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Grow Up! Sleep (And Do Other Activities) in a Bed!

I've heard so many random comments about how some people need to and never graduate from college student physical student sleeping structures. Think futons, mattresses on the floor, twin bunk beds. A friend of mine was actually completely repelled by a person who now makes good money (first “real job” after freelancing) who is still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. (And apparently doesn't suffer from back problems, like one friend, who would be sleeping in agony on most conventional beds.) 

 

Futon on floor

I guess maybe the whole adult bed issues ties into marriage. You know, the marriage bed, and dowry chests often contained linens and other items to furnish the bed. And this bed would be for the couple only, a major rite of passage, as for many centuries siblings and unmarried family members routinely slept together in the same bed. Why? Most people were poor. Privacy was lacking. Bedding was expensive. 

Of course, in the United States, most young adults live with each other, cohabit before marriage. In fact, I even remember when I was living in the dorms, the sign when a guy and a girl (two guys was of course taboo at that time) began to cohabit was the double bed. Sometimes two beds pushed together, and usually in the guy's room. Apparently the guy's dorm was a more acceptable place for sex than the girl's dorm. The few times guys even visited the girl dorms was for let me eat with or even fix dinner for you in my room. Sexist, oh yes! 

I've often wondered if a certain type of bed makes better sex. I mean, some bed sex fantasies involve frills and canopies and flowers but also rough sex. Really rough. I think of those bodice-ripper historical romance novels, where the guy who ends up being Prince Charming, but not after some often an often mind-boggling I love him, I hate him, I love her, I hate her, and the result of this confusion is a heroine deflowered before the wedding, sometimes on the same bed where she ends up after the marriage. 
Bodice ripper cover art


In contrast, the man-eating, predatory Sue Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore Show ended up doing the deflowering on her indescribable bed. We see this bed in one episode, where the WJM-TV gang congregate to comfort her when she realizes her sister will be staying in Minneapolis to host a rival cooking show. Erosville, USA. Cupids, flowers, pink satin. It vibrates. And when the climax occurs (and in Sue Ann's world, her climax is the goal), the florid theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet sounds forth. 
 

Sue Ann Nivens' bed

I'm not entirely sure how LGBTQ persons fit into this dynamic, because for ages they were banned from participating in traditional heterosexual rites of passage. In the days of the closet, when lovers had to present themselves as “roommates,” I'm sure a double bed would more than raise eyebrows. But then, those were the days when heterosexual icons Lucy and Ricky had to sleep in separate twin beds after the first season of I Love Lucy as a double bed was too risque. 

I just bought some bed risers for my futon frame. I sleep on a futon, which used to be on the floor, then on a low wooden frame, then on a black metal sling frame (still low). Now the sleeping structure resembles a bed, at least the height. Have I grown up? Maybe, but the best sex I've had occurred on the floor of a van. 
 

 

 

Hot nude guy in front of van

 

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So, What's This I Hear About Snowflakes?

“An overly sensitive person, incapable of dealing with any opinions that differ from their own. These people can often be seen congregating in ‘safe zones’ on college campuses.” 

Thus saith the Urban Dictionary, perhaps summarizing this new idiom bandied about by mostly conservative pundits. 

I find the comparison, actually, rather inept, because what is snowflake, literally? 

Wikepedia gives you the answer: 

A snowflake is either a single ice crystal or an aggregation of ice crystals which falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow. Each flake nucleates around a dust particle in supersaturated air masses by attracting supercooled cloud water droplets, which freeze and accrete in crystal form. Complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity zones in the atmosphere, such that individual snowflakes differ in detail from one another, but may be categorized in eight broad classifications and at least 80 individual variants. 

What I am getting from this definition is strength and diversity. In fact, no two snowflakes actually look alike (like people, even twins). Perhaps the fear of diversity could perhaps be read into the pundits’ use of the word here, but, as the definition above states, a snowflake or a group of snowflakes are originally ice crystal. Yes, the original ice melts, but its impact as snow can be quite powerful: 

Once snowflakes land and accumulate, they undergo metamorphosis with changes in temperature and coalesce into a snowpack. The characteristics of the snowpack reflect the changed nature of the constituent snow crystals. 
 

snowpack

Yes, get a bunch of snowflakes together, and watch out. The resulting impact, morphing the sarcastic words of Ida in Mildred Pierce when she pointedly refers to Mildred’s gigolo boyfriend/husband/stepfather and lover of the spoiled Veda (eerily like the winner of the election in his narcissism and amorality): Don't look now, Junior, but you're standing next to a falling snowpack. 
 

Ida in Mildred Pierce
Veda, Monty, and Mildred in Mildred Pierce


I wish the retro Chicagoland figure Suzy Snowflake could, like Glinda threatens to do to the Wicked Witch of the West, just say begone, lest someone drop a house on you, to the forces of evil that are taking over this land. 
 

Suzy Snowflake

In fact, at this juncture, it’s small comfort to lapse into the cliché that after winter comes spring, which would not occur without the healing, cleansing darkness and beauty (just look at snowflakes close-up) of winter. 

I do think, though, that snowflakes like me who really believe in truth and beauty, if not causing a violent avalanche, can work behind the scenes, like the seed in the ground growing secretly, to overcome the evil so that we don’t face a silent spring where no birds sing. 

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