#FilthyBooks Campaign Day 21 Example & Book Report: Ask The Passengers by A.S. King
Sent to all Texas legislators in the TX Senate and House on 3/17/2023
Dear Honorable Texas Legislator,
Your 21st example of sexually explicit materials found in Texas Schools is Ask The Passengers by A.S. King. Like most sexually explicit books, Ask The Passengers normalizes sexual promiscuity in teenagers, in addition to drinking alcohol and drug use. Here is an example:
Please see the attached book report for full book report of explicit content.
Sexually explicit materials are in your district; is Ask The Passengers by A.S. King in one of your ISDs? Follow the link to search the library collection of most schools:
The RPT Subcommittee: Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids is committed to driving legislation that will prohibit sexually explicit books from Texas school libraries and children's sections of libraries across the state. We WILL NOT support legislation that codifies into Texas law that sexually explicit books can be in the library, and checked out, with parental permission.
The state has a compelling interest to protect kids from sexualization and harmful materials in their libraries. Children throughout the state need the same protection.
~Christin Bentley M.S.
Content Report from Booklooks.org:
"I don't like pot has taken my dad away from me, but I like how it's given him the balls to stick up for me like that. I send love from my bedroom. Dad, I love you for saying what you said at dinner. I know it was hard because Mom has chopped off your balls and baked them in a testes casserole, but thank you for trying.
31 The swirling white air dances around the caged freezer light bulb, and she pushes me right up against the dappled stainless-steel wall and kisses me with both her hands braided into my hair. This is not our first kiss. … She's also kissing me. A lot. And I'm kissing her back. …I only knew her as the neighboring school district's badass hockey star who would periodically get mentioned in small-town gossip. I'm pretty sure she used the word dyke in her description, too.
32 Now she's laughing while she kisses me. "You're not going to tell me to back off again, are you? she asks. Mmmm, Hmmm, "I manage while still kissing her neck, her ear. "Back off," I say. I bite her earlobe. … So far in my life, Dee is the only person who wants to totally ravish me. I have to stop her all the time. I swear she'd do it right here in the walk-in freezer if she could.
41 Dad is in his Saturday stoner clothes. … The only thing he did while he was "cleaning out the garage attic" was take a few hits from the pipe he hides up there and exhale out the exhaust fan towards Bob's house.
42 Dad disappears to the garage again on some vague errand, which means he's going to toke up.
49 Before we can have any sort of conversation, which is what I'd really like to do, Dee leans over and kisses me. Then as always, she goes too fast. I take her hand out of my shirt and place it on my hip.
49 I want to tell her that I'm not ready for intimacy. I want to tell her to stop looking at me with those lovesick eyes. Instead, I do what any awkward geek who wants to avoid the topic of sex at all costs would do.
63 A bunch of underage queer kids is the last thing they care about. 64 If they've ever snuck out on a Saturday night. (To a gay bar.) If they've ever wondered what making love to a girl must feel like.
65 In my case, I thought happiness was a lot of stupid shit. Drugs. Guys. Telling my parents off. More drugs. More telling my parents off. More guys. More drugs.
68 Dancing gay people. People letting loose and not giving a shit what other people think about them, just as Kristina promised.
69 They say: All normal teenagers are doing it. As long as they don't come home with a disease or a baby, what's the big deal?
72 "You sure this isn't weird for you?" She points to two women kissing. I shrug. "I've seen you and Donna do that before."
75 She kisses my neck and my cheek and my head, and I instantly get giggly, and then she turns my head and kisses me and time stands still. … When she moves to put her hand between my legs, I stop her.
76 I grab her approaching hand. "If all you want is sex, then why don't you find a girl who just gives out?..."
106 When Dee kisses me, the taste of her is enough to make me die right here on the spot
107 I can't believe no one else can smell the pot wafting from his core. At this point, I think we could scrape off his epidermis and smoke it for a buzz.
114 I hop into Dee's car and jump on here like a lonely dog after a day at home alone. This is probably the most forward I've ever been with her, and while I'm doing it I try to figure out why. … She slips her hands into the waistband of my jeans, onto my hips. I kiss her as if we are not in a parking lot surrounded by a bunch of other people.
116 It's as if someone has taken the real Astrid Jones and replaced her with one who is okay with intimacy in public places. … Dee is right here, rubbing up against me. We are two parts of the same animal. People are hooting. We're on fire. Every time Dee gets her face near mine, we kiss.
117 I kiss her on her neck. "Totally worth it." "True." She kisses me sloppily and it makes my insides twist up and we make out for a few minutes and everything is going great until she jams her hand into my pants and I have to stop her from going too far because I don't want to go that far. … She slaps the car seat and says, "Damnit, Jones! Just shit or get off the pot!"
121 "Is that how you want to make love to me the first time? Forcing yourself?” …"I wouldn't have ever done something that made you feel horrible. Jesus! You make me out like a date rapist.
141 I admit I could us a night out away from my house, and I wouldn't mind a hard lemonade after the cruddy week I had.
149 As we kiss--and Kim is a spectacular kisser--I begin to think about what this means. This means I've kissed two girls in my life. Which is one more than the one boy I've kissed--if you don't count Jeff Garnet, who I'm not really kissing. It means I am more of a lesbian that I was only a minute ago when I was just looking at Kim and thinking about how cute she is. It means that one day I will have to tell my parents. And Ellis, who says things like lesbian luncheon. It means that maybe I will finally drive my pseudo-agoraphobic mother into full-fledged hiding.
152 I make my exit while Donna and Kristina start making out in the backseat and Justin texts Chad because he's not here yet. … When we kiss, it overflows into a longer kiss and then a longer one and then a passionate, sink-down-in-the-seats kiss and I feel a blanket of desire over me like I've never really felt before. She grabs my hair and twists it. She squeezes my hips, and I put my right hand up her shirt and touch her through her bra and then slide my index finger around her waistband. Just a little.
153 She chuckles and slips her hands into my jeans and down the sides of my legs. Under my panties, and then aims them around my ass and holds it like someone would hold a water balloon. Carefully. Skillfully. Page Content … She removes her hands from my jeans and lifts my shirt a little. She kisses my lips. My chin. My neck. My collarbone. My belly. My ribs. "I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. Were you trying to say something?" She begins to unbutton my fly.
155 …and Dee and I start to kiss again in the corner while our hips are pressing into each other and our hands are touching places that should not be touched in a public place.
155 Even if I just did what I did with a complete stranger named Kim.
179 "Who'd have thought they were dykes? They don't look like dykes."
183 "Hey, dyke! Hey lezzer!" the whole time. "One night with me and my crew would cure that, you know!"
193 YES, Astrid, I know the whole world is talking about you, too, but you are the one who chose to go out and shake your booty with your gays, you know?
206 Dad gets up and goes out the back door toward the garage, and I almost want to follow him and ask him if I can have a toke off the pipe just so I can unhear what he just said.
209 ..and the only person I've really seen is my dad, and he's just--us--useless," I say. I mean stoned. Useless and stoned."
215 They pay me to be the good-looking young guy on their arm. They pay me for other stuff too.
215 Then I remember that it takes a lot of clients to get rich...unless one of them falls in love like I do.
252 "I don't care who knows I'm gay!" I say. "I'M GAY! Okay? I'm fucking GAY!"
252 I stand in the long hall and hear it echo back at me, She's fucking gay. Okay?
252 Frank Socrates, who is stationed at the water fountain, echoes, too. "She's fucking gay, okay?"
254 Does Mom know you're stoned all the time?
254 So far, I get that you think I smoke too much weed and that Mom is a bitch who doesn't love you.
258 He's too stoned to know what to say.
284 "So I say, no way, I would know if I ever said that because it was about my own fucking sister and that it was wrong to say that you'd tried to do anything to mean that you aren't some sort of weirdo lesbian rapist or anything.
Profanity Count Ass 7 Bitch 4 Dyke 4 Fuck 11 Piss 1 Pussy 1 Shit 19