sexual guilt is something men have to walk around with, something that complicates their taking on more public care-taking roles. Still, the comment from the boyfriend half-raised my hackles. Aren’t we all supposed to pretend we don’t see it when a kid’s butt suggests something about sexuality for a split second? Aren’t we supposed to swallow any discomfort if we can’t simply turn away? But these questions last no longer than a pulse.
As we are preparing to leave, my daughter puts back on her bear costume and admires it in the full-length mirror by the door. How fun to be a stuffed animal! The rounded ears, the extra soft padded oval of tummy, the stubby tail, which she points toward the mirror and then cranes around to see. “Shake your tail,” calls out the boyfriend from the couch. And perhaps any question formed never entirely dissolves. A mama bear rises up in me immediately, rears on hind legs, towering, teeth bared, claws slashing, roaring: I’ll rip your mouth off! In his comment, I see my daughter stripped bare, her body placed on the stage of femaleness, in front of the judging eyes. I will plow bloody rifts in those faces! I will scratch out those eyes! I see the multitude who will be watching her—my fear informed by my own awareness of how I’d found myself gazing at my ten-year-old son’s female friends—to see when they go into bud, how they swan out, to admire and imagine what they’ll look like later. Is it the self-implication that chains my mama bear’s ankle? The awareness that our sexuality is complex?
The cooing over my daughter’s costume extended to the ladies’ chorus: “Look at you!” and “Shake it!”
A couple of these women have known and adored my child since she was born. She’s always liked their kind attentions. She likes to dance. “Booty dance,” she’ll say sometimes, and she’ll push her butt out behind her and shake it. She likes the way it feels, I imagine, that basic human pleasure, exaggerating movements to match a beat. It’s clear that she also likes the attention doing it gets her.
“This was so much fun,” I say cheerfully, gathering up shoes, the mama bear still raging behind my skull, against my skin, but kept there while the cub wanders a wider circle. I want my daughter to have a fully developed sexuality, to be able to explore and play with sexuality. I want to remove shame from this process, and for her to escape the pressures of commodification and expectation. I want her to be free to find what gives her bodily pleasure. I have always wanted that for myself. I believe I’ve fought for that for myself.
But I feel in a flash a new sense, if not understanding, of the origins of the burka, the hijab, dress codes. Cover up, please.
The mama bear, claws slashing—how far is my reach? All the rest of you, shut up, avert your gaze, keep your hands to yourself.
“Thanks so much,” I say. “Happy birthday. Nice to meet you. We’ll see you soon.”
The female body, even at the age of three, the site of so much.
TWO MEMORIES I HAVE.
One, being with my brother at a rest stop and playing in the pebbles of the parking lot. We were streaming the pebbles from our hands, making mountains, creating a crashing sound. A little girl watched us closely. She tentatively picked up a small handful of pebbles, let them drip from her palm. Instantly, her mom yanked her up, slapped her hand, wiped it, yelled, “You’ll get filthy!” I remember feeling gratitude that I was not her, that my mom was letting us play. We played hard. We ran far. Prissy instincts were not indulged.
Then, when I was in first grade, I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor in the cafeteria. I had red tights on—red was my favorite color—and the seam of the crotch was visible. Another girl looked at me blankly.
“Ladies don’t sit like that,” she intoned. “Ladies keep their legs together. That’s what my mom told me.”
And I was grateful again not to have such a mother. And I don’t want to be a mother like that. And I don’t want anyone, ever, telling my daughter to shake her tail. Even if she likes it.
More to the immediate point of why I resisted employment at the Bounce Babe Lounge: I feared that performing sexuality for men would alienate me from my ecstatic and revelatory lust for Carl. And despite the power of this lust, we had enough obstacles. I’d broken up with my college boyfriend soon after he’d come to town, but that house in West Philadelphia was a confusing atmosphere in which to start a heterosexual romance, even if you weren’t two-timing.
The trend toward sex work had fostered a male-female rift in the neighborhood, as the women took to equating men and johns and a couple of them dumped guys they’d been hanging out with. As fresh meat on the scene, my scent attracted both the girls newly interested in their own and the boys and men left hanging by the change-over. With little to do besides sit on the porch and take in the milieu, I accepted compliments and massages from anyone who offered, in keeping with the anything-goes atmosphere. It wouldn’t have been cool for him to voice a complaint, but when Carl came home from work to find me receiving rubs on both my neck and my feet, or lifting up my arm so someone could examine the small tattoo I had near my armpit, he might ignore me for hours. Meanwhile, he was still hung up on a former house resident, and when she came around, he’d turn his his beam on her. We didn’t act much like an overt couple around the pack in any case. We went on a group road trip where we didn’t sleep in the same tent on the first night. We dropped acid together and then he went off to an over-twenty-one joint where I couldn’t follow.
But at some point most every night he’d give me a signal and we’d go up to his room and enter our sex zone. And often enough, we’d sneak off the premises and prowl the city as a pair. We had things in common aside from our desire to abrade our bodies against each other’s. A secret hankering for greasy pizza and fountain Cokes to relieve the house diet of vegan stir-fry, for one thing. A preference for the kind of dirty guitar rock just starting to be put out by Sub Pop Records over the thrashier, hardcore stuff of Alternative Tentacles, for another, along with a belief in the totemic power of record label names. And we both came from small town upbringings that left us with a bit of gee-whiz when our guards dropped.
Mostly what we had in common was a desire to explore the metropolis by foot. We liked to walk, and we crisscrossed the city—from the dilapidated industrial sites on the West Side, to posh Rittenhouse Square in Center City, to the Historic District farther east. We were all the way down at Penn’s Landing the night he brought up the road trip that’d been in the air: He and three other guys had been plotting to pile in Mel’s truck and head to San Francisco to visit Joe, a popular housemate who’d made the move west a few months back. The departure date had been set for two weeks out. But if I wanted to, he told me, he’d ditch the ride, and he and I could take the thousand bucks he’d saved from his job as a laborer and we could hitchhike there together. We wouldn’t rush madcap; we’d stop for adventures. We’d crash with friends of friends. We’d go camping. He’d always wanted to hike in the Rockies. He’d spent some seasons backpacking in the Adirondacks, and he had all the gear.
We’d go on the road, is what I heard. On the Road On the Road On the Road.
“Yes!” I said. Of course I said yes. As soon as the words were out of his mouth I believed I’d orchestrated my entire summer, my entire romantic history, my entire life, exactly for this. Over the next couple of days, as we proved our sincere intentions—Carl told the other guys he wasn’t going with them, and I told Reba and my parents our plan—we couldn’t stop grinning at each other like a couple of excited kids.
THIS PERFECT ACCORD didn’t last long. Before we even left, we reverted back to being guarded and sly when we were out of bed, suspicious of each other’s motives. Perhaps this was justifiable, given the dynamics. I was beholden to Carl in many aspects. He was older, bigger, male, more established amongst the crowd we ran in. He carried the cash, the know-how, the sexual prowess; I needed these things from him, and I didn’t like feeling needy. It made me defensive. He also had moods that dwarfed my own, and he was not above using both his strengths and his weaknesses as a way to draw me in, bind me tighter. He wanted a dedicated mate, one without an expiration