I must start with some phrases approximately androgyny. In grammar college, withinside the 5th and 6th grades, we have been all tyrannized via way of means of a inflexible set of regulations that supposedly decided whether or not we have been boys or girls. The episode in Huckleberry Finn wherein Huck is disguised as a woman and offers himself away via way of means of the manner he threads a needle and catches a ball - that form of thing. We found out that the manner you sat, crossed your legs, held a cigarette, and checked out your nails-the manner you probably did these items instinctively became absolute evidence of your intercourse. Now manifestly maximum youngsters did now no longer take this literally, however I did. I idea that simply one slip, simply one wrong go of my legs or flick of an imaginary cigarette ash might flip me from some thing I became into the opposite thing; that could be all it took, actually. Even aleven though I became outwardly a woman and had among the trappings usually related to girldom-a woman's name, for example, and dresses, my very own telephone, an autograph book - I spent the early years of my formative years in reality sure that I may at any factor gum it up. I did now no longer experience in any respect like a woman. I became boyish. I became athletic, ambitious, outspoken, competitive, noisy, rambunctious. I had scabs on my knees and my socks slid into my loafers and I ought to throw a football. I desired desperately now no longer to be that manner, now no longer to be a aggregate of each matters, however as a substitute simply one, a woman, a particular indeniable woman. As gentle and as crimson as a nursery. And not anything might try this for me, I felt, however breasts.I became approximately six months more youthful than absolutely each person else in my class, and so for approximately six months after it began, for 6 months after my pals had all started to develop (that became the phrase we used, develop), I became now no longer in particular worried. I might take a seat down withinside the tub and appearance down at my breasts and recognize that any day now, any 2d now, they might begin developing like absolutely each person else's. They didn't. "I need to shop for a bra," Isaid to my mom one night. "What for?" she stated. My mom became actually hateful approximately bras, and by the point my 1/3 sister had gotten to the factor wherein she became prepared to need one, my mom had labored the complete enterprise right into a comedy routine. "Whit' now no longer use a Band-Aid as a substitute?" she might say. It became a supply of tremendous delight to my mom that she had in no way even needed to put on a brassiere till she had her fourth child, after which handiest due to the fact her gynecologist made her. It became incomprehensible to me that all and sundry ought to ever be happy with some thing like that. It became the 1950s, for God's sake. Jane Russell. Cashmere sweaters. Couldn't my mom see that? "I am too vintage to put on an undershirt." Screaming. Weeping. Shouting. "Then do not put on an undershirt," stated my mom. "But I need to shop for a bra." "What for?"I think that for maximum girls, breasts, brassieres, that whole thing, has greater trauma, greater to do with the approaching of formative years, with turning into a lady, than some thing else. Certainly greater than getting your duration, even though that, too, became traumatic, symbolic.But you can see breasts; they have been there; they have been seen. Whereas a woman ought to declare to have her duration for months earlier than she absolutely were given it and no one might ever recognize the difference. Which is precisely what I did. All you needed to do became make a tremendous fuss over having sufficient nickels for the Kotex system and stroll round clutching your belly and moaning for 3 to 5 days a month approximately The Curse and you can persuade anybody. There is a college of idea someplace withinside the women's lib/ women's mag/gynecology status quo that says that menstrual cramps are basically psychological, and I lean closer to it. Not that I did not have them ultimately. Agonizing cramps, heating-pad cramps, go-down-to-the- college-nurse-and-lie-on-the-cot cramps.But in contrast to any ache I had ever suffered, I cherished the ache of cramps, welcomed it, wallowed in it, bragged approximately it. "I cannot go. I actually have cramps." "I cannot try this. I actually have cramps." And maximum of all, gigglingly, blushingly: "I cannot swim. I actually have cramps." Nobody ever used the hard-center phrase. Menstruation. God, what an lousy phrase. Never that. "I actually have cramps."The morning I first were given my duration, I went into my mom's bed room to inform her. And my mom, my utterly-hateful-approximately-bras mom, burst into tears. It became actually a adorable second, and I don't forget it so in reality now no longer simply as it became one of the instances I ever noticed my mom cry on my account (the opposite became after I became stuck being a six-year-vintage kleptomaniac), however additionally due to the fact the incident did now no longer imply to me what it intended to her. Her little woman, her firstborn, had ultimately grow to be a lady. That became what she became crying approximately. My response to the event, however, became that I may properly be a lady in a few scientific, textbook sense (and will as a minimum prevent faking each month and prevent losing all the ones nickels). But in every other sense-in a seen sense-I became as androgynous and as susceptible to tip over into boyhood as ever.I began out with a 28 AA bra. I do not suppose they made them any smaller in the ones days, even though I accumulate that now you could purchase bras for 5-year-olds that do not have any cups in anyway in them; instructor bras they're called. My first brassiere got here from Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills. I went there alone, shaking, high quality they might appearance me over and smile and inform me to return back returned subsequent year. An real more fit took me into the dressing room and stood over me whilst I took off my shirt and attempted the primary one on. The little puffs stood out on my chest. "Lean over," stated the more fit. (To this day, I am now no longer positive what fitters in bra departments do besides to inform you to lean over.) I leaned over, with the fleeting desire that my breasts might miraculously fall out of my frame and into the puffs. Nothing."Don't fear approximately it," stated my pal Libby a few months later, while matters had now no longer improved. "You'll get them after you are married.""What are you speaking approximately?" I stated."When you get married," Libby explained, "your husband will contact your breasts and rub them and kiss them and they will grow."That became the killer. Necking I ought to deal with. Intercourse I ought to deal with. But it had in no way crossed via way of means of thoughts that a person became going to the touch my breasts, that breasts had some thing to do with all that, petting, my God, they in no way stated petting in my little intercourse guide approximately the fertilization of the ovum. I have become dizzy. For I knew instantly - as naive as I were handiest a second earlier than-that handiest a part of what she became pronouncing became true: the touching, rubbing, kissing part, now no longer the developing part. And I knew that nobody might ever need to marry me. I had no breasts. I might in no way have breasts.My excellent pal in college became Diana Raskob. She lived a block from me in a residence complete of wonders. English desserts, for instance. The Raskobs have been the primary human beings in Beverly Hills to have English desserts for breakfast. They additionally had an apricot tree withinside the returned, and a badminton court, and a subscription to Seventeen magazine, and masses of games, like Sorry and Parcheesi and Treasure Hunt and Anagrams. Diana and I spent 3 or 4 afternoons per week of their den studying and gambling and eating.Diana's mom's kitchen became complete of the maximum gigantic collection of junk meals I actually have ever been uncovered to. My residence became complete of apples and peaches and milk and home made chocolate-chip cookies - which have been nice, and top for you, however-now no longer-proper-earlier than-dinner-or-you'll-spoil-your-appetite. Diana's residence had not anything in it that became top for you, and what is greater, you can stuff it in proper up till dinner and no one cared. Bar-B-Q potato chips (they have been the primary in them, too), massive bottles of ginger ale, sparkling popcorn with melted butter, warm fudge sauce on BaskinRobbins jamoca ice cream, powdered-sugar doughnuts from Van de Kamp's. Diana and I were excellent pals on the grounds that we have been seven; we have been approximately similarly famous in college (that's to say, now no longer in particular), we had approximately the identical fulfillment with boys (extraordinarily intermittent), and we seemed a good deal the identical. Dark. Tall. Gangly.
