[Note: This is the third of Paddy Mitchell’s seven final blog entries, written shortly before his death on January 14, 2007, and mailed to Ottawa to be posted on his blog. The series is being published posthumously between January 21 and January 25th.]
Did you get to read the piece about Samantha? Because of the delay between my writing on this blog and my receiving it via snail-mail I have no way of knowing whether the woman who runs things for me in Ottawa felt the essays I send her are appropriate to print. I’m completely out of touch after spending the past 12 years in maximum security prisons (Atlanta, Leavenworth, Lewisburg, Butner medical center) that I don’t know what’s acceptable in this day and age.
“Samantha” was a lady I met in my travels and I wrote about in my book, only to edit the piece out thinking it was too explicit, but since, regretted taking it and others out of my book. I’m from an old school, anything you wouldn’t mention to your mother, you shouldn’t write about in a book. Boy-oh-boy, have times changed in literature! I just got finished reading “My Old Man” by Amy Sohn, a chick-lit author. It was the most graffic, sexually explicit book I’ve ever read. It gets the thumbs-up from all the critics. And I worried that two words would offend my readers… “Pussy and Penis”. I wouldn’t dare offend by using the words: f..k, or c..t, or c..k. There’s so much more to Samantha’s story and I’m wondering (and waiting to hear) if it would be appropriate to tell about it here. I will let you know what the consensus is, soon.
