Feb 23, 2009

If You Can't Keep It In Your Pants...

...Keep It In The Family.

That was the jokey motto of the punk band, The Inbreds. Yes, it's pretty tasteless.

I wanted to take a minute and address the incest theme that's cropped up a few times in the stories I've written in recent weeks. I'm not a proponent of incest and it happening in real life is a stomach-turner. However, when it's in fantasy -- especially when it's more of a "title" thing than a blood-relation thing (calling a man "Daddy" or a woman "Mommy") then it's something else entirely for me. There's some fun to be had when playing with those taboos.

I think it's easier for me to utilize this tact since I am without much family of my own.

I'm the only son of an only daughter of a woman who abandoned her life/family and moved to the West Coast. My biological father died when I was two and my mother moved us away from his family, severing all ties, and putting us where she didn't have any family around either. My mom and I were basically an island apart from our few blood relations.

When I did gain a family via my step-father, I always felt like the family's black sheep. They tried to welcome me as much as they could but it was difficult, what with me being a weirdo.

And, later, when my mother and step-father divorced, I basically lost all of the family I had gained with their "arrangement" (they went for nearly two decades without getting married). I only have the most fleeting of contact with one cousin and one aunt. The rest of them pretty much divorced themselves from me when my folks went their separate ways.

With the recent death of my agoraphobic grandmother, this leaves me, again, with just my mom as my only blood relative around. And, if you knew my mom, you'd know that she's about useless when it comes to being an "engaged" person in my life. I had breakfast with her a few days ago and you'd think that maybe she'd ask about what's going on in my life at all? No. She just jawed on about her own stuff for the entire duration of the meal. Her friends, her book club, her volunteer work...

Thus, you can see, dear reader, that I have a very different view of family than most people. That's probably why I can toss around incestuous relationships with ease. I've got friends who have been molested and my heart goes out to them. I still believe that my ex-wife was a victim of this heinous crime. This still makes me uncomfortable in the real world / fantasy world divide (a topic that Angela St. Lawrence at Zen Fetish has discussed far more eloquently than I ever could but, in fantasy, it's another arrow for my perverse quiver.

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