You look in the mirror, and it's not your mother you see any more. It is perhaps the least sexy woman you know of—your grandmother. She may have been kind and a great baker of cookies, but sexy? No, no, no.
There's a new level of compassion that the end of collagen and the Kegel imperative bring with them. The hot flashes are the least of it. If you're going to have any sex life when your lips have suddenly (SO suddenly) developed those little wrinkles like living room curtains, and your labia have suddenly deflated and deformed—nobody mentioned THAT would happen--and you can't count 100 percent on your urethra, and you aren't sure if you can even come any more—if you're going to have any sex life at all under those circumstances, you have to develop some sympathy for other women in the same situation. Because you have to find some way to imagine another woman finding you sexy.
And you'll have to reciprocate. Oh my dears, there is so much beauty and excitement in a firm, slim, energetic female body with a light sheen of sweat on it. And what can you say about a high mileage, well-worn, rather dry, menopausal woman? That she's wise? She may or may not be… Is that sexy? The skin on her arms--even if her cheekbones are prominent and her eyes are a perceptive clear blue, even if she has knowledge, skill, and wisdom—the skin on her arms stretches and wrinkles with every motion. It's like the earth's surface from outer space—looking down at the foothills. And yes, John Updike described it as looking like lizard skin. What about that inspires lust?
For now, I leave the question open.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
In His Dreams
In his dreams of pogroms, he is the Jew.
Each night he hears the dogs coming for him,
the horses’ hooves on stone,
the men with whips, shouting.
Each night he escapes many times,
and wipes the dogs' saliva from his neck.
In his dreams I speak his language.
I understand him perfectly when he tells me of
his hunger, his loneliness, his wanderlust.
I do just as he asks. He is the lonely hero.
I am the whore with a heart of gold.
In his dreams flowers turn into birds
birds turn into rabbits,
mice have feathered wings, are fat, and taste like fish.
It is always night. All the dogs are caged
and foxes jog freely down deserted streets.
Each night he hears the dogs coming for him,
the horses’ hooves on stone,
the men with whips, shouting.
Each night he escapes many times,
and wipes the dogs' saliva from his neck.
In his dreams I speak his language.
I understand him perfectly when he tells me of
his hunger, his loneliness, his wanderlust.
I do just as he asks. He is the lonely hero.
I am the whore with a heart of gold.
In his dreams flowers turn into birds
birds turn into rabbits,
mice have feathered wings, are fat, and taste like fish.
It is always night. All the dogs are caged
and foxes jog freely down deserted streets.
Monday, December 29, 2008
My Mother's Chains are Broken
My mother's chains are broken.
My sister and I are going through her jewelry drawer. When we were children, it was just a jewelry box, but now it's a drawer full of boxes full of her colors, bright and deep, full of pendants, strings of pearls, necklaces, broaches and bracelets. Every time we find one that might match her outfit, the chain is broken. Why hasn’t she had them fixed?
It’s my sister’s idea for my mother to wear the outfit from her 50th wedding anniversary. We find the dress and then the slippers. But the necklace…
My sister untangles one. Beads fall and scatter:
Like the friends of her child-rearing years, Ruth next door then, raising 5 weird and funny kids of her own and sharing in her daily fun and fears. Off to California. Pauline, whose powerful mind turned on her. Maggie still carrying on in their college town Providence. And Mel, arm in arm with her through the years from college to the kids’ growing up, but not willing to go with her into piety and ecstasy.
Like the friends of her holiest days, Mona, Judy, and Mary Frances, retired to distant states, or sublimed to the final state.
Like her father, Norman Frederick, who taught her to sing their songs back to the birds, and to raise a barn in a field of canvas. His energies enfeebled slowly, were regulated by battery for a time, and finally went to ground.
Like her granddaughter Caity, shoved into a Florida jail cell. No phone calls go in, letters are returned. It goes on like that for many months. A package comes back unopened.
Like her husband Tom, her tall-dark-handsome. He stutters into speech, but the balloons of his thoughts and memories slip from his grasp. They go floating away into the brilliant sky. He watches them go with an uneasy shrug.
Like her direct line to god, which she wielded like a brickbat, a trumpet, a lasso, a healing balm. When her friend Jesus betrayed her, the line frayed like old black fabric-insulated cable, and she bit it through, tore it apart, ground it under her heel.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Stray
He is perfect we understand
we share lust for touch
we share irritation and spasms of violence
he raises his arm ready to swat
I feel the tension in my own hand
he is wired, like every perfect one
I strike one-two-three-four
he strikes once and is done
he nuzzles into my bosom and I long for tongue
Now! he cries. I say just a minute.
Better not to stare too long eye to eye
Better not to see where understanding ends
or where strange misunderstanding must stray.
we share lust for touch
we share irritation and spasms of violence
he raises his arm ready to swat
I feel the tension in my own hand
he is wired, like every perfect one
I strike one-two-three-four
he strikes once and is done
he nuzzles into my bosom and I long for tongue
Now! he cries. I say just a minute.
Better not to stare too long eye to eye
Better not to see where understanding ends
or where strange misunderstanding must stray.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Neatly Put Away
My mother’s in a box, all neatly put away.
Her singing Three Little Fishies at the dinner table;
her not-quite stern reminders: “I hope you’ve done your homework”
her working turps and oils on canvas into a radiant heat;
her lisping Castillan;
her Judy Garland imitation;
her temper and impatience;
her memories of her old fashioned aunts we never met;
her imprecations, “Oh dear GOD!”
her prayers;
her love of children;
her faith in her husband:
all have gone the way of seamed stockings,
twenty-five thousand dollar New Jersey farmhouses,
and neighborhood clambakes among the mosquitos.
Her singing Three Little Fishies at the dinner table;
her not-quite stern reminders: “I hope you’ve done your homework”
her working turps and oils on canvas into a radiant heat;
her lisping Castillan;
her Judy Garland imitation;
her temper and impatience;
her memories of her old fashioned aunts we never met;
her imprecations, “Oh dear GOD!”
her prayers;
her love of children;
her faith in her husband:
all have gone the way of seamed stockings,
twenty-five thousand dollar New Jersey farmhouses,
and neighborhood clambakes among the mosquitos.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Lowdown on Down There
The supermarket checkout rag quoted, in pink, some woman yacking about her “vajay.” “Oh, it’s got a nick name now?” I thought, a tad disapprovingly. Then the girl in my head kicked my internal schoolmarm in the shins.
People are talking about vaginas! On the cover of supermarket magazines! And on TV. Tyra Banks, a glamorous African American talk show host who aims her show at the young and female, did an entire show last fall called “What’s Up Down There?” entirely about women’s privates—the vajay. Meanwhile Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan keep flashing theirs to the paparazzi, we learn on Yahoo “news.”
The world has fucking revolved, people.
Women’s privates have been so private for so long that many women never learned to talk about that part of their anatomy at all. As a girl, I only learned the vaguest terms--allusions to a neighborhood like “down there” (by the docks, probably) or that void “between your legs,” neither here nor there. And since then, we have only had those dirty words assigned by men for the double purpose of jacking off and insulting—pussy, cunt, snatch, cooch, and so on. Women have had mixed success in reclaiming these words. Educated white women have for a couple of decades been able to choke out the clinical word vagina in private circumstances—to a group of other women, a doctor, or a good-hearted boyfriend. But the vocabulary was carefully correct. And this kind of talk was not available at the supermarket checkout counter in big pink letters. The result has been that the freest women in the world have not felt free to talk about their sexuality, the very core of freedom and creativity. A little progress was made in recent years with the cute “girl parts,” the full equivalent of cute “boy parts.”
Now at last we have the gift of speech.
And we’re talking not just about breasts, women’s secondary sex characteristic, but the primary sexual attribute, and quite possibly a healthy, lusty one, too. What a concept. “My vajay.”
The schoolmarm claps her hands together one time. The girl dances a little dance and goes on to the next thing.
Who should we thank for this gift? The source is probably threefold.
Black women have long been less hung up about sexual matters than whites. They have known the female genitalia as a “chore girl.” The term is a joke that brings together the image of the steel wool scrubber of the same name, which shares its curly appearance with pubic hair, and the chore that women’s genitalia so often perform of keeping men sexually satisfied. I believe it was Woopie Goldberg who introduced the term “hoo-hoo” to the wider world in a major motion picture. I suppose--and I hope readers will send me their list—Black American women have a variety of other names for the vagina, too. Possibly, vajay was among those. Possibly not, before vagina went mainstream.
But how did vajay break into the mainstream press? Eve Ensler must get the lion’s share of the credit, for taking the Vagina Monologues national, and international. Never before the Monologues had the word vagina occupied so much public space in newspapers, marquees, and conversation. The power of the title alone is hard to overestimate.
And finally, a little credit to the men who own the media that carries the word. Men have always had words for male and female genitals—and more importantly, permission to use those words. By easing control over women’s public use of the word (albeit in full expectation of financial reward) they remove the final barrier to this freedom of speech. Naturally, vagina would get shortened to our intimate friend vajay.
Thanks, Eve.
People are talking about vaginas! On the cover of supermarket magazines! And on TV. Tyra Banks, a glamorous African American talk show host who aims her show at the young and female, did an entire show last fall called “What’s Up Down There?” entirely about women’s privates—the vajay. Meanwhile Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan keep flashing theirs to the paparazzi, we learn on Yahoo “news.”
The world has fucking revolved, people.
Women’s privates have been so private for so long that many women never learned to talk about that part of their anatomy at all. As a girl, I only learned the vaguest terms--allusions to a neighborhood like “down there” (by the docks, probably) or that void “between your legs,” neither here nor there. And since then, we have only had those dirty words assigned by men for the double purpose of jacking off and insulting—pussy, cunt, snatch, cooch, and so on. Women have had mixed success in reclaiming these words. Educated white women have for a couple of decades been able to choke out the clinical word vagina in private circumstances—to a group of other women, a doctor, or a good-hearted boyfriend. But the vocabulary was carefully correct. And this kind of talk was not available at the supermarket checkout counter in big pink letters. The result has been that the freest women in the world have not felt free to talk about their sexuality, the very core of freedom and creativity. A little progress was made in recent years with the cute “girl parts,” the full equivalent of cute “boy parts.”
Now at last we have the gift of speech.
And we’re talking not just about breasts, women’s secondary sex characteristic, but the primary sexual attribute, and quite possibly a healthy, lusty one, too. What a concept. “My vajay.”
The schoolmarm claps her hands together one time. The girl dances a little dance and goes on to the next thing.
Who should we thank for this gift? The source is probably threefold.
Black women have long been less hung up about sexual matters than whites. They have known the female genitalia as a “chore girl.” The term is a joke that brings together the image of the steel wool scrubber of the same name, which shares its curly appearance with pubic hair, and the chore that women’s genitalia so often perform of keeping men sexually satisfied. I believe it was Woopie Goldberg who introduced the term “hoo-hoo” to the wider world in a major motion picture. I suppose--and I hope readers will send me their list—Black American women have a variety of other names for the vagina, too. Possibly, vajay was among those. Possibly not, before vagina went mainstream.
But how did vajay break into the mainstream press? Eve Ensler must get the lion’s share of the credit, for taking the Vagina Monologues national, and international. Never before the Monologues had the word vagina occupied so much public space in newspapers, marquees, and conversation. The power of the title alone is hard to overestimate.
And finally, a little credit to the men who own the media that carries the word. Men have always had words for male and female genitals—and more importantly, permission to use those words. By easing control over women’s public use of the word (albeit in full expectation of financial reward) they remove the final barrier to this freedom of speech. Naturally, vagina would get shortened to our intimate friend vajay.
Thanks, Eve.
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