Looking Back
“affairs on birthdays, with paint-by-number kits, gift-wrapped, for presents and little baskets of jelly beans and Indian corn for favors, and inedible white cake (eaten nonetheless) with pink or green or yellow frosting for after-party stomach-aches. Until about second grade our parties were boy-girl—we never really thought about the distinctions, the only difference between us, outside of clothing, being whether we deflated our party balloons and took them home with us (the girls) or popped th...em in somebody’s ear (the boys).
Then, when we were seven or so, the parties segregated. It strikes me as too bad, now. It wasn’t anything in us, but something in our surroundings that made us wary and imposed on us unnatural shame at being caught, after an especially noisy bellyflop in the town pool, with our bathing suits momentarily askew, exposing our tops (that’s what we called them—the real, clinical names for things always scared us). We would have been young enough to feel natural still with boys, except that we were all in such a hurry to grow up that we affected sexy feelings and the awkwardness of crushes long before we really felt them.MoreLess
Then, when we were seven or so, the parties segregated. It strikes me as too bad, now. It wasn’t anything in us, but something in our surroundings that made us wary and imposed on us unnatural shame at being caught, after an especially noisy bellyflop in the town pool, with our bathing suits momentarily askew, exposing our tops (that’s what we called them—the real, clinical names for things always scared us). We would have been young enough to feel natural still with boys, except that we were all in such a hurry to grow up that we affected sexy feelings and the awkwardness of crushes long before we really felt them.MoreLess
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