So there we were, on the floor of a bathroom at AVAC, and Big D just slid that tampon right on up so fast I didn’t think quickly enough to be freaked out. And I was all, “Where are you going?” as if she was doing a Jacques Cousteau deep dive. And she’s going down. And I was like, “There’s something more down there? What an amazing discovery!” Finding my vagina was a moment of “Interesting. Did. Not. Know. That.” Big D was exactly the friend I needed to get me through the moment as quickly as possible. We never once spoke of it again until we were adults, not out of shame, but from a sense of “What happens in an AVAC bathroom stays in an AVAC bathroom.” Only recently, when I brought it up to her, did it seem even remotely nuts.
But how was I supposed to know where my vagina was? From a young age, most girls are not given the most basic information about their bodies. And we grow into smart women who often don’t go to doctors on a regular basis because we are too busy putting others in our lives first, and don’t share personal medical information with each other, either. People talk about our bodies solely as reproductive systems, and we remain just as clueless as The Virgin Mary’s learning she was but a vessel for something greater.
THANK GOD FOR JUDY BLUME, BECAUSE AT LEAST SHE ARMED ME WITH THE basic facts of menstruation. Nowadays, girls can Wikipedia everything—or more likely, study porn clips online.
But back then, all we had was Judy Blume. She also gifted us with Forever. We all knew and loved Forever, because it had the Sex Scene. And outside of porn (which was damn hard to procure in those pre-Internet days), Forever was the only depiction of sex we had ever seen. High school senior Katherine meets fellow student Michael, who nicknames his penis “Ralph” and teaches her how to rub one out, before they go “all the way” in his sister’s bedroom.
We were smart enough to know that Forever—not the cheesy VHS porn tapes that my trusty friend Becky had discovered in her parents’ room—taught us the more accurate portrait of how sex would unfold in our own lives. (Thank you, Judy!) Forever gave us the truth. It was about wanting to have sex, preparing to have sex, having sex, and what happens afterward. Judy Blume was our tutor.
During our freshman year, my friend Julie had sex at a house party with a boy she liked. They had planned to do it, but both were too fearful to go buy condoms. He told her he had a plan, so just before the big deed, he pulled out a plastic baggie. You read that right. A Ziploc.
A month or so later, a bunch of us were hanging out on one of the school lawns. None of us wanted to just go home and be bored, so we decided to be bored together. We were talking about how we couldn’t wait for summer when Julie started crying. She leaned forward into the circle.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered.
We sort of fell into her, muffling her cries. I asked her twice if she was sure. It was such a stupid question, but I didn’t want what she was saying to be true. My friend Barbara instead snapped into action. She was always very advanced and finger-snapping efficient with her asymmetrical bob and mod clothes.
“Okay, how much money do you have?” she said.
Julie shrugged.
“Okay,” she said, looking at us all. “How much money do we have?”
Barbara said we needed about $350. That’s what she decided was the going rate for an abortion.
Over the next couple of days, like some very special Magic School Bus episode, we all, a bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, went to our parents to make a bunch of fake requests for money to buy new uniforms or to go on nonexistent field trips. In a couple of days, we got $350. The next hurdle was scheduling the abortion within the confines of the school day. To accomplish this, the lot of us cut class to go to the Planned Parenthood in Pleasanton. There was a lone protester outside. She wasn’t crazy, as far as protesters go, but it was strangely terrifying. She had a sign and was just there, staring at a bunch of teenagers who didn’t want anyone to see us.
Imagine five terrified fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls sitting in a waiting room, hugging our backpacks. There was a basket of condoms on a little side table by the door. As we waited for Julie, I was eyeing those condoms. And sitting in a Planned Parenthood waiting for my friend’s abortion to be over, I was still afraid of what the people working there would think if they saw me taking a condom.
Julie came out and we all hugged her. She didn’t cry, she just wanted to get on with her life. She led the way out the door, walking fast and with her eyes focused forward. I trailed behind, and in one fell swoop I dumped the entire basket of condoms into my bag.
No one called shotgun. We let Julie sit in the passenger seat. As soon as the car doors closed, I opened my bag to show everyone the condoms.
“Everyone take some,” I ordered.
They wouldn’t. Everyone was afraid of getting caught by their parents with condoms.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll hold them. But come to me, okay?”
That’s how it went. I became the condom dispensary, bringing them to school and to parties whenever I got the heads-up. Adults weren’t looking out for us. They assumed that we knew we could get pregnant and wouldn’t risk it by actually having sex. But even when you know better, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do better. That’s a lie parents tell themselves so they don’t have to admit their kids have sex. And they do. They will either live with fear and baggies and abortions, or live with knowledge and condoms.
My dad found my stash, of course, and flipped out.
“They’re for my friends,” I screamed. That didn’t help. I used the “What were you doing snooping in my room?” tactic, which actually worked for once. I think he was terrified.
These days, kids are mostly just honest with adults, which is just weird. I recently met a young woman in a teen empowerment seminar. “I told him I wanted to suck his dick so I sucked his dick,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”
Um, yeah . . . No?
Now, when I try to talk to our boys or I talk to young girls, here’s what I say:
“Are you ready to own your sexuality in a way that you can experience pleasure as well as give it? And be truly grown-up about it?”
But what kids are doing now, the way they process it and act on it, is so different. They would probably read Forever and it would be so pedestrian to them. “What kind of baby-book bullshit is this?”
But I see their “raw honesty” and I raise them.
“If you’re such good friends that you gave him a blow job,” I asked that one girl, “did he eat your pussy?”
“No,” she said, looking at her friends.
“Well, make sure he does that next time.”
“Okay.”
“And then have him eat your ass,” I said, “and see where that goes.”
“Whoa.”
“It’s called reciprocation. Otherwise, it’s a very unequal friendship. And I wouldn’t want that kind of friendship. If you’re gonna do it, then shit, really do it.”
I WANT PEOPLE TO MAKE INFORMED, JOYFUL CHOICES ABOUT SEX. Because I love sex. In the heyday of my twenties and thirties, I loved the variety. Now that I am married, I am in a monogamous relationship. But I used to think monogamy was for suckers who didn’t have options. “Some choose monogamy,” I would say, “but most people have it foisted upon them.”
I just didn’t see the point back then. I did, however, see the point in publicly declaring oneself to be in a monogamous relationship. It was never lost on me that society thinks a woman should be allotted one dick to use and she should be happy with it for the rest of her life. But I always saw sex as something to be enjoyed. Repeatedly. With as many different partners as possible.
In interviews I am often asked what sage advice I have to offer young women. I admit the advice I give in Redbook is different than what I tell people over drinks. There is a gorgeous, perfect, talented young actress who I talked to at a party a few weeks ago.
“Look, you can’t take your pussy with you,” I said. “Use it. Enjoy it. Fuck, fuck, fuc
k, until you run out of dicks. Travel to other countries and have sex. Explore the full range of everything, and feel zero shame. Don’t let society’s narrow scope about what they think you should do with your vagina determine what you do with your vagina.”
As I talked, the look on her face was the slow-clap moment in movies. There was the beginning of the realization that I was really saying this, then the rapturous joy of a huge smile as she knew I meant every word. Enough with teaching people to pretend that sex is only for procreation and only in the missionary position and only upon taking the marital oath. If you’re having consensual sex with another adult, enjoy it.
So repeat after me: I resolve to embrace my sexuality and my freedom to do with my body parts as I see fit. And I will learn about my body so I can take care of it and get the pleasure I deserve. I will share that information with anyone and everyone, and not police the usage of any vagina but my own. So help me Judy Blume.
three
BLACK GIRL BLUES
Here is a secret to talking to teenagers: they open up best when you’re not sitting across the table staring at them. For the past year I have mentored a class of teens around age fourteen. I find they share the most about what’s going on in their lives when we’re taking a walk. Recently, I took them out on a particularly gorgeous, sunny day. As this one boy Marcus got a bit ahead of me, he did this stop-and-start fast walk, like some sort of relay race. He would stop in the shade of a tree, then sprint through the direct sunlight to stand at the next tree.
“What are you doing?” I finally asked.
“I don’t want to get any blacker,” said Marcus.
“You’re literally running from your blackness, Marcus,” I said. “You know? It’s a bit much. I’m not going to win any mentoring awards if you keep this up.”
I checked in on him at lunch—the other secret to getting teenagers to talk is food. He explained that the relay race was all about girls. The girls he considered the hottest in school only liked the guys who look like Nordic princes. And that’s not him.
“You’re perfect,” I said. “Look at my husband. He is not light skinned, and he has not exactly lacked for female attention. So many girls are gonna love you exactly the way you are. I’m not light.”
“You get lighter sometimes,” said Marcus. “I’ve noticed.”
I scoffed. “If you want to stay inside on a soundstage with no windows for months on end,” I said, “you too can look jaundiced. It’s because I work inside.”
“Yeah, well. It’s possible then. So I’m just gonna stay out of the sun.”
This kid I’m supposed to be mentoring had been sold the same ideal I had when I was young. I too went through periods where I stayed in the shade. I was obsessed with putting on sunblock, and in late summer I would insist on showing people my tan lines. “Look, this is my original color,” I would say, proffering my shoulder to a white girl. “Look how light I am.” I was really saying, “I have a chance to get back to that shade, so please excuse my current darkness.”
I learned to apologize for my very skin at an early age. You know how you tell little girls, even at their most awkward stages, “You’re so pretty” or “You’re a princess”? My family played none of those games. The collective consensus was, “Oof, this one.”
I was so thin that I looked like a black daddy longlegs spider with buckteeth. This is not overly earnest, false-humility celebrity speak, I swear. In case I didn’t know that, the world presented a relentless barrage of images and comments making it clear to me and all my peers that most of us would never get within spitting distance of classic beauty. But I thought that at least my parents should think I was cute. When they would gather my sisters and me for a family photo, they would check each face for perfection. There was always a pause when they got to me. “Ah, Nickie, what a personality you have. You are funny.”
In my family, light skin was the standard of beauty. This was true both in my dad’s family, who were all dark-skinned, and my mom’s family, who were very light. My mom was the most beautiful woman in the world to me—and I looked nothing like her.
With my dad, I simply wasn’t his version of pretty. His ideal is very specific: short, light skin, long hair. I checked none of the above. Of my sisters, I looked the most like my father, and I think he wanted no part of that. As for my mother, only now do I understand that she made a decision to never praise my looks because she grew up being told her looks would be enough. They weren’t. Young Theresa Glass was encouraged to build a foundation on the flower of her beauty and simply trust that it would remain in bloom long enough to win the security of a good man. Her thoughts on the books she read voraciously would only spoil the moment. “Shh,” they said. “Just be pretty. When you get a man, talk all you want.”
So my mom was the nineteen-year-old virgin who married the first guy who said he loved her. And by the time she had me, she’d realized that marriage was not the end-all. He didn’t want to hear her thoughts, either. Looks had gotten her no-fucking-where.
I couldn’t lighten my skin to be considered beautiful like her, but I thought that if I fixed my hair, I had more of a fighting chance at being told I was pretty. At age eight, I begged my Afro-loving mother to let me start straightening my hair with relaxer, which some called crainy crack. Twice a month on Saturdays, she begrudgingly took my sisters and me on the hour-long drive from Pleasanton to my cousin’s salon in Stockton for the “taming” of my hair.
My mother had rocked an Angela Davis Afro in the seventies and did not approve of these trips to the salon. Yet she repeatedly caved to our demands that we straighten our hair, a political act of surrender on her part, or simply maternal fatigue. Either way, my desire to be seen and validated by my white peers when it came to my hair had the power to override her beliefs as a mother.
I cut out pictures from magazines to show my cousin what I wanted. If I was the Before, the straight-haired, light-skinned women in these pictures could be my happily ever After. One day when I was twelve, I brought a picture of Troy Beyer, the biracial actress who played Diahann Carroll’s daughter on Dynasty. She was basically Halle Berry before there was Halle. I didn’t even know that she was biracial, and I didn’t know what work went into making her gorgeous straight hair fall so effortlessly around her light-skinned face. I just wanted to be that kind of black girl.
“This is what I want,” I said.
My cousin looked confused, but shrugged and went to work. The deal with relaxer was that it was usually left on for about fifteen minutes to straighten hair. It’s a harsh chemical, and the way I understood it was that no matter how much it itched or burned, the more I could stand it, the better. If fifteen minutes means it’s working, then thirty minutes means I’m closer to glory. At thirty-five minutes I might turn white!
But the other thing with relaxers is that the hairdresser has to rely on you telling them when the chemicals start to burn. So if you’re saying, “I’m good, I’m fine,” they’re all, “Shit, leave it on, then.”
The burn is incredible, let me tell you. You start to squirm around in your seat. You’re chair dancing—because your head feels like it’s on fire. Eventually, you have to give in because you can’t take it anymore. Not this time. In my world, if there were degrees of “good blackness,” the best black girl was light skinned with straight hair and light eyes. I don’t have light eyes and I don’t have light skin, but at least I could get in the game if my hair was straight. No pain, no gain.
This day I was going to break my record. I would withstand any temporary pain to finally be pretty.
“You good?” my cousin said about fifteen minutes in.
I nodded. I wasn’t. It didn’t matter.
A few more minutes went by. I could feel the chemicals searing my scalp. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. I told myself this pain was only temporary. When people at school saw me, I would be so grateful and proud of my strength. Every single minute counted.
“You good?” she s
aid again.
I nodded. Finally, I began to bawl, then weep, then scream. My cousin raced me to the bowl to rinse me out.
“Dammit, why didn’t you tell me?” I ended up with lesions on my scalp where the relaxer gave me chemical burns. I was willing to disfigure myself in order to be deemed “presentable” and “pretty.” To be truly seen. At twelve, I had not been once called pretty. Not by friends, not by my family, and certainly not by boys. My friends all had people checking them out and had their isn’t-that-cute elementary school boyfriends. I was completely and utterly alone and invisible.
What was it like for my mother to sit there for hours upon hours, watching these black girls she wanted to raise to be proud black women become seduced by assimilation? And then to see her child screaming and squirming with open sores on her scalp because she wanted her hair to be as soft and silky as possible. My hair turned out like that of any other black girl with a tight curl pattern who’d gotten their hair relaxed and styled: medium length, slightly bumped under, except with lesions that would later scab.
Even after I was burned, with each trip to my cousin’s salon, I carried with me the hope that this would be the week I was going to look like the pictures. That misguided goal remained unattainable, of course, but I could always tell the difference in the way people treated me when I came fresh from getting my hair done professionally.
“Oh my God, your hair looks so straight.”
“Your hair looks so nice that way!”
Translation: You look prettier the closer you get to white. Keep trying.
If I didn’t have my hair done professionally for school picture day, I didn’t want to give out the prints when they arrived. There are years where my school photo is simply missing from the albums because they were given to me to take home. If I didn’t look within a mile of what I thought of as “okay,” I just didn’t give the photos to my mother. I was not going to give her the opportunity to hand that eight-by-ten glossy to my grandmother so she could frame it next to photos of my cousins who had lighter skin and straight hair.
We're Going to Need More Wine Page 4
