|
Love & Sex, Plain & Simple
It all began when I was six years old passing notes to boys I liked in grade school. The feel of a big fat 1st grade pencil in my hand, the smell of freshly sharpened lead, the way all the stuff in my head and heart just came spilling out onto my Big Chief Writing Tablet. It was magic. Carefully folding them into tiny squares just big enough to fit in the palm of my hand, I'd pass them across to Marilyn Kurz who'd pass them to Susan Massy who'd pass them to Clifford Johnson who'd pass them, at last, to their final destination, Bob Boswick. I was smitten with Bob Boswick.
It's hard to fathom a little girl of six knowing much of anything about love, but it is only in hindsight that I realize that in many ways I knew far more then than I do now. It was unencumbered awe. Naked rapture. It was feeling the Mystery of Boy spread across my face and chest and into the pit of my stomach. No fear, no censoring, just sheer delight that left me feeling heady, weak in the knees and dreamy eyed. There were fewer rules back then, fewer pitfalls, fewer voices in my head thwarting the naturalness of it all. Bob Boswick was smitten with me. I was smitten with Bob Boswick. Plain and Simple.
Valentine's Day, 1959, Bob Boswick presented me with a big red heart-shaped box of chocolates right in front of First Period class. I was in awe. I felt like the only girl on earth that ever got a big red heart-shaped box of chocolates from a boy. As the bell rang, still standing in front of Miss Gilmore's desk, there was Mike Ellam awkwardly holding a dozen freshly picked red roses, thorny stems carefully bundled in dripping wet newspaper and aluminum foil.
All for me.
If my heart can become pure and simple,
like that of a child, I think there can be
no greater happiness than this."
- Kitaro Nishida
I was euphoric, feeling not a shred of self-consciousness, that is not until Ruth Skrakowski blurted out in typical school-girl-sing-song fashion, "Robyn's Got Two Boyfriends, Robyn's Got Two Boyfriends", everybody snickering, pointing their fingers and laughing at us. I looked at my classmates and I looked at Bob Boswick and Mike Ellam who were, as plain as day, Super Heroes and it was right then and there that I decided my classmates were all stupid idiots.
Apparently, Miss Gilmore thought this was the cutest thing she'd ever seen because before lunch the entire school had heard about it. But for me, it was my initiation into the uncharted waters of love and adoration and the worse kind of betrayal there is. Of course it never occurred to me that I had to choose. I thought on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Bob Boswick could take me for rides on his bike. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Mike Ellam could take me for rides on his. Sundays were reserved for my dad who took me for long ambles through the woods near our house looking for things that I would not discover until some decades later. But I didn't know I had to choose. So, I didn't. I was smitten with Bob Boswick and Mike Ellam. Plain and Simple.
For the most part, the three of us got along swell. All the Big People thought this was Adorable but I never really understood what they were going on about. Most of the girls at school told me I was Bad and that I really shouldn't have two boyfriends at the same time. I never really understood what they were going on about either.
It takes courage to grow up
and become who you really are.
- e.e. cummings
Another school year passed; birthdays celebrated, siblings born, spelling bees lost and won, and after school bike rides to Glenview Shopping Center for soda pop and sweet tarts were as regular as sunup. Sometimes we'd play Cowboys and Indians and used spear grass for arrows. Once I got a piece of grass stuck in my eye and they both fretted over me like you wouldn't believe, one holding me still as I cried, the other carefully trying to pull it out. I remember looking up into the sweaty faces of both those boys and I could not imagine life without them. I loved those boys and those boys loved me. And it was much more than just Puppy Love, those boys respected me. You see, I could spit. And I could spit far.
The summer of 1960 everything changed. It was just another hot sticky Texas afternoon and while playing behind the hedges in back of Mike Ellam's house, I told the boys I would show them mine if they would show me theirs. Without further ado we pulled down our shorts and underwear and for the first time in our brief lives got a good mystifying look at one of our most remarkable differences. Mike Ellam got down on his hands and knees to get a better look and while peering up at me intently, his head cocked slightly to one side he asked, "Is that all there is?" Not to be misunderstood, I spread my legs a little and held my hand down there as if by doing so I was properly defending her somehow.
Innocence plays in the backyard of ignorance - Proverb quotes
Honestly, I thought the boys' thingies looked kind of silly really, just dangling there and wagging about as they punched and teased each other, but I dared not say such a thing because I could tell they were real proud of them. And despite the incredulous look on both of their faces, I was quite pleased with my soft compact little mound. No sooner had we lost interest in just another game of Show and Tell, Mike Ellam's mom came walking around the corner of the house and found the three of us standing there buck naked from the waste down; my pink and white panties folded neatly atop my sneakers, the boy's underwear crumpled and strewn in the sandy dirt nearby.
I was forbidden to see either of the boys alone again, ever. My soft compact little mound took on the shame of my entire neighborhood and elementary school. There would be no more bike rides. No more stolen kisses behind the 7-11. No more trading bologna for peanut butter, fishing for crawdads, or long walks along Five Mile Creek. That was the summer I took my first precarious step onto the bumpy road of adult shame, the summer when Show and Tell became dirty and bad. Gradually, from one summer to the next, revealing my heart became as perilous as revealing my secret place.
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself -- on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life
Nobody ever really told me, but at six years old I knew they were somehow connected. Like most of us, I had to forget and wander far far away and then somewhere along the road, well into my post-feminist adulthood, begin that long painful struggle of finding my way back again; both gratefully and reluctantly reclaiming what had always been the truth of my feminine core. No more feeling beholden to someone else's fear or shame. No more cutting myself up into manageable little pieces to keep the men in my life safe. No more pretending. My secret place and my heart are inseparable. They are one in the same. Like Five Mile Creek trailing off into every ocean there is ... it's all connected.
Just in case you're wondering what could possibly be the point of this missive ... the secret may lie in not looking so hard. There's no ulterior motive to much of anything I do anymore now that I'm finding my way back to 'her' - the little girl in Miss Gilmore's first period class at T.L. Marsalis Elementary School. So, those times you find the little girl or boy in you squirming in your seat wondering, "What the heck does love want from me anyway?",
pause for a moment and remember those summers long ago when questions like that never even existed.
Plain and Simple.
Robyn Lark Wakefield
*The names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent. |
