Pillow Talk

While visiting over the holidays, we stayed in two separate households.  We came home talking about buying some new pillows after staying in one guest room that featured some pillows with one side of memory foam and the other standard polyester.  We even touched on the topic of a new mattress--the other friend we stayed with had a "sleep number bed," the competition with Tempur-pedic mattresses with memory foam for the newest thing in mattresses.  Before we could get to a store to buy some pillows, we heard about "off-gassing" from memory foam mattresses and the possibility of their involvement in causing disease.  

Still more alarming, when you talk about pillows and mattresses, you hear about the likelihood of their involvement in germs, disease and infestation.  And, it's not limited to memory foam, there is controversy over the use of fire retardants, a state requirement, in mattresses and their relationship to causing certain disorders, etc.  I googled mattresses and disease, and yup, I had "about 2,390,000 results in 0.28 seconds."  

These days, if you get a bunch of baby boomers together, pillow talk is likely to be about which pillow makes it easiest on your arthritic neck, or which mattress warms and conforms to your sore joints in other places, or which pillow placed between your knees will help avoid hip or lumbar pain when you get up in the morning.  

If you are old enough to remember John Profumo and Christine Keeler of the British spy scandals, then you know what pillow talk really is.  It was apparently what Ms. Keeler used to extract secrets from Mr. Profumo and give them to the Russians.   Wikipedia provides the following definitions: Pillow talk is the relaxed, intimate conversation that often occurs between two sexual partners after the act of  "you know what," usually accompanied by cuddling, caresses, and other physical intimacy.  It is associated with honesty, sexual afterglow, and bonding.  Pillow talk, more broadly may also refer to conversations between parties that may be of a more casual and flirting nature, and are not necessarily engaged in a physical relationship.  In any form, it sounds pleasant enough, yes?  

It even provided the support in reality for all those Bond girls in the fifty years of Bond films we have seen, pillow talk with a Bond girl is a veritable institution, and Lord knows it has made Bond films a good deal more enjoyable than they might otherwise have been.  I mean, who could enjoy movies with baddies the likes of "Rosa Klebb," "Blofeld," "Scaramanga," "Oddjob" and "Jaws" if they lacked the compensatory Bond girls like "Honey Ryder," "Wai Lin," "Vesper Lynd," "Domino" and, I am not making this up, "Pussy Galore," "Plenty O'Toole," "Holly Goodhead" and "Octopussy?"  

But alas, during those same fifty years "pillow talk" has evolved, hasn't it?  I don't plan on buying any new bedding any time soon, the new kind of pillow talk leaves me cold.