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DANGEROUS MEN/Carol Cloos WHEN I LEFT THAT picturesque ignorance we often mistake for innocence, I did so with guides who gave me an education in the sensuous. Yet we avoided the pitfalls that dominate many recent memoirs and headlines and court cases, and I had more than a sexual awakening. Writing a political pamphlet in 1641, John Milton coined the word sensuous as he tried to describe actions that joined the senses with the spirit. He hoped to cast off the aura of carnaUty and the dangers that the word sensual had come to represent, and wrote of the soul's "visible and sensuous colleague the body." Growing up, I encountered the usual risks and temptations. Whatever sexual dangers I experienced—at five, at eleven, at fifteen— left me fortunately unharmed, and I took from them whatever lessons I could. None of these dangers came from the men who loved me and made me aware, during my chUdhood, of the marvelous physicahty and sensuosity of the world. The men who loved me brought me to pleasure and intimacy, but never to harm. They understood the boundaries that some find too fine to perceive. My father was one of these men. He was a smoker, and I enjoyed that fact and was especially.fond of his Ughter, a classic steel Zippo. One October he lost it while harvesting cabbage, so I set out on a search. It was cold and damp after a morning rain, the kind of day when my father wore rubber overalls to the fields. A Zippo would be hard to spot among silvery-green cabbage heads, but four years old and low to the ground, I could easUy scoot up and down the rows, lifting and parting the outer leaves. My hands and arms got cross-hatched with thin red cuts, like the kind you get from paper. After half a dozen rows, I found it. Smooth and cold, its curves soothed my raw hand. Racing to the house, I stumbled and fell. I came into the kitchen wet, breathless, and with a bleeding knee, the Zippo behind my back. My father asked what my secret was, and when I presented it, gave the grin I waited for. "See if it works," I begged. The dampened flints scratched a few times, then sparked alive, and my father smiled and drew me close. The Missouri Review · 40 I nestled in, smelling his skin, his smoke. With my finger, I traced the white scar Unes a summer's farming had left on his sun-browned arms. Such physical affection was common between us, especiaUy if I came along when he visited with other men, in their barns and kitchens and fields, or at the tavern. You know the waiting posture of an idle chUd—one foot kind of crooked or making small, sUding movements. If he sensed I was bored, he'd stroke my head. Or if he was sitting, he'd pat and rub my bottom. With my head close to his pocket, I'd smell his Lucky Strikes. Once in a while he'd stop at the Country Inn to talk with a friend or to find his brother and give him a ride home. If there was time, he'd order a beer. The owner offered to bring me an orange soda "as a present" and I always had to whisper that I preferred ginger ale. My father offered to pay, as though my special request was somehow more expensive. He'd sometimes rub my head. He'd be talking and laughing with the men, and sending me a message: He was glad I was there, it was okay that I didn't like orange, we wouldn't be long. The tavern visits stopped when I got to be school age. I'd wait for my father in the truck and he'd be out in minutes. That age was the break-off point for my male cousins, as weU. Before that, I think we were thought blind to the temptations of alcohol and bar language. At about five or six I began to be allowed to go, perhaps once a week, to the outdoor...

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