Curve, 1993, woodcut, from private art collection of student work, artist unknown, photo alteration © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
While perusing the health and vigor of our categories last night, I had a realization: writers rarely write about sex. Our Sex category has a measly 5 posts, which leads me to wonder, why bother to have a sex category at all?
I thought about my favorite literature writers and tried to remember what they had written about sex. I did come up with a chapter in Stoner, a book assigned to us in a Natalie Goldberg Taos Intensive last year. It’s a favorite on my bookshelf now, and contains one of the most subtly erotic accounts I’ve ever read about making love.
(If you don’t know about Stoner or John Williams, read the dynamic interview, John Williams: Plain Writer by Dan Wakefield in the 10th Anniversary issue of Ploughshares.)
Some see making love and sex as two different things. And now that I think about it, so do I. But different how? I’m not sure I can answer that in an on-the-fly blog post.
I remembered last night, that about 4 years ago, I wrote a tasteful erotic piece called Lean Into The Curves, about the virtues of making love as compared to learning to ride my Honda Rebel. There is something sensual about motorcycle riding; and the instructor who wore scarlet Harley boots with flames shooting off the sides, only added fuel to the fire.
I stood up at a microphone (dressed in a crisp, white, open-collared blouse, dangling silver earrings, black Levi’s, cherry lipstick, and a black, short-cut blazer) and read the piece at a venue in Minneapolis (no longer in existence) called hotBed. The audience was full of 150 women who all laughed at the right places and cheered at the end, wildly clapping when Ella Fitzgerald’s At Last echoed through the room as I read the final lines.
The sound woman was right on cue.
It’s hard to imagine standing up and reading that same piece today. Have I lost my edge? Or are there too few places to submit that kind of work.
Most people have sex at least once in their lifetime. And it’s alive and well on family TV and in G-rated films. So why don’t writers write about sex? Or the erotic? Or making love?
I don’t have any answers. Only to say that, thank goodness, some do.
Here is a poem from Galway Kinnell called, simply – Sex. Exquisite. I heard him read it at the Fitzgerald Theater earlier this year. I’m heading to the writing table right now. Maybe I’ll get inspired.
Sex
by Galway KinnellOn my hands are the odors
of the knockout ether
either of above the sky
where the bluebirds get blued
on their upper surfaces
or of down under the earth
where the immaculate nightcrawlers
take in tubes of red earth
and polish their insides.-from Strong Is Your Hold, Poems, Houghton Mifflin, 2006
posted on red Ravine Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
-related to post, Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On
Wow!!! I’m trying to picture you in that get up. I never knew. Do you have a picture?
Sex is a wonderful thing. It can fulfill you or leave you wanting. ( for more or for completeness) It can cause many problems or much happiness. It can be complicated or simple. It can control or complete. It can be a beautiful happening or down and dirty. YOur mind and your acceptance have a lot to do with the way you preceive it . also the way you were raised and treated along lifes journey. The best is when it is through love ,not just relief of strong desires. Love makes it complete and wonderfully fulfilling. Anything else is for the moment!!
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Amelia, I think I do somewhere! I’ll have to ask Liz. She was there, too, and I think we had just met. Thanks for your great response.
I really liked these lines in your comment:
Your mind and your acceptance have a lot to do with the way you perceive it . also the way you were raised and treated along life’s journey. The best is when it is through love, not just relief of strong desires. Love makes it complete and wonderfully fulfilling. Anything else is for the moment!!
For love or for the moment. Yes, it rings true. Wise words. Thanks again for jumping in on the comments. You are forever surprising me in the most pleasant of ways. 8)
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Amelia – I had the *exact* same response about the crisp white blouse, the dark short blazer, the cherry lipstick. Such an image, and then reading an erotic piece to a cheering crowd. After reading that, I want to read the piece (or better yet, replicate the reading somewhere and attend!).
(And, before I forget, QM, maybe you can post an excerpt from Lean Into The Curves.)
And why do we not write about sex, yet sex is one of the most pervasive topics on the internet? I mean, start a blog about S&M, as one example I saw recently, and it immediately rises to the top. (Take a look at growing blogs, and I bet you’ll find one there!)
I’ll have to think about the question you raise and search my own soul for why I tend to avoid writing about sex. I know I do avoid it. Am I modest? Am I worried what people will think? What is it exactly?
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I think most of what rises to the top about sex is dirty. It is hard to describe the beauty of sex in words. So we that enjoy the beauty in sex tend to write more about Love, which to us sometimes does include sex as a beautiful expression of love in the most private way.
Maybe too, we are a little selfish in sharing that part of our selves with the world, for fear they will not take it in the way that we are trying to present it. That they will look at us in a different light, especially someone that has had bad experiences.
Children sometimes have a hard time accepting their parents as being sexual partners and don’t want to visualize them in that way. They forget how they came into this world!
Some generations never expressed emotions in front of anyone much less their children. A real shame.! The children grow up not knowing how to show their love also.
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George R. R. Martin disagrees
While The Song of Ice and Fire are some of the greatest fantasy books I’ve ever read, Mr. Martin has a penchant for writing graphic sex exploits (maybe that’s too harsh), specifically incest and other taboo subjects that one would typically find stemming from the medieval eras.
But for modern day writing, I find that it’s mainly the author’s wish to not have to fall back on what seems to be a cheap trick to grab a few more readers. They simply don’t want to attribute themselves to the kind of stuff one would find it cheesy romance novels or erotica fiction.
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ybonesy, good idea for me to post a snippet of Lean Into The Curves. I’ll have to see if I can dig it out from the archived volumes of writing and practices I seem to have buried on my computer. No, I think I know what folder it’s in. Let me read it again. It’s been a while.
And, yes, it’s so true. Sex is one of the most pervasive topics on the Internet, but mostly raunchy sex (and it fills up our spam filter every single day); yet people seem to have forgotten how to write about the erotic and sensual. It’s so hard to find good erotic writing.
One thought around writing about sex (even in writing practices where no one public is going to read them, people rarely write about sex) is that I wonder if we write less about it when we are having less sex. I know when I’ve been in the throes of passion, I want to write about it. There is great energy there. Does that make sense?
Another thing – sex is 2nd chakra energy. And that’s the same place creativity flows from. If we are blocked there, it’s sometimes hard to get things going creatively.
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arstpierre, yes, I think you have a good point about writers not wanting to associate themselves with romance novels or erotica fiction.
It’s like Amelia said, too, there is a fear that people will not take it in the way that we are trying to present it. That they will look at us in a different light
But if you read a book like Stoner, you see how eloquent and titillating subtlety can be. Erotica can be subtle as well, and woven into a creative story that holds a lot of ground.
The other thing is that in all the years I’ve been doing writing practice with people (almost every day), hardly any of them write about sex. Or money. And this is all private writing that would never be revealed to the public.
It think there is something deeper at work preventing us from skillfully writing about it.
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I have several notebooks from when I was in different writing groups, and I noticed the other day while rifling through one that it was *filled* with sex writing. I mean, filled. I couldn’t believe I was writing so much about sex in writing groups. But I was prolific. And, yes, it dawned on me that my sex life was also prolific (if a sex life can be prolific) at that time, too.
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Interesting about your writing notebooks, ybonesy. I think it was the same when I wrote that piece I read – prolific sex life. There was a lot of energy for it at that time. What happens to that energy when we are less active? It seems like an area where it’s all or nothing.
It would be nice to be able to write about it from the gray areas, too. It might be more realistic and in tune with most people’s lives. When you find an erotic chapter or scene in a classic or in great literature, it’s like a breath of fresh air. The writer understood something I don’t think I’ve quite come to yet.
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Well I say: BETTER TO HAVE LOVED AND LUST than never to have loved at all. I’ve been converting from MAC to PC the last couple of weeks — nothing sexy about that — so have been offline and out of sorts in technology hell. Then I discovered the “Gargage Band” appliication last night and composed a sexy little number. And then I read this sexy little number on my first visit to rR in a while. Love the Kinnell poem and that picture of you all sexed up. One of the most sensual writers I’ve ever read is Carole Maso. Check out some of her stuff. Also, can I share this poem from Adrienne Rich? It’s “The Floating Poem” (from Twenty-One Love Poems):
Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine — tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come —
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there —
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth —
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave — whatever happens, this is.
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Okay, I know what you mean here. I’ve been writing a memoir about my early marriage. What did we do the most? We had sex. The memoir takes place in a tropical jungle, with black sand beaches, rolling waves that glow with phosphorescence in the moonlight. There were waterfalls, mountain hikes, and water clean enough to drink from the spring. But no sex.
And yes, we had sex in a 200 year old rain tree, beside decayed bird totems poles, under the eves of an ocean cave, and certainly after fishing for prawns in the river. We still have sex, in the bedroom, kitchen, laundry room, in the backyard, and sometimes (don’t tell the kids) in the tree fort.
But is it anywhere in anything I’ve ever written? No.
So, there, see how easily I can list the places where I have had sex with my lover? But as you noticed, I didn’t actually describe the event that took place on the edge of a cliff, or in the center of a Chinese village. Perhaps during really good sex, our cognitive mind isn’t present. Sex is an occupation of the body–kind of like giving birth. Perhaps our muse can’t really access ourselves in the real moment. It is too quantum or spiritual to fit into the linear form of language. Somehow our memory of love making fails to translate into sensual data. Perhaps it has never made it into my compost pile of emotional experience.
OR it could be the puritan culture we live in, where sex is taboo, women are dirty and soulless, sex is forbidden—and as an occupation of the flesh—is disconnected from the divine. Writing then should be about higher reasoning and Art—but as I also know, the minute I include my reasoning intellect in my writing, my prose becomes stilted and flat.
But I look again at the opening image, the curve of a woman’s lower back in shadow—perhaps visual stimulation is the highest level the mind is capable of re-producing.
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Adrienne Rich is a writer who has never shied away from this topic. And in an interview I read, her work is about the desire for connection:
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There’s always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two. Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected — pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
The Boston Phoenix interview, June 1999
A Rich Life, by Michael Kline (link)
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Wow, very eloquent, rakello. (And, sharonimo, talk about sexed up. Whew!)
Have you tried adding sex scenes to your memoir? I mean, look at the energy there. Maybe that’s a subtheme of the memoir, too, which is how your marriage settled. Not just the move from adventurous tropical island to a more “normal” life, but everything. (Although, clearly you’re still having fun in the kids’ tree fort, so maybe it isn’t a subtheme.)
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I like the way Rakello writes, It stirs the senses all the way. Sharonimo however leaves nothing to the imagination to be stirred. I guess that’s the difference between lust and making love.
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I wrote a story recently about virgin births, where the women conceive via a mysterious connection to an angel. They experience an orgasm, but it’s that kind of pure, mystical, physical love that I’ve only felt in dreams.
I think I shy away from writing about sex as something real because I feel so much ambivalence on the subject. Plus, I’m still developing as a writer. Still, maybe I need to write about it, in order to reveal the mixed feelings.
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[…] June 26, 2007 at 10:02 pm · Filed under stories I decided to post this story after reading a post on Red Ravine called Why Writers Don’t Write About Sex. […]
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Sharonimo, I didn’t know who Carole Maso was. Had to look her up. I did find a link to a Rain Taxi interview (1997)which was compelling.
I liked this about language and desire:
Here’s the link for those who wish to read the whole interview:
Rain Taxi
Vol. 2 No. 4, Winter 1997/1998 (#8)
An Interview with Carole Maso (link)
by BRIAN EVENSON
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Great story Mariacristina!!
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Amelia, thanks for your comments today. I enjoyed them. I found some parallel themes between a few of your comments and rakello’s:
(1) how hard it is to put sex into words
rakello: But I look again at the opening image, the curve of a woman’s lower back in shadow—perhaps visual stimulation is the highest level the mind is capable of re-producing.
Amelia: It is hard to describe the beauty of sex in words. So we that enjoy the beauty in sex tend to write more about Love, which to us sometimes does include sex as a beautiful expression of love in the most private way.
(2) the way children view parents
rakello: We still have sex, in the bedroom, kitchen, laundry room, in the backyard, and sometimes (don’t tell the kids) in the tree fort.
Amelia: Children sometimes have a hard time accepting their parents as being sexual partners and don’t want to visualize them in that way. They forget how they came into this world!
Thanks so much for joining us on this topic. Very poetic. Keep writing your stories!
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rakello, thanks for your thoughtful comment. It’s so rich with visual imagery. And I like these philosophical points:
Writing then should be about higher reasoning and Art—but as I also know, the minute I include my reasoning intellect in my writing, my prose becomes stilted and flat.
Sex is an occupation of the body–kind of like giving birth. Perhaps our muse can’t really access ourselves in the real moment. It is too quantum or spiritual to fit into the linear form of language. Somehow our memory of love making fails to translate into sensual data. Perhaps it has never made it into my compost pile of emotional experience.
I hope you’ll join us again. I was inspired by your details!
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Very interesting posts on sex. I agree that our society is still fairly puritan in our views on sex. Other societies revere sex and do not have the hang-up we have. Maybe that is why graphic descriptions of sex is such a lucrative industry, from romance novels to pornography.
I also believe that the female view of sex and the male view are different. I think men prefer more visual cues where sex is concerned (then again I am struck by the impact on me of the smell of sex that may linger in a room or on my fingers that sometimes lasts for a day or two.)
Sex earlier in a relationship is different than that with a seasoned lover. The early relationship sex can have more of a mental aspect as you get to know the other person and they get to know your “buttons” where in seasoned sex your lover often knows just when to change the touch or pressure at the right time.
So now I have talked about sex without any embarrassment or concern for the reaction of my audience. Does that make me different? I hope not because we should all be able to talk about sex without worrying about the puritan filters of our ancestors.
My mother was open about sex, not that she talked about it with us but she made comments like, “If you’re not having sex by now I’d be worried.” I have taken that further with my children where we have talked about masturbation (it is not to be ashamed of and is a good way to figure out what you like and don’t like), the impact of sex on a relationship, the impact of pregnancy on their future (both for my son and daughter) and I have encouraged them to ask questions about sex, and sexuality. My hope is to make them comfortable and informed about sex.
My daughter shocks her friends with her knowledge and their failure to rattle her with their comments or questions. I hope my son can be the same with his friends.
These are my first impressions on your posts.
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You know, I have so many comments I could say but I stop myself from saying them. And then I’m reminded of the James Baldwin quote: I want to be an honest man and a good writer. QM and I had some back and forth about this quote, me wondering if he was making a point of *not* saying, I want to be a good man and an honest writer.
On the one hand, I ask myself, why don’t I talk honestly about sex? (And here, Amelia, I have to admit it’s sex, not making love.) But then I wonder, why *would* I write about sex? Why would I need to divulge something others might label as perversions? Are they? S-E-X. Such a small word, and yet such a huge range of relationship to it.
If it’s because I don’t want to be judged, then why am I willing to be judged in so many other realms of my life? And my desire for presenting to my daughters a healthy attitude toward sex doesn’t seem to be a good indicator of whether I can write about it (although I do appreciate your words on this, R3, and I kind of even see similarities between your mother and mine, who I remember used to tell us that when you’re first married you usually have sex several time a week or day). Is it a disconnect between body (true physical) and mind?
I’m stumped, QM, but I’m going to keep sitting with it and see what I land on.
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Ybonesy –
I think we don’t write or talk about sex because we are afraid of being judged.
I hesitated to put as much out there. I took the risk because I think we are too often held back by what other’s may think of us. That alone is something that allowed me to write on a personal note, the desire not to “have to conform”.
I choose to be an honest man and a good writer, but I guess that will redefine who my audience will be.
R3
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Maybe that is it, but I write about so many other things that can be judged good or bad, so I’m wondering if it’s really that. Maybe it is. Maybe judgments about sex are worse because they’ve been colored by all the inputs we’ve received along the way about sex.
But why then could I write so freely about sex (and often choose it, subconsciously, as my main topic) all those years ago when I wrote with others, some of whom were strangers? Maybe it is that I’m not as sexually charged now as I was then. What if that’s what’s changed? (And maybe it still comes down to fear of being judged, because if my scenes aren’t what they once were, maybe that will say something about me?)
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Ybonsey –
Interesting thoughts. I find that when I do things with a group I tend to be less self conscious and more accepting of things that are outside of my normal way of doing things.
When everybody is doing the same thing or is working on the same task there is a tacit approval from the group that redefines your norms for that time. Maybe the group has changed and not you.
I agree we are definitely colored by the society, community and culture we live in and came from. If we recognize and embrace that we can then make some conscious decisions on how much we will allow that to impact our writing and comfort level.
The question about being sexually charged is an interesting one. Even though we are as active now as when we first met, our interactions have changed. The level of endorphins has changed because there is less “unknown” territory within our sexual interactions and more familiarity. Think of this in terms of reading in front of a crowd for the first time, your heart is beating hard in your chest, your breathing is harder, your hands sweat, but after doing it several times in front of the same group your reaction becomes tempered. Because of this familiarity sex now is better in most ways because there is less concern about “getting her there” and more focus on technique or enjoying your partners pleasure.
As I have gotten older my view of sex has ripened. Where it was a status symbol in high school, it has become a way to share myself with another in a way that says, “I trust you, and want to share myself with you.” Think about what sex represented to you when you wrote so freely about it and where you were in your sexual evolution at that time. Then examine where you are now regarding sex and I think you will see some differences that will help explain some of where you are. I think you touched on some of this when you mentioned your kids and what you wanted to know about sex.
R3
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The conversation has really picked up since I was here last. You know what was amazing? I turned on a Bones CD this morning while I was waiting for the train at the tracks and, lo and behold, there was a Chapter on writing about the erotic in Writing Down the Bones. I had forgotten all about it. I’ll have to see if there’s a good quote there.
The gist of what she was saying is to start slow and work up to what you want to say in the practice, rather than jumping into the center too quickly. It’s more erotic to build up. And to write details of everything around you, set the whole sensory scene, so it doesn’t get too abstract.
I couldn’t believe that’s the chapter that poured through the speakers this morning. How fitting after this post.
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The sexiest writing works in the reader’s imagination. Let them make the connection.
I know someone who overtells stories. He over-emotes, supplying the emotion he hopes to induce in his listeners, which actually repels them from those feelings.
Give your reader the scene, the smiles, the words, the touch — you don’t have to get lewd, you can simply allude. Let them supply the rest.
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[…] -related to posts: Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On and Why Writers Don’t Write About Sex […]
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[…] I remember when Galway read. Strong Is Your Hold seemed new and fresh for him. Insomniac and Sex vibrated across the room. And in his poem for Jane Kenyon, How Could She Not, you could hear the […]
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Interesting. I tend to agree with ombudsmen … let the reader’s imagination ‘fill in the blanks’… I find that SO MUCH goes on pre-during-post any ‘sexual act’ that it seems somewhat reductive and almost trite to attempt to encapsulate that mind-body bending experience of INFINITY into the limiting linguistic confines of TIME & SPACE … if you catch my drift … Try ‘The Dancing Bear’ on my site to better FEEL what I MEAN – it is a very sexual ‘story’ with NO SEX as such … Glad I’ve found your blog. Will be back. Cheers, C
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canadada, I’m so glad you found this post. I loved this post; it was one of our first that really got the comments the flowing. A very provocative question.
I hope to check out your story.
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canadada, thanks for reviving this post I had not read it or the comments in a while. As ybonesy mentions, it really did get the comments flowing. It’s still a good question, isn’t it? And a delicate balance.
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Ever heard of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award? Might have something to do with it. However, all publicity is good publicity, right?
“The awards were set up by Auberon Waugh with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, and Melvyn Bragg.”
jamesewan
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jamesewan, I hadn’t heard of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award until you mentioned it in your comment. Makes total sense that it might scare writers to death. 8) However, it sounds like we’d be in good company to receive such an award — the likes of Wolfe, Faulks, Bragg.
It’s always fun when this post is revived. I wrote it over a year ago, yet it still remains a vital topic for writers — both fiction and non-fiction. If you are writing about sex in non-fiction or memoir, it feels like even more of a sensitive subject to me.
I like the idea of approaching sex in poetry though. Maybe there is something about how poetry allows only so many lines. You can hint at things that you don’t have to fully explain and let the reader’s imagination go with it. Ah, so much to think about on this post. Thanks for stopping by!
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However, it sounds like we’d be in good company to receive such an award — the likes of Wolfe, Faulks, Bragg.
Good point, and to jamesewan’s other point, all publicity is good publicity.
I like the description “gently dissuading.” I think more of these types of awards should be given in all of life. An award that gently dissuades toupees or combovers on otherwise reasonable men, another for big hair on otherwise beautiful women, one to gently dissuade moustaches on otherwise handsome faces (why are all my examples hair related??).
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HA! ybonesy, you crack me up. I like your idea of such awards for all areas of life. We noticed when watching the Olympics the last week that there are certain announcers that would receive some of the awards you are talking about. 8) Yeah, what is is about hair?
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[…] it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do….What […]
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