My Sex and Violence

OK, so Belinda had invited me over to her house when her parents weren’t home, and I actually believed there was a real possibility that sex might happen. Before we discuss what actually went down at Belinda’s though, we should put it in perspective. A little background on my sexual history at age 14 is in order.

Before 5, I was fascinated by my mom and my sister. I still had no idea why, but I liked them. My sister and I would play doctor, and I remember having romantic feeling towards my mom. But I was never jealous of my dad like Freud says you’re supposed to be. The concept of adult sexuality was completely outside my reality at the time. I just liked women.

At around age 5 however, things started getting complicated. A flurry of intellectual curiosity took hold of my mind like a vise. Between marathon bouts of Lego building, I’d lie back on the carpet and stair up at the sprayed popcorn ceiling to ponder one of life’s mysteries after another. Some were easy to figure out.

For example:
Why were all those amazing things like highway interchanges and skyscrapers built?

Answer:
For humans. I’m a human, so everything on earth was built for me.

Duh. That was easy. But some questions were harder:

For example:
If I’m five years old, yet history goes back much further than five years. How is that possible?
That stumper lead me to the age old classic…
Where did I come from? Where does everyone come from? Where do babies come from?

Answer:
?

Boy that one really puzzled me. So I decided to escalate my query straight to the source of all earthly wisdom. My parents.

My Mom, wearing one of those white 70’s tunic hippie shirts with the colorful collars, was standing in the living room with my dad when I dropped the stork bomb. Her face got all pensive as she sized me up. Then she sized my dad up as if a significant but not necessarily pleasant moment they had long been waiting for had finally arrived. From my perspective as a five year old, it was like standing at a skyscraper constructions site watching the cranes move back and forth. I wasn’t small, grownups were just tall.

The tipoff that my question was big deal came from mom’s voice. It switched gears from her normal tone into that overcompensating “I’m OK with this so don’t freak out, OK?” mode. You know the tone. It’s the one people take on when you tell them you’re dumping them.

Next thing I remember, I’m sitting on my father’s lap in the kitchen and on a piece of notebook paper in front of me, mom’s drawing a serviceable sketch of an uncircumcised penis. She explained the human reproductive process in detail, using all the medical terms: Penis, Vagina, you name it. By the intensity and measure of her explanation, you got the feeling she thought this was one of her significant rites of passage as a parent. It was her duty as a mother to properly inform her child about the ways of the world. And she was taking every precaution to make sure she did the job nature had assigned her with utmost skill and care. Gotta love mom.

I didn’t understand a word she said. The connection between this big somber AV presentation and where babies come from somehow escaped me. So I sat there bored & zoned out until she was done.

The only part of the entire ordeal that stands out in my memory is asking them what my grandfather was going on about. My mom explained that he objected to them teaching me all this. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with my learning something. Then I thought maybe grandpa’s anger was justified. After all, Mom was boring the hell out of me and she hadn’t even answered my question.

After it was all over, I was very confused.

The big lecture about the birds and the bees didn’t much effect my obsession with women though. And it wasn’t long before I had two or three girlfriends going. There was my blond fiancé in kindergarten, who I romanced in the coat closet. There was my 18 year old neighbor, whose lips I couldn’t reach so I kissed her belly button.  And there was that Indian girl in the apartment across the hall who was the first girl ever I kissed on the mouth.

At first she was shy about kissing me. So I put a hoola hoop on the floor in the hallway between our apartments, and in center of that, I put a chair. The hoola hoop represented the boundaries of our private bubble kingdom, where outside rules didn’t apply. Inside the hoola hoop, I was the ruler of this kingdom, and she was my princess. In that context, she eagerly did everything I asked her to. Women man, some things never change.

At 5 I was girl crazy and blissfully ignorant that my sexuality was anything but the most natural thing in the world. When I look back on that time, I marvel at how natural and pure everything felt. Then I turned 6.

Whenever I heard music, a mysterious force in my little hips would just start moving back and forth, side to side. Like my sexuality, it was the most natural feeling in the world.

So one day in the kitchen of our little New Jersey apartment, some music came on, I started doing my thing, and my mom noticed. Now she’s a loud woman. And when she saw me gyrating and dancing about she said: Hayy! Haaayy! Haaaayy! This must have been meant as encouragement, but her loud squeals focused everyone’s attention on me. Suddenly I was on the spot. I felt a feeling come over me that I can only describe as melting, but in reverse. The fluidity of the dance was gone, and replaced with the paralyzing sensation that something big and significant was happening and if I did the wrong thing, I might very well mess it all up.  My Mom screamed “Dance! Dance!” in a tone she must have thought was encouraging. But it was too late.

People talk about Catholic guilt. But I don’t remember Catholic school ever really freaking me out about sex. The day my dancing got everyone’s attention though, was the first time I really felt a powerful fear of doing something wrong. Little did I know, this seemingly random event would have a profound effect on my sexuality later in life. I didn’t dance again until I was 18.