Becoming a Visible Man

Chapter 6 Consummate Presence

147 6 Consummate Presence When I was growing up, there was virtually no discussion within my family about sexuality. My brother and I were taught respect for the autonomous physical space of others, and that our bodies were private and not to be violated. We were left to infer what violation meant. I learned about sexuality from the other children in my neighborhood and from my own body.I learned from gradual experience the difference between exciting,satisfying,gratifying,private,dirty,offensive,wrong, harmful, and hurtful. I learned the difference between lust and love. When I was fourteen, a new family moved into the house next door to mine. I have no recollection of the adults, nor of the family name, but I remember the girl Linda and what her presence did to me and to the other boys in the neighborhood. Linda was sixteen. She went to a private school, so we only saw her coming and going, and we never had much chance to get to know her. No other girl in the neighborhood was like her.She had thick,wavy dark hair that just brushed the top of her shoulders. She had breasts that looked heavy, firm, and round.“Look at those handfuls,” we’d say as she walked from her father’s car to her front door.She ignored us as we moved off the road when her parents drove through our ballgames. We stood aside and stared at her, holding our best rebel poses.“I’ll bet she’s got hair on her pussy,” Craig said once. We were stunned, silent at first. But he had done it: Craig had given us all permission to expose our lust. Whenwecouldn’tgatherenoughboystocomposeopposingteams,we would sprawl beneath the redwood tree in my front yard and talk about what we’d like to do with Linda: “I’ll bet she does it.”“Think she’d do it Green,BecomingFinal.indd 147 3/24/04 2:36:19 PM Becoming a Visible Man 148 with you?”“Sure!”“No way!”“She’d do it with me!”“No way.”“What do you think she looks like when she does it?”“I’ll bet she jiggles great.”“I’d stick mine in her just to see that.”“Yeah.” I suspect we all felt the delicious erotic pulse and vibrancy through our young bodies; but it was all talk,no action. We wanted to see her undressed, and we dared each other to hide in the bushes outside her window, climb up in the branches of the bushy cypress that shielded her bedroom from the sun. I was the one who finally did it. Tommy went with me, but he never climbed up high enough to see in.I saw her in her white slip,white bra,and pale yellow panties. I was terrified that she might see me, so I scrambled down before she turned. “I saw her,” I whispered to Tommy as we ran out of her yard. “Well, does she?” Craig asked later. “Does she have hair on her pussy?” “Yeah,”I said, grinning like a dog.“She does.”I didn’t even know what “pussy” meant. “Damn,” he said.“I wish I’d seen that. How come you get to be the one who sees her?” “‘Cause I’m the one with guts,” I sneered. That I knew well enough. In that time of awakening lust,my boyhood was secure,but awareness was descending on me:as the realities of female adolescence imposed their fate on my developing body, I felt that my dream of attaining manhood would never be realized. My status among the boys in the neighborhood as a leader, as an equal (even occasionally superior) team member, and as a strong arm and strong will, was firmly established. The difficulty for me—and for Craig and Tommy and the other boys—was that as we were growing older our worlds were being populated with many other kids who didn’t understand who I was, didn’t realize that I was the power hitter, that I was the best wide receiver, that I was the superior strategist in battle.These boys from the surrounding neighborhoods made the boys from my neighborhood feel stupid for permitting what they thought was a girl to participate in their sacred rituals and games. My friends weren’t strong enough to stand up to them. In our neighborhood it was business as usual; but in more public space...