taboo

I'm reading a book that has a surprise twist in the first chapter, as a girl knocks on a woman's door and says, "I think you're my mother."

I can't stop thinking: are all darkest secrets about sex?

Abortion vs. adoption.
Rape.
Infertility.
Sex: what/who/where you desire. what age it began. with how many.

As a habit, I don't write about sex, because I don't tweet, Facebook, or blog anything I wouldn't want my grandmother to read... and I regularly print my blog posts and mail them to her so that she can read what I write without having to learn how to use a computer.

But I'll see my grandmother next week, and I think it's worth asking. For example, did she have as many friends as I do who simply could not get pregnant? Is it because we're all waiting 10 years later or because we're all on hormonal birth control or because we all eat more fast food or, hell, more organic food than our parents and grandparents?

Or did she (or my mother) talk about these sorts of things with her girlfriends? Are we in some kind of post-Sex and the City freedom of speech era? Certainly nothing I could write about would be a surprise to my grandmother. She does, after all, have cable. (Not that you need cable to watch Dr. Phil.) (Not that I've watched Dr. Phil, so I'm conjecturing.)

The highest court in our land allows men to marry men and women to abort. We have clubs devoted to women taking off their clothes for money, men dressing like women for fashion, anonymous group sex for fun.

For better and worse, privacy is one thing that unites us all. Shame, guilt, or the freedom from either. Experimentation and experience, lust and love.

The point is: having secrets makes us human.

I hope that, whatever yours are, you find a way to make them lighter. Or at least to accept them.