I need to do a little self-promotion. This past Saturday, my colleague and friend Marcia McNair interviewed me about my book The Silence Of Men on her BlogTalk Radio show, The Power of Poetry. I hope you’ll give a listen.
Marcia is a perceptive reader and wonderful interviewer and her questions led me to see things in my poetry that I hadn’t seen before. My favorite part of the conversation was about the poem called “Working The Dotted Line,” which tells the story of the first time an old girlfriend and I had sex, and she was a virgin. What I liked best about Marcia’s reading of this piece was her noticing my mother’s presence in the poem and how that started me talking about something I often encounter but have never given much serious thought. Most of the men I know, even as adults, are deeply uncomfortable with their mother’s sexuality, and I don’t understand it. Or, to be more accurate, while I understand intellectually, I don’t get it emotionally. As well, they often it profoundly disturbing that I am not made uncomfortable not just by the idea of my mother as a sexual being, but by the fact that, when I was growing up, I knew–that she made no effort to hide the fact (though she certainly did not rub it in my face either)–that she had sexual relationships with at least some of the men she dated. I even knew that my mother would occasionally go to bars, or dancing, where men would try to pick her up, or where she might try to pick someone up herself, and it didn’t bother me. Indeed, it seemed to me perfectly natural. Why wouldn’t my mother, who was in her 30s at the time, go out and have a good time, and do things that other single 30-year-old women did when they socialized? My mother has been a single woman since I was around 12 years old, and I have always known that she had a sex life. More to the point, I have never expected her not to have one or to keep it hidden from me. I met all, or at least most (as far as I know), of the men she dated when I was growing up, and it never seemed strange to me or wrong or awkward that she should have men in her life or that I should know she was having sex with them. (Though it was often, I think, awkward for them.) I don’t really have much else to say about this for now, but it is something I want to write about, something I had never really thought to write about until Marcia brought it up. Here is the poem:
Working The Dotted Line
I don’t remember what vacation
I was home for, or how Beth
managed to be in New York
on the one day we’d have
the apartment to ourselves,
but I think I recall
my mother’s hanging crystals
scattering the afternoon sunlight
in small rainbows that shimmied
on the walls and on our skin,
and I can still see Beth stretching
nervous along the length
of the daybed’s mattress,
and my fingers tracing
the ridges of her ribs
as she tugged at my erection.
I’m ready. Let’s do it!
It was her first time, not mine,
but it was my first condom,
and I’d forgotten to read the directions,
so I stood there growing soft,
squinting at the print on the box
telling me the step-by-step
I needed to learn
was on the inside.
I ripped the cardboard open
and sat reading on the bed’s edge,
thumbing the foil-packed
lubricated circle,
trying to visualize
what I had to do.
Beth reached into my lap
to ready me again,
but when I tore along the dotted line,
our protection, like a goldfish
taken by hand from its bowl,
slipped from my grasp
and landed under the desk
my mother sat at
when she paid the bills.
When I picked it up,
it was covered with the dust
and small particles of dirt
that settle daily into all our lives,
so I didn’t put the next one on
till I was kneeling hard
between Beth’s open legs.
She raised herself on her elbows,
smiling that the second skin
we needed to keep us safe
should make me so clumsy,
but once I let go
of what the instructions called
the reservoir tip—I thought
of the dams holding water back
in the mountains near where she lived
and what would happen if they broke—
her smile disappeared
and bunching the sheet beneath her
into her fists, she lifted
her butt onto the pillow
we’d heard would make things easier.
I bent for a quick look
at where I had to go
and climbed up onto her,
trying with one hand
to be graceful and accurate
and with the other
to balance over her
without falling.
At her first grimace
I pulled back. No!
She shook her head, eyes
clamped shut and then
staring wide, her voice
a whisper through clenched teeth,
Just do it! Get it over with!
So I entered her again, trying
from the tightness in her face
to gauge how hard not to push,
but when she cried out anyway,
I left her body one more time
and crouched over her,
my latex-covered penis
nosing downward
towards her navel,
and I placed my palms
against her cheeks,
I cannot hurt you like this!
Look, it’s going to hurt, she said.
There’s no other way.
And I’ve chosen you!
And since I wanted so much to be her choice,
I kissed her eyelids and her mouth,
and with my eyes buried
in the hollow of her neck
moved slowly in
till I felt her flesh
stop giving way. Then,
with one arm around her rib cage
and the other around her head,
holding her tight against my chest,
I pulled down and thrust up
in a single motion I breathed through
like I was lifting heavy boxes.
She screamed into the muscle
just above my collar bone,
bit deep into my flesh,
and, as she bled onto me,
I bled.
We said nothing afterwards.
We didn’t cuddle
or smile at each other as we dressed
or walk hand in hand
to the train that took her home;
and I did not ask her
what her silence meant,
nor she mine, but if she had,
I would’ve told her this:
My wordlessness was shame.
I’d no idea how not to hurt her;
and I would’ve told her
I wanted it to do over,
which is what I’d tell her even now.
(shudder)
(stomach-heave)
We could’ve used a little trigger-warning there.
The shame is not yours–let that shame fall on all those who ever told anyone it should hurt–all who failed to tell all the young, girls and boys alike, how to make sure it won’t hurt. That is just plain monstrous.
Makes me glad to have chosen the celibate path. Enough other things happen in life to make one bleed–why let half the population have that sort of thing happen to them at the hands of another human being?
People aren’t bubble-wrap.
Make it better for your kids. Somehow. For all who come after. Tell them how not to get hurt, whatever they wind up doing. How to do whatever needs to be done way in advance, so there is another way.
I’m off to bleach my brain.
Hmm. Angiportus, I think you make it sound much more dire than it is. Yes, absolutely, let’s make it possible for our children to have less shame and more communication, but I’m not sure that not hurting at all is going to be an option for all women. I don’t feel abused by the first boy I had sex with, and the pleasure sex has given me in my life is worth the pain I felt the first time. I respect your decision to remain celibate, but please, save your pity.
Wow, that was horrifying and yes, potentially triggering. Ugh.
I’m so glad my first time was not like that, although it easily could have been. There was some pain at the start; in fact I have some pain at the start every time I have intercourse, to this day. (Apparently it takes a few moments for things to “loosen up” and no, they never do loosen up quite enough ahead of time, regardless of how much “prep” we do. The intercourse has to actually start in order to get there.) But I can’t imagine how excruciating it would have been if my lover had done what you describe in your poem. I think I might never have had intercourse again!
Not all pain can be avoided, but that? Awful and avoidable!
Something hurts someone bad enough to make them yell, that sounds pretty dire. And it doesn’t sound like something that inevitable. There’s got to be something one can do beforehand, and not filling us in on that is, well, not something I’d ever want on my conscience.
If you don’t need my “pity”, that’s nice for you, but I suspect a lot of others would like to know how to avoid being injured just to make their anatomy fit someone else’s–or how to provide their kids with this safety.
Allburningup, you might want to go and get that checked out; I believe there are several curable conditions that cause pain. Hope this helps.
Thanks for sharing that poem, Richard. Young people with good intentions often find their introduction to sex going in that sad and disturbing direction. I wonder how Beth felt about it, or how she feels about it now, years later. It wouldn’t fit in the scope of the poem to consider if she thought the pain was well worth it, or no big deal, or if she wished it had been different.
The first time I had sex with a boyfriend, it was a little painful and very clumsy. Like Chingona, I didn’t feel like my boyfriend had abused me. I didn’t blame him for any of the difficult bits. Like Richard, I didn’t feel like the experience had lived up to expectations, and wished we could do that first time over. Not so we could not do it, but so we could do it without the mistakes.
Scarleteen has a lot of good sex ed resources for young people, with information about complicated aspects of emotional health as well as direct physical safety. There’s a fabulous page about readiness for partnered sex that includes “Why do I want to do this?” and “Who do I want to do this for?” about pressure from partners and friends. (If everyone in the world followed this advice, I don’t think there could be any romantic comedies, but that’s beside the point.)
I love the tone of all Scarleteen’s advice and information. Even when they’re writing about complicated or scary stuff, it feels accessible. This page contains helpful suggestions for the first time a couple has heterosexual intercourse. Just what Richard and Beth needed to know.
http://www.scarleteen.com/article/sexuality/first_intercourse_101
They go on to talk about the importance of communication, aftercare, and the transition from intimacy back to ordinary life. The section about “You Aren’t Alone” mentions:
,
which I think it helpful, and a bit unusual for sex ed materials.
On that same page about physical details of first intercourse, they say, “As well, if pain during intercourse continues and helps like these don’t fix things, check in with your doctor: certain health conditions or issues — like an infection, a cyst, vulvar vestibulitis and the like — can also be culprits.” You might want to look into it, Allburningup. Scarleteen isn’t just for teens. I started reading them in my late 30s when I was looking for a gynecologist that wouldn’t scare me. (They don’t have lists of references, but they do have advice about what to expect and suggestions about finding a sensitive doctor and discussing uncomfortable topics.)
I was thinking while reading the poem that it was not a good sign she was clenching the sheets. I mean, if you’re that tense you’re probably increasing the likelihood of pain a lot. Then again, it’s impossible to get through adolescense or life with no pain (physical, emotional, etc.). Most of us have things we wish we could have done better or differently from that period in our lives. It would be really interesting to have a companion poem from the female point of view – either solicited from Beth, from a female poet, or your imagination.
Thanks, Adrian.
Maybe it’s impossible to avoid all life’s pains and scars, but those that are preventable, well, duh.
Before you ever start dating, maybe you could stretch the tight spots or something?
I see this as a facet of a whole horrid side of this culture–that children and teens don’t have a right to their bodies, that adults can do whatever invasive and painful thing they want, or let someone else do it, to their kid, just because they are feeding and housing that kid. Thus, routine circumcision, unconsented cosmetic procedures, and so on, as well as child sexual abuse, hitting, and scenes like in that poem–it’s all related, it’s all part and parcel. You don’t tell them how to protect themselves because they might get some other ideas about defying you. (All this in addition to the idea of women as some sort of unclean being whose every function is painful even to themselves. Gaaaahhh.)
As a survivor of assorted violations, I can tell you it all has no place in a civilized society, or any society that I’d want to be a part of.
The Berlin Wall came down, and so can this.
My first time mirrored Beth’s – I was nervous, emotionally not ready, and there was an intense amount of pain. Yet, I really don’t see another way it could have happened for me. I’m not a take-it-slow kind of girl, nor was I the type raised with a real awareness about what to expect from my body.
It’s really heartbreaking in a way, this poem. You see, my pain went away, and I don’t really think about blame in the situation nor really remember it. Richard, yours has obviously left a deep scar on you. I’ve often thought about that – that men must feel pain in a deep way when they hurt someone with their bodies, the intimacy that is supposed to be love but ends up without the pleasure of love.
Perhaps I’m being too esoteric here, but in my experience women have an idea of pain associated with sex that men just don’t. Our periods, our clues that we’re now “women” cause pain. Childbirth causes pain. Sex for the first time may or may not be painful, but we have the awareness already that it’s not …well, pretty. Men aren’t taught to expect that, nor really to deal with it because it’s almost a pressure – you aren’t supposed to hurt her, but you’re not supposed to really handle it either. It’s sad.
Simple Truth:
Is it a scar? I am not so sure, only because scar tissue is dead, and it’s not just that I am being picky about your metaphor. It’s that the experience I have recounted in this poem, as well as experiences such as I wrote about in My Daughter’s Vagina, Parts 7 and 9 have left me with a very deep and very alive awareness of the fact that my body can be a weapon, an (un)intentional instrument of someone else’s pain and, more, that the culture in which I live wants me to see my body in that way.
Ah, yes – this is very much living pain, not scar tissue. I don’t think you’re being picky, or rather, I understand the pickiness.
On a related note, I’ve had to become aware of this type of pain in my life right now – not my pain, my boyfriend’s. He is rather well-endowed, and I’m not the body type that can handle him well. Sex is slow to start, and painful sometimes, and he often has a real fear of hurting me that interferes with his enjoyment of sex. Needless to say, there is NOTHING out there to help him, no support, no even real acknowledgment that this is a real problem and that it could affect him emotionally. I have seen the attitude of “oh, she’ll handle it” or “I wish I had that problem” but never “I understand your concern.” We have had to make changes, such as me starting to let him know exactly how I feel, which is a challenge for me as well, but one I’m willing to take on to allow him to feel he has a safety net of sorts and can relax some.
I will never know what his pain, or yours, or my first boyfriend’s, really means to them, the lack of support or even acknowledgment of that pain. But I can at least empathize without pitying, having been in the other end of the situation and seeing the impact it can have.
Thanks to those who expressed concern, but I already know what is going on. It is just as the Scarleteen article says: “More commonly, you may just be so nervous, anxious or keyed up that your vagina is tensing up on you.” Not that I’m especially tense about sex; in fact I am tense all the time and sex actually helps me relax, but it takes awhile. The advice most doctors give me is to frequently practice relaxation with slow penetration. Yes, it works. When I have intercourse very frequently there is hardly any pain and what there is fades much more quickly. Once we had only non-intercourse sex for two months and when we had intercourse again after that it was as difficult as the first time.
The truth, is, intercourse isn’t instinctive for me. I enjoy it when I’m in the mood for it, but often it seems a bit foreign or weird, compared with the things I mainly prefer in sex. So I’m not highly motivated to have lots of it just so I can reduce the mild pain I get when having it infrequently.
I thought that Scarleteen article was really great; I thought I was very knowledgeable about sex as a teen but I just barely knew about tension and vaginas tightening up and I didn’t pay much attention to that. I didn’t really expect any pain my first time because I knew my hymen was practically non-existent, and when you hear about first time pain it’s always about the hymen. Luckily, though, when it did happen I was able to figure it out and asked my lover to go very slow, resulting in much less pain that went away as we continued. But what if I hadn’t figured to say that?What if, like the girl in the poem, my first experience of sex was of my lover violently thrusting his penis into my clenched vagina!
I can barely imagine how awful that would be.