by Alena Deerwater
I love Momma – Dad too, I guess – but sometimes … I don't know. Do you ever feel like you were dropped off at the wrong house at birth by the stork or whoever? Or God got the right mother but who is this man hanging around her acting like he's her first child?
That's why sex ed was so disappointing. Not that you have to use a condom not to get pregnant or AIDS or anything; but that it takes both a woman and a man to … that I don't just belong to Momma. It scares me, gives me the heeby-jeebies that somehow I came from both of them – that they're both in me – like I have to reconcile their differences somewhere in my body, in my life.
Who thought of the word condom anyway? It's so close to the word condemn: condemned to use a condom, condemned if you use one cuz that means you're having sex, condemned to use something slimier than the inside of a chicken's neck. Condom, condemn, condom, condemn. God, that sex ed teacher made me never want to eat another banana ever again.
“Before AIDS,” Momma always says, “it was safe just to get a diaphragm. As long as you knew how to put it in.” According to Momma-lore, back in her first year in college, when Momma wasn't a momma yet, and was free-wheeling, sassy Crystal Krauss, she talked the school doc into handing over a diaphragm without any instructions. That very night she had an opportunity to use the thing.
“Thank God for Sally,” Momma says every baggillienth time she tells this story. “She hauled me into the dorm women's room and shoved me into a stall. She climbed on top of the toilet in the next stall and peered over the edge at me – offering instructions.
“”Careful with the goo. If your fingers get too slippery you can't keep the damn thing to stay folded while you slip it up your whadutzick.” Sally never gave a hoot-or-holler when some priss walked by and gave them a dirty look.
“”You go ahead and get pregnant,” Sally would snap at the uptight co-ed. “We know you're just here for your MRS degree, Miss Snooty-pants. Some of us have other learnin' to do.””
“How do you get this frisbee to unfold once it's up there?” Momma asked from her seated position, giggling on the throne.
“You must not have it up far enough. Is the front edge tucked behind your pubic bone?”
“How the fuck do I know?” Momma laughed.
“Stick your fingers up there. Feel around a bit. There should be something hard on top you can sorta hook your finger around.”
“Oh my God. I can't believe I didn't know any of this was up there.”
“It's just the entrance-way, darling. You need to pay more attention in Human Biology 101.”
“Science, shmience. I'm an English major.”
“Well, you go ahead and tell that diaphragm a nice story to get it in place.”
“Halleluiah Sister. It's in!” Momma hauled ass out of there, hoping her date hadn't fallen asleep with all the waiting.
“Go forth and don't multiply.” Sally saluted Momma from over the stall door.
Momma started telling me this story when I was in fifth grade. I had just started my first round of public school sex education, sitting in the first row with a menstrual pad between my legs.
I remember the first sex question I ever asked Momma. I was home for lunch on a school-day. I must have been in first or second grade. She was sitting in the breakfast nook with me at the round glass table that you could see yourself in if you got the angle and light just right. I was eating a tuna sandwich cut diagonally in half. I always bit off the top two corners of the triangle to make it look like a boat to sail away in.
“What's the real word for penis?” I asked between bites.
“Penis? You mean like … Well, penis is the real word for – “
“No. No. No.” I interrupted. “What's the real word? Penis is the slang word, like booby is really breast. I mean it just sounds so silly: peeeeen-is. Like 'peanuts, come get your peanuts' at the ballgame.”
I don't know how Momma kept from laughing. She pulled out the dictionary and even went on line. I learned all the names for sex organs: real ones from learned sources, slang from Momma.
We especially loved to say, “ vulva, yoni, labia, clitoris.” At night, when I'm missing Momma, I chant these words to myself, watch them float to the ceiling, out to the trees, and up to the stars.