In Search of Mary

by Bee Rowlatt

  “Sexuality is like life itself. It’s so multifaceted: there’s no right and wrong. You know San Francisco is the clitoris of the United States? Yes it is, and if you go up to Bernal Hill you’ll be right there. Beth and I did a ceremony up there and pleasured the planetary clitoris: we got down and rubbed it. We take people on ecosexual walking tours and invite them to enjoy nature. The tours are so much fun, and they’re all different. It’s all about what turns people on in nature.”

  She leads me into the room at the back of her house, to a wall chart. Annie points out its divisions: “Ecosexual encounters are divided here into the four elements – fire, water, air, earth. Most people get turned on by water. Standing under water, or straddling the showerhead, getting pummelled – it’s totally ecstatic! Try it out – give yourself permission to be ecosexy. Then there’s lying on the earth, hugging the earth. People who like racing – you know, motorcycles and speedboats? I think they’re into wind: it’s a wind fetish, but maybe they don’t know it yet.”

  I briefly envisage Jeremy Clarkson coming out and self-identifying as an ecosexual. The image is immediately regrettable.

  All of a sudden Annie livens up. “Come on, let’s do it! Shall we do it?” She takes us down some steep stairs to her garden. “OK, I’ve never done an ecosex walking tour of the backyard, but we ought to give it a go. This should revive me.” I lift Will onto my shoulders, and we follow Annie out into her garden. It’s small and pleasant, and the late sun is shining in. Annie soon gets on a roll:

  “If you think of the earth as a lover, the earth is alive: it’s a living and breathing thing. Soil is alive – it’s full of life, and trees move just like us, only very slowly. Here, look at this pouting lily: it’s like a heart of a penis or giant clitoris, and look at this look at this – pollen, seeds – this is the sex organ of the plant, don’t you just want to – oh my God – it smells, now you have to inhale deeply and you can lick it – you can suck this – look at the colour, that yellow penetrates your eye: it’s giving intercourse to your eyes!”

  She really does revive. More and more.

  “You should always ask permission: hello flower – we want to ask the flower, how do we know – but I think this flower loves being admired… feel this… stroke this… go like this: it’s like the most beautiful penis – it’s so sensuous.”

  We’re caressing a lily, then some rocks, then a tree. Annie humps and writhes against the tree.

  “Ecosex is all about the senses: tasting, smelling, touching and listening. Making love in nature is the obvious thing, but try to imagine it as though you’re part of the earth.”

  Will and I both follow her as she shoots off round the garden squeezing things, licking things, pushing fingers into soil, rubbing leaves.

  “Look at that orange – look at that orange with the green – oh my Goddess! I don’t know anything about gardening, but here are some things we can taste.”

  She pulls out some chives and we nibble.

  “But wait—” she commands. “We could just eat it… or you can let it come… come into your body, erotically, roll it in your mouth and let it melt, inhale deeply, feeling it wanting to feed you – and when you die you will feed it back. It’s a conversation: you use your fantasy – it’s using your fantasy muscles and the five senses of your body.”

  She then takes the leaves out of her mouth and spreads them out, semi-chewed, onto her face. “It’s full of life, and now I’m borrowing its skin!”

  “Oops – I think I ate mine too quickly—” I gulp. “Should I have played with it a bit more?”

  “What you put in is what you get out!” she says coquettishly. She gets down and strokes the grass, running her fingers through it. “When I was a little girl I’d eat the roses, and my mum would go crazy. Also smelling burning wood and feeling heat off the campfire, all those things are so good… I’m just learning all this, figuring it out. That’s why on these ecosex walking tours I always learn something new. As a teen I did a lot of psychedelics, and had intense connections with nature. It was the ’60s, you know – everyone did it.”

  This is somewhat beyond the 1960s, though. She’s taking tree-hugging to a new level. “Do you want to be hugged?” she asks a cherry tree as she begins mounting it. “I love you. You’re so BIG. We can put our bodies together. Look at it: look at the joins between the branches – that looks like a vagina – you might find a little anus: it’s silvery smooth. If you’re into penises – and I like penises – you can see this as a big hard phallus. They’re so alive – we forget that we take nature so much for granted. Look at the colour of this flower: it’s like the inside of the vagina, and it’s so soft…” She puts on her glasses for a closer look. Will comes and puts his face to the flowers too. With each new flower and leaf she shows, he laughs with his mouth wide open. It’s his open-headed smile, like a muppet. And there’s no stopping Annie now.

  “This is our corpse flower,” she says. “The Victorians thought these flowers were too erotic to look at. And when it bloomed it stank of flesh: it was too much for them; it was considered too arousing. Look at all these blushing flowers, and these juicy nubs.”

  We go back onto Annie’s terrace. “OK, so if you open yourself up and you bend your knees, you can breathe it all in…”

  I obediently bend my knees and reach my arms upwards, while Will sits on the floor nearby, watching us with an encouraging smile. Annie starts to pant, reaching out her arms as if to embrace the sunshine, and then moans between pants.

  “You can get high just breathing in; it’s very ecstatic and orgasmic – it’s kind of an ecogasm: you feel that energy of the earth coming up, and your energy going out… it’s like the earth is having sex all the time – nature is totally in reproductive mode – everywhere there’s fucking and reproduction going on – and death and birth and sex everywhere. It’s everywhere…”

  I clear my throat and breathe as loudly as possible. We are reaching peak Annie-mation. She pants more, slower and deeper, and lets out small screams:

  “So, it’s like saying yes… YES… YES! I’m feeling the electricity of the life force. That’s ecosex: letting that into your body. Giving it out and bringing it in… It’s feminism, but it’s for everything, not just women or men, it’s all about loving the universe more – I don’t know – I haven’t figured it all out yet.” She releases her arms back down and shakes her hair. “But the best is yet to come!”

  She sighs, smiling. I laugh: “Annie, I came here to argue with the Second Wave, and I end up being seduced by the Third Wave.”

  “Oh, I love waves.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “You know you can be butt-fucked by the ocean? It’s so great, you get down in the water and stick up your behind like this – and it’s just the size. Size really matters, when it comes to waves. And the waves come up and slap you and push you and roll you around…”

  As she talks I’m thinking that Annie Sprinkle is everything that any kind of activist movement needs: she is funny and sexy. The ditz, the orgasmic display – and throughout the whole show Annie appears to be completely unselfconscious. I can’t help but wonder if she’s aware what irresistible PR this is. Is it all for real?

  But then there’s nothing less phony than the next thing Annie says. I tease her gently about finishing off the cookies before she starts the dieting class tonight. She pauses, and in a more detached, dreamy voice, she muses:

  “You know what, I’ve done all the taboos. But there’s still one big taboo left. Way more than prostitution, porn, fisting, golden showers or my Public Cervix Announcement. Masturbation rituals, sex in the dirt with Beth: I’ve done all of that – but the biggest taboo is this: you can’t be chubby or old.” She looks down. “I’m just a chubby old woman. And that is society’s greatest taboo, if you’re a woman. This is what you are not allowed to be. I know this is true, because when I was young and I saw fat or old women I was very judgemental. I can show my pussy to forty thousand people, but I’m ashamed of my belly. I
have shame about my belly. I try not to be ashamed, but I am.”

  She is for real.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Unopened Chapter of Death

  Will and I finally take our leave of the real Annie Sprinkle, hug goodbye and set off. We walk a long way to let it all soak in, to let the glowing magic last. Up the hill we roam, and all the way back down. I smile knowingly at a couple of perfectly innocent trees. But eventually the walking brings us back to earth; back down to the concrete pavement. And as the day fades, a shadow enters my mind. Annie Sprinkle may well be an ambassador for tolerance and fun, but what about the other end of the scale?

  We’ve had sexy frolics in Annie’s pouting, glowing garden, but the shadow slowly falling over us is the returning thought of people in a less enlightened place. Not everyone gets to live in San Francisco or Norway. My day with Lucy and her mums comes to mind; Gloria’s mouldy walls and the bitter hopelessness of that train ride home. Ecosexuality is riotous excellence, but how and where can it connect to Gloria? Will it be useful to people like her any time soon?

  We spot a small diner and go inside. It’s pretty hard work having an ecogasm, and I’m starving. I’ve always longed to order “eggs over easy”, and I confidently do so, despite not knowing what it means. When the food arrives, Will’s order beats mine hands down. We gasp – I’m jealous. Right before Will’s wide eyes is a pancake mouse face, with chocolate eyes and nose, topped with whiskers of crispy bacon. We’re still laughing about it, pulling mouse faces and nibbling the bacon whiskers when I hear something frightening, jarring.

  It’s a nearby woman, and she seems to be crying. There’s a small girl with her, who looks around in fear. The woman scrambles to stand up, and it’s clear that she’s pregnant. She clutches at her abdomen and lets out the same noise. I jump up at the same time that the waiter rushes over. Through the sudden shouting and phone calls, the waiter waves everyone away, placing a protective arm around the woman’s back as she cries. A car pulls up outside, and she and the girl get in. The woman’s eyes have the shine of terror.

  It’s over so quickly. The remaining diner customers look at each other and make forlorn remarks about how we hope she’s OK and “Oh, that poor little girl”. The woman was pregnant, but it didn’t look like she was full term. Was she losing the baby? Was that the sound of a death, coming strangled from her mouth? They have gone, and everyone has settled down again. Will carries on eating the bacon whiskers, but I’m not hungry. I lift and circle him in my arms, self-medicating. I smell his pancakey neck and kiss his face too many times.

  After we leave, the subsequent hours are filled with growing shame at my lack of usefulness. What if she’s too poor for hospital? What if she’s not legal and can’t get medical help? Why didn’t I try to get her name? The sounds she made echo on in my ears, and when Will is in his cot asleep, the thoughts roam wider. That animal cry of pain reverberates on, and I wish with all my heart that I could find her. The procession of humanity condenses in such sounds. Even here in Silicon Valley, the very pinnacle of development, a woman is still in mortal danger on the whim of nature.

  I see Mary Shelley, sitting on a pile of ice as she bleeds, and then Wollstonecraft herself, in her own closing chapter. Suddenly, crashing in on me like a bursting dam, is the scene from Godwin’s biography that I half-read years ago. I fled the pages, distraught, and have never once dared to return. Even though it’s right here with me always, because his biography is the second half of my treasured edition of Letters from Norway. It’s the scene of the death of Mary Wollstonecraft.

  Can I bear it? It’s not only that I’m being a chicken – although that’s certainly a factor. It’s that the whole effort, the point and the meaning of all this travelling and writing – it has all been about bringing her to life. Resurrecting her. So at what point must I look deep into her slow and untimely annihilation? What possible good can it bring? Can’t I pretend it didn’t happen and only stay in the warm places, the vivid moments, the true sound of her living voice?

  I know there is no good in it, but despite myself I look anyway. Holding the book, my dearest old battered book with the smooth and neglected death section, unwanted, close to the end, I turn to these dreaded back pages, brace myself and look inside. The spine isn’t even cracked. No aging notes, scraps or bookmarks fall out of this part. The text itself appears smaller, and the language more dusty since all my supersized Californian capering, but oh, it’s good to be back with her. Even here.

  Wollstonecraft has done Paris, done Norway, returned to London and been finally rejected by Imlay. She has tried to die once more, continued with her writing and publishing, and embarked on a love affair with the radical philosopher William Godwin. This last is the most golden, but also the shortest episode in her story. Theirs is a “friendship melting into love”. Their letters are tender, and the relationship is one of equals.

  Godwin is kind: he brings thoughtful gifts to young Frances, and he thinks the world of Wollstonecraft and her “unvanquishable greatness of soul”. They become an item, to the dismay of London society. Only when she gets pregnant do they cave in and get married, to protect their unborn child from the social fury their unconventionality provokes. They marry in St Pancras Old Church, where, a few short months later, she will be buried.

  The “last fatal scene of her life” cannot be better conveyed than by William Godwin’s own words. Neither is his account matched anywhere as a blueprint for how Revolutionary Man can get it so perfectly right, in the ultimate moment of domesticity.

  Now heavily pregnant with the author of Frankenstein, she “was taken into labour on Wednesday the thirtieth of August”. Being Wollstonecraft, she will of course have none of the customary medics and attendant fuss. She only wants a midwife and is cheerfully sending off notes here and there throughout the day, as her pains get stronger.

  About two o’clock in the afternoon, she went up to her chamber – never more to descend.

  The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. … I was sitting in a parlour, and it was not until after two o’clock on Thursday morning that I received the alarming intelligence that the placenta was not yet removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for Dr Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was mistaken.

  The period from the birth of the child till about eight o’clock the next morning was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was considerable, and produced and almost uninterrupted series of fainting fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning and found her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday that she should have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave me …

  What had passed however in the night between Wednesday and Thursday had so far alarmed me that I did not quit the house, and scarcely the chamber, during the following day. But my alarms wore off as time advanced. Appearances were more favourable than the exhausted state of the patient would almost have permitted me to expect …

  Saturday was a day less auspicious than Friday, but not absolutely alarming.

  Sunday, the third of September, I now regard as the day that finally decided on the fate of the object dearest to my heart that the universe contained. Encouraged by what I considered as the progress of her recovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one of them as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner time. On my return, I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that she had had a sort of shivering fit and had expressed some anxiety at the length of my absence… I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonably absent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault.

/>   In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of which were in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled, the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued probably for five minutes.

  And so it continues. On Monday they call more doctors in. On Tuesday they discuss operating.

  Wednesday was to me the day of greatest torture in the melancholy series. It was now decided that the only chance of supporting her through what she had to suffer was by supplying her rather freely with wine…

  …About ten o’clock on Thursday evening, Mr Carlisle told us to prepare ourselves, for we had reason to expect the fatal event every moment… She did not die on Thursday night.

  Good God, how long – how long can this carry on?

  She was affectionate and compliant to the last. I observed on Friday and Saturday nights that, whenever her attendants commended her to sleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhaps for the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, though the effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual…

  … On Saturday morning, I talked to her for a good while of the two children. In conformity with Mr Carlisle’s maxim of not impressing the idea of death, I was obliged to manage my expressions. I therefore affected to proceed wholly upon the ground of her having been very ill, and that it would be some time before she could expect to be well, wishing her to tell me anything that she would choose to have done respecting the children, as they would now be principally under my care. After having repeated this idea to her in a great variety of forms, she at length said, with a significant tone of voice: “I know what you are thinking of,” but added that she had nothing to communicate to me upon the subject…

  At six o’clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr Carlisle called me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the intelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes before eight…