certain kind of woman, a strong one. A woman nothing like my mother, though I could be drawn to beauty too.
The first woman I remember having a crush on was the actress who played Perry Mason’s secretary on TV, Della Street. Perry might win the cases, and his big tall buddy, Paul Drake, stepped in when a little muscle was needed, but Della had this cool, calm, organized manner, like nothing ever flustered her, and underneath her gentle exterior there was a firmness and command I liked. Unlike the woman I lived with—my mother—this one had a handle on things.
I imagined how it would be if Della came to our house. How she’d get rid of all those variously dated and mostly out-of-date yogurt cultures on the windowsill, the frozen orange juice cans with paintbrushes lying around, my father’s tapes spooling off the reels, my brother’s Mad magazines, my mother’s sequins and hair ornaments littering the floor, and all those unopened bills from the phone company and some recording studio where George made a demo one time, forwarded from whatever town we’d lived in before.
I watched The Patty Duke Show, about two identical cousins—one of whom grew up in London, the other in a place near New York City called Brooklyn. The proper, refined London girl, Cathy, comes to live with the family of the Brooklyn girl, Patty, who is a fun, wild, American teenager type. But I always liked Cathy best. She was sensible and cautious, where Patty was boy-crazy and immature. Patty got on my nerves.
In fact, I watched television a lot in those days, searching for women to model myself on. I liked Julia Child’s big, confident voice and how she handled a roasting chicken, and the runner, Wilma Rudolph, who won three medals at the 1960 Olympics even though she’d been born with polio. I liked Donna Reed, not only because she was beautiful, but because she seemed kind, and steady, in a way I longed for my own parents to be. I loved The Beverly Hillbillies, but not because the ridiculous antics of the Clampett family amused me. The one I related to was the no-nonsense secretary Miss Jane Hathaway, the one sane character in the bunch. Something about her long thin frame and her plainness, even homeliness—particularly set off by the frilly excesses of Elly May—stirred my heart.
I was thirteen when I realized that how I felt about these women differed from how my brother viewed certain male celebrities and hero types.
For me, the women whose images covered the walls in my room were not simply people I admired, or ones whose music or performances appealed to me. I didn’t just like these women. I thought about kissing them, and for the first time that I remember—having been all my life a person seemingly lacking in imagination—I imagined what I’d like to do with them.
I pictured the women wrapping their arms around me, and their legs, and pressing their hands into my flesh, running their fingers through my hair and down my neck.
I didn’t know the word for who I was or how I felt, when I first started getting these feelings. I only knew I wasn’t like other girls, who screamed when they saw the Beatles on television, or hung pictures of Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson on their bedroom walls.
I didn’t want a boy, I wanted girls—real girls, girls at my school—to feel about me as they did about some boy. To show that kind of interest, but in me this time. How could it be, I wondered, that they could fall all over themselves for some pimply loser with a bulging Adam’s apple who snapped their bra strap, when I would kiss them tenderly and love them?
The first time I ever acted on my feelings for a girl was in seventh grade,shortly after we moved to Vermont. Her name was Jenny Samuels, and we had math together, and gym. Our lockers were next to each other, which meant we’d change side by side. This was wonderful and terrible, having her naked, or almost naked, up that close to me, and wanting so badly to look at her,
The first woman I remember having a crush on was the actress who played Perry Mason’s secretary on TV, Della Street. Perry might win the cases, and his big tall buddy, Paul Drake, stepped in when a little muscle was needed, but Della had this cool, calm, organized manner, like nothing ever flustered her, and underneath her gentle exterior there was a firmness and command I liked. Unlike the woman I lived with—my mother—this one had a handle on things.
I imagined how it would be if Della came to our house. How she’d get rid of all those variously dated and mostly out-of-date yogurt cultures on the windowsill, the frozen orange juice cans with paintbrushes lying around, my father’s tapes spooling off the reels, my brother’s Mad magazines, my mother’s sequins and hair ornaments littering the floor, and all those unopened bills from the phone company and some recording studio where George made a demo one time, forwarded from whatever town we’d lived in before.
I watched The Patty Duke Show, about two identical cousins—one of whom grew up in London, the other in a place near New York City called Brooklyn. The proper, refined London girl, Cathy, comes to live with the family of the Brooklyn girl, Patty, who is a fun, wild, American teenager type. But I always liked Cathy best. She was sensible and cautious, where Patty was boy-crazy and immature. Patty got on my nerves.
In fact, I watched television a lot in those days, searching for women to model myself on. I liked Julia Child’s big, confident voice and how she handled a roasting chicken, and the runner, Wilma Rudolph, who won three medals at the 1960 Olympics even though she’d been born with polio. I liked Donna Reed, not only because she was beautiful, but because she seemed kind, and steady, in a way I longed for my own parents to be. I loved The Beverly Hillbillies, but not because the ridiculous antics of the Clampett family amused me. The one I related to was the no-nonsense secretary Miss Jane Hathaway, the one sane character in the bunch. Something about her long thin frame and her plainness, even homeliness—particularly set off by the frilly excesses of Elly May—stirred my heart.
I was thirteen when I realized that how I felt about these women differed from how my brother viewed certain male celebrities and hero types.
For me, the women whose images covered the walls in my room were not simply people I admired, or ones whose music or performances appealed to me. I didn’t just like these women. I thought about kissing them, and for the first time that I remember—having been all my life a person seemingly lacking in imagination—I imagined what I’d like to do with them.
I pictured the women wrapping their arms around me, and their legs, and pressing their hands into my flesh, running their fingers through my hair and down my neck.
I didn’t know the word for who I was or how I felt, when I first started getting these feelings. I only knew I wasn’t like other girls, who screamed when they saw the Beatles on television, or hung pictures of Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson on their bedroom walls.
I didn’t want a boy, I wanted girls—real girls, girls at my school—to feel about me as they did about some boy. To show that kind of interest, but in me this time. How could it be, I wondered, that they could fall all over themselves for some pimply loser with a bulging Adam’s apple who snapped their bra strap, when I would kiss them tenderly and love them?
The first time I ever acted on my feelings for a girl was in seventh grade,shortly after we moved to Vermont. Her name was Jenny Samuels, and we had math together, and gym. Our lockers were next to each other, which meant we’d change side by side. This was wonderful and terrible, having her naked, or almost naked, up that close to me, and wanting so badly to look at her,
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