I have three girls…which means three times I’ve had to give the old Sex and Puberty talk. I always assumed my delivery would get progressively better as the last one rounded the bend into womanhood, but no such luck.

I still remember the first time. My oldest walked into the kitchen where I was slaughtering a recipe for Beef Stroganoff. Upon quick analysis, I could see that her legs were bowed and it looked as if she had ridden Old Nell bareback from Fort Briggs at an uncomfortable canter.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“You know!” she gasped, her eyebrows raised…index finger pointing to her privates.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“Come on, you KNOWWWWW!”

I suddenly understood…and cursed myself for not reading the brochure the school had sent home a few years prior. Immediately I prayed to any menstrual God there was…Creator of the Curse… Lord of the Heavy Flow… The High Priestess of Pads and Pons… in hopes that from some far reaching heavenly direction wise words would appear.

Procrastinating, I turned a few knobs on the stove, wiped my hands on a towel, dipped my finger in the sauce…and waited. Eventually I realized I had to wing it, but not before my daughter told me that she thought she’d put “IT” in the wrong hole.

“What?” I said.

“You know…those things. I don’t think I put it in the right place.”

“A tampon?” I said.

“MOM! You don’t have to say it!”

For whatever reason my thoughts took nervous flight to an old joke involving female genitalia and a bowling ball. The smirk on my face as I remembered the punch line sent her waddling out of the room like an old cowpoke.

“Wait! Oh God, this is it, isn’t it?…The day you want me to explain things. I thought there would be more time…and now I’m supposed to be clinical, yet motherly.”

My daughter rolled her eyes and I realized I was losing her.

“Some day you will understand how difficult this is. My success or failure at explaining this could mean the difference between you embracing womanhood…or being doomed to years of therapy. It’s a lot of pressure. Just give me a minute.”

“Mom, WHERE DOES IT GO?”

“Okay…I can do this. A tampon? Well, it’s fairly rudimentary. It goes in front…no, actually behind…that flipper thing.”

“Flipper thing?” She said, looking confused. “You mean the clitoris?…Or the clitoral hood?”

Then a few years later, the second daughter splash landed into her womanly wake. Like her sibling, she cornered me in the kitchen where the conversation started out much the same until I stopped her in mid-sentence recalling my previous “bird and bee” debacle. Regrouping from a pregnant pause, I blurted something about going to fetch the “Let It Flow” school pamphlet.

“Forget it Mom…I’ll just go ask my sister.”

Years passed, and I was all alone with number three… “the baby.” One evening she approached me, holding a tampon up to the light like a mouse  by the tail.

“Yo Mo, where does this bad boy go?”

I will give you the good news first…by that point I had forgotten the bowling ball joke. I was even fairly factual, but nowadays, this new batch of kids are much more open and in touch with their bodies. Very little embarrasses them.

One day I walked into the bathroom and she had plastered a new Kotex to the wall as if it were a piece of art. I looked at it for a long time.

“What is this doing here?” I asked.

“I’m preparing.” She said.

“Preparing? Honey, people prepare for a hurricane, a tsunami or an earthquake…but a Kotex is not to be confused with stocking Spam in a bomb shelter.”

I remember when I was growing up. No one clued me in. I guess we were instinctively supposed to know what was going on, like birds flying south in the winter. One day I overheard some girls on the playground. When I walked up to them, they fell silent.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Female things,” one sneered. Then they turned their backs and giggled.

“I know all about that,” I said. Both girls abruptly did an about-face.

“Have you started bleeding?” One of them asked.

“Bleeding?…Who hasn’t?” I laughed.

When I got home from school I asked my neighbor, Virginia. She was two years older.

I said, “Ginny, how does that blood get out of you anyways?”

She said that it just sort of gushed out of a hole.

“A hole?” I said.

“Damn,” she screamed, “Don’t you know anything?”

I began having dreams…frightening dreams, that made me wake in a cold sweat. I saw myself sitting in a classroom when all of the sudden a gigantic tidal wave of blood exploded from this blow hole down there, knocking over desks and children, carrying them out the door and into the hallway. There were kids trying to keep their heads afloat, desperately grabbing for lockers and mounting fire extinguishers for support. Miss Delbert, the school nurse, lunged toward me through the rapids of blood swinging a sanitary pad and belt over her head. The vital fluids of life erupted from me like red hot lava, oozing with such force that it was all I could do to hold onto my desk and watch my best friend Margie Klinkerbush get swept away.

Okay, my daughters’ Kotex wall-art never caught on with the critics, and remained part of an underground private collection. In some Andy Warhol circles I’m sure it could have been cutting edge…probably ahead of its time. All I know is… I have finally finished my last bloody speech on menstrual cycles!…Now I’m fine-tuning my spiel on pregnancy and the joys of childbirth.

     I was inexperienced, naïve, scared, and totally grossed out with the thought of exchanging bodily fluids of any kind. He was tall, blonde, ripped, and more than willing to usher me into what would hopefully be a joyous celebration of my sexuality. I remember him fondly…a man who took his time…and promised to tell his fraternity brothers the next morning that he fell asleep in the car, instead of stuck to the wet spot of my 100 count cottons.

     It seems to be a fad of late to revisit our 16-year-old pubescent selves, and with the benefit of hindsight offer up words of wisdom to reassure that gangly brownie-baking geek that everything will be okay. Lighten up…love yourself…live for the moment…resist cosmetic surgery, but most of all, keep your sense of humor. One day you may take a job at a mattress warehouse store and find yourself doing the street corner boogie to commuter traffic in a Sealy Posturepedic sandwich board. For that you’ll need to draw laughs from every funny bone in your body…or take stronger drugs.

     With this in mind, I have begun to pen my explosive new memoir called DEAR ME: A LETTER TO MY DEFLOWERED SELF.

     Let me start by saying, I was a late bloomer. While most girls were swapping their training bras for full-fledged cups and experimenting with their sexuality, I was spending exhausting hours stuffing my sunken chest with bobby socks.

And when I wasn’t padding that trainer, I was squeezing the hell out of my Mark Eden Bust Developer. That spring loaded pink-clam got a real workout…enhancing my triceps beautifully, but not a buxom inch of cleavage to show for it.

     Puberty was a cruel master. All my friends seemed to be finding the perfect asshole to pop their cherries. I was instructed in proper blowjob etiquette and technique well before I’d ever laid eyes on a penis. “Look up at him with your best Bambi-doe-eyed vamp glance and proceed to work that thing like it owes you money.” They recounted smells, swells, and that rare occasion when the dingy actually slipped effortlessly into the marina. And as all this activity probed and penetrated my innocence, there I was…home alone in my toxic bright yellow single bed, reading the Nancy Drew series from cover to cover while picking corn kernels out of my braces.

     In doing research for my deflowerment novel, I have decided that it would be unfair to give just one version of how the seal was broken. Instead, I decided it was only right that I contact my first lover in order to give full recognition to the man who stripped me of my clothes, my dignity, and from the look of the sheets, a fair share of my type A-negative.

     With these glorious memories in mind, I began my hunt for “first boink.” Searching online, scouring phonebooks, writing personal ads, hiring investigators, tapping phone lines, hacking computers…I even resorted to conducting a surveillance stakeout. I went to these great lengths wanting him to understand his role in my life. Somehow I was certain he felt the same.

     Upon securing his number, you can imagine the butterflies I felt dialing those digits 40 years later.

     Me:  Dale?

     Boink: Who’s asking?

     Me:  This is Annie.

     Boink: Who?

     Me:  Annie.

     Boink:  Sorry, I’m drawing a blank.

     Me:  Remember? We met in a bar. You were with some drunk friends…I drove the whole bunch of you home in my Volkswagon.

     Boink: Tall? Brunette?

     Me: No, sort of average height with blond hair.

     Boink: “Sugar Hips”… That you?

     Me:  Ah, no. Not “Sugar Hips.”

     Boink: Give me another clue.

     Me:  OMG, this is awkward. Okay, I knew you in college.

     Boink: There were 40,000 students. You need to narrow the playing field.

     Me:  We were friends for a couple months in 1977. GOOD Friends.

     Boink:  Good friends?

     Me:  With benefits…

     Boink: If this is some sort of paternity suit, just keep dialing cuz’ I’m not your man. Besides, that kid would be going through his first midlife crisis by now.

     Me:  I didn’t call for money…or about a baby. I am calling because you took my virginity.

     Boink: Oh shit…a vengeful woman.

     Me:  No, actually I’m writing a book about my first time.

     Boink: You’re kidding, right?

     Me: No, I’m not. I’m writing about my first sexual experience…with you. The man who opened the door to what has now become a completely fulfilling exploration of sexual delight. Before you, they used to call me the Ice Queen…so I guess I just wanted to say…thanks for planting your flag in my polar cap.

     Boink: Wow…you’re welcome. Women have always told me I have an uncanny talent for breaking the ice.

     Needless to say, I am reassessing the book. Forty years later I guess I was looking to embellish the significance of that moment, and make it more than it really was. An attempt at revisionist history, with the hopes and dreams that he would provide the emotional depth and detail it so deserved.

     Oh hell, who am I kidding? The expectation of sharing that sentimental touchy, feely, warm and fuzzy stuff is SO over-rated. Maybe this is all I needed. After all, I can’t remember much about that night either.

As I’ve mentioned, some years back I sold real estate. One of the many houses I had to sell was located in a small community just outside of Seattle. A true “close-and-doze” would be the real estate terminology as this place surpassed the definition of “fixer.” Apparently the owner of the property died in her kitchen while feeding her cat, Earl Grey. At the time of her death she had no living relatives. Carl, her husband, had died some twenty odd years prior leaving the entire estate in Francis’s name. All of her belongings –the dilapidated house (which rumbled every time Burlington Northern passed), the Buicks, (her Century, Carl’s Skylark), relic furnishings, and an extensive stock portfolio were all to be sold with the funds handed over to the Humane Society. Somewhat of a normal transaction since they were childless, but there was a twist. In her will it stated that at the time of her passing Earl Grey was to be captured and euthanized. 

It was the attorney handling the estate who decided that the dirty task of disposing of poor Earl fell under my jurisdiction. Oh sure, I’d been asked to clean and tidy, bring flowers and food, even scrape and paint from time to time, but never kill a cat. And all the while I couldn’t help but feel the noiseless presence of Francis. A hermit with Earl for so many years and now I was to display what was left of her world to hordes of curious neighbors, looky-loos, and fast-talking realtors. I was well aware that there would be those who would want to see how she lived…where she hit the floor and took her last breath. Those who would possibly search for clues in Francis’ final scoop of Kiddle and Bits that had come to rest in the cracks of warped formica.

The first time I saw the place I was amazed how time had stopped somehow, like when you visit old people and you notice the pages of their calendar haven’t been turned in a few months or years, or the hour hand had fallen off on the Smith Selectric above the stove. There was something incredibly eerie about her untouched belongings as if she had just popped off to the store for a quart of milk or to mail a letter to a distant relative in Nebraska. But that was not the case. 

My clues were many. There were waterlogged phone books on the front porch, unpaid bills in the mail slot, and shingles splayed across the lawn after a heavy winter storm. Inside, I was welcomed by time-eaten green shag carpet and sticks of worn furniture. There were shoes lined up at the front door as if they were waiting to go somewhere, a selection of plastic bonnets and hats adorning a coat stand, and a bathrobe casually draped over a chair in the bedroom. A bedroom in which she hosted a mad tea party of teddy bears. This is something I found to be a reoccurring theme in the homes of the elderly, and each time I came upon a cluster of bears I had to ask myself, at what age do grown women start their love affair with the Paddingtons? 

The walls of Francis’s home were lined with black and white photographs of lustful youth in wooden frames. I could only imagine the importance of the people encapsulated in those dusty tombs of glass –the wide smiles full of lifetime guarantees, futures ripe with promise. More photos exposing middle age lines and furrowed brows, a place for disbelief to lodge. Then later life…possibly a fiftieth celebration with Carl, a resilience and shock of so many years with the same person. A disturbing sense that if death takes one before the other there will be a week or so of visitors and assurances to keep the one left behind busy, a few casseroles delivered by neighbors with easy instructions, and a sharing of tears that only dead flowers can hear. It is a parachute jump into an uncharted field that she had to navigate to the best of her ability. Had she imagined this outcome as a young bride? Could she possibly envision herself alone in this rattling old house? No, probably not, because hope instills promise… and solitude rarely gives one pause for vanity. 

Instead, she thinks of protection. There is an earthquake kit and a baseball bat in the closet, a smoke detector, and a monitored alarm whose batteries had long ago ceased to hold up their end of the bargain. Francis appeared to be prepared for everything, but being alone. It reminds me how a life can sort of creepily cut loose from the web of stuff that made it habitable. It is like you are suspended above the abyss by an intricate and fascinating pattern of memories, but when they are gone…Boom, right into a bin at the Goodwill to later keep some homeless soul warm, or assist a costume seeking Halloween teen make a corny fashion statement by mockingly wearing the items that once lay flat against now cold skin.

I sat in Francis’s kitchen nook, staring out the window at the view, which must have delighted her the past fifty-seven years… and I spot Earl. Two eyeballs peeking out through a hole in the rockery like an inaccessible planet or that little kid Jessica who long ago fell into the well. No more a desperado than I. Just a little crapped-on gray clump of fur, probably damn scared and hungry. His eyes looked more pronounced, holding a stare like a person slowly going mad. We looked at each other, both lost in our own complexities and I knew I couldn’t kill him. Even when I took the listing I always knew that Earl would be safe on my watch. If this makes me a liar, so be it. 

Until my friend died I used to meet him at a restaurant in Seattle’s University District called “The Continental.” It was the last hold out where smokers of all nationalities communed in a hodge-podge of language and culture. 

My friend had a fixation with Third World women. He would tell me about them while he hot-boxed one cigarette after another, blowing it over his pancakes into my eggs and toast. It was pointless to complain because he couldn’t go fifteen minutes without a drag. 

Here is a tidbit of our last conversation before he fell ill and died. My nickname for him was…Vertical Vern. 

“Damn…look at me. 

I smoke three packs a day.

Three damn packs.

Have you checked the price of cigs?

Fucking ridiculous.

I’d sell my mother for a pack…

So they got me by the short hairs.

Been smoking ever since I was this high.

Tried the patch…and the gum. 

That shit don’t work.

My lungs got holes the size of the Holland tunnel.

What’s the point of stopping now?

I know people who’ve quit cold-turkey

And what do you know?

Dull as dirt. Got nothing to say.

“Hi, I’m John…I’m healthy…

Eat raw fish, hit the gym, don’t drink,

Wow…ain’t I something!”

Those kind of people shrivel my nuts.

You know why?

Because…BOOM! They’re the walking dead…

One foot in the grave.

Not me, man!

I’m going down huffin’ a carton of Marlboros, 

hooked up to an intravenous Dewars drip. 

Sixty-three years old and look at me…

Liver’s pickled…lungs are shot

But hey, I’m vertical! 

You’d think painting was a crime.

I should show you Isabella. She’s Cuban.

I had every intention of painting her

But I made love to her first.

She laid there like a mattress with a hole in it.

The only thing moving was her mouth

telling me about her family in Cuba. 

I painted her in bed.

That’s the last time I oiled. She was something.

Venus to my penis…What more can I say?

We all got faults but let me tell you something…

Do you think ol’ Vern here painted her with small titties?

Hell no! I painted a goddamn goddess rack.

Now I teach her bambinos to paint 

And we get along just fine.

See how it works? 

You’re smiling…but I know a thing or two about life.

Lived long enough to write the whole damn book.

Been married too. My ex ended up with a knee surgeon.

Now there’s a fucking racket. 

People born everyday with two knees ready to bust.

I guess I’m lucky.

Got two good ones…

But my lungs are shot. 

What do you expect…smoking three packs a day.” 

Strange that I remember this random, disjointed conversation like it happened today. The memories flood back…How I used to stop by his house to visit and he would answer the door in his underwear, oblivious to the fact he’d been up all night working on some new painting. We’d stand in the kitchen in front of his easel…layers of paint dripping from the stove doubling as a palate, and he’d tell me about a new hue he was experimenting with. It crossed my mind that he thought of women in much the same way he dabbled, diluted, and mingled his color wheel…. A man, who one morning after thirty years of marriage, possibly in search of an undiscovered exotic pigment, walked down to the bakery for a maple bar and never came home.”