So I have to change her name. Well, at least to the name I have chosen to use in a semi-autobiographical novel I am writing, tentatively titled Shame. Well I remember being attracted to Alexis in what was then a rural part of Boksburg. She had a younger brother, Cosmo, and the three of us splashed through the nearby vlei, picked peaches, threw figs at one another, chased after cattle with my dogs. She was about 11 and I was about 12. It was more her eyes, her electric smile, and less her body that interested me (and the fact that she was not a boy). At least I think so.
Her face was sweet water brought into focus by those twinkling pebbles, her eyes. Bright pebbles. Later on in life in memory they would stare from deep inside a still pond up at me, unreadable, unattainable, with (I think) a hint of remorse, even shame, for what we had done. Of course, after our episode, which I will come to, Alexis was no longer the easy “catch” she had been. Why the metaphor of water for her face? Her face reminded me of a pond, which, like any body of water, puckers and wrinkles under a breath of wind. And her face would ripple with the moods and a child’s fancy of the moment. Whenever I secretly looked at her, and she knew that I was, Alexis’s favourite trick was to throw her long hair over her face and then stare at me, eyes hidden behind the astonishing fronds and watch me watching her, not knowing I could see her staring back. But she probably did know. And flicked back the mane, then looked for the next diversion, a fig to throw.
We had a small orchard of fig trees on the huge plot we lived on. The bees thickened and glittered around the sweetly rotting globes that had fallen till it seemed the critters would float off with the treasure. There were afternoons of flinging figs at one another, mud-caked neighbours’ children joining in the screaming, scampering and dodging. Alexis and I were never on the same side in those wars. I was too shy, preferring only to watch from the other side. I don’t know what she felt. By the time we were called in to wash before dinner the pink fruit innards lay splattered all over the veld, gaudy dead butterflies under the nearby creaking windmill.
Her body. I was alarmed by it, stood in awe of it, an almost boneless lightness as she skittered giggling away while her brother and I hurled figs at her. Often Alexis and Cosmo stayed over on weekends. We swam in the pool or the nearby Carlos Rolfe’s vlei. Alexis would be in a wet shirt and shorts. There was nothing to see; we were both too young to understand what seeing meant anyway. Just the rough jokes of adults overheard: a skin of words masking things, no depth. The play of her body under a veil of cotton, light and water simply enticed. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with sexuality. It had everything to do with sexuality. That is before the word “sexual” came along like an accusation with reverberations that knolled the death bell of received norms, such as what was taboo, disgusting and sies. Or as one aunt would often say about matters to do with the lavatory or the sexual: oh poof, Roddy. (The excretory and the sexual went together, I was then already noting, as suggested by the sheer proximity of the anus and genitals.)
Cosmo bought into the idea of how to get Alexis and me into bed together probably because he was keen for any naughtiness. Which of course meant he and I were like blood brothers. We only used the plan once. Whenever the two kids did a stayover at our home he and I shared the bed and Alexis was put in the guest room. So, that night, long after the adults had gone to bed, Cosmo stole through to his sister’s room, woke her up and she came padding over to join me. Alexis didn’t giggle now. Quietly she lay on top of me, warm as earth. We kissed till my mouth felt like one of those bruised figs and we swore eternal love, all that jazz. But we didn’t have the faintest clue what else to do with each other’s bodies. I was just a little too young to have any genuine arousal. Well … surely I would remember that. That first sexual encounter reminds me now of seeing a silly mutt chasing a pigeon and then one day miraculously catching one. He sat back on his backside and cocked his head and ears without the foggiest notion what to do with this prize he had hunted for God knows how long. Thankfully Cosmo remembered to wake up Alexis and me at some early hour to swap beds again.
It was to be our secret. Initially, was there shame? Guilt? I know I just felt uncomfortable around our parents the next day. Then I noticed over breakfast Alexis’s father (much later I learned he was the stepfather), grinning at me, Alexis sitting next to him, a little pale and withdrawn. The pond had iced over. My discomfort grew over what we had done. Only some time later could I name our experience with the words shame and guilt. We had been dirty. Poof, Roddy. But her flesh like earth packed against mine as we fell asleep was my first sexual awakening.
Our childhood relationship was never the same again. Sometime later Alexis’ mother divorced once more and she and her kids moved to Johannesburg. Alexis and I didn’t see each other again.
In the novel I am writing I am trying to grapple with just what a sense of childhood shame is and its consequences later in adulthood. Following the thinking of a child character loosely based on me I have written: “Sin: he had learned that word at St Andrew’s boarding school in Bloemfontein. The pale fire of the word burned into him long before he ever paged through a dictionary to find its definition. He felt so sinless, but the word echoed through him as if through an empty space as he lay in bed that night. So he looked up the word in his dictionary. The definition spoke nothing to him. It was then that he dimly began to realise that definition and meaning often parted ways.”
It’s now about 35 years later. That rural part of Boksburg is long gone, replaced by office blocks. I have seen Alexis on Facebook and sent her several messages, said hi, made a joke about the fig fights. She does not respond. In her online photos she still smiles the same way.
Interesting.I have long pondered this quote: “People say young love or love of the moment isn’t real, but I think the only love is the first. Later we hear its fleeting recapitulations throughout our lives, brief echoes of the original theme in a work that increasingly becomes all development, the mechanical elaboration of a crab canon with too many parts.”
-Edmund White. A Boy’s Own Story. However,I think that on deep reflection I have learned this is not so. Love is not sex. Sometimes there is love in sex, but the most profound love normally has nothing to do with sex, which proves that Shakespeare was greater than Darwin. And that most adolescent experimentation has an ongoing turpitude that White found fascinating, but only because in his own words ‘means were greater than meaning’.
@Rod, sometimes the world does not need to learn every single thought that bounces through our heads.This would be one time and I certainly understand why Alexis doesn’t ‘friend’ you on Facebook.
La Quebecoise –
was not just any thought “bouncing through my mind”. I tried to convey that these early experiences profoundly shape what we are, and our sexuality is an intrinsic part of our being, probably the most powerful, for good or not. Our emerging sexuality defines a lot else that happens in our lives and I am trying to explore that. FYI, “Alexis’ did “friend” me on Facebook years ago. Hence I have permission to look at her online photos, see where she is at and vice versa. But does not communicate, which is her prerogative. She has said in a wall message that she does not use Facebook much. Mark Robertson responded with far greater understanding and I was trying to show that love and sexual experiences are not necessarily the same thing. Ours was a primordial experience which I tried to convey with mere words, which get in the way. This is because words, resonant and distorted with taboos and societal values, get in the way. It is the spaces between the words that are more important. But thanks for commenting, I like to see different angles. Thanks.
Born in a Roman Catholic nest, me and my three brothers were taught that “one does not do these things until after being married”. And living in a small house, three younger sisters added to the family, there was not much opportunity given to do otherwise.
“First love” is like a methyl spirits flame: “sudden and short lived”. If it deepens, lucky you! If not, it remains a memorable image in ones mind. One never knows if the image is more beneficial for the soul in the long run.
I still remember the lovely smile of a girl when I was an army soldier, having a beer with one of my friends. We never ever met. We never ever spoke. She still helps me over some of the relationship hurdles we all experience.
Rod, keep Alexis’ smile as one of your fantasy treasures. Don’t try to blow the bubble.
This is so beautifully written and covers so much ground.
For many young women there is also shame surrounding their sexual encounters. There is shame at not knowing what you were doing, whether you wanted to do it and what was expected of you. Then there comes the shame that labelling provides, words like ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ that are bandied about at women, and rarely pasted onto men.
It is this process of negotiating our shame, our pride, and the mixture in between that leads us to develop our sense of ourselves, and of our own sexuality.
hello Rod, I think men may understand this more than women would, but I may be wrong. And of course some writers appeal more than others. I confess to not understanding what you were writing about; sex, love, shame, guilt all muddled up. And what in the name of heaven were you & her brother thinking of anyway. It’s all a melange to me. But it’s your story, and good luck with it.
@Rod. I have just read one of Mark Robertson’s posts to another article. he is much more poetic & philosophical than am I. So I do understand why he might well have understood your poetry and your philosophical musings.
All the best in Kiwiland
Another very fine writer had this to say about young love/ sex and shame: “When love flies,it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and who are not conscious of folly or prurience in the past, of long aimless conversations”. The memory of young lust is often a memory of the distortion of passion over reason. The shame is not just sexual shame. It is the shame of surrender to passions that are primeval and beyond our control, but that leave us emotionally bereft and – even more devastating – morally compromised. Regret. Folly. Shame.
People don’t talk about sex and shame enough. And usually when men talk about sex, its never about the shameful aspects. There is a lot that is hidden about children’s sexuality. Also, I went to a group of churches called His People then under Paul Daniel (yes I will name them, since they aren’t hiding their teachings) where they teach that women are emotional, and men sexual. That women’s weakness is to fantasize about knights on white horses, and men’s is masturbation. But women in church were masturbating like crazy and couldn’t admit it to anybody whereas men spoke about it freely. There was no room in Christian fundamentalist teaching about the primal sex instinct in women. It just didn’t exist.
I love Mark Robertson’s comment – my first love was my LAST TRUE love. It was the first time I experienced that crazy gush of emotions, so couldnt control it.
Now when I feel that gush of emotions, i know its passing infatuation, there’s no naivete.
After my fundamentalist ways, I discovered sex and love aren’t the same.
Sex is pleasurable and intense.
It isn’t sin, maybe when we stop treating it like its sin, people like Alexis will know that it’s ok to be awoken and feel ok to greet you with a huge hug instead of cold icepondness.