booby trap

something different this week

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Hi Hi-

I made a new friend here on substack and guess what… she invited me to participate in a Boob Round Up. Yes, that does sound weird. But I did it.

Leslie Senevey

wrote a lovely and telling personal essay about her body, and in a sense, all our bodies.

At the close of her essay she requested boob stories, and she was inundated with women who have something to say. Hence the invitation for me. A Boob Rodeo, so to speak. Here’s mine:

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Photo by Konstantinos Papadopoulos on Unsplash

Booby Trapped

1. As a young boy my husband detested family meals at his aunt’s home. A tough young widow, Aunt Midge ran a bustling neighborhood market. Joel’s dad drove the family across town in the Chevy Impala to sit at Aunt Midge’s table and eat overcooked steak, canned beans, challah, and potatoes. Kids had to be quiet, grown-ups smoked cigarettes and pipes, gossiped about who was getting married, and who in the family owed who money. The TV was background noise, game shows, evening news, Merv Griffin. Often Joel had to sleep over, to keep his cousin company, and, once everyone else had gone, Aunt Midge would disappear into her bedroom, telling the boys to finish clearing the table. She’d return, topless, to wash the dishes. The vision of her, long red braid tossed over her freckled shoulder, corn cob pipe clamped between her teeth, pendulous, unavoidable breasts, was more than Joel’s eight-year-old heart could bear.

2. After work, my grandma tossed her keys and pocketbook on her desk. She’d kick off her kitten heeled sandals and head to her bedroom where I knew to kneel on her yellow chenille bedspread a pot of Ponds cold cream in hand. Grandma would perch on the mattress edge with her pale and narrow back to me and ask that I undo the hook and eye clasps of her Platex -18 hour Bra. The straps, slipped from her shoulders, caused red divots and my job when visiting her in Miami, was to rub cream into the divots while she sighed and said, “You’re a keeper.” No matter how much I slathered on, nor how hard I kneaded, the divots never vanished. After, she’d button her cotton pajamas and say, “Now, we can relax.”

   We’d step out onto the breezeway for a dinner of chicken salad and rye toast, a glass of milk for me, iced tea and a Camel cigarette for her.

3. My mother tossed a sheet across our clothesline, affording herself some privacy in our backyard. She’d pour a tequila and orange soda, grab the jar of coconut oil and her novel, Michner or Vonnegut, to lay out topless and shiny on our teabag sized patio. This was in our California beach town, where getting a tan was actually something my mother put on her to-do list. Sometimes I’d sit with her, in my swimsuit, shy because I had no breasts to set free. Yearning to be grown up—to jiggle my glass so the ice cubes clinked, to laugh at a book—to have no tan lines.

4. At the Woolworth’s on the Pacific Garden Mall, enormous acetate ladies’ underpants hung from small plastic hangers and the bras were tucked into boxes. I roamed the lingerie section, fingering silky nighties, and terry cloth robes, all colors from the boring end of the crayon box… peach, almond, cream. Alone and nonchalant, no idea what size I might wear. I settled on the word “training” then slyly removed a bra from one box and shoved it into another. The empty box I left on the shelf. In the dressing room, I put on a bra and slid my shirt back over my head. Through the curtain the saleslady asked if I needed help.

   “Maybe I’m not ready,” I told her when I swept open the curtain.

   She accepted the box with one bra. I took my time leaving the store, trying on sandals and buying a lemonade at the lunch counter, all the while feeling the electric jolt of the straps, the cups, and the band touching my skin. It was the first time my breasts thrilled me.

5. Rack. Melons. Tits. Boobs. Jugs. Knockers. Bazoombas. TaTas. Peaches. Who cared what the boys called them, as long as they called them something.

   In 8^th grade, we coveted Esprit de Corp angora sweaters from the exciting end of the crayon box—magenta, tangerine, jade and cobalt. The trick was to buy one a size too big and then shrink it too really cling. Mine, purchased with babysitting money, was fuchsia. Short sleeved, soft, and jewel bright. After the dance, in the parking lot, the boy I liked pressed his dry lips to mine while we waited for his mom to pick him. He stroked my chest and I thought, “Sweater kittens.”

6. Suddenly! A golden ticket to womanhood. A period. A waist. Breasts. There was thrilling power to being noticed in the corridor, turning the combination at my locker, hooted at from a car full of boys, slipped an extra dollar by the carnal-eyed dad who watched while I scooped mint chip ice cream cones for his kids.

   But the other dad who, when driving me home from babysitting, pulled into the cemetery and groped beneath my shirt. The man who repeatedly left notes on my windshield… calling me beautiful, somehow knowing where I was, the grocery store, the DMV, the library. The river guide who, after our day on the river, found out where I worked and regularly came to the bookstore while I hid in the stacks. The boss who called me ‘Princess’ and rubbed my shoulders without invitation. The man who handed me a red solo cup at a party…. There was no power.
   

7. The second time my breasts thrilled me: Huge and tender. Crisscrossed with blue veins. They were a miracle. The hard latch of my babies’ mouths, like closing a coin purse on my nipple. The sting of letdown, the bite of tears in the back of my eyes. And then the oxytocin bath. Their squishy bodies, limpet tight against my belly, eyes drifting back in ecstasy until their lips—tender wet velvety— relaxed, and the popped nursing blister fluttered with each breath.

8. Breast cancer.

9. Ten years after the bi-lateral mastectomy and chemotherapy and the not-my-breasts implants, I was soaping up in the shower and discovered an oyster sized lump in my armpit. One pauses and then one makes phone calls and appointments.

   Again in a hospital gown open in front. Again a young woman arranged me on the slab in the twilit ultrasound room. “This will feel cold,” she said before squirting gel on my chest. And it did. Everything was cold. Again the sweeping pressure of the wand over the not-my-breasts implants. Again the beep and click of measuring. “I have to get the doctor.” She promised to be right back.

   I shut my eyes and hummed my theme song:

   Don’t bring around a cloud
   To rain on my parade

   The radiologist set her hand on my shoulder. “Have you fallen? Have you taken a blow to the chest?” I shook my head. “Let me show you something.” She pivoted the screen with the white sworls and pinpoints of light. The background nearly black.

   “This is called a silicone storm.”

   “Not cancer?” I allowed myself to shake.

   “Not cancer. You’ve had a rupture. The implant has been dripping little beads, like the styrofoam in a bean bag chair. The lump is a node that has swallowed some up, like Ms. Pacman. You’ll need surgery.”

   I loved the picture on the screen. I loved it so hard. It was like star gazing. Like seeing the milky way.

10. With the second implant surgery, I had my nipples trimmed. Is this an overshare? When you get this far, with this much history, is there even such thing as an overshare?

    Aside from being cancer free, I wanted another value-add to the bi-lateral mastectomy and the implant swapout… I wanted to never hook a bra again. I wanted to wear a t-shirt without my freak flags flying. Though I should not care if my body makes other people uncomfortable, I do. I consider eight-year-old Joel’s little heart when faced with Aunt Midge, washing her dishes, liberated from her bra.

    So, the surgeon pruned my nipples. T-shirt, silk-shirt, angora sweater, no matter what I wear my bra and I are no longer on familiar terms. I’ve been freed.

    And I wonder, Aunt Midge, gloriously topless at your kitchen sink, with clearly no fucks to give, what preceded your declaration of freedom?

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Thanks for reading. I hope your day is filled with delight!

If you missed the last few jewels… no fear! Here they are: cookies. melon salad.
a novel. dance. poem. cake. friendship. school shopping. drawing. coffee cups. copying art. spices. beans. short story.

To stay in the loop:

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Tell your people you love them, and take care of your skin!

Merciii!