Yup. I used to date women. It started in high school. Wait. Strike that. It started in high school. It started in fourth grade. Ashley Parker. We used to bend down and kiss each other on the lips behind the hedgerow before I hurried off to my mother’s car at the end of the driveway.
Wait. Revelation. It started before THAT. Lauren Pearson. We once pulled our pants down during a playdate and smooshed our bodies together. Just laying and smooshing. A few minutes later we were back to making up songs and chasing each other around the house, weaving in between swings, mailboxes, and flower gardens. Second grade. Or third. But definitely not later than that.
So I was only eight when I first noticed something different about my relationships with girls. First allowed my body to pursue a physical closeness to them. I dissect it now, at age 31, but back then it was natural. How could it be anything else? How can you say that an eight year old with zero gay influences in her life and no understanding of sexuality is exhibiting learned behavior? Remember, this was the 80s, not present-day. There was no Target selling teeny tiny tops and itsy bitsy skirts to five year olds! I’m pretty sure all I wore was Osh Kosh B’Gosh hand-me-downs from Jen. And cartoon girls didn’t have boobs protruding farther than their arms. Sex wasn’t marketed the way it is now, so I was oblivious about it for quite some time.
When I was twelve and in my first year of junior high I heard some kids talking about smearing toothpaste all over some boy’s locker. Why would you do that? A bit more naive than my classmates, I didn’t get it. But the reference was cum, apparently. (Ya, um, stupid, I know.) The toothpaste was supposed to represent cum – semen, jizz, you know, CUM. I had no idea what this stuff was or where it came from. I was twelve. But I was still oblivious. I guessed this was just junior high and I wasn’t used to it. The other kids laughed their asses off and I tried my best to fake it. I felt a bit dumb, was perplexed, but somehow understood that, like algebra and biology, I would figure this out too.
The junior high idiocy – um, er, behavior – was a result of influence – older siblings, tv, movies, sneaking a peek at mom and dad’s porn collection. The eight year old body-smooshing just was. There was no why, no need for understanding. I think if it was an eight year old boy I was smooshing, however, it probably would have confused me. As in, what’s beneath your underwear? Why does it look different? What does it do? How does it feel? For me AND for you…
For the better part of my life the relationships I formed with females were natural, instinctual, and comforting. But somewhere along the line, things have changed. Up until the birth of my bond with Dan, which happened on a white-tiled kitchen floor in a bass-thumping Florida duplex, I kissed, fondled, dated, fought and cuddled with, women. Through high school and beyond it was women that held all my secrets. Physical and emotional alike. In sexual and non-sexual relationships alike. (And yes, you can kiss, cuddle and fight with your best friend too! Just ask Jane.)
So it wasn’t only romantic relationships that I nourished. Some of my closest friendships were formed when I was a teenager. I am lucky to have kept several of those candles burning strong. Because that’s what those ladies are for me: light.
But having kids has changed things. Just like I had to get used to the new anatomy beneath the covers when I started seriously dating my husband, I’ve had to get used to the new arrangement that is making and keeping friends in motherhood. Friends that are single. That are married. That have no kids. That have one kid. That have two kids.
It is undeniable that motherhood has changed me. I don’t try to get my youth back by slipping some ecstasy and heading to a rave. And I don’t relate to people the way I used to.
The disconnect saddens me. It infuriates me. Because making new friends with other moms is, as I’ve mentioned, not quite the easiest task. When motherhood is the most natural thing why is friendship-in-motherhood so difficult to come by? And how do we prevent it from causing a rift in friendships that we have fostered for 10, 15 or 20 years?
I think this is not always the case. I’m sure some of it is me. Strange, blunt me. Strange, not-interested-in-your-chit-chat me.
It’s like my natural instinct to connect with other females in an intimate way has been replaced by the natural instinct of motherhood. Or rather, that motherhood has interrupted the process of friendship.
There is more to be said
for in the wake of motherhood,
much changes…
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gosh, i soooooooo relate to this sarah. the isolation that comes with motherhood is NOT one that i anticipated, nor one that i am willing to accept… however, it seems to still just be there.
hence, my connection with women via blogging, etc… these peeps, you and jen included, are my female connection.
it’s when i read posts like this that i want to spend the rest of the day in bed, reading “the red tent” and pondering where the community of women who raises each other’s children together has gone…
Your post made me think of a conversation I’ve often had with your sis. Why does our society/mass media/family insist on foisting ideas about sexuality on us and our children. From the slutty toddler clothes at Target to the declaration from well-meaning friends and family to me about my daughter: “Oh, Z is going to break all the little boys’ hearts!” (BTW, I never know how to respond to THAT one. Seems like a mouthful to say, “Well, maybe she’ll break a few girls’ hearts, too, but whoever’s hearts she breaks, I hope she does it with empathy and compassion–and anybody who breaks her heart is dead f*ing meat.”)
There is something to be said for letting children discover these things on their own, the way you did, Sarah, with smooshing and smooching. But there’s also a lot of confusing territory. (Case in point–In 5th grade, a boy rubbed a piece of blue rubber (probably from a pool toy or something) on me and declared, “Now you can’t have a baby.” I asked what the heck he was talking about, and he said, “It’s a rubber. You wear one of these if you don’t want to have a baby.” So first I thought he rendered me sterile by touching me with the blue rectangle. But I thought a lot about it and realized how dumb I was being: I needed to somehow pin this piece of rubber to my clothing (think gold stars on Jews in Nazi Germany) as an outward symbol to people that I didn’t want to have a baby. Duh! Then I thought even more and became worried that because I wasn’t wearing this blue declaration/decoration, I might end up having a baby by accident. I spent a lot of that fifth-grade year thinking about all this until I was distracted by the Smurfs.)
So how do we come up with the right combo for our kids of guiding them and letting them discover for themselves when it comes to relationships and sensuality in the broadest sense? Without unintentionally (I hope) boxing them into preconceived ideas about whom we should and shouldn’t be smooshing with? And what the heck do I say the next time someone tells me that Z will someday meet the man of her dreams and have a family with him, in a way that this adult and, more important, 2 1/2-year-old Z (who hears everything but doesn’t necessarily understand it), will not be totally freaked out?
I was here. Just wanted to let you know. And this is too important for a quick read while my kids are yelling at each other in the background. But I was here and I’m glad.. beyond glad… that you wrote this. Back for more when I can give you the presence you deserve.
Wow, Sarah, I love your honesty and I am amazed by how you can connect all of this and put it into the context of motherhood and what it can do to our friendships. I sometimes think the friendships (new and old) suffer because of lack of time and energy…as in, “I miss you and we have to get together when we have time” or “I think I might like that woman, but I don’t have time for my old friends; I certainly don’t have time for new ones.” I am also one of those strange, not-interested-in-your-chit-chat ones. I have often blamed myself for being self-centerered or preoccupied and that is why I could care less about the chit chat. Now I am starting to think that maybe it’s more: maybe I just want to put the bullshit aside and really talk and dig in there…and there are not too many women in my life, unfortunately, who get that about me.
This reminded me of a conversation I was having with some friends about how much our friendships changed, came and went as a result of parenthood. How our childless friends can no longer relate and how different parenting styles can quickly reduce friendships that were once solid to shaky at best. Of course we were not nearly as articulate about it as you. Beautiful, beautiful, needed to be said post…..in fact, it may just be the inspiration I need to get back to posting.