Can’t You Knock Before You Come In?

On discovering the book Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1978

I was mostly a precocious kid. In some ways, though, I was naïve, a late bloomer of sorts. I wasn’t a very adventurous teenager in the ways of some of my peers. I didn’t drink alcohol or use drugs; experimentation was off the table for me, partly due to my epilepsy diagnosis and mostly because of equal amounts of fear and good sense. And while my peers were making early forays into sex, I lived in my world of books. I didn’t think there was anything “wrong” with me until I started comparing notes with friends in adulthood. Drinking (a little) and dabbling in drugs came in my twenties, once I was cleared medically. And sex came, too, maybe a bit later than most of the kids I knew. Late? Probably not that late, but as a frustrated, lonely teen, I was at sea, was I gay, was I straight?

There really wasn’t anything wrong with me, I just got a later start compared to some of my friends when it came to things like drugs, and yes, sex in general and masturbation, specifically. I didn’t get much information from my parents regarding the ins and outs of baby-making or sex just for fun and pleasure. We definitely didn’t talk about being gay, well, until my father came out. Then we didn’t talk about it even more, until I insisted.

I was unsure of my sexuality when I was a teenager. I didn’t trust boys. After a couple of sexual assaults, I kept myself away, even as I longed to trust them. My disordered eating behaviors really kicked in, as a way of shielding myself and I began gaining weight. It was a way to keep potential harm at bay. And I was also attracted to women.

I was 16 when my dad came out and moved out. I loved him and missed having him around every day. I felt utterly abandoned and wanted someone I could talk to about my feelings. At that point, he really wasn’t the one I could ask questions of. He was free and single and able to live the life he always wanted. That of an out gay man. He was also plagued with guilt. It made it hard for him to offer me comfort or encouragement. I often wondered if he wished he’d never had me or my brother. I know he loved us, but I’ve always felt that he must have had regrets, too.

In high school, sex education was pretty pathetic in the 70s. They didn’t even call it sex ed, it was called “health education.” I did learn CPR, so I was equipped to save lives if I was ever in a situation where someone needed a good Heimliching. Not a total waste, but I really wanted to talk about kissing girls! Mr. Pappas, my health ed teacher was a nice guy, a muscled jock who coached lacrosse and football and also taught driver’s ed. A real jack of all trades. He had the darkest, bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen. They were all I could focus on, the class was so boring. He didn’t really like talking about sex. He didn’t try very hard to conceal his feelings about abortion being newly legal. He may have talked to the boys about condoms, but I don’t remember it. The class was a bummer. I was able to talk about my feelings more openly with another health ed teacher, a woman named Hilda Ward. She was the only African American teacher in my very white suburban school. She was a safe haven for me and admitted that she too, experienced attraction to women. I was so lucky to have her on my side and felt honored that she’d share such personal information with me at a time when it really wasn’t okay to be that honest. She was a brave woman and she related to my feeling like an outsider. She felt the same way, just for different reasons.

Before my parents split up, I had a habit of snooping through drawers and briefcases. I knew things in my family were rotten, but no one talked about anything difficult. They never yelled or fought, so I had to get my intel anyway I could. One night when my folks went to a show, I took myself for a little stroll through the drawers of their nightstands and dressers. I discovered a copy of The Joy of Sex, complete with illustrations of straight white people getting it on. Even though it really wasn’t what I was looking for, I found the drawings exciting, arousing. Oh, those teenage hormones had a mind of their own. I was feeling the feels but had no idea what to do with them. I found a tiny brown glass bottle in my father’s bedside drawer. The bottle had a red and yellow label that read “Rush.” Curious, I unscrewed the cap and I took a sniff of the foul-smelling liquid contained there. It smelled like a boys’ locker room. I quickly re-capped it and put it back where I found it. I had no idea what it was for. When I was in my twenties, I finally found out that it worked as a sexual enhancer and to this day, I’ve never had the pleasure, thank you very much, I’m good. The idea of my parents as sexual beings was not a thought I wanted to entertain too often, so I stopped looking in drawers. I did walk in on them once, toward the end of their marriage. It was exciting and gross at the same time. I didn’t knock. It never occurred to me that they might want privacy.

When I was 17, my friend’s mom from down the street gave me a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the ground-breaking health manual of the feminist movement. She was one of two feminist moms I knew, and someone I could be myself with, although she wasn’t totally at ease with my interest in women as romantic and sexual partners.

It was a while before I cracked that book open because I felt a little shy about it. The book sat on a shelf waiting for me to get brave. But, oh, when I finally did! So many interesting topics to read about. Birth control, female anatomy, sexuality, rape, menopause, abortion, and masturbation (only one page on that subject, though––at least in the 1970s edition). AND there was a chapter called “In Amerika They Call Us Dykes.” Once I found that chapter, and started reading it, directions on how to masturbate were, frankly, unnecessary. You couldn’t tear me away from that section. I visited often, if you get my drift. And at seventeen, I discovered I had quite a large appetite. I had my first orgasm while reading that book.

One Tuesday night (the night my dad would take the train from the city to have dinner with me and my brother) I couldn’t think of anything else but that book. Well. And the orgasms I wanted to have. So, I excused myself, forfeiting time with my father, so I could hang with my gang of women, the ones who lived in the pages of that sexy chapter. I told him I had homework to do, and said “You guys hang out, I’ll be back,” and ran upstairs to sit in the ugly, ratty yellow and brown tweed armchair that I got from my best friend. Her parents were throwing it out because it was falling apart, but it was so comfortable; I had to grab it. My mother absolutely hated it. She was an interior designer with superb taste. I’m sure a part of me wanted the chair because she disliked it so much.

I got myself positioned properly, sitting in the chair; I covered my lap with the red, white, and blue afghan my grandmother crocheted for me. It reached from my waist to the floor. My ratty blue jeans were tugged down around my ankles. I opened the book and got right to it, and in the middle of my joy, my father did the thing. You know, the knock while simultaneously opening my bedroom door, with no time for me to grant or refuse admission.

He stood in the doorway, his ever-present cigarette held between his fingers, plumes of smoke partly obscuring his face, and said,

“Honey, I have to get going, my train is leaving in 20 minutes. Come down and say goodbye.”

And he just stood there and waited for me to get up. Which WAS IMPOSSIBLE because I was naked from the waist down.

Trying to keep my cool, I cleared my throat, and said “I’ll be right down, just give me a minute.” And then I waited for him to turn around and walk away, but he left my bedroom door open so I had to wait until he walked downstairs before I could uncover myself, hike my pants up and zip. I walked him to the front door when his cab honked, gave him a big hug and kiss goodbye and locked the front door to run back upstairs to my Amerikan Dykes and pick up where I left off “reading.”

No one in my family knocks.

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