Fucking (Taboo Exercise from Weds)

By the time I was seven, my mother had probably fucked every adult I knew. Everyone except perhaps old Richard, the skinny man with tobacco-stained lips who had both a cane and a shotgun and lived by himself in a shack below the pond. My father had also fucked every grown-up around, including Richard. Man, woman, skinny or fat, black or white, cute or ugly, the etiquette was to call it “fucking” and to try everybody at least once.

I didn’t much notice or care. None of us kids did. It affected us only in that it was another game we’d play down at the old barn. Besides rocket ship and horses and kings and queens, we’d play fucking. Lying naked, stiff as boards, on top of each other, we’d try not to laugh. That corner of the barn was where Milky, one of the wild cats, had delivered her kittens and it always smelled like fur and damp hay. For a second or two we’d feel someones hipbones pushing into our belly or a knee poking into our thigh. Then we’d start to feel too squished or ticklish and we’d run off to go make a maze through the hay or go swim in the pond.

Sometimes, for organizational purposes, we’d line up girls and boys, other times youngest to oldest. It didn’t matter much, for we were always an odd number and fucking wasn’t even our favorite game. Our favorite game was to climb to the second story of the barn and then jump out of the window, a huge mountain of hay strategically placed below to break our fall.

Our other favorite game, especially when it was cold outside, was to sit around and talk about sugar: the best kinds of candy, what ice cream flavor you’d pick if you could have just one; we’d spend whole afternoons like this. I told the story again and again about the time someone came down the road with a pack of strawberry bubble gum. The grown-ups hid it and a few of us found it above the bookshelf and split the whole pack, just the three of us.

Late at night on the knoll, while drumming and peyote kept the grown-ups occupied and the stars were so bright we had to squint, we’d nestle our sleeping bags close together and whisper about the chocolate chips hidden in the back of the kitchen larder. We wished we were brave enough to scramble down the hill by moonlight, sneak into the kitchen and then open the door to the cool larder, darker even than the night outside, and make our way, hands grazing burlap sacks of brown rice, chickpeas, and black beans, until we’d reach the very back where the chocolate chips were waiting.

In summer, the sugar talk died down because there was so much fruit. Naked bodies everywhere—and watermelon! Walking across the rim of the pond to my mother it was hard not to trip on all those penises. Black or reddish orange, brown or pink, they were all such strangely lifeless lumps. The vaginas were better. Still at eye level, but mostly hidden behind curls. It was only when the women squatted down to pee, or bent over to pick up something left behind, that I’d get a glimpse of all the complications inside.

By the end of the summer, I’d turned seven and now it was only the older kids changing bodies that interested me. The kids that had taught us how to light fire to curled manzanita bark (raising the burning wood to our lips and loving the smell before we began the fits of coughing) were now going off in small groups on their own. We couldn’t find them anymore to ask them to play and when we did, they’d shrug, or say yes, and then soon forget us standing there. They still came to the pond, though. It was too hot to spend the whole day without getting wet. But now they kept their clothes on until right before they dove in. I’d get just a glimpse of a few black sprouted hairs, oddly drawn against pale skin or a blur of small breasts that drew in tightly at the nipples, like badly blown balloons. I wanted them to stand still, but they’d streak past and be gone, swallowed up by the pond. The water breaking then resolving back to it’s smooth surface. Their bodies just shadows below.