eating with toes

what sex is not

i walk around naked indoors cuz when i was a kid, naked wasn't safe. so now i do it in abundance.

my mother's first child was four when my mom and dad had me. i think my dad knew from the start that this kid was fucked up. somehow, someway, somewhere in his first three point five years of life, somebody did something and turned this kid into a whack job at the ripe old age of four. my dad didn't help either, especially after i was born cuz i turned out to be the only daughter of my grandmother's only son, and as far as i know, as kids, it was just my grandma and her sister. matriarchal doesn't begin to describe my father's family. my dad grew up with all women and went the other extreme -- not gay, not supermacho, just very appreciative of the feminine way of authority in heading his households. as macho as you can get and still love fucking strong women. my mom was a single parent; she must've turned him into jelly the first time he spent the night with her and her kid. my dad was a chef in the navy with one tour in vietnam under his belt and another yet to come. his stability and kitchen ability prolly put a hoohah in her yingyang the first time he made her breakfast. or dinner, as the case may be. i can see the attraction. but he was four years younger and probably about twelve years less mature; for them to get married, he must've hidden that well.

i came along and i know that i sucked all the attention away from everybody. my grandmother instantly became my godmother, complete with the godfatherist 'naming of the child after the godfather' -- godmother, in this case. til just recently, i ran away from that name like piss runnin down a leg but i think i'm finally starting to grow into it. i know all too well the plight of kids who have to grow into overlarge ears and face-effacing noses. shit sucks and no matter how you try to hide it -- or what your parents do to hide it for you -- the pre-college years are your labelling rites of passage cuz every teacher, substitute, and principle is gonna say your whole fuckin name on the first fuckin day of every fuckin school year and by the time you live it down, it's summer when it don't matter anyway and you gotta start all over in sepfuckintember. that shit fuckin sucks. but i still wouldn'ta wanted the ears or the nose thing. you can single-initial-dot a name; nose jobs and ear tucks cost half an arm and two kneecaps and who the fuck has that kinda money when they first turn legal enough to get it.

my dad still got to share in the spotlight, him bein the only son and all, but when we visited cincinnati, it was all about me. the way they tell it, i would fall asleep on my grandmother's bosom and awaken screaming holy murder if anyone so much as lifted my thimble-sized thumb off my grandma's chest. i was that spoiled. i slept in my grandma's bed with her on every visit, from the time i was born up through my sixteenth year. i could stay up til fourfiftyeight in the morning and still go crawl into her bed and she never once complained. she even knew how much space to leave me, next to the wall of course, as i grew and got older. that spoiled.

my parents shoulda never had my younger two brothers. they got . . . minimal attention, mostly from people who'd already seen me, and leftover attention really sucks. especially for the oldest, who isn't even a real family member and my dad made that real clear the minute we hit the road leadin to ohio. six years later, my mother's first child would begin making me pay for being me cuz somebody forgot to teach the little sonofabitch to share in the first place; being kicked back to past third place musta really sucked for those four years he waited for the opportunity to get back at me and my younger siblings. he started with me, but got right on into my two younger brothers as soon as soon as they reached my 'age of ascension'. by the time he hit the ripe old age of fourteen, that twisted little fucker was a sexual predator who already had three preyed-upon victims that he fucked regularly and beat the shit out of often. i got most of the beatings and most of the fucking, but he was ruthless and relentless with one and all.

by the time i hit ten, hypervigilance was my toy and my playground and i played the boyscout-like sentry with relish and ease. it became a game of know-where-everyone-is-at-all-times and i routinely quizzed myself in my head to keep track of everything breathin at all times. if i lost somebody, i would make a visual and/or physical trip around whereever i was and made careful word-association mental notes as i returned to my post on the front porch.

i was also regularly getting my ass kicked by gangs of kids at school because the fuckin principal somehow got the bright idea that tellin the whole school that my test scores indicated that i was the most intelligent student there. i was in the fifth fuckin grade. do you know what it's like to have the whole fuckin school know that you're the one throwin off the curve on everyfuckinstandardizedtest? and that you get special priviledges because your teachers run out of stuff to give you to do cuz you finish everyfuckinthing they give you? i was also the new kid, transferred in after the divorce. it was fun, bein smart and all, but only til the bell rang. i lived two and a half blocks from school. the music teacher started driving me home from school regularly before that first christmas. when she wasn't there, and she did try to let me know ahead of time when she wouldn't be but it didn't always work out that she could, i had to run like hell and not make a single mistake. i think i maybe only made one. it kinda slacked off, though, after i broke some kid's arm one day.

there was this kid who issued nonverbal threats to me daily. i never quite figured out why, but it could only have been his thing, not something i did or didn't do or said or didn't say. he started the first day i got there.

one afternoon, i was waiting for the music teacher outside a kindergarten classroom, where she was talking to two of the k-teachers. up he comes with a friend of his. the friend was neither my friend nor my enemy. he was smart too. kid number one sees the opportunity to kick my ass backed up into a corner, and he proceeds to do so. having been trained to know that silence is my only friend when i'm getting my ass kicked, i scream not once. the friend runs away. good thing cuz after he got done and went inside to hold his own little nonchalant conversation with the three teachers, i looked at my hands. i'd put my hands up to protect my face cuz i still had to be careful of nosebleeds, and i see blood. all i remember was the hellforgod yell that i let out and the next thing i know, two teachers are pulling me off him while the third teacher tries to extricate him from the visegrip grasp my thighs have him clinched in and the volley of shots his face is receiving courtesy of my bloody hands.

i saw him again, a few days later. i'd broken his arm.

his parents transferred him a week later.

sex was rage and pain and everyone who was not a friend sat squarely with my enemies. a lover once told me that it was amazing that i could like sex at all. i'm inclined to agree with him.