Sylvia Kristel, soft porn legend, died this week at age 60. She was most famous for her role in the Emmanuelle movies…and for being an exciter of my young lust.
During the apartheid era in South Africa, we didn’t just live apart from other races but us English were, to a fair degree, separated from the Afrikaners (who ran the country). The Afrikaans nation was strongly religious and that conservatism seeped through our nation like oil through sand. My mother was a fundamentalist, in love with that prostitute-loving, evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart.
What has that got to do with Sylvia, a Dutch girl who took her clothes off? Well, there i was, an insecure nerd who felt utterly lost and incapable in the presence of pretty girls (as girlfriends were banned by a domineering mother). In that situation, no one was going to properly explain raging, boyish hormones and wet dreams to me. No one was going to give thanks to that biology which put Humankind at the top of the food chain. Instead, sexuality was bewildering, wanted yet arriving with a dirty feeling. Continue reading
