The Great American Landscaping Novel

This is a review of the novel Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.

I decided to read it and judge for myself after seeing that in many locations, people were challenging its presence on the shelves of school libraries. Typically the claim was made that it "promotes pedophilia." This is the passage that was frequently quoted:

"But there's one thing I'd never tell Nick in a million years, not that it really matters: in fourth grade, at a church youth-group meeting, out in the bushes behind the parsonage, I touched Doug Goble's dick, and he touched mine. In fact, there were even some mouths involved." (p. 19)

Except -- the passage isn't quoted in its entirety. All the people objecting to the book started with the words "not that it really matters," capitalizing the N to make it look as if that's the beginning of the sentence.

See the trick here? By leaving out the first clause, these liars make it seem as if "not that it really matters" refers to what follows, which in turn would make the entire passage gratuitous. Which is what they want people to think. But it actually refers to what came before it. The protagonist, 22-year-old Mike Munoz, is claiming it doesn't really matter that he would never tell Nick about this incident. But that's only because of where he is at this point in the story. The fact he wouldn't tell Nick, his best friend, may not matter in itself, but the reason he wouldn't does, because what it means is that Nick's unabashed homophobia puts a limit on how open and frank Mike can be with him.

So, in a sense, Mike is lying to himself in saying that it doesn't matter. This becomes clear later in the story (pp. 91-93) when, increasingly frustrated by Nick's bigoted attitude about gays and others, Mike does tell him about this incident, and Nick doesn't take it well. He walks out of the restaurant in which they're meeting.

I won't say more about what follows to avoid spoilers, but this makes clear how dishonest the protesters are. They deliberately and deceptively edit a passage from the book to make it look as if it was put in there for no reason (except to "corrupt the youth" presumably) when it actually sets up something crucial to the whole story.

And, of course, it's not depicting sexual contact between a child and an adult, but between two children, such as has been quite common historically*. It's only a refusal to acknowledge this reality that drives some people to attribute such honest depictions to "pedophilic" motives.

*"As long as the adult members of a society permit them to do so, immature males and females engage in practically every type of sexual behavior found in grown men and women. [p. 197] [...] After reviewing the cross-species and cross-cultural evidence, we are convinced that tendencies toward sexual behavior before maturity and even before puberty are genetically determined in many primates, including human beings." -- Ford. C. S.. & Beach. F. A. (1951). Patterns of sexual behavior. New York: Harper & Row.

"You have learn to fight for things.”

Today is French president Emmanuel Macron’s 44^th birthday. In 2017 he told The Telegraph how confronting the challenges to his relationship with Brigitte Trogneux, now his wife, helped form his personal resolve:

“French President Emmanuel Macron is married to Brigitte Trogneux, who is 24 years his senior. They first met when he was only 15 years old and took part in drama plays at the very respectable Jesuit school of La Providence in the quiet, middle-class neighborhood of Amiens, Northern France.

“Macron tells how he fell in love with Trogneux:

“’It was at secondary school, through drama, that I met Brigitte. It was surreptitiously that things happened and that I fell in love. Through an intellectual bond, which day after day became ever closer. Then emerged a lasting passion.’

“It appears that the intellectual bond started when Macron was 15, and that the passionate relationship began when he was 16.

“Brigitte Trogneux recalls that … ‘all the teachers were buzzing about Emmanuel.’ Her own daughter, Laurence, a classmate of Macron’s, also spoke of him as ‘that amazing guy' [… …].

“’Every Friday, for several months, we spent several hours working on a play together,' Macron writes. [ … ] ‘We decided to produce it together. We chatted about everything. [ … ] I felt that we had always known each other.’ [ … ]

“At the time, Trogneux was 39 years old, married, and the mother of three children. Emmanuel was succeeding at school with disconcerting ease. Girls did not seem to be his main interest. His parents remember only one girlfriend. [ … ]

[Emmanuel’s father] “was ‘surprised’ all the same and ‘almost fell off his chair’ when he learned about his son’s relationship. His mother admits: ‘When Emmanuel met Brigitte, we certainly did not say: “how wonderful!”’ Emmanuel’s grandmother, however, was ‘very conciliatory.’

“Macron’s parents, a bit shaken, decided to meet Trogneux and ask her not to see their son until he had reached adulthood. His father, however, was not convinced this was the right response. ‘I thought it could even have an adverse effect.’ But his wife insisted, and so he told Trogneux: ‘I forbid you to see him until he turns 18.’ ‘I can’t promise you anything,' Trogneux answered tearfully. [ … ].

“As it happened, Emmanuel was due to go to Paris to complete his final year at secondary school. Was the decision motivated or accelerated by his romance with Brigitte? Did his parents see this as a way of getting him away from his beloved? Both deny it, rejecting any version of the romance in which they would have ‘kicked their son out of the house.’

[… …]

“’It is very hard,' he says. ‘An experience like that makes you think... You have to learn to fight for things, to bear the burden and have a life which does not in any way correspond to other people’s lives. That was what we went through for fifteen years. We managed to achieve the situation we’re in today, because we knew it was what we wanted. It didn’t just happen all by itself.’”

Source: Anne Fulda, “The Macron affair: How the French election winner’s parents discovered he was dating his teacher.” The Telegraph, 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/macron-affair-french-presidential-candidates-parents-discovered/ Quoted in T. Rivas, Positive Memories. Still available for now from lulu.com at https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/t-rivas/positive-memories/paperback/product-24450434.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Lust for Life

"I had been a ragamuffin kid of 15 coping with a neighborhood filled with gangs.... Under her guidance I became a different person.... I am eternally grateful."

Today would be screen legend Kirk Douglas's 105th birthday. As reported in the January 24, 2007, New York Post:

"Kirk Douglas is 90 years old -- but time hasn't dulled his memory when it comes to some of his more colorful sexual experiences."

"In his new memoir, Let's Face It -- 90 Years of Living, Loving and Learning, due in April from Wiley, the cleft-chinned Oscar-winning star of such pictures as Spartacus and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral recalls a fling with a 'big, tall blond' German airline stewardess who liked to be disciplined in bed. During their enthusiastic sex sessions, 'she would scream, I'm a Nazi! -- which was my cue to slap her, which I did,' Douglas writes.

"He also remembers getting deflowered in high school by his English teacher.

"'I had been a ragamuffin kid of 15 coping with a neighborhood filled with gangs.... Under her guidance I became a different person.... I am eternally grateful. By today's standards she would have gone to jail. I had no idea we were doing something wrong. Did she?'

"Douglas didn't stop at his teacher. He also wanted to bed a "beautiful young redhead" who sat in front of him, and wrote her a drippy, Shakespeare-like sonnet that ended:

"'Bewitched by a vision so fair,
I reach out and touch your hair;
Happily you turn and smile at me,
And change my humble state to ecstasy.'

"Despite his stab at 'bad poetry,' it worked, and 'I got the girl,' Douglas writes. Much as he loved sex, Douglas occasionally drew the line. One summer vacation during college when he was working in a steel mill,

"'I met a very attractive girl with rich parents.... She said her father would buy us a nice apartment in New York and take care of all of our expenses while I was in drama school.... She had a beautiful Cadillac and there was the extra dividend of good sex. What else could a poor Jewish boy want? But deep down inside I knew I would end up as a man without character. Bottom line, I just couldn't do it.'

"The Hollywood legend also recalls once being awakened by Ava Gardner, then wed to Frank Sinatra, who showed up at his door at 2 a.m. and sobbed to him:

"'Frank and I had an argument. He had a gun. He threatened to commit suicide. I don't know what to do.'

"Douglas told her, 'Ava, married people have arguments.... Frank loves you. You must go back and try to act like nothing happened.'"

Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. (ABC News, June 29, 2012 --
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/06/kirk-douglas-on-helping-to-break-blacklist)

Most of the above information is taken from Positive Memories by T. Rivas. If you'd like a copy and can't find one online, PM me.

A Great Artist, and the Love of His Life

Born on this date: flamenco star Camarón de la Isla. As reported by T. Rivas:

"José Monge (or Monje) Cruz, known as Camarón de la Isla (1950-1992), was one of the greatest flamenco singers of the 20th century and he still has many followers today.

"What is less known about flamenco singer Camarón is that, in 1976, he married a gypsy girl, Dolores Montoya, whom he nicknamed La Chispa (The Spark). He had first met the girl about a decade before and he asked for her hand in marriage when she was only fourteen.

"Together they had four children. On a range of websites, La Chispa is mentioned as the love of his life and she is also mentioned as his viuda (widow).

"The Reportaje de TV del entierro de Camarón (TV report on Camarón's funeral)* consists of a video about Camarón, his funeral, and La Chispa. In it she says he 'was a very good person and a very good husband and artist.'

"According to other sites, the often deified Camarón turned out to be human after all, because he really smoked too much, which brought about the lung cancer he died from at a very young age. He also did some drugs. The most negative thing I read about him was that for some time he wanted to be a bullfighter, something which unfortunately is not all too uncommon in flamenco circles, for historical reasons.

"On a more neutral note, he could be quite capricious about expensive beautiful cars, while at the same time being callado (introverted) and raro (eccentric).

"I haven't found anything bad about his relationship with La Chispa (as such) though. I did find: 'La Chispa, que lo adoraba' (La Chispa who adored him).

La Chispa also used to visit (or still visits) his grave for years after his funeral. For four years she mourned for him ('ella estuvo cuatro años llorando') and she became so depressed that she did not eat enough. She simply did not know what to do without him and their children were being looked after by her father and sister. Dolores was saved from her depression when her children told her that if she stopped eating they would too.

"•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10wxc1Fou9g

See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTwIWSfc5g. In this show we see Camarón, La Chispa and their children."

Unfortunately, Rivas' book Positive Memories, from which this account is taken -- and which also includes nearly two hundred other such happy "March/September" stories in all gender combinations, as recounted by the younger partner -- is no longer available from the IPCE site and soon will not be available from lulu.com either, because of worsening censorship laws in his home country of the Netherlands. But, for anyone who's interested, I'm in possession of a PDF copy.