One of the houses we lived in when I was a kid backed onto a cemetery, and because it was right there and because it was away from the house, quiet and interesting (the details on the stones, the weeping concrete angels, one monument shaped and inscribed like an open book…) we spent a lot of time there, or at least I did. Once, although I only know this from my mom, I came home from the place (my brother, younger sister, and I had discovered the spot where all the funereal detritus was left) with a large horse-shoe shaped wreath around my neck with a satin banner reading ‘Mother’ on it. What would Freud say? This was at an age when I walked home from school every day stepping on all the cracks, only to arrive and find my nemesis, my primary care-giver upon whom I entirely relied, in perfect condition (‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back’). Sigh.
I loved that cemetery. It was heavily sloped, it had nooks and crannies, it was big and seemed very old to my five and six-year-old self; it had interesting little steps in surprising places that felt like they were a secret, crooked stone staircases to levels yet to be explored. There was a huge hemlock not far from where our woods backed onto the cemetery where in summer I would play in the shade. It was perfect. I still love cemeteries, which are often on prime real estate, and yes, what a waste, I sure won’t be buried in one, but – landscaping and quiet in combination, oases of order and serenity even in a rural community like mine – what’s not to love?
My paternal grandmother’s family has a sweet rural cemetery in which my gram, her husband, parents and others are buried, on land given to the local church sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. I used to stop there, let my dog or dogs out – depending on the year – to frolic and play prior to the drive back to New York City. Sometimes, depending on the weather, and whether or not and when my parental unit were expecting me, I’d stop on the way there. Once I did this, visiting my grandparents’ graves, after a stop to gas up on Route 17 outside Monticello, New York. I remember leaning over to scrape the moss and lichen on the gravestones of my gram and gramps, and then, gathering up the pup, we were on our way again. During the visit, I realized I had left my one credit card either at the gas station or – I wasn’t sure. I’d made that quick dog and gravestone stop at Beaverkill, but – surely, I hadn’t had the credit card out at that point? Well, no – but – stopping to make sure on my way back several days later, I found the card in the grass, face up and forward right by my grandmother’s stone (how had I missed that? probably by looking for the dog). As she and I shared a name, the tableau made me laugh – but no one else had seen it, and pre-cell-phone, there is no photo to memorialize my grandmother’s ghost’s Amex card usage – or whatever scenario would have popped into a finder’s mind. Was it around Halloween? I can’t remember, but let’s say it was, for shits and giggles.
I don’t think playing in a cemetery made me a different child, yet I very well recall the many children among the dead; their memorial stones were different, not scary but profound, impressing upon me that children, children my age and younger, die, and that one-hundred years ago and more they died with frequency. During the recent pandemic I wondered if, in the madness of that time, a reminder of the ravages of polio, or the Spanish flu, might’ve come in handy. Modern medicine is a marvel we take for granted. My great-uncle Fred died at age eighteen before antibiotics were available, all because of a cut on his face that became septic. My pal Donna tells me about lining up three times for polio vaccines of different kinds, as the science changed. They were so glad to do it, she said, relieved and totally willing. They all knew kids and adults who had died, or were crippled for life.
On a whole other note, I do not recommend having sex in a graveyard, which indeed I have done. Too many mosquitos flying about, the gravestones are rough on the back and other tender parts, and while it’s private and secluded (usually) it’s just not very comfy. Chatting up my future partner of three plus years in a cemetery is (flashing forward two decades from that incidence of cemetery sex), however, a memory I shall always cherish. That particular graveyard is in a spot so beautiful and remote, with views that are – even for the Catskills – beyond stunning, what a wonderful place to meet and flirt in: highly recommend.
I don’t find cemeteries sad, although funeral services are, and individual markers in graveyards can be. Returning for a walk through the graveyard I played in as a child several years ago, I unexpectedly stumbled across a gravestone for a boy I knew in high school, although he was several grades below myself and my peers. I had forgotten he was dead, and was startled with the reminder, and how very young he was. Getting out of his car to help a woman with a flat tire, he was struck and killed on the side of the road by a tractor trailer. There was a framed photo on the stone, and I stood and wept for the loss, for his family and friends, for his older brother who was a classmate of mine, who was also dead by then – of cancer and the complications of alcoholism, grief and self-neglect. But much more often I see these peaceful oases as, simply, places of rest, final rest. My dad was so ready to let go the shackles of mortal life, and the older I get, yes, I see that. So many losses, so much turmoil and pain, so much love, so many memories good and bad and everything in-between, and the inevitable losses brought by aging of our once strong bodies, minds, and even of our purpose. And a new world, struggling to be born, shaking the foundations of the old, breaking them – and us – into pieces. Shakes had it about right, eh, although poor, confused, spoiled and over-thinking Hamlet was very young – would he be diagnosed as bi-polar in modern times, seeing ghosts and talking to skulls while watching less fortunate men digging in the dirt?
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.’
I started this project – The First Time – in hopes of eliciting women’s narratives, women’s stories, to highlight the other side of the coin of the never-ending, head-banging litany of men, men, men (and teenaged boys) and their limited point of view on their first experiences of sex. Men have been controlling too many slices of human life, including dominating the subject of how, where, when, why humans experience their initiation into sexual intimacy. To date, only five stories including my own have been told and recorded here. I know there are at least two other women out there working on their tales, and I also realize there’s a reason why women don’t tell, don’t write, don’t want to participate in this project, or are reluctant to, and that is because because women’s first sexual encounters are often coercive, violent, the result of a secret bet made by male peers only discovered later, or otherwise abusive and just plain fucking ugly. Not, in other words, fun, and very often a source of shame, pain, and regret. Who TF wants to remember, let alone tell that fucking nightmare of a tale? Well, I do, and I believe women and girls need to, need to tell, to write, and to share these stories – because when we don’t tell them, we are alone, and alone is not good, not in this, or in any area historically darkened by shame, and misogyny.
So. A plea. To set aside fear and embarrassment and humiliation and shame and whatever else the concern is and write, write it out, get it out. This week I shared over lunch the particular vomitous-ness that is my tale of being assaulted by two (married with children) men who only days before were my teachers in high school. What an idiot I was as a teenager, but – was I? Was I really an idiot? Isn’t it more correct to say what fucking predatory pieces of shit they were? Yup. Why did or does trusting them – one was also a member of my church – make me an idiot? Weren’t they the actual idiots, thinking for even one second that I was either interested or open to their advances, thinking too that they were safe and untouchable in the small-town scheme of things, which (fucking hell) turned out to be (mostly) true; I think they might be ashamed of themselves but…I’m also resigned to the fact that they may not reflect upon past misdeeds at all. Still. Risking so much for what? A bit of teenaged pussy? Fucking assholes. Fucking pieces of shit. Fucking entitled idiots. And, teenaged girls are entitled to be young and dumb; teenaged girls are entitled to be alone in spaces, to get in a car or drive someone else home, to walk through all the places public and private that exist without being assaulted, groped, harassed, stalked, cat-called. Teenaged girls and women deserve to occupy and occupy fully any and all spaces – including the space of adolescent risk taking – without fear, including fear of death. Teenaged girls and women deserve the right to trust, to safety – and to make mistakes without dire or life-altering consequence.
Staying in the shadows helps no one. Silence aids the perpetrators; they count on it, the silence of women and girls, of children of both sexes. And, even if the first time for you wasn’t traumatic, just messy and embarrassing, that too needs telling, that too is relatable, powerful, moving, valuable. Sex – grunting and groaning and slipping and sliding – is hilarious, ridiculous, sublime, anxiety-producing, glorious. Telling your truth, sharing the story of what happened in your own life, is healing, is helping, is capable of breaking hearts open, and knitting others up – all of which we need in this increasingly on-line world, one that lacks empathy (or seems to) for others.
My mother was addicted to romance novels, which I read quite a few of as a kid because they were there and I was a reader, which I still am. For at least fifteen years she received a box of skinny-ass novels (twenty at a time) in the mail, addressed to me. To me. This went on until my late twenties, when I finally demanded that she stop this nonsense, saying Mom, if you’re embarrassed about getting a box from Harlequin or Boons and Mills, that’s your lookout, not mine. She didn’t want the post master locally to judge her, but she was fine with him judging me, and why wouldn’t she be? I was her shadow. All that to get to the fact that each and every one of these asinine stories had a virgin who was instantly multi-orgasmic, instantly able – and willing – to give amazing head (though they never mention swallowing!), and instantly bonded to the hunk in question, for life. This is not how it goes in the real world, not even close. It’s cotton candy for the brain, and perfectly fine reading if you’re into that, but not even close to reality. These bullshit stories, however, dominate in the world, in our culture, in our conservative and even not so conservative religions, in our families, and all too often in our minds. I also believe they provide relief of a kind to those whose personal experience of sex for the first time was anything but rosy, bonding, and instantly orgasmic. Reality is not cotton candy – it’s a healthy meal made fresh with all food groups included! Women and girls need more of that kind of brain food, dahlinks.
Sex is fun, and girls and women get to enjoy it, including with multiple or same sex or whatever combination of partners you can think of. And, orgasms – unless you’re very lucky – don’t happen instantly, especially if there is any history of abuse or even ‘just’ body-shaming. Sex is one of if not the most powerful drivers of human behavior we crazy-ass humans have; it is too often twisted and exploited. Another goal of this project is to light up our perspective – women and girls’ points of view and experiences – to change that, to throw a little needed light on the subject because many men, too fucking many men, simply don’t get it, or care. They’ve bought the idea, the male-created and male-centered myth and narrative of male dominance, of predatory behavior being biologically defensible, natural even, which it most certainly is not. Safe in their enclaves of male privilege, they don’t fucking care; when I look at photos of sporting events in the middle east – which are all male on the field and in the stands – I get so angry I have to force myself to take deep breaths. Predatory behavior in men is learned, encouraged by sexist cultures and blatant misogyny; it is also often excused and ignored, but one thing it ain’t is natural.
Y’wanna see behavioral change? Change the dominant story, the myths, the patriarchal narratives, the founding and foundational tale of how and where and when – bringing the matriarchal and female point of view into every space and aspect of human life and behavior. And, if you’ll join us, do so by sharing your tale or tales of joy or woe, bringing light and air and truth to the subject of sex, sexuality and intimacy for women and girls. Because, it matters. It really matters. One story at a time.
Re; our (latest) Speaker of the House: yay. Yay? Because, not only does this extremely conservative pod caster and constitutional lawyer oppose abortion, gay marriage, and the separation of church and state, he also denies the 2020 election result, still. Yay? I’m glad we have a speaker, because the house of representatives has a lot of business to get to, but – FFS. This guy? He looks the part (middle-aged white guy in a suit, and card-carrying conservative Christian) but for all his smooth looks and reasonable seeming niceness – no. Please, no. And – he’s what we’ve got. It’s been a three-week shit-show brought to us by the GOP, and I expect the shit-show isn’t entirely over – but for now, for at least seventy-two hours, maybe a week, or whenever the government needs to be funded again, we’ll at least be free of endless speaker speculation, conference and floor votes and the concomitant failure of anyone but this guy to win enough of his own party conference which is in the majority (basically the equivalent of your family refusing to vote for you), and more bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Knowing that he got into the Speaker’s chair because he’s a MAGA maggot is not comforting. H wants to end Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, wants a federal ban on abortion, an end to WIC and other programs that benefit women and children living in poverty (because that’s pro-life, right? not to mention that his state, Louisiana, is among the worst regarding rates of women and children living in poverty). I could go on. This guy?
In 2024, I predict and will be working toward a Blue Wave, putting the people’s house back in the hands of those who don’t traffic in bullshit and performative governance, which is not governance at all. Appearing on Fox News doesn’t not pass legislation that will help the American People. Hakeem Jeffries will make a terrific Speaker, and I for one can’t wait.
And – just yesterday – one more in an endless stream of mass shootings (I believe, but don’t quote me as it might be a larger number, that we average at least two per day?) this time in Lewiston, Maine. Yet another white male was able to get lots and lots of ammo and guns despite mental health issues (thanks, Republican congress!) and is described per the AP as Robert Card, ‘a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine. ..Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks in the summer of 2023….It did not provide details about his treatment or condition but said Card had reported “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the military base.’
I fucking hate guns. Enough already. Long past enough. We need to reinstate the assault weapons ban, including the provisions keeping guns out of the hands of anyone who has had mental health issues within – what’s a reasonable amount of time – NEVER AGAIN, let’s try that, a never-ending period of time, universal background checks, federal databases of all gun sales and purchases. Let’s treat guns as the lethal weapons they are. JHFC. Enough.
