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I've been thinking about my attitude towards sex lately. I like to think that I am a rather open minded person when it comes to who does what with whom. I try to follow the adage that as long as everyone is of age, informed and consenting then what goes on between two or more people is their business. I may not understand someone's desire to be tied to a post and whipped, but that doesn't mean I look down on it. Who am I to judge if you like being diapered? For that matter, if you are a person that only likes your sex missionary, in a darkened room, and fully clothed, then bully for you. To each his own, I say.

But where did this disposition come from? To whom do I owe a bit of thanks for giving me this insight. At first I was going to say my mother. It was in her household that I and my brothers and sisters learned not to be ashamed of our bodies. We were taught that sex is natural. We learned that the sex act can be endearing, crude or just plain funny. Get us all together for a family dinner or some kind of function, and I can guarantee that within five minutes someone is going to start talking about sex. It may be a dirty joke, or a debate about who gives the better blow job, but someone somehow will bring up the topic of fornication. My mother is not excluded from these conversations. Before she turned sixty, Mom joked that she hoped she got a dildo for her birthday. I think she was genuinely disappointed in her children that none of us had the stones to follow through and buy her one.

Who then, if it wasn’t my mother, began this stance towards of sexual openness in our family?  I think it began with Mrs. Beatrice Dugger, also known as Grandma. Turns out Grandma wasn’t always the god fearing, Southern Baptist that we all knew and loved. I found out recently through discussions with my mother that Grandma was once a woman of, dare I say, loose morals. Allegedly Mrs. Dugger had a first husband who was off to war when she met my grandfather, and she gave birth to my uncle six months before she and my grandfather were married. Grandma apparently also had an affair in the late 50’s.

“How do you know?” I asked my mother.

 “Because they had a big fight and Dad was holding her head down in the toilet. He was yelling at the top of his lungs that she had better stop seeing that man, or he was going to kill her,” Mom told me.

 I was also enlightened to the fact that Grandma was a booze hound back in the day. She only settled down, gave up drinking and found Jesus after my Uncle Tim was born with mental retardation. While none of these revelations were shocking they did help me understand some of my pie baking, church going grandmother’s actions growing up a little better. See, she didn’t always come across as a sweet old lady.

“Do you know why the Pollack took a saucer of milk to bed with him?” Grandma asked me in her kitchen when I was around six years old.

“No.” I can just picture myself all wide eyed and tow headed. I remember she was at the sink I was standing between the kitchen table and the door that lead to the back porch.

“To feed his wife’s pussy!” she cackled.

That’s right. My grandmother told me my first dirty and racist joke at the same time. I’m not sure how long it took me to work out what pussy actually meant.

This is not the only evidence of how my family’s attitude towards sex was formed. I remember when I was thirteen and visiting my grandparents’ farm for the weekend. My cousin Julie, who is four years younger than me and lived down the road, came over to hang out. It was a warm spring day and we had been outside running, chasing bugs, or throwing rocks, whatever it was kids did for entertainment in those days. We had just come in the front door, sweaty and thirsty from our efforts, when we saw Grandma in the cramped bathroom on our way to the kitchen to get something to drink. Grandma was wearing a dark, oversized sweatshirt with the arms pushed up and slacks while cleaning.

“Aren’t you hot, Grandma?” Julie asked.

“No, I ain’t hot,” Grandma said in her Tennessee twang. She then proceeded to lift up the sweatshirt. It happened in a blink of an eye, but that is all it took. My grandmother flashed us.

Growing up with a matriarch like Mrs. Bea Dugger, a woman who would show her breasts to her grandchildren for a laugh and the shock value, most definitely shaped our perception of sex and our bodies. And crazy as it might sound; I think it was in a good way.