Carnal Conversations

The pundits on NPR have been abuzz the last day or so about a new report indicating that one in five kids under the age of fifteen has had sex. So-who’s surprised? As soon as adults become parents, they get amnesia when it comes to sex. And they become hypocrites. Kids can smell hypocrisy a mile away. I did. I was a kid during the last great age of hypocrisy, the 1950’s. There was lots of teenage sex around then too, but you’d never know it based on the memories of those who were there.

Like most children I was innately sexual. By the age of 6 or 7 my curiosity went beyond fingering my body parts in the privacy of our family bathroom to wondering if any of my neighborhood pals had similar anatomical configurations and if they experienced the same pleasurable sensations. Determined to satisfy my burgeoning interest, and in the spirit of inquiry, I organized sex games in my garage with the neighborhood kids, some older, some younger than me. It never took much coercion, the games were pretty mundane, usually of the “doctor” variety, and my willing partners in crime all intuitively knew we needed to be very surreptitious about this sort of activity.  I can still recall the smell of the dark, dank, musky air, even in summer, in that windowless garage.

We lived in a densely populated, working-class urban neighborhood of two-family houses separated only by black asphalt driveways, with the prerequisite garage usually situated behind the house. Backyards, if there were any, might consist of dirt or gravel, interspersed here and there with a lonely tuft of grass. Most parents sent their kids out to play in the dead-end street in the morning, and would not check on them or call them back home till dinner. High expectations, a desire to explore the unknown walked out the door and down the front steps with me, as I, along with my friends, learned to fend for ourselves. It was survival of the fittest. I don’t remember feeling rejected, afraid, or unhappy – just endlessly curious.

Sex wasn’t the only game that filled our days. We rode our bikes, ate 5-cent popsicles in the summer, and played kick the can. As my little group of engaged partners, boys and girls, grew, I was not clever enough to realize we might be calling attention to ourselves with our ever more frequent trips into the enveloping darkness in my parent’s cinder block garage. One steamy summer day, I knew I was in trouble when the garage door rumbled open behind me. Light flooded our mungy, secret space, revealing an array of exposed genitals and all hell broke loose. My friends scattered. Mom dragged me by my arm down the hot, black, asphalt driveway – smacking me wildly with her free hand, all the while screaming, “you dirty girl, you dirty girl.” Letting my whole body go limp I did not resist. I did not feel any pain. In this moment of ultimate consciousness, I thought if what I was doing makes my mother so insane, then it must be a very, very powerful thing. Having so much potential to provoke was worth saving for future exploration.

 EATING

Anorexia and bulimia were not in the popular lexicon of 1958. It was the year I turned 13. The turbulence of childhood morphed into all-out warfare as the struggles with my mother escalated. Being a housewife, a stay-at-home mom, the kitchen was her seat of operations and food was a vehicle to control behavior. Meals were prepared according to schedule. Dinner mandated our coming together as a family, but my father would often not appear at the expected hour. Stomachs growled while the hands of the clock on the mustard yellow kitchen wall crawled along at an agonizing pace. Mom hovered like an anxious bird in front of the old cast iron gas stove gradually turning down the flame as her American Chop Suey turned into a soggy overcooked mess while we waited. No eating beforehand was allowed. When Dad finally made an entrance, his odd half smile and slight stagger put me on high alert. It was clear he had been drinking.

We (my younger brother, mom, dad, and me) would sit around the Formica table in our cramped little kitchen. Awkward silences punctuated my mother's attempt to hold a conversation pretending that everything was hunky-dory. The air was thick with things unsaid. Feeling trapped, I yearned to escape. Mounds of unwanted food sat in front of me. We were never allowed to help ourselves, our plates, even my Dads were always arranged and served by my mother. It had been this way as long as I could remember.

I’d been a slightly overweight kid. Not obese but “chubby” they called it back then. I was very self-conscious about my slightly rounded belly and the fact that my knees were so soft and thick they appeared to be boneless. Mom used to take me shopping once a year in early September for school clothes, often picking out frilly dresses with tight little cap sleeves. She insisted on coming in the cramped quarters of the dressing room with me. As she yanked the dresses over my head, they would get stuck on my fleshy upper arms. In a rising panic, breaking into a sweat, fearing I'd suffocate underneath the opaque layers of nylon while she berated me for having to go to the “Chubbette” Department (I kid you not – this is what passed for clever marketing in the 1950’s) to find something that fit.

“You embarrass me,” she whispered. Devastated, I sullenly acquiesced while hating the clothes purchased with her money, their layers of crinolines and powder puffy ruffled skirts exacerbated my desire to rid myself of the body I could not hide.

Back home, at the kitchen table, the piles of food kept coming. I wasn't allowed to leave my seat until I cleaned my plate. In that starkly outlined moment, in front of an insurmountable Everest sized mound of now cold mashed potatoes and peas­-I snapped. That’s it. The Furies erupted from the deepest recess of my primordial self. I’m taking control over what goes in my mouth. I refused to eat. As I sat staring blankly out the kitchen window, the early evening sky turned dark while the food on my plate congealed into a goopy mass. Everyone left the room while I sat at the table, ramrod straight, hands folded in my lap as if in prayer. The dishes had been cleared. Finally, mom gave up, went into the living room and turned on the TV. I slid off my chair and went to bed.

One terrifying evening at the dinner table, not knowing where to go with her frustration, mother goaded my father. “Erik, DO something about that girl!”

Dad seemed reluctant, almost confused as he rose from his chair. His six-foot frame blocked out the glare of the ceiling light, casting me in his shadow. I dared not look into his face. He stood by my side, hesitated for a moment, and appeared unsure how to proceed. I waited in wary silence briefly contemplating my fate knowing flight was not an option. He slowly raised his leg, putting his knee on my lap, either to hold me down or to gain leverage. With his left hand braced on the back of the chair, he slowly forced a whole, red ripe tomato in my mouth. My teeth clamped shut, gritted against this onslaught. The juice and seeds ran down my chin and neck in thin, red streams, on down the front of my shirt. My lips flattened from the pressure of his palm across my gums. I held my head up, firm, unflinching. I’d rather die than give in. There was a lot of shouting going on around me. I didn’t hear it. I’d entered the zone. It was a place I’d learned to retreat to, avoiding all fear. Drawing on images and scenes I’d been reading about in Greek Mythology, I felt the Erinyes would protect me. The rest of that evening remains, thankfully, buried in the folds of my memory.

Not surprising, I started losing weight. I developed other strategies to appease them. I learned I could eat whatever my mother gave me and then later sneak into the bathroom and vomit. Soon I began to gorge when no one was home. Mother never allowed me to have ice cream or cookies between meals, only after I’d eaten all the other stuff first. I started eating gallons of ice cream when she was out and then I’d stick my finger down my throat to throw it all up. She would question me about the disappearance of all this food. I’d lie, and she wondered what was going on as I continued to lose weight. Eventually, my period stopped. Mom took me to a pediatrician to find out what was wrong. The pediatrician prescribed hormones, little pink pills in a plastic wheel that I had to take every day for 28 days and then my period would come back. And so, it did. With the little magic pills. My weight continued to drop. I was so pleased with my new look. I could wear tight pants and throw away the girdle my mother made me wear to control my “jiggle.” I felt liberated. I hit a low weight of eighty-seven pounds. My Dad would count the protruding bones of my spine that had become visible. I was 5’4” tall.

 FIRST SEX

By the age of fourteen I’d won the battle of control with my parents. I’d exhausted them. School had been my sanctuary. While my parents bemoaned my behavior, they had no quarrel with my academic achievements. The epic tales in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey enthralled me. 

I’d been on those hormone pills to bring my period back just a few months when my personal research revealed that these were birth control pills. Eureka! No one told me. Not the pediatrician who prescribed them and certainly not my mother. I’m not sure she even knew. It was 1959 and there was a lot they didn’t know about hormones. If mom was curious, she never exposed herself in that way. Admitting you didn’t know something made you vulnerable, so she accepted without question the word or instructions from anyone wearing a uniform and doctors in their white lab coats sat at the top of that heap. I also discovered that I could keep getting the prescription renewed. No one paid attention. It seems pretty incredible now. In looking back, I’m even amazed, but that’s what happened.

Boys were starting to sniff around. I felt confident with my newfound attractiveness and budding sexuality. Then came Eddie. A twenty-one year-old paratrooper from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. We met at a party when he was home to visit his family in New Jersey. He started to pursue me. Telephone calls, movie dates, he wanted to meet my mother. I brought him home. Mom loved him. She thought he was so handsome she nearly swooned the first time she met him. He had huge shoulders and liked to pick me up and carry me around. I was his pet. The timing seemed right; I was dying to find out what “having sex” would require. Several months earlier mom had left a book on my bed titled something like “Becoming a Woman.”  We discussed the hygiene involved when getting your period, but she never used the word sex, or penis, or vagina. She lived in that foggy place where the only thing that differentiates males from females were the colors pink and blue.

The magic moment did not happen in the throes of the usual teenage emotional swamp. I plotted and planned the scene. Using my own money, I bought my first underpants that were not white cotton, and a lacy black bra. I wore them the day Eddie invited me over to his house when he was on leave, and we knew his mother would not be home. I wasn't exactly sure how things would play out. I let him know I was ready for anything and figured he’d know what to do.

We were smooching on the couch, his hands starting to roam in places they had never gone before, and I suggested we go somewhere more comfortable. He picked me up, carried me through the door of his mother’s bedroom and placed me, carefully, in the middle of her four-poster bed. It was all white eyelet ruffles and embroidered heart shaped pillows. He slowly pulled my sweater over my head. I gave no help, nor did I resist. I was excited about what he would think when he saw my black underwear. My breasts were small and I pushed my shoulders back to make the most of them. He seemed okay with what he saw. He left and came back with a towel, which he laid out under me. I didn’t know about the blood when your hymen is broken for the first time.

 Propped up on my elbows I watched as he stepped out of his jeans, then his underpants, dropping them in a pile on the floor. In wordless contemplation he stood staring at me. My eyes were transfixed on his penis as it snapped to attention with no visible sign of support. Then the action picked up. My body sunk deep into the mattress as he pressed the full weight of himself against me. The air in the room became flesh. His deeply tanned chest arched above me, and I had a slight feeling of panic, not enough to stop. With the objectivity of an anthropologist, I was outside myself looking down on the scene trying to figure out what was happening while it happened. The new black underwear was tossed aside. Then it was over.

Now what? A small spot of blood smeared my inner thigh, and some stained the towel. I had never been completely naked in front of anyone, not even my mom or dad in a very, very long time. Eddie said I could take a bath if I wanted. This seemed more intimate than the sex. He gave me some of his mother’s bubble bath. As I lay submerged in the tub, in a sea of bubbles, I heard a familiar voice. One of Eddie’s friends was at the front door. For the first time I was scared. Would Eddie betray me? ridicule me? take advantage of my vulnerability? I heard the screen door slam. Two sets of footsteps tap, tapped as they walked down the hall toward the kitchen. The bathroom was immediately to the left of the well–worn Formica table. The door was slightly ajar. I could see them sitting together at the table talking. Their backs toward the bathroom. Eddie told his friend we were going to get married. My tension dissipated as fast as the bubbles in the tub. I smiled to myself. Over my dead body.

-Cynthia Close

 Armed with an MFA from Boston University, Cynthia Close plowed her way through several productive careers in the arts including instructor in drawing and painting, Dean of Admissions at The Art Institute of Boston, founder of ARTWORKS Consulting, and president of Documentary Educational Resources (DER) - a nonprofit film distribution company. She now claims to be a writer.