Sex And The Single Child

Elisa DeCarlo

Sex was why my mother and her friends wore bright red lipstick and tossed their heads back when they laughed, white teeth bright against their lipstick. Sex was why my father and his friends dressed like peacocks in Nehru jackets and green velvet suits and all the emblems of the sixties male. They were young and vital and horny.

My parents had a lot of parties: cocktail parties, dinner parties, holiday parties. At night I sat, in my pink pajamas, at the top of the stairs and listened to the magical sounds of laughter, clinking ice and vibraphone music. Adult life went downstairs and out on the patio and at the end of our circular driveway. Figures broke apart in the dark if I wandered in. It was never “in front of the children”. There was a thick, yeasty feeling in the air, a feeling of sex. I didn’t know what sex was but I knew that it was the feeling in the air. Sex was something adults thought about a lot.

My first memory of sex is of my mother and father “doing it” when I was five years old. Actually, I don’t even know if it is my first memory or not. My older sister told me I saw them doing it. “Mom and dad have fuzzy bottoms!” I announced to her. I think that I remember it — there is a shadowy image in my mind of two large, dark silhouettes moving together in their king-size bed. But is that image there because I remember it, or because I should remember it? Now my sister claims she doesn’t remember telling me about it! She remembers the atmosphere in our home as utterly sterile, no sex at all, and she’s only five years older than I am. What changed?

My second sexual memory was some time after that. Even though it was forbidden, I went into my parent’s bathroom to use the toilet. At that moment my father stepped out of the shower. I stared up at his massive nakedness, his vast pale body with its little nipples, his long, long thin arms and legs. And his penis. I knew what it was because I took baths with my baby brother. But the difference between my brother’s insignificant little pee-pee and the gnarled-looking bag of guts hanging between my father’s legs: Freudian as it may be, the only word to describe the difference is “enormous”.

“Get out of here!” Dad yelled, grabbing a towel. I fled down the hall. The next time I took a bath with my brother, I gave his genitals more careful scrutiny. “Mom, is my brother’s pee-pee going to get as big as Dad’s?” My mother stared and said, “Penis, Elisa.” Mom read all of the latest child-rearing books and never allowed us to use euphemisms. No ca-ca or do-do for this woman. No, we urinated, we had bowel movements, and I knew that I was the possessor of a vagina, whatever that was. Many years later my sister blundered in on my brother having sex with his girlfriend. She reported back that yes, his penis was, if anything, bigger than Dad’s.

I didn’t want to be a girl. The mommies all seemed so unhappy when they weren’t at parties. They were trapped in their pretty houses, and always shooed me and my friends out of the room so they could talk. Not that they were talking about anything I understood, except that being a woman was clearly no fun. The men got to go fun places and they had all of the money.

And I hated women’s clothes. When I had to wear dresses, I couldn’t climb trees, I couldn’t run, and worst of all would be my mother pulling up my tights. Her fingernails plucking at my fat little legs drove me CRAZY. Her perfume surrounded me like a cloud of dead flowers. I’d fidget and complain, she’d get mad. During my 9 to 5 days, when I wore a dress and pantyhose, I’d pull it off as soon as I walked through my front door. My older sisters had to wear girdles, but only for a short time before fashion liberated women from the damn things. They both wore short dresses and ponytails. I could hear them giggling together in the bathroom next to my bedroom. About what, I had no idea.

When I was in elementary school, I was sent home several times for wearing corduroy pants. My parents went in to see the principal. I was allowed to wear pants. I was already marked as weird by my classmates. This just made it more so.

Little girls were supposed to cute. I lived six stops away from cute. Even as a toddler, Mom said I looked best in tailored things. Little girls were supposed to be quiet. Well mannered. I was neither. Later I learned I was well-known for blurting out the things adults thought but didn’t say. Example, telling my spinster aunt Catherine, “Nobody likes you!”

Little girls combed their hair and smiled and waited until the grown-ups were gone to be evil. I’ve blocked out most of what happened to me in elementary school. But I know I wasn’t the only victim by a long shot. One of the toys in the Sears Wish Book that I really, really wanted was a doll head with long hair. You could practice putting makeup on it, and styling its hair. But Mom said it was sexist so that was that.

But I didn’t want to be a boy, either. Boys weren’t very interesting. Except that they liked blowing things up and destroying stuff. Daddies also seemed unhappy, unless they were at parties. Otherwise they were stiff and angry in suits, and they looked at us children as if we had no right to be there.

I wanted to be a neutral creature, free of the obligations of either sex. And, of course, free of the obligations of sex itself. Sort of like the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost.

When I was around ten years old, I deliberately disconnected my sister while she was talking to her boyfriend on the phone. She swung her leg up and kicked me squarely in the crotch with her pointy-toed Kinney shoes. I saw red and black stars and fell to the ground. What could be down there that hurt that much? So I inspected it. I didn’t like what I’d found. There were two funny little pieces of meat that hung down on either side of my hairless crotch. At the time I thought they looked like hamburger. I confided as much to my best friend.

“Those are your labia. Everybody’s got those.”

“Do you?”

“No, but I’m different. Eew!”

She never told me why she was different. She did not forgive me when I sprouted breasts. I developed early and fast. When she walked past me in school, she’d say “Hi, Elisa,” and punch me hard in the chest. I refused to wear a bra, I refused to admit that those were breasts. Surely they would go away. Of course, along with the breasts came my first period. Even though Mom didn’t believe in euphemisms, she didn’t exactly believe in information, either. I had no idea what those stains were on my cotton Lollipops underpants. I went to Mom and pulled them down.

“Get in the car!”

“Why?”

“We’re going to the doctor!”

At sixty miles an hour she gave me a hasty lesson in biology. The lesson was so garbled that when I arrived at the pediatricians, I said, “I’m bleeding from my anus.” Dr. Lee thought I had a serious medical condition. When he discovered that it was merely my period, he smiled and said, “Elisa, you’re a woman now.” He patiently explained that this was something I would endure every month. For years and years. Until I was old. Like my sisters, who bitched and moaned and doubled up and asked Mom to buy Midol. What had Mom told them? Why didn’t they tell me anything?

For my twelfth birthday, my best friend’s father gave me a present. “Now that you are a woman.” Her mother beamed as I opened the box. It was a red and white flowered garter belt, with garters and white stockings. I’d never worn a garter belt. It was terrifying. Why did they think I wanted it? I wanted a toy horse! (I should mention that Christine’s father was French.)

But I wore the garter belt — once. To my cousin’s wedding. But how did you urinate when you wore a garter belt? What did you do with the garters? With the stockings? How did you sit on the toilet? How did you get your underpants out of the way? I did my best but ended up soaking my underpants. Urine even splashed on my black patent Mary Janes. The humiliation was total. I spent my cousin’s wedding sobbing in the ladies lounge, waiting for my goddamned underpants to dry and cursing my best friend’s parents. When we got home I tore off the belt and threw it in the wastebasket.

Now I was positive I didn’t want to be a woman. But there seemed to be no way of avoiding my body’s taking a definite position on my gender. My mind, however, took much longer.