The Wikiness

The day my ignorance of the human sexual act ended, I must have been eight years old. Larry Smallwood, an older boy in the neighborhood, took it upon himself to enlighten me. In a Park District summer program together, we walked in single file along Rehm Park and he asked, “Do you know where babies come from?”

He was older. I knew he’d see through a bluff–me, a boy without brothers or attentive adults at home. 

“No,” I admitted.

“Well, let me tell you,”, and then with the relish of blowing another’s mind, Larry explained the rude mechanics of the act that he claimed had given me existence.

But to my prepubescent brain it all seemed outrageous, impossible. For even if a man could somehow insert his penis and squirt “seed” into a woman, there was the more basic question of how any healthy woman would ever consent to let him penetrate her in the first place. For it must be painful, and we avoid pain. How would she let it happen? It seemed so unnatural. And if what he said were true, that meant that Mom and Dad had done this act at least five times, once for me and each of my four sisters. I shuddered.

That couldn’t be true.

I left the conversation skeptical of  Larry’s claim, but whom could I ask for confirmation? Sex was a taboo topic in my religious family. I remained in troubled doubt for some days, but then one day at school recess, a trusted older student confirmed Larry’s incredible story.

My tender innocence was trampled, and with it some innate positive regard for females. For some time, I looked askance at my sisters, and inwardly judged all girls and women, For now I knew the horrible truth about them. They were complicit in their own monstrous despoilation. This “knowledge” fed a nascent misogyny and was perhaps at the headwaters of my toxic masculinity. 

Going forward, the whole affair of sex remained confused in my mind–a theory without issue–but it did explain some of the adult jokes that I had not understood on the Newlywed Game and Love, American Style. 

Then one day walking to school I came upon some other kids excitedly pointing across the street at two dogs who–were they rabid? What were they doing? Are they fighting? They’re seemingly stuck together, back-to-back. This strikes me and the other younger kids as quite novel and amusing.

But then an older kid solves the mystery for us. “They’re fucking! They’re making puppies!” 

Ah. Here was proof. Even dogs, the noblest of creatures in my mind, were stained with the same mammalian taint of bestial inter-penetration. Oh, it was hard for a while to look at dogs, even my beloved Carin Terrier Marilyn, with respect. But at least she was “fixed,” and so like a saint somewhat above other dogs.

I now know that what we children witnessed is known as a “Breeding Tie,” which happens, according to the British Kennel Club website, “when the gland at the end of the male’s penis swells up and is gripped by the contracting muscles of the female’s vagina, preventing the two from being separated. A tie is often seen as a sign of successful mating and is common among dogs, wolves, and foxes.”

My horror, distrust, and disdain for human mating lasted until seventh grade and the onset of puberty hormones. I grew aware then that my body and mind were transforming themselves outside of my control, so feel in control of it, I learned all about it. It started with a booklet I found among my older sisters’ things, perhaps from Kimberley-Clark, the Kotex people. With drawings of ovaries and their branching parts I was puzzled but fascinated. Understanding the menstrual cycle was the key to certain mysteries for me, too–the “headaches,” “cramps,” and mood swings of my sisters. The strange smells and weird string-attached rockets. 

My heart expanded enough for me to sympathize with my sisters. subject as they were to a monthly bodily take-over. What a drag that must be, and how inconvenient–yet another source of bodily embarrassment that men were privileged to miss.