fingerlakeswanderer's Open Salon Blog

Are Women Human? The Israel Conscription Debate. (update)

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:11:29 -0500

I do not know what it is to be a woman in Israel. I cannot pretend to, as I have never been there. I have friends who have lived in Israel, some observant Jews, some not, but other than that, I don't have much of a clue. Yes, of course, I read things. But I just want to point out, before I begin, that I am not speaking as an Israeli woman.*

I am speaking as an American feminist who is trying to figure out the mixed messages that women are sent in Israel, and the frightening world of surveillance that many Israeli women live under. (And if Israeli women live under surveillance, multiply that exponentially to get to Palestinian women's experiences.)

But I was struck by two stories that appeared close to one another in Ha'aretz, one of the more leftist Israeli newspapers. In one story, a woman was arrested for praying at the Western Wall (frequently referred to as the "Wailing Wall.") In another, women can be forcibly inducted into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) if they are thought to be faking their religiosity.

As many of you know, all Israeli young people--male and female--are required to serve in the IDF. According to War Resisters International, Israel violates young people's human rights in that there is no conscientious objection status for men, and only partial c.o. status for women.

A woman can claim c.o. status:

Art. 39 (c) deals with the exemption of women with a particular religious background. According to this article: "A female person of military age who has proved, in such manner and to such authority as shall be prescribed by regulations, that reasons of conscience or reasons connected with her family's religious way of life prevent her from serving in defence service, shall be exempt from the duty of that service."

Men are allowed to claim religious education (e.g. studying to be a Rabbi) as a basis for exemption, but with women (who may not join the Rabbinate,) the right to claim c.o. status is directly linked to her family's level of religious orthodoxy. Article 39 seems to assume that a woman (who is apparently old enough to fight and die for Israel) is still subject to her family's religious beliefs. In other words, she is not recognized as her own person, but as an extension of her father. The religious exemption is not based on objection of war, as Judaism is not a pacifistic religion; rather, it is the family's fear that she will "stray."**

The legislation on exemption of religious women is based on Jewish tradition, which does not permit daughters either to stray from their father's authority or to live in a mixed-gender society. Military service by women would conflict with both these proscriptions, hence with the traditional religious way of life.

Art. 40 specifies exemption on religious grounds. According to it, exemption is permissible when: "(1) reasons of religious conviction prevent her from serving in the defence service and (2) she observes the dietary laws at home and away from home and (3) she does not ride on the Sabbath."

I would be curious as to whether there is someone reading this who can enlighten me why these same observances do not preclude men.

November 22nd saw the introduction of a bill that will radically change this.

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday approved a bill aimed at curbing the growing number of secular girls evading service in the Israel Defense Forces by claiming to be religious.

The bill, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry, advises that the Israel Defense Forces keep close surveillance on every prospective recruit who cites religion as a reason not to complete service. This way, say minister, the IDF will have an easier time determining which claims are valid.

The article does not detail how a woman's religiosity will be determined. Will she have to take a test? I assume that this will automatically preclude any Conservative or Reform Jew from claiming the exemption. But what does a woman have to do to prove that she's religious "enough."

Approximately one-third of women seek the exemption. This is seen as a problem, but this bill is also seen as a continuation of the struggle between the secularists and the religious in the Knesset.

The most chilling part of the bill is the surveillance apparatus that these new rules will create:

Hasson called his bill an opportunity intends to equalize the conditions under which women can receive exemptions, characterizing the ministers' proposal as one that would simply enable the establishment of a team of private detectives whose sole purpose would be to follow up on women already exempt from their military service

Imagine: private detectives whose sole purpose is to follow women exempt from military service to make sure they are religious enough.

Having just read that article, you can imagine my bewilderment when I read this article:

Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit).

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said the act was a provocation meant to turn the wall into a fighting ground. "We must distance politics and disagreement from this sacred place," Rabinowitz said.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, associate director of Israel's reform movement, said that all over the world women are entitled to wear the tallit, and only in the land of the Jews are they excluded from the social custom and even arrested for praying.

Last week Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Shas party's spiritual leader, said during his weekly sermon that the women in the feminist movement are "stupid" and act the way they do out of a selfish desire for equality, not "for heavens' sake."

I have quoted most of the article because I find it appalling. In effect, a woman was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl and reading the Torah at the Wall. She was arrested because the courts have ruled that visitors to the Wall must comply with its dress code.

In the practice of something private, praying to G*d at a holy site, this woman was arrested. Someone was watching her. Ironic, huh? Not religious enough? You'll be noted in some little book. Trying to practice the religion? Back in the book.

Both cases are about how women are not seen by Israeli law as equal in the eyes of God. They can die for their country, but they cannot pray for it--at least not in places that have been reserved for men.

Why does this infuriate me so? I'm not Jewish. I support a two-state solution, in which both Palestine and Israel would be recognized as sovereign nations. (Yes. I'm aware that Palestinians are second-class humans in Israel. I'm not trying to have that argument.)

But I find it interesting that, when you have determined that women are lesser beings, the perimeters that you put around acceptable female behavior is so constricting that "too much" --whichever way you go--brings you into conflict with your society.

Israel is a modern nation. The United States is a modern nation, but we have our own issues that are similar to those of Israel. For example, women are still exempted from conscription. I do not believe that anyone should be conscripted, but if the draft exists, then everyone--male and female, rich and poor--should be eligible. I don't think that women in this country will have full equal rights until they can be drafted. ***

Military service for women is fraught with danger--not only from the enemies, but also from your fellow servicemen.

The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.

In this country, there are those who continue to insist that while women are also children of God, they are first their fathers' daughters, and then their husbands' wives. Their personhood is defined by their relationship to men.

Such seems to be the case in Israel. The only route to conscientious objection in Israel is to claim that one's father's religious beliefs preclude one from being exposed to military culture. Where is the claim that you simply do not want to participate in what you perceive as an immoral war? Can you serve in a non-combat position?

Perhaps this blog post makes little sense. I cannot pinpoint what made my eyes skip through the headlines to settle on these two separate stories. But as I read both of them, I envisioned Israeli women in a box.

And, as I hear our politicians negotiate a health care bill that would preclude women's access to medical procedures because of some legislators' moral concerns, I realized that we're in a box, too. Maybe a different shape and color. But a box nonetheless.

*See Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things You Need to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.

**Friends of mine were part of the Peace Now! movement in Israel. They were at a rally when a friend of theirs was killed by a fellow Jew, who objected to those who objected to Israeli policies.

***Newt Gingrich once famously said that women should not serve in combat positions because sitting in damp fox holes would give them yeast infections. (He said it more crudely.)

Update:

I've just assigned an essay to my students for them to read. By chance, the Western Wall comes up in the essay.

From Richard Rodriguez, "The God of the Desert," Harper's

"After the Six Day War, the Israeli government bulldozed an Arab neighborhood to create Western Wall Plaza, an emptiness to facilitate devotion within emptiness--a desert that is also a well...

Western Wall Plaza levels sorrow, ecstacy, cancer, belief. Here emptiness rises to proclaim its unlikeliness to God, who allows for no comparison. This is His incomparable Temple. It does not resemble. It is all that remains."

Such Great Heights

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:11:52 -0500

I see my folks are getting on. And I watch their bodies change. I know they see the same in me. And it makes us both feel strange.

When I come to terms with this. My world will change for me. If I'm the Seated Woman in the Parasol, I will be safe in my frame.

Should I give up, or should I just keep chasing pavements? Even if it leads nowhere? Or would it be a waste?

Staring at the blank page before you. Open up the dirty window.
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

I'm going to find myself a girl who can show me what happiness means. And we'll fill in the missing colors in each other's paint-by-number dreams. And we'll put our dark glasses on, and we'll make love until our strength is gone. And when the morning light comes streaming in. We'll get up and do it again. Get it up again.

So here we lie against each other. These four walls could never hold us. We're looking for wide open spaces high above the kitchen. Tell me I don't know where you go, to the world where you live.

Mess up my bed with me. Kick off the covers. I'm waiting. Every word you say I think I should write down. Don't want to forget come daylight.

In a heaven of people there's only some want to fly. Ain't that crazy. Oh babe. Oh darlin'. In a world full of people, there's only some want to fly. Isn't that crazy?

I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images. And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned. They will see us waving from such great heights. Come down now, they'll say. They will see us waving from such great heights. Come down now, but we'll stay.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?

Fiction Friday: A Heart Like Water

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:11:23 -0500

This is an excerpt from a completed novel manuscript. The characters in this piece are Margaret, a young woman who has left rural New York and now works in a bookshop in the Lower East Side. She works for Flo, an English woman, who along with her husband, Harry, regularly smuggle in books that were forbidden by the Comstock laws. The other character is Niccolo, Margaret's lover, an Italian in exile, an anarchist from whom Margaret is learning many things.The year is 1905.

Please feel free to tell me this blows chunks.

Perhaps it was the smell of the books, their constant presence, the way handling them all day left her hands sere, as if she were an old woman, but she found the presence annoying. So Niccolo’s pressing pamphlets and books upon her, as he has been doing increasingly, felt as if he was asking her to work even when she was not in the shop.

As she had so many times before, such thoughts made her wonder what was wrong with her? It was just that everything was so much—so much noise, so many people, so many books, men at the shop always asking things of her—to run and fetch them something from a shelf, but never asking her what she thought—it was enough sometimes to make her feel like an insignificant speck of dust. And now here was Niccolo, who obviously didn’t see her as insignificant, but he still wanted something from her. He wanted her to read what he had read so that she might discuss these things with him. And was that for her benefit. Or to make her more entertaining for him?

Where did these thoughts come from? She wanted to scream sometimes. Her own ingratitude shamed her. Niccolo loved her—she knew he did and she loved him—but why did he think that shoving books at her was proof of his love?

Outside, heavy rain drenched the street above the store. They had lain rags against the bottom of the door to attempt to keep out the water that fell like a cataract down the steps from the street.

“It’s chucking it down,” said Flo as she stood by the door, monitoring the deluge. “But at least it will bring some blessed cool air with all this rain. I just don’t think I could have taken anymore of this heat.”

A hiccup of anxiety fluttered in Margaret’s chest, and she had clasped her hands together to offset their trembling. She wanted to charge out into the street—rain be damned. But why? And then suddenly she knew. Her due date was approaching. Would she never stop feeling this pain? Christ. It had been months. It seemed like the baby had been gone longer than she had been pregnant so couldn’t she stop grieving now?

She was a stupid girl to feel this way. What would she have done with a baby? And better to have found out how weak Martin really was.

Niccolo would have stood by her. But luckily, she and Niccolo did not have to worry about babies. The two of them took so many precautions—the sheaths, the pessary—that Niccolo had joked that if he ever went back to Confession, the priest would tell him that every time he and Margaret made love they sinned so many different ways that he’d be saying pater nosters for the rest of his days.

As if her thoughts had made him appear, Niccolo came through the door, letting in a river of water around his feet and leading Flo to squawk like a ruffled broody hen. “Bloody hell, Niccolo. Come in before you drown.” Flo ushered him in the door, stooping over to replace the now sopping rags. “Just watch the store, love,” she said to Margaret. “I’m going to go look for something else to put in front of the door.”

Flo disappeared up the stairs. “You’re soaked, Niccolo,” Margaret said. “Why aren’t you at work?”

Niccolo’s hair was plastered to the sides of his face. Water was running down his nose, dripping off his chin, his brow, his fingertips.

“It’s no matter,” he said. “It’s only water.”

There was anger behind his words, and for a moment, Margaret thought herself its cause. “Niccolo, is something wrong? Did something happen at work?”

“No, cara,” he said, but he made no effort to come closer. His jaw was clenched, and she could see the bulge of the muscle close to his ear.

Flo bustled back into the room. She brought with her a towel and a plaid wool blanket. “I pulled this out of the trunk,” she said. “It may smell a bit like camphor, but it’ll warm you up. I’m going to put the kettle on, and I’ll bring you a cuppa tea. Daft boy, trudging about in the rain.” The could hear her muttering as she left the room.

“Come and sit,” Margaret said, leading him to a chair.

“I am too angry to sit,” he said. “Just let me stand here for a minute while I gather my thoughts. Oh cara. We had the most awful news today at the press. Schlomo was so upset that he said we would work no more today. There’s to be a meeting tonight to decide what to do.”

“To do about what?”

“There was a strike in some town up north,” he said. “It was at a mill, one of those places where they have small children working the looms—the usual—but these workers were upset because in the past month, two children—from the same family Margaret!—two children had been crushed to death. And so the workers demanded changes. And do you know what the mill owner did? That enlightened American gentleman? He called in Pinkerton agents. Thugs. And they threw men, women and children—babies and pregnant women—they threw them out of company housing and into the streets, and if the families resisted, they beat them. These people have no jobs, no place to live, all because they were trying to protect their children.”

Niccolo was trembling. She could see his body shuddering beneath the blanket. “Are you cold, love?” she said.

He didn’t answer. “I cannot imagine what kind of monster puts mothers and children out onto the street,” he said. “I thought that kind of cruelty only happened in Europe.” He was rubbing his ribs through the layers of blankets and clothes.

He lowered himself into the chair. She took the towel from his hand and began to dry his hair, lifting damp strands off his neck and rubbing them between the pieces of towel.

“I would understand if this was Italy. I’ve seen this type of cruelty before. Did I ever tell you? No, I don’t believe I did. Several years ago,” he said, “there was a bad year for the crops, and there was a shortage of food. So, in all its wisdom, my government decided to raise the prices of bread and flour—that would be Mr. Smith’s unseen hand, wouldn’t it?” He laughed and the cruelty of the laugh made her shiver. “There was no shortage of food among the wealthy—no, they had plenty to eat so that their bellies could say as soft and fat as the pillows upon their beds. But among the popolo, the people, there were shortages, and at night you could hear the cries of children who had been put to bed hungry. Do you know how much your belly hurts when you have not been fed for days? It feels as if your stomach is beginning to eat itself. It is an awful pain, and you feel sick, as if someone were to offer you food you would throw it up. Luckily, after a while, the pain fades and then you just feel ill and empty-headed, but the parents who were watching their children were not relieved when their babies no longer cried. For they knew then that their children were moving toward the cruel sleep of death. And while the Church may have told them that their children would soon be with God and the saints, they did not want to send their bambini to God so soon. There are plenty of poor children in heaven. That is where the rich prefer they dwell. Less trouble that way….”

She took a breath, realized she had stopped breathing while he spoke. She rubbed his head. Waited.

“So the people took to the streets and demanded bread. I was a student at the university and I followed the news as if I was reading a story, but the first day, when I saw the people in the piazza demanding food, I realized that their struggle was not a form of entertainment—it was life—and I was a part of that. So on the second day, I gathered in the piazza too. But on that day, the soldiers came with their guns and their bayonets. I saw a soldier—someone my age—club a woman with his rifle. I tried to stop him from hitting her again … the bayonet bounced off one of my ribs, and, well I was extremely lucky to live.”

Neither one of them had heard Flo return. She set the tray containing the pot of tea, three cups and saucers, milk, sugar and a plate of mince tarts on the little table beside Niccolo’s chair. “Thought we could use a bit of a nosh,” she said.

If Flo had heard any of what they had been discussing, she gave no indication. “I’ll be mother,” she said. “Silly me. I’m old enough to be both your mothers. Of course I’ll be mother.” Margaret wanted to shout at her. Silly woman. Prattling on about nothing, when Niccolo was in so much pain. She closed her eyes against the image that came into her head. Niccolo running to save the woman, the soldier turning toward Niccolo. Someone had tried to kill him. The thought filled her with rage.

“Margaret, love, I was talking to you,” Flo said. “Would you like a mince tart?”

“No thank you. I’m not hungry.”

The small talk nearly killed her. But she did it, confident that eventually, Flo would leave. Which she did, announcing that she would take the tea things back to the kitchen, and “you’ll keep an eye on the store, won’t you love?” Harry was upstairs, working on repairing a few of the books that had gotten damaged in shipment. Margaret wondered if Flo would go to find Harry, try to distract him from his task. It was a rainy day, after all. It’s what she wanted to do right now, with Niccolo. Take him up to her room and trade her body for his pain. She wanted to see the mark where someone had tried to take him away from her. Wanted to touch it, kiss it, make it disappear with her mouth.

He stood. “I can’t stay. I have to go think about what to do about this.”

“What can you do?” she said.

“I don’t know. But we will think of something tonight at the meeting. There are a few of us who can come up with some ideas. I think Schlomo wants to print up some pamphlets, alert other people to what has happened. I’m sure they’ll take up a collection for the workers, but that’s temporary. We need real change. Real action. Something.”

He was somewhere else now. Even though his body was in the room, it didn’t really matter that she was there with him. It was her turn to shudder, suddenly cold. She threw her arms around him, pulled his head down, kissed him. He pulled away. “Cara, not now. I must go. I will come to see you soon. I swear.”

OS Exclusive: Interview with Ted Genoways, Editor, VQR

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:11:58 -0500

This week marked the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India, in which 162 people were killed, and scores injured. I began a series of articles that mirrored Virginia Quarterly Review's decision to run a four-part long-form journalism piece that would be exclusively online.

The articles, which all-told, totaled 19,000 words, told a stunning tale of chaos, terror, the deliberate infliction of suffering, and a response from Indian armed services and police that seemed to contribute to the death toll.

Jason Motlagh, the author of the article, spent months interviewing survivors and researching the details. The result is something stunning. And, I believe, ground-breaking. It heralds good things for what can be done online.

This type of journalism is usually saved for the pages of print. VQR's decision to run it online was monumental, and I was curious, now that the series was complete, how its editor, Ted Genoways, felt the experiment had gone. He was gracious enough to allow me to interview him.

In our interview, we talk about the successes and limitations of writing long-form journalism for the Internet.

LB: What was the genesis of the idea for doing long-form journalism as a blog piece? Why not publish it in the print journal?

TG: Jason Motlagh had written an outstanding article for us about separatist groups in India and came by the VQR offices to discuss what he might work on next. I wondered if he thought it would be possible to undertake a long-form narrative of the Mumbai terror attacks. Jason has great contacts in Mumbai, especially with reporters there, so he agreed to give it a go. The original idea was to publish it in our Fall issue, but Jason was still working as the deadline approached--and the piece kept get longer and longer. But it wasn't just getting bigger; it was getting better. We started talking about releasing it on the web as a way of letting it run as long as it needed to be and also timing its release closer to the anniversary.

LB: Now that you've done it, what is your initial reaction to the response the piece(s) have received? Do you think it would have have attracted a larger audience in the journal? Or do you think that you've benefited from word of mouth (something that is hard to do with journals, I would think.)

Probably the most gratifying element of the response has been hearing from survivors of the attacks--words of praise and thanks but also additional information and refinements of the timeline. We're working on a revised version of the article, something else that wouldn't be possible with a print publication. It's still too early to judge the full readership of the whole piece, but we've already had a strong response. The upside of the blogosphere is that it's democratic nature allows a great piece like this, even if it's from a small publication like ours, to circulate widely and swiftly. The real question is whether we can convince foundations or other funders to support this kind of journalism, because it's expensive to produce and putting it up free on the web doesn't do anything to offset those costs.

LB: What is the future of this piece? Is it something that your writer is going to turn into a book?

That's up to Jason--but he's gotten a number of inquiries from agents and book editors. I think that it would make a great book, and Jason is the perfect writer to undertake that job.

LB: Having done this once, and really broken new ground, would you do it again?

That's an interesting question. This piece was really a special opportunity, and I think that we should try experiments like this only when we feel like we have something as singular and important as this piece is. On top of that, this isn't the kind of thing that we can afford to do often unless we can identify sources of support. So I think we've proven that we can undertake this kind of ambitious reporting successfully and shown that there's an audience out there for it. Now the question is whether we can figure out a way to pay for it. The web is a cheap delivery mechanism, but multiple trips to Mumbai, months of research, and the staff time to edit the piece, prepare it for the web, and promote it, isn't free. We're lucky to have great support from the University of Virginia, but in tough economic times, we need to find a few altruistic supporters of journalism who see this kind of work as important, whether it's profit-generating or not. I'm optimistic that such people are out there.

> As so many complain that the web is full of 'bad journalism,' this piece will become my touchstone for rebutting such nonsense.

That's great--and you're right: it's untrue that the web is bankrupt of good journalism. And we're actually very excited about the possibilities of mixing traditional media with new media. Indeed, one of our principal foundation supporters, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Journalism, underwrote an article that we published by Kwame Dawes about HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Pulitzer funded a photographer, Joshua Cogan, and film crew to accompany Kwame. They developed that story into news segments for PBS and, with support from the MAC AIDS fund, into an incredible online project called "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica" <http://www.livehopelove.com/>, that recently won an Emmy for "new approaches to news and documentary programming."

Kwame also wrote poems that he and Josh turned into audio slideshows. That approach inspired a project called In Verse that I created with radio producer Lu Olkowski. That project produced paired poems and photographs for the current issue of VQR (Susan B. A. Somers-Willett and Brenda Ann Kenneally in Troy, New York, and Natasha Trethewey and Josh Cogan in Gulfport, Mississippi), but it also turned into several amazing radio segments for WNYC's Studio 360 <http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2009/11/06> <http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2009/11/13> and some incredible audio slideshows that exist solely on the web. That project got off the ground because of a pilot program called Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0, an initiative of the Association of Independents in Radio funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

What I find hopeful about those projects is that they represent a convergence of nonprofit organizations--print, television, radio, and multimedia storytellers working with altruistic funders like MAC AIDS, Pulitzer, and CPB. At a time when journals are threatened and support for journalism is dwindling, these initiatives seem vital and exciting to me--evidence that great storytelling can be carried out on the web as easily as any other medium.

The Bad Sex Awards

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:11:56 -0500

It's my favorite time of the literary year! The Literary Review has released their "short list" of nominees, and The Guardian, ever eager to contribute to the discussion of literature, is only too happy to post some of the passages in question.

One of the things I love about the awards is that, in general, some of our best writers are usually nominated. It seems that even the best of the best have a "hard" time writing about the old in-and-out. Shakespeare called it "making the beast with two backs." Paul Theorux, one of this year's nominee's calls it "praying at the portal." oy gewalt.

It's always difficult to choose my favourites when skimming through the list. But here's a taste of what's to come, should you venture over to the linked page.

From PAUL THEOROUX: A DEAD HAND: A CRIME IN CALCUTTA

"'Baby.' She took my head in both hands and guided it downward, between her fragrant thighs. 'Yoni puja – pray, pray at my portal.'

"She was holding my head, murmuring 'Pray,' and I did so, beseeching her with my mouth and tongue, my licking a primitive form of language in a simple prayer. It had always worked before, a language she had taught me herself, the warm muffled tongue."

RICHARD MILWARD: TEN STOREY LOVE SONG

"Let's have sex, they think simultaneously, couples having strange mind-reading powers after months and months of trying to figure each other out. Panting, Georgie starts rubbing her hands round Bobby's biological erogenous zones, turning his trousers into a tent with lots of rude organs camping underneath. Bobby sucks all the freckles and moles off her chest, pulling the GD bib wheeeeeeeeeee over her head and flicking Georgie's turquoise bra off her shoulders then kissing her tits, and he's got so much energy – plus he's very impatient – Bobby tugs off his sweaty sweater himself and gives Georgie a helping hand with his zip. Then comes the enormous anticipation of someone putting their mitts on your cock and balls. Georgie smiles to herself and keeps him hanging on for a bit, which in a way is even better though it makes the Artist want to explode and after one or two tugs he moans 'whoah' then screams 'whoah!' and Georgie lets go giggling, then suddenly her face is all serious and Bobby pulls her polished pine legs apart and slithers a hand up her skirt where her fanny's got a bit of five o'clock shadow like a pin cushion but her lips are nice and slippy, and he slides some lubricunt round and round, mixing clockwise with anticlockwise with figure 8 until Georgie's shagging the air with pleasure bashing her feet about. Then, Bobby starts scrabbling frantically across the carpet for Mr Condom, sending five or six multicolour Durexes flying through the air, and he struggles getting the packet open and Georgie has to roll Mr Condom down Mr Penis for him and she has to help insert him into Mrs Vagina."