Funny thing happened on my way to the cervix…
I was supposed to come out named Paul Andrew. Despite the fact that my parents and their friends and family were certain that I’d be a bouncing baby boy, I passed through my Mom’s cervix as Karen Beth. While a bouncing baby, I lacked that special “Je ne sais quoi” known as a penis. So, what became of Paul Andrew? Somewhere and somehow, Paul Andrew’s essence must have clung to me, as I moved down the birth canal, since I emerged from my mother with a head filled with pink fuzzy hair on the outside and notions of wanting to be a boy on the inside. As a baby, I filled my days with my chubby little hands wrapped around a Gerber baby sausage link, as I lacked a link of my own to play with. During a diaper change, I’d look down past the mountain of my baby Buddah belly and see no pine tree towering in the valley below. If I could articulate my desires as an infant, I would have been the shortest and youngest patient on Freud’s couch. (Sometimes a bubble gum cigar is just a bubble gum cigar). Then, I would have had the earliest reported case of Penis Envy.
I had the Pinocchio Syndrome. I wanted to be a real boy! Instead of being called by my real name, Karen, I preferred to be known as KK using my more gender-neutral initials. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have suggested to others, “Just call me Paul.” As a kindergartner, I’d regularly ask my parents, when I was going to become a boy. As my mother was an earlier version of Dr. Ruth (Crotrojan Woman), she had no problems deflating my hopes and dreams by clearly defining that boys have penises, while girl’s have vaginas. Mommy Ruth explained that since I was born with a vagina, I’d always be a girl. At bath time, she’d point out where in my anatomy I was lacking external equipment. Despite my Mother’s “My Body, Myself” discussions of gender definition, I would always burst out my war cry yelling, “IT WILL GROW!” to my mother or anyone who’d challenge my transformational growth towards becoming a boy. (Perhaps this is currently why I don’t automatically delete spam e-mails promising penile enhancement from http://www.exxxcite.com, as these spammers at least believe in my potential.)
I have a sister, Lauren, who is 15 months older than me, so naturally, friends and families would regularly buy the “the girlies” dolls. Instead, I would covet my neighbors (actually my cousin, Chuckie’s) Hot Wheels and GI Joes. If we’d play house, I’d always assume the role of a\the two-year old son or the family dog never doing time as the mommy. If we played Barbie’s, I’d have Ken. No matter which male doll or action figure I’d chose whether I played with Ken or GI Joe, I’d always pull-down their pants to check out their plastic package. I’d find that when their waistbands were pulled down below the knees, just like me, we’d all be as smooth as Kojack’s head in the nether regions.
I still held fast in my proclamation that “IT WOULD GROW!” Now, in the tub, having discovered “the little man in boat” clinically termed the clitoris, I’d pull on myself showing my Mother and sisters evidence that I was turning into a boy. I was a tomboy and had many male friends. In fact, from an early age, I was attracted to and loved boys. As a friend once pointed out, somehow I was a young gay boy. While this wasn’t true, while my friends wanted to grow up to be “mommies, nurses, and teachers,” I didn’t want to grow up versus growing out to fill the zipper region of my pants. I’d settle on a career of being a policeman, cowboy, or fireman and even once after probably being served a batch of expired Hamburger Helper, I wanted to be a drum. No wonder why I was jealous, when Robbie Brovero got to play along with the chorus to “Little Drummer Boy” over me during the Crescent Elementary School Winter Concert. (Being a Jew didn’t help mw land that coveted role either.) My missing member wouldn’t get me membership into the boys’club, as it continued to refuse to grow. To try to get some mojo, I walked around bare-chested in the summer and enjoyed my pair of boy’s Husky jeans that gave the appearance of a bulge. The transformation was happening; if only in my mind. Being a chunkster, as I filled my Husky jeans, I began to have some “oven-stuffer roaster pop-ups” action on my chest. With my speed bumps emerging, I began to get teased as I’d play the role of the shirtless teenage hunky son, when the girls in the neighborhood played house. It became harder to act like Leif Garrett, when you’re packing a couple of buds that belong more on Mrs. Garrett from the Facts of Life.
While I held onto a few vestiges of hope that my Husky jeans might eventually fill out, my Mother sat me down and explained to me that I was beginning puberty. She took me through the whole her whole puberty talk. We revisited that the man has a penis (seemed a great deal more ominous than the earlier talks in which the “boy has the penis”) and that the woman has a vagina. Much like my Nanna, my mom’s mother would say, “Don’t be embarrassed. You have nothing that I don’t have only mine is older and more hairy.” In my mom’s version of this talk about my emerging breasts, she’d discuss why “my girls’ would need to be put into a torturous lingerie device from now on. I not only lost the freedom of letting “my girls” swing freely in breeze, but when my mother stridently told me once more that I was born with a vagina and would never become a boy, I didn’t answer with my usual “IT WILL GROW”. Those words withered in my throat like the erection that I would never have. Eventually, those tiny oven-stuffer roaster pop-ups became more the size of DD chickens and years later, I grew that hair that Nanna told me about down below. Not even Ken had that.
I gave up on wanting to grow a Johnson, but continue to hold their membership in high esteem. As is said when someone harbors a bias, “some of my best friends have penises.” I’ve gone through life without the ability to pee standing up or to write my name in the snow. Maybe I should just change my name to Dot so I can enjoy that male snow-day rite of passage? All-in-all, it doesn’t matter, as in the Titanic moments of life, I’ll beat Paul Andrew’s ass into a lifeboat every time!
Rubber Chicken 