Journal of an Evening Primrose

           virgin teen’s discovery of her erotic, angry self

Front of book cover is me in Hollywood. Back is me now.

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note to parents: 

My experience as a #realTeenageMom plus the help of a clear and audacious MUSE helped me write Journal of an Evening Primrose, the story of a horny 16yr old, who desires a hook-up before Christmas.

JEP came forward in a writing process—soon it became a labor of love. Her voice overtook my sensibility.

I was not only along for the ride of writing my first novel, I yearned to wise up virgin tweens and teens, hoping to help them sooner than later find wisdom about sex and come to peace with their sexuality—their body of overwhelming desires.

What kept me going was an idea that gelled: perhaps JEP could reach other kids because she had reached me—and me preaching “don’t do as momma did” just barely reached my kids.

When young people argue as JEP does with her sexual urgings, my hope is they’d use their bodies conscientiously and calmly to make choices in line with their lifestyle goals. Before sex they need to “think” about this vital activity thoroughly through. And forgo social drunkenness.

The imparitive need is for them to set goals that they become the people they desire to be, not letting a critical self-image scathe them. Let’s face it, we drag our bodies (that we love or hate) into an affair with life and often let it speak in opposition to our mind’s desire.

So basically, the pages unfolded the way they did in the secret journal of this evening primrose, to help young people think through the decision to lose their virginity in a way they’ll be proud of in years to come—to secure a healthy self-image first, which means a healthy future. And that they may bless our world with their precious being.

Yet this book is not a how to guide. It’s a story of a girl’s struggle with anger and her erotic nature. By identifying with JEP, I’m hopeful, the wisdom and patience required to become a full-fledged lady as she managed to do at age 16, will make sense to girls.

I believe every girl and woman you’ll ever see or meet has 16yr old JEP’s angst: sexuality vs. parental control/societal stigma. It’s hidden. Yet girls’ sexual thoughts are wildly prevalent, incessantly stirring in the heads of females swaying in pretty skirts down the streets of any path in our world. Same goes for the sister in her size 3XL Walmart nightie, hiding in bed with a dose of Krispy Kremes.

If virgins wrote their secret unexpressed or repressed thoughts about sex, not giving a damn if someone judges them or not, those feelings would be raw, naked words on the written page, like JEP wrote in her journal, spelling out that they are totally freaked by their virginity status vs. their eyes for a guy or gal—i.e. horniness.

This author endlessly prayed for JEP, selflessly letting her in to her creative life. I became so engrossed with her plight not to screw up her life sexually, her painful-feel-guilty toxic angst with her Mom (which wasn’t going to be healed in one journal), her sincere love and worry for her grandmother, her carefree spirit and humorous mind, her steel-trap genius and her wrestling with this profundity that I yearned for my Muse to tell me how to write her story that in the end her dreams would normalize.

Writing is an insane process when the character lives only when you detach your soul from reality, getting out of the way to delineate what strongly comes forward. It’s scary when honesty about sex is in the mix—can’t imagine Stephanie Meyer or E.L. James’ stress level.

An ol’ senior Fulbright Professor and academic dean known for an eye for the downunder and not this book’s audience read a draft. He promised a brutally honest critic and delivered it. He stated, “Great potential, well written . . . express yourself clearly and in a way that flows. However, I don’t like angry Marilyn and cannot imagine others would either and that’s fatal.” He suggested I make her more likeable by making her moral dilemma a “bigger challenge.” The reason for my need to do this, he said, is that “Any teenage girl [wanting to lose her virginity] can easily find guys from 15 to 80 who’d be only too happy to accommodate her.”

Need I say this is JEP’s private journal where she reveals freely a pissed off person others don’t necessarily know? It’s not like she’s concerned about hiding bloody sheets. She’s a girl with an innate moral fiber and a strong sense of independence, and yes she’s horny. But still she knows the biggest challenge to her youth is having her “cherry popped by the right person.”

Marilyn’s body is likened to a landscape of tons of water being held back by a weak dam, a thin membrane—better say: memory-brain. After the act of severing the barrier between girl and womanhood, bedrock will receive the waterfall of the end of her innocence. This is serious flow that could drown the girl and inhibit the woman she wants to become—next is the operative idea—if she isn’t deliberate in the decision of where, when, how, and with whom to give her first release.

Generally speaking guys think way differently, as does my writerly academic dean friend, because even after decades of ejaculations they don’t feel guilty about whose virginity they humped away in high school or college and usually don’t recall the girls’ names. The world gives them carte blanche yet has no vessel for the darlings’ tears.

Let’s face it. They have no cherry to pop. There’s a reason for that. Guys cannot bear pain down there except when they’re gay. (My gay friends and I laugh about this.) Nor could these fellows (straight guys) of society experience pregnancy’s ordeal.

I’m saddened the 21st Century girls don’t realize they have taken on guys’ approach to sex: thinking arbitrarily, randomly, haphazardly about it. And the reason is obvious why guys do this. They can’t get pregnant fgs. I so love that gay guys won’t knock a girl up unless she begs him to sire her kid.

Lovely ladies, you cannot afford to be careless or indiscriminate. Thereby, I would not advise you getting copulation advice from any guy or ol’ Grandfather Time. Advice from Grandmama Wisdom is truer and more worthwhile. She loves you!