by Michael Lund
I believe I'm not ugly because boys, after all, have asked me out. And Randy's interest in me, despite the animal element, reassures me to some degree. But I can't decide whether I'm above-average looking, in some sense pretty, by any stretch of the imagination sexy.
The first thing I've concluded is that I don't have especially large breasts. But the halter accents that area, or so I believe, making what I have seem larger than it is. However, I'm thinking this from within my body, not as an observer viewing me from a point outside myself. Randy becomes that observer.
When he doesn't hear an answer to his call at the front door, Randy steps cautiously into the living room and peers around the edge of the doorway into the dining room. And when he sees me, his jaw drops and he sucks in air.
Because my mother is pointing to the music in front of me, I am not looking directly at Randy, who appears on my left. Instead, I catch his reflection in the mirror above the breakfront to my right and look up to see him there.
I've just taken a deep breath to sustain a consistent tone and to continue smoothly through the melodic line. The tightening of my stomach muscles to propel air through that embouchure has caused my pedal pushers to drop down several inches below my navel. And with the halter top above, fully eight inches of firm, muscular tummy is exposed to an adolescent male's view. It's a tummy that's naturally flat, but playing the flute has hardened it just as it's developed my embouchure.
That tummy is exposed to my view, too, in the mirror above the breakfront. I see, in fact, myself and, on the other side of me, Randy's gaping boy's face and my erect woman's form. I am as starstruck as he is. Look at that beautiful bare midriff!
6
What models did I have to judge the quality of my erect form with its slender middle? Well, I'd seen other girls' bodies, even Sally Winchester's, in the locker room after gym class. But you can't stare in those situations, and your peers don't freeze so that you can evaluate posture, size, firmness.
This, then, was a question I began to ask myself that summer in relation to the Miss Route 66 Pageant, and one I'm still asking: where do our ideas of beauty come from? I know that one fundamental element of my definition has always included wholeness: whatever has beauty is complete in itself.
Now, I don't mean this simply in a physical sense, whole bodies or complete structures, because a person who's lost a leg can be both beautiful and heroic. I mean it more in the sense that the idea of a thing is carried through to a clear fulfillment. I'm a foe of arrested development, opposed to a compromise mentality, turned off by limited aspirations.
For that reason, by the way, my Mom never should have used the neighborhood pear trees in her birds and bees talk. It may have inspired an inappropriate narrowing in my vision of certain things.
Those pears had, as I've said, so little real value until their one moment of ripeness, that day in the fall when they stood between extended tart hardness and soft, sweet rotting. That's when they had, to me, beauty. And my mother's explanation of sex and pregnancy led me to think those early stages were to be endured only because of the adult person they eventually produced. So sessions with Randy were not expected to include pleasure, to contain beauty.
I will tell you something else: Sally Winchester (who, incidentally, was far from pear-shaped) was not complete. I didn't know what she was missing at the moment I saw myself reflected in the dining room of my own house on Oak Street in the summer before my senior year of high school. But I felt in my bones there was something not right about her. And I was, it turns out, right!
You wouldn't have seen it--none of us saw it--in her baton twirling routines performed in the front of every parade, at so many football games, in countless talent contests in Fairfield and beyond. Her moving baton was a seamless blur or a precise and regular accent to her prancing step. When she threw it spinning high above her while marching, it returned to her grip and its continued rotation like a yo-yo on a string.
Her outfit was traditional--the short skirt, the tight top, the tasseled boots--and the performance was standard. But she made no errors, and each element had more speed, height, and dexterity than anything Fairfield had ever seen.
Still, there was something missing, something wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it then. It came clear only when she was a finalist at the Miss Route 66 Pageant that next winter.
In those summer months of practicing the flute and estranging the boyfriend, I wasn't yet thinking that Sally had discernible flaws that could be her undoing in the Miss Route 66 competition. My more immediate object was ascertaining my own form, my own beauty. For that I used one of the few measures my contemporaries knew: the Sears catalog. (We had movie stars, of course, but in those days, they were required to keep their clothes on rather than take them off. So, what beauty was, exclusive of clothes, was less easy to determine.)
"Look at this!" Sandy said with exasperation one weeknight that summer (when Randy believed I was baby-sitting). We held the summer edition of the Sears catalog open on her bed. "Did you ever have any panties that fit like this? They look like they're painted on."
It's true--there's not a single wrinkle in any of the undergarments worn by the models we see. Yes, the women all stand stiffly, frozen like the mannequins on display in downtown stores. So I agree with Sandy that this can't be real life, where things ride up, wad, stretch and sag.
"What I want to know about is shape," I say. "Are these women all 36-24-36?" I refer, of course, to the ideal hourglass figure of our age, which I know I do not possess. Nor does Sandy.
"They say that's what Sally is," Sandy asserts. "I wish I was."
Sandy is what we called in those days "chubby." She's not really "fat" or "overweight" even, but there's always been just a bit more flesh in every part than society proposes as perfect. While she rightfully resents the automatic judgment others impose on her form, she at least enjoys the outgoing personality and cheerful disposition that's supposed to come with this body type.
"I'm too thin," I lament, thinking primarily of my breasts. "I never put on weight, and now I'm nearly five eight."
Being tall was a disadvantage in those days, as boys didn't want to go out with anyone nearly as tall as or taller than they were. And there was far less prestige attached to those girls' sports where height was an advantage. So I worried that I was growing out of all the chances I knew about to achieve happiness.
"Stand up," Sandy says. "Let me see how you look in your underwear."
I'm a little hesitant about this. While girls see each other dressing and undressing at, say, slumber parties, there's a basic shyness that controls those situations.
"Right here? Now?"
"Yes. I'll do it too."
Within minutes both of us are standing in bras and panties, looking down at the Sears catalog models, up at our images in the mirror, across at each other.
Not only are the Sears' women's undergarments all a perfect fit, their skins are without blemish, no hair is out of place, the looks on their faces show no embarrassment.
This must be beauty, I think. Composure, composed, composition. Everything has a place and is in its place. Each part a model length and width, the whole an ideal arrangement.
When the phone in the hall rings, the two of us who do not believe we possess beauty and have no clothes on, jump.
The telephone rests on a thin table outside Sandy's parents' room, just across the hall from us. The Johnson house resembles the Bells', as there are only three basic floor plans in our entire neighborhood. Because she's an only child, her parents didn't add a bedroom upstairs or in the basement, as many others did, to accommodate a growing family. So Sandy's room is on the main floor.
"Hello." We can hear her mother answering through the door. And then she calls, "Sandy, it's for you."
Sandy scrambles into her slacks and blouse, while I lie giggling on the bed.
In another moment, though, I have to dress in a hurry also, as Sandy calls to me: "Susan, telephone."
"Susan? Hi, this is Larry. You know, Larry Thornton."
"Oh, yes. Larry. How are you?"
I raise my eyes to Sandy, turning up a palm as a question: why is he calling me; why is he calling me here?
It takes him awhile to get to it, but he's kind of asking me over. And now my eyes narrow at Sandy. I suspect she's set me up for this, inviting me to her house and telling him to call.
"So you can come over Saturday and fill out the questionnaire?" he asks.
"Well, yes, I guess I can," I concede, frowning at Sandy.
"It will only take about ten minutes. But I'll have to show you my experiment first."
Larry's entering the science fair again, a perennial effort. He's never won first prize, but his cartography exhibit had earned honorable mention last year. He'd produced a series of maps of Fairfield based on historical records down at the courthouse.
"What's your subject this year, Larry?" I ask politely--and then wish I hadn't.
"Worms."
7
Going to Larry's wouldn't, I decided, be that hard, so long as Randy didn't find out about it. Even if he did, I could maintain it wasn't really a date. Or, better yet, I could make it another step away from Randy and toward going out with other boys. Hmm, then again, I might see Larry's older brother Paul!
It appeared at first, however, that the visit would do more to teach me about worms and dirt than alter my romantic landscape.
I suppose I should have been more tolerant of Larry's enthusiasm for earthworms, as I'd begun to be a fanatic myself about the flute. My mother at first tried to slow me down in my effort to master a complex musical instrument as quickly as possible. But I impressed her with steady application. She didn't know (or let on she knew) that I had ulterior motives in this enterprise.
Because breathing is crucial in playing any wind instrument, and because I had connected the depth and quality of my tone with powerful lips and a firm (sexy!) tummy, I was willing to endure the repetitive drills and monotonous exercises that establish the foundation for more sophisticated performance.
At first Mom would show me what to do, then leave me to practice alone so that she could return to housework. But early in the summer, she found she was enjoying playing so much herself that our practice sessions together got longer and longer. In fact, some things that happened later that year suggested that her mouth and belly were firming up as well!
My knowledge of the instrument itself also developed while I learned to play music. I had once assumed the flute was a single piece, just a pipe with holes drilled in it like a reed played in ancient times. But I learned that, in addition to the three main pieces, there are keys, rods, posts, adjustment screws, tone holes--all fitted together with microscopic precision.
Holding the flute is something one needs to practice, developing the body and the instrument into a single unit. Arm strength, stance, flexibility and power in the fingers must develop so that you can perform for any length of time. And then the mental aspect of it all must be acknowledged, a concept of the musical composition--melody, key, tempo, variation--guiding the physical operation. I had only begun, I realize now, a life's work of understanding.
At the time I stopped by Larry's house to see his science experiment, then, I should have had more respect for the similarly complex operation he was studying and the lengthy project he had completed.
"See the castings?" Larry asked, pointing at one of the six wooden trays he had stretched across saw horses in his basement. "This is what comes out of an earthworm. They contain partially digested material that enriches the soil. I measure the amount produced per cubic foot of soil per week."
"You're weighing. . . " I didn't know if the word for "waste" coming from a worm was the four-letter one a "sweet" girl like me wouldn't have used in public.
"The muscles of an earthworm are fascinating," he went on, ignoring my failure to finish. "There are circular muscles, which squeeze the body to make it longer, and another layer of longitudinal muscles, which contract the body's length."
"Uh-huh." I studied Larry while he talked. Actually, he was not bad looking, but the serious air he had about things had prevented me from checking him out in the past. I did it now with at least modest curiosity. Hmm, slim build, flat tummy, mature face. I bet his older brother is even better-looking!
"That's how they move, see. Stretching and contracting, pulling and pushing. Their burrowing through the ground lets air and water in."
"Yeah, well, I guess that's good. They're finding more food."
"It's the way their existence provides food for us that's fascinating," he corrected me. "More air and water in the soil is good for plants. So is the partially digested material they leave behind. Organic matter."
Larry pulled a big worm out of a tray, and it curled over his finger and reached for something to dig into.
"How big do those things get?"
"Most of the adults are about ten inches long, less than one-half inch in diameter. But these well-fed monsters get as big around as my middle finger and can be over a foot in length. Just what fishermen want!"
I looked at the worm, a large slimy thing. And then I looked up to Larry's face as he regarded it. Wait a minute. He's smiling. At his project, or at me?
"So, OK, what do I need to do?"
"Oh, well, that has to do with reproduction."
"Reproduction?" It had never occurred to me to wonder how adult worms make baby worms. Neighborhood lore had it that, if you cut one in two, both halves survived, making two worms. Was that what Larry was talking about?
"See, most people don't know much about worms, how they live, what they contribute to farming, how they reproduce. So one part of my exhibit will reflect public ignorance of worms, which I'm documenting through a questionnaire."
"So I'm one of the dummies who don't appreciate worms?"
"Oh, I don't know, Susan. I thought you might be an exception. Someone who does know and appreciate them."
Again, I sense a smile playing around his eyes. Is he putting me on about this whole deal?
He gives me the questionnaire, four pages, but all I have to do is, with a number 2 pencil, fill in the circle next to what I think is the correct answer. It doesn't take me long to realize I know very little about worms.
I do have to admire Larry's thoroughness in this whole endeavor, not only quantifying elements of earthworm life but providing a context for the knowledge he produces.
After I give him back the form (and it didn't take more than ten minutes), I ask some questions. I soon learn a heck of a lot more about worm sex than I ever thought I'd want to know!
Earthworms are both sexes, each having two pairs of male organs and one pair of female organs. They mate with their bodies together, facing opposite directions. A mucus is secreted, covering the rear portions of each worm with slime. Sperm travels through the slime. Ugh!--this is worse than my Mom's birds and bees and pears!
Later, a mucous ring slides forward over the worm's body, gathering several eggs and sperm along with it, and fertilization takes place inside that gunk. In two or three weeks, one or two worms hatch from a capsule formed by the mucous ring.
"The new worm starts eating its way through the ground, leaving castings," Larry concludes. "And the whole process starts again. Aren't they great?"
"What do the worms eat, anyway?"
"Anything that's in the ground. Say you're a worm living under a pear tree. You know the ones in your back yard?"
I do, of course. But I wonder how he knows about them.
"In, oh, October, November, they ripen, rot, fall to the ground."
"Yeah, the wasps and yellow jackets are all over them."
"Well, they eat some, and birds do. What's left of the pairs decays and decomposes, becomes part of Mother Earth. And through Mother Earth goe
s the earthworm, eating old pear stuff and leaving castings, opening the soil for air and moisture, fertilizing it so new pear trees can grow, blossom, bear fruit. It's a cycle."
He puts the worm he's been passing from hand to hand back into the tray. It scrambles (if a worm can "scramble"?) to get back underground. I look up at Larry, obviously enraptured by his project, the science of castings.
Suddenly, Larry's giant worm reminds me of Randy's "mouth organ." These boys want me to pay attention to their pet projects. I think, instead, of my flute, its clean lines and sweet tone. I recall my slender self in the mirror of my dining room, the instrument held straight out, my belly tight. Boys, I conclude--they can wait.
8
Boys can wait, but what about men?
