just look at those teeth! I used to have teeth as straight as sticks (straight ones) until puberty, until my wisdom teeth, gnarled and nudged, strained against the others and made them all much better friends. But I like them this way. bodies this and that -- and so in this episode I dutifully talk about the stage of adolescence in which I became physiologically capable of sexual reproduction.
I bloomed late, I was a late-bloomer, a babyish and bashful bud. When I was fourteen I was braless and robust, and I loved to swim, and I was lonely. I remember when my mother told me that she had something that she needed to talk about, with me, which never happened, and I doggedly followed her to her room, intrigued. she sat down on the bed and motioned for me to join her as she held up a white, twirly, twisted bra.
"do you know what this is?" she asked. um. yes.
"no," I said.
"it's a brassiere," she said kindly. "and women wear them to contain themselves." I was petrified. "Your father and I..." she looked at me with her eyebrows raised. "we decided that it would be best if you started wearing them from now on." she dropped it unceremoniously in my lap, empty eggcups, waiting to be filled with girlflesh. I looked at the size: 34B.
my mother saved everything that she ever posessed, and some of my favorite times were when I would venture to the attic with a flashlight and go through boxes and boxes of burger wrappers, buttons, photographs, baby toys, old shoes. I remember coming across pictures of my parents on the first trip they ever took together, to acapulco, mexico, and I saw photos of my mother in a swimsuit, her breasts large and luminous, and I remember not being able to believe how big my mom's chest was. she was skinny everywhere else, but her breasts were practically popping out of her canary yellow bathing suit. and she was pregnant with me. I can still see that picture in my mind, an inverse image on my eyelids, my mom beaming, sweaty cleavage, sand. all of a sudden I was petrified that my breasts would never stop growing.
I took the sneering, scoffy bra to the bathroom and I spent about an hour crying, writing in my journal, and nervously fiddling with the clasps. I decided that it was retarded, and that I didn't really need it (I did). I carefully folded it in the garbage, under some used tissue and newspaper, and promptly forgot all about it.
I went to Mexico with my father shortly thereafter. He owned several companies and traveled often, and I traveled with him often, and he used these strict and sterile opportunities to leture me about history and politics and how I had been charged with great responsibility ("but I prefer to think of it as respons-ability," my father said, "because I know you're more than capable of handling it."). I didn't wear the bra, and as we were eating in an enthusiastic and forcefully festive restaurant, he noticed. he set down his fork.
"Christian, didn't your mother give you the brassiere and talk to you about puberty?" he asked. my jaw dropped. I nodded.
"Well," he said, sighing, "why aren't you wearing it?"
"I forgot," I said to my enchilada.
"You wear a size 34B, don't you? Because I'm taking you to the store right after this and getting you one," the enchilada said. and that was it, the last of my days unshackled to a bra. to this day this still rates as one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life, second only to the day I got my period, which I remember in brightly vivid detail.
a few months after adopting and adapting to the bra, a few months before my fifteenth birthday, I was reading a book about Jacques Cousteau in a large room filled with computers and books on the upper floor of our house that we called 'the classroom.' my mother was sitting nearby, crouched over my sisters and a storybook, and christopher, a year younger than me, was playing a game on the computer. I felt flushed and sweaty and dizzy, and I knew exactly what was happening, thanks to my mother, who, after driving around aimlessly around the neighborhood after school one day, decided to explain menstruation to me.
"every month a woman's body creates this beautiful blanket inside of her uterus. do you know where the uterus is?" she asked. I wondered if she could possibly say the word uterus one more time. I cringed.
"yes," I said dutifully.
"of course you do!" she chirped. "well, inside of your uterus, your body makes a beautiful, pearly egg wrapped inside of a beautiful blanket. but if that egg isn't... fertilized..." my mother gave me a long sidelong glance as she said this, and I was mortified as my parents had never bothered to talk with me about sex, and she was obviously assuming that I knew what people do in the bedroom, what my parents did. "If the egg isn't fertilized, then the body gently says 'good-bye!' to the beautiful blanket to make a brand new one! And that's such a beautiful thing, and that's called your per-i-od." she said it slowly, like I was a retard. I nodded. "Some women complain all the time about it, and they say bad things about it. Like it's a curse. But it isn't! It's so beautiful, and the universe has a plan for all of us, like this one time when I was at the store and I had a list of the things I needed, but I left it on the table, and..." and as she continued to babble, I looked forlornly out the window, at the children jovially walking home from school, hiking their backpacks up their shoulders as they sunnily chattered with their friends.
and just a few short months after that awkward discussion, there I was, Judy Blume watching over me, my body coldly and clinically expelling my uterus lining to make another, and another, and another, etc forever. I imagined a small army of workers tromping impassively through, efficiently building and tearing down until I reached menopause and they could all retire and go home, avidly gossping and following the state of my fertility as though I were Catherine of Aragon. I was a woman, a baby maker, now eligible for a socially strategic marriage. I heard the low murmur of my mother, who was pleasantly rounded out with her seventh child, and the rustle of my three childish sisters, with their immature limbs and loins, and I felt so amazingly isolated and alone. I had known that puberty was coming for me, but as my friends and classmates exchanged old bodies and voices and skin for new ones, I had somehow remained behind, stalwart and unsure. thoughtlessly, I had somehow thought that I would remain boyish and young forever. I kept the period to myself until later that night, when I crept into my mother's room and, bawling, told her that my body had made a beautiful blanket.
"that's wonderful, don't cry!" she exclaimed, sending me to the bathroom to wash my face. I emerged, puffy-eyed and wet-faced, and I sat on the bed again.
"don't tell dad," I said. she bit her lip.
"well, I already told him, and he's so proud!" she said brightly. I shuddered.
"where is he?" I asked.
"oh, he... went to go run some errands!" she said nonchalantly. I went to my room and stared at the ceiling until Faith, my sister, knocked on the door. "Dad wants you!" she cried. I went to see what dad wanted, and I found a cake waiting for me that had congratulations written on it in a curly script, and popsicles, and my mother mechanically blew on a horn. I was so mortified by it all, yet strangely touched.
I felt like I had been betrayed by an old friend -- I had known my body, it was knobby and mine, and it worked in a precise, predicted manner; now it was a stranger, a hodgepodge of foreign bulges and bumps.
"so how often does this period thing happen and how long does it last?" I asked my mom in between bites of cake, "like, once a year for a month?"
"it happens for about a week every month," my mom said gravely.
"what!" I cried, cake falling out of my mouth. I was distraught and dismayed.
"Christian, getting your period is such a beautiful thing. It signifies womanhood, and blah blah blah blah"
my body isn't a strange stranger anymore. I'm familiar with it; I'm familiar with my curves and clutches of fat and my knobby knees and elbows, and my teeth, and the long scar on my arm. and I love my brain with dxm lesions on it, legions of lesions. I love it, it's mine, we're in cahoots now and we work together, and I feel so comfortable in it. two of my sisters are transmutating through puberty right now: Faith and Sam, 11 and 15. and sam is all awkward and doesn't know how her new body works yet, she's driving a foreign car with new knobs and needles.
In conclusion, I don't write here as often or as well as I should; I have no natural inclination to share my feelings or thoughts so sometimes it seems hard or unnatural. I am dancing around right now to the new Mouse on Mars cd, radical connector, and I really recommend it. tonight I was at magnolia's with josh when this guy bounces over, grinning, and says 'if I comp your meal, will you come here to have lunch on wednesday?!'. he was so enthusiastic that I started laughing. "you are exactly like bizarro lynn, this waitress here, you act and look exactly like her, and I've seen you here before and everyone thinks so, so will you come in on wednesday?" bizarro lynn? is she a circus freak? so I'm going to meet my doppelganger this wednesday. sam (sister, 15) is talking about moving to the philippines. and I promise to upload my book sometime this week. ta!
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