One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 83

#83 – “Tear your bread into little pieces before you put gravy on it.”

 (Me, age 10, 1958)

Bread and gravy was a staple in our house, and tearing the bread into little pieces before mom put gravy on it was a fun ritual when I was a small child. (For you grammar nazis and Yankees, that's "bread with gravy"). Of course the purpose was to make it easier for little hands, but for me it was also a sensual experience – the softness, fragrance, and yummy-ness of the bread, and the anticipation of the warm and creamy gravy. Of course it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that the feelings I was experiencing at the age of 10 were closely related to the feelings I would have as a grown and sexually active woman.

Science confirms that we’re hard-wired for the sensual correlation between food and sex. Men are attracted to women for sex and women are attracted to men for food, but not exactly in the way it sounds. At the very biological level, men are driven to procreate, and women are driven to feed children, in vitro or out. And although most women have been able to feed themselves and their children for years, just as the female praying mantis kills and eats her sexual partner immediately after consummation of sex, women have been using sex to get a nice dinner out forever. CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW...

Just Kids by Patti Smith

I read somewhere that Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy, and I repeat that because it really sums the book up quite nicely. The story begins in 1967, when 20-year-old Chicagoan Patti Smith moves to New York City, meets artist Robert Mapplethorpe, and begins a lifetime of love and friendship. As most people know (as such, not a spoiler), Mapplethorpe’s lifetime was cut short as he died of complications from AIDS in 1989 when he was 42. Before he died, Mapplethorpe asked Smith to “write his life,” and Just Kids, which won a National Book Award, is that story – at least the story from Patti Smith’s perspective, anyway, which I found entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

Here’s a little perspective on Smith and Mapplethorpe (pictured). Smith, who is commonly referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk,’ is famous for her music and poetry, and is probably most well know for her performance of Because The Night, which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen.

Robert Mapplethorpe, who was known in the art world for his black and white photos of flowers and nude men, lept into the national consciousness when public funding got tangled up in a show of his homoerotic and provocative religious art, and triggered a giant controversy. Remember the crucifix-in-a-jar-of-urine brouhaha? CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW...

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Paula McLain’s novel, The Paris Wife, is the minimally fictionalized story of Ernest Hemingway’s marriage to Hadley Richardson, his first of four wives. If you’ve read it you know Hadley Richardson Hemingway was a rather boring gal, and Hemingway was the cliché of a tortured artistic soul. You also know that the setting for most of the book, Paris in the 1920s, doesn’t get much more interesting, especially when you’re hanging out with the likes of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Woody Allen’s 2012 Oscar nominated Midnight in Paris is an entertaining glimpse into that era as well.

Despite her lackluster persona in the book, Hadley Richardson does have an interesting backstory riddled with tragedy. Her father committed suicide, her sister  died of burns sustained in a house fire, and Hadley spent her 20s caring for her ailing mother.

Out of the blue appears handsome,  and nine-years-younger Hemingway who sweeps a borderline homely Hadley off her feet. Although Hemingway swears to his adoration of Hadley, I couldn't help but imagine that he was more attracted to her trust fund than her charms. Hemingway's biographer Jeffrey Meyers apparently agrees, as he said, "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for ... a comfortable income, a life in Europe." CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW...