboo and thus lead to misinformation and shame and secrecy, yes?”
He clears his throat, tucks his hair behind his ear. He’s nervous. And I’m getting some kind of little thrill knowing that.
“Absolutely. Sorry, I just …” He doesn’t finish that thought. He cracks his neck instead. “Absolutely,” he says, a little steadier. “Sex is one of the main weapons religious institutions use to control people, especially women.”
I huff. “Tell me about it. If you only knew how many purity rings I’ve worn over the years …”
He winces.
I laugh. “Yeah, a purity ring is not the magical guarantee of abstinence that the church thinks it is. Even perfectly devout me didn’t make it through college as a”—I air quote the word—“virgin.”
His lopsided smile tugs. “Not a fan of the concept of virginity?”