Now I Lay Me Down

My sister used to enjoy making fun of how prudish I was. My nieces and their children look on me as some prim and proper creature who likes to turn film canisters into rockets but is otherwise dull. If I swear, my friends burst into fits of giggles. Avatars have given up hitting on me in Second Life (not that I'm complaining). How did I get here?

But is there anything wrong with being prudish at 13? Is it possible that their mother's stream of scorchingly blue vocabulary just made my limited use of "Aw, shit!" seem like no swearing at all to my nieces? Do I really swear that infrequently? I don't have a problem with swearing. Just today my husband and I were imagining David Sedaris's brother Paul as a spokesman for some product or another and both of us went through a conjugation of "mother-fuck" worthy of Carlos Fuentes. We chuckled at ourselves, not out of any kind of embarrassment or shock, but just at the juxtaposition of Paul (a person we don't know at all but seem to think we do) and, say, Aunt Ruby's Peanuts.

Okay, my first year of college, I have to admit that I consciously taught myself to say "Shit!" by repeating it over and over in the car on my way to class. And my sister's language did used to make me cringe. When she was dying, and her husband was playing the stereo too loud (or perhaps just the wrong music - she'd taken an unreasonable dislike to Leon Redbone years before), she raised her head up enough to tell me to go "Tell him to fucking turn that shit off!" I think my version of it was something in a hushed voice to the effect of, "She respectfully requests you turn the music down."

And I really do say, "Oh, sugar!" - but because I think it's funny.

I look back now and wonder why I should be the anomaly when I hardly recall our parents swearing. I could get into deep doo-doo for saying someone "crapped out," if my dad hadn't pointed out that it was a perfectly respectable gambling term. When I was eight or nine I clearly remember my mother starting to say "damn" and trying to turn it into "darn" and coming out with strange dipthong that sounded like "Darren." Sewing could even make her hurl out a very unusual "Hot damn!" which was worse, she informed me, than a regular "damn." I don't recall my dad swearing or even raising his voice. During their worst arguments, no matter how shrill my mother got, he remained calm and reasonable, and, boy! did that piss her off! The most I ever heard him say to her was, "Now, Ruth ..." Something like that would send her spinning out of control and lead to her calling him a "Buster" as in, "Look here, Buster! If you think ..."

So, as a young person, I had to resort to being whiny. I had no good vocabulary! I would stretch my sister's ordinarily monosyllabic name into three or four syllables and run it through my sinus passages. And she would call me names. She called me "The Modest Maiden." "You take that back! Mo-o-ommmmm!" I was also some kind of "virgin" as well, but I don't remember the adjective. This was because I liked to have the door closed when I was on the toilet. Silly me. What was that all about? To keep her from coming in, I started locking the bathroom door. It seemed as if she was always wanting to brush her hair when I was in the bathroom. Couldn't she keep a comb in her room? What was that dresser and mirror for? Geyahhhhd, Ayeeeunnn! It turns out she was just part cat. I can't go to the bathroom without a cat being upset if the door is closed.

Is this reaction so unusual? Am I the only person in the world who closes the bathroom door? I was in my family. I was also the only one who didn't scamper naked through the house. When we moved to the beach, we would shower off the salt and sand before entering the house after a swim. My dad would actually totally strip outside. At least my mom shed her suit in the laundry room. I often wondered how the neighbors felt about some seventy-year-old retiree rinsing his less-than beefcake form in the side yard. No one ever said anything to me.

How did I get this way?

The first year we went away for the summer vacation (always the same last two weeks is July like all IBMers and their vendors) without my sister, she went crazy. She had a week-long party. The nosy neighbor next door pumped her for information about it; she was sure there was an orgy going on. There was definitely a great deal of drinking, but that wasn't so unusual because drinking went on all the time in my family. My sister's friends came over and spent the night - and another night, and another and another ... We had three bedrooms in the house and they were all occupied. My sister told me that one of her friend's period started on my bed and that was the least of it.

Later on I went into my room and looked at my twin bed. It creeped me out that it had led a more interesting life than I had. I felt it had betrayed me somehow. How could I sleep on it again? My sister had thought it was a big joke: people having sex on her little sister's bed. I was disturbed, but not at her, which was the weird thing. I was upset with the bed. It didn't last long, though. You can only stay up watch television so long. Eventually, you have to go to bed.

I spent most of my life living down my sister's behavior. She wasn't a scholar, so I had to do well at school. This was something that was easier to achieve when she finally moved out of the house. She never did what she was told, so I was quick to obey. Her language made stevedores cringe; I spoke four languages (three of them badly). She had wild, unprotected sex, had children outside of marriage, died from cervical cancer; I couldn't get a date or even probably wanted one. She did the right thing and finally got married, had two children, and stayed home to be the perfect mom; I ran off to New York City to break into acting.

Now that our parents are gone, I don't have to live a contrary life, but I have done so for so long, I don't know what sort of life I would have wanted. There are things I don't attempt because she was good at them: pottery, mothering, training horses, pies. Okay, I do make pies, but they will never be as good as hers. I had a boyfriend (such a juvenile term!) who was so fascinated by one of her pies that he pried off the pastry layer by layer. "If you don't want that, I'll eat it," I told him. No way, he wasn't giving up that pie. He'd never seen anything like it. No one ever will.

I don't say these things about my sister to be mean. This is my last chance to contrast myself with her. From now on, I will be treading in virgin (so to speak) territory. I am taking the path she never took, going through the menopause she never achieved, getting old without her to forge the path for me. And really, the only thing I can think of to say is, "Oh, shhhhhugar!"

At Last!

Someone must be mellowing in their Old Age. No longer can This Certain Person complain about the Season's Greetings cards I send out. I feel that now, and only now, Peace on Earth is within our grasp. And why is this? What is this magic, is it the Ineffable? Is it Easter?

No, of course not, it's My Birthday and I will thank everyone in the world to set aside their stupid, petty prejudices and join hands for a big lovefest in my name, amen.

Don't make me send you a card!