LITERARY EROTICA

"She leans forward and brushes her lips past mine - so softly it's not even a kiss, merely contact. She pauses for just a second, keeping her lips so close I can feel her breath on my face. Then she leans in and kisses me, a gentle kiss, tentative but lingering...I am reeling, teetering on my knees. Still staring into my eyes, she takes my hands and brings them to her lips...'Touch me, Jacob.' I am doomed, finished...I crush my bruised mouth to hers, running my hands over her rib cage, her waist, her hips, her thighs - ..."

So I probably just spoiled the juiciest part of Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen. But that was a very PG-13 edit of it. Reading this extremely racy page in the book the other night, it got me thinking - how come books do not come with a parental rating, like movies, TV shows, music, and video games do?

I first learned about the rituals of "dating" probably through The Babysitter's Club, then Sweet Valley High. Then, things got a little more complicated - the characters in R.L. Stine's Fear Street threw parties, made out, cheated on their best friends. In Judy Blume's Summer Sisters, they gossiped and shared and experimented, and lived to tell about it. I was in the sixth grade, so scandalized and disturbed by the details that I made my mom return it to the store. She asked no questions.

By freshman year in high school, I was reading the more "adult" romance paperbacks, like A Knight in Shining Armor, by Jude Devereaux. An erotic relationship that transgressed eras, even! I plucked this one right off the bookshelf - no curtains to dodge behind, no warning on the back cover, no plastic wrapping, no ID checking.

There is an unsaid tolerance toward literature of any nature - as long as your child reads, what can be of harm? Even better - a delightful realization if a kid's reading level is well beyond his/her age. But what is this reverence toward the idea of reading that makes it slip in between the cracks of FCC regulations, parental protests and governmental warnings? Words can be just as sensual and graphic as photography, film, or video games can be - agreed?