We don’t want to censor anything,
says the Moms for Liberty spokeswoman.
We just want to keep our kids from reading
books that aren’t age appropriate.
I understand this, but it never would have
worked on me. My mom knew I would read
anything I could get my hands on, and I guess
my dad was squeamish about giving me The Talk,
so when I was nine years old, she left a copy
of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about
Sex but Were Afraid to Ask on the coffee table
in the living room. I read it cover-to-cover,
and it contained a lot that a nine-year-old
wasn’t ready for, a lot that disturbed me.
Girls can lose their hymens climbing trees.
That guy standing in the ER waiting room
probably has a lightbulb lodged in his ass.
The Catholic church put nuns on the pill
in the Belgian Congo for fear of rapacious terrorists.
The earliest dildos, made of clay, were found
in Egyptian tombs. I knew more than everything
I wanted to know, but I didn’t know that
a few blocks away, my best friend,
who would later introduce me to my wife,
was getting raped by his mom. I didn’t learn that
until decades later, after my friend had bouts
of homelessness, addiction, and jail time.
I learned it from his little brother, who had hid
under the bed while it happened, six-years-old.
 

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