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A funny, poignant short story about attempting to discover the mechanics and pondering the meaning of human sexuality when you are the sixth grade know-it-all. A glimpse at the Original Wound that cannot be healed without a connection to one's own soul and spiritual guidance. Frank language. Victoria Louise Savage, age twelve years and seven months, spent the second week of April in the sixth grade attempting to comprehend the mechanics of human copulation. It just didn't make sense to her. She knew where the human sexual organs were located: she knew that hidden in the rubbery cleft between her "front bottom" and her "behind bottom," in the center of her crotch, where the white lint from her cotton underwear tended to collect, was her own vagina. She was aware that while her cleft ran front to back, those of Chinese girls were said to run side to side. She couldn't see how it made any difference, though, for what troubled her was not the direction of the fold but its awkward location. She'd seen her father's privates occasionally, after he left the boiling, overheated bathroom, following one of his legendarily steaming showers, to stand before the living room "swamp cooler" to dry off, and the towel slipped while he was rescuing himself from heat stroke. She'd been impressed: he seemed to have three you-know-whats down there (and so she'd told Kim, the girl who lived in the corner house, back in second grade). In reality, of course, she'd mistaken her father's compact testicles for additional penises, and as a result she was convinced that penises were ball-shaped. And she knew that, whether a man possessed one or three (or perhaps some men possessed two or four), they were located not within in the crotch, but just above. And that was the problem, in her mind. It seemed to her that the location in men and women ought to match, as it did in butterflies and moths, for instance. She'd seen plenty of butterflies and moths mating, found them on trees and hedges and within the honeysuckle taking over the back fence, always linked tail to tail serenely awaiting the completion of some magical, mysterious process. She wondered how they knew when they were done. Once, she and three neighbor kids had engaged in a debate about what was occurring. One boy said that the male's tail was like a vacuum, sucking the female's eggs out of her, and he asserted that they wouldn't come out if the male didn't assist her in this way. To prove his point, he abruptly pulled apart the two hummingbird-sized moths they were examining. Both of their tales then leaked, one leaking only what looked like guts, the other oozing masses of perfectly round, white eggs like miniature okra seeds. Victoria saw that it was true that the two had been stuck together as firmly as with a vacuum seal, and that pulling them apart had pulled their insides out. Victoria shuddered at their doom, but the boy, Wilson, crowed gleefully that he had just helped them, wasn't that great! Wilson argued that the big one had to be the male and that he had evidently just finished sucking out all his wife's eggs since none were left in her. "I'll just help propagate the species," he boasted, dabbing dollops of eggs on several honeysuckle leaves. Victoria's friend Maggie exclaimed, "Eww, gross! You're not helping, you're smashing the eggs, Nasty!" The latter she spoke accusatorily, venomously, and Victoria joined her, turning the description into a proper name: "Nasty! Nasty!" Victoria was troubled by Wilson's ignorance and cruelty, and even more by the helplessness of the moths, so vulnerable to sudden death at the very moment of creating new life. That had been long ago, in the fourth grade, back when she lived in the old neighborhood, where each bungalow had two or three kids. Here, though attending the same school, she was on her own, no peers nearby to help her figure out the big truths of life that the grown-ups would not tell. So for this week she was experimenting on her dolls. G.I. Joe was only half the size of Barbie and P.J., a military midget, but handsome and rugged enough for Barbie and P.J. to fight over, though usually they shared him peacefully since he was the only male doll available to Victoria. Victoria placed them together with their crotches touching, by sliding G.I. Joe sideways between Barbie's unbending legs, one foot behind her back and one at her front, until his short left leg stopped just below Barbie's pointy breasts ("Knockers," her father called breasts, and Victoria knew why: once she'd fiercely knocked her sister on the head with those two hard plastic knobs, and it had been very effective). Barbie's long legs went all the way to Joe's head, one foot in his face. Their rigid legs alternating, they'd been held in place overnight with a rubber band to ensure fertilization. That would surely be the proper position! If Victoria had had a Ken doll it still would have worked, for his leg could have gone between Barbie's plastic knockers, so the size of G.I. Joe did not invalidate her experiment. What did invalidate it, of course, was that their "middle bottoms" did not quite touch, for their legs were not quite far enough apart anatomically to create enough space to bring them all the way together. But if anatomically deficient Joe had had a penis, it might have reached. If it were located in the middle of his crotch, anyhow. Then they could have joined like the butterflies. She could get them to touch if one or both did the splits, now. Yeah, that way the two plastic bodies could connect. But she had to imagine circus-like contortions for real people to do it that way. With their legs straight down, real people could lie on a bed together. She knew that's where they did it. With their legs straight down like dolls, one of them (the man, she thought) could lie on one side (the left, she thought) while the other scootched up between his legs on her back until they joined. Then they could relax and just lie there until the process was complete. That, she could figure. But she couldn't figure out how real humans could do the splits the way her dolls did and still fit on a bed (she'd never seen anything other than twin and regular beds, of course). Victoria held her dolls up in mid-air with her two hands to do the deed. Hmm. If only one did the splits, she could lie on her side, and he could lie on his side facing her opened legs. They would form a T-shape instead of an overlapped I-shape. But that way they were merely abutted. There was no intertwining of legs as in the other method. Somehow, that leg-embrace seemed better. Though Joe could at least hug Barbie's one leg. Of course, when both had their legs in the splits, one leg forward, one leg back (Barbies couldn't do the side-splits, because their legs wouldn't spread, only rotate in complete circles--as often as you please!), then they could spin against each other in circles. Screwing, she'd heard it called. If only G.I. Joe had anything to hold them together, then they could twirl in opposite directions. That might be as fun as twirling on the bars at school. But the organless soldier couldn't hold them together, and every time Victoria tried to twist them round and round she ended up dropping one, which made her aware of her own part in their acrobatics, and once again she was stumped. In real life the guy would have to stand on his head, and the girl would have to get on top. What would she use for leverage to spin? Victoria pictured doing it under the jungle gym, the girl using her arms to turn her body, and maybe hold some of her weight. Hmm. But she'd been told that boys did the screwing, and she hated to think of herself as the one head-down in the dirt. What if the girl hung from the bars and the guy put his head on a Lazy Susan? Yeah, that would probably work! But she herself did not know any boys who could do the splits or would even try, and who would want to do it on the playground? And, anyhow, men didn't have their organs between their legs like women. Penis. Victoria knew that was the proper word. All the other kids said wiener, or if they were being bold, dick. A joke current that very week was, "Didja hear the one about Tom, Dick, and Harry? Tom's dick IS hairy!" Told to her only yesterday in the lunch line by Gina Danielson, whose father was running for city council. Victoria had been taught all the correct words by her parents--penis, vagina, vulva--and didactically taught them to all the other kids in furtive huddles on the playground or in the bathroom. She was therefore considered a sex expert. Especially after she got detention a whole week for contributing to an incident in which the school bully, Alexander Weems, yelled in the lunch room, "Ha! Ha! I'm going to put my pennies in Margaret's pajamas," causing Margaret, aghast, to burst into angry tears and shriek, "This is all your fault!" at Victoria. When the principal ("Principal" is spelled P-R-I-N-C-I-P-A-L because I'm your pal"), Mr. Henries, heard the whole story, both Alexander and Victoria were disciplined. Alexander had to sit in a chair in the hall for all recesses for three days. Victoria had to do it for a whole week for being the "instigator," no matter how patiently Victoria explained that she'd merely been improving Alexander's vocabulary. Of course everyone saw her sitting there each recess and knew just why, too. An awe came over the others, and a mantle of wicked greatness fell upon Victoria. Which is why she now had to figure out the body-positioning thing, the mechanics of sex. Because people were counting on her for answers. She'd already dispensed certain other wise tidbits. Peggy, for instance, whose mother was in nursing school, said her mother told her there was a knot up inside the vagina that had to be untied before a girl could have sex. It was called a Cherry High-Ban, and if it wasn't untied first it would break when she tried to have sex, which would make her bleed and hurt. It took a doctor or a husband to properly untie it. The girls whispered in horror about Peggy's tale at slumber parties until finally consulting Victoria. Was Peggy's story for real? The girls had all checked themselves for such a knot and couldn't find evidence of even one among them. Plus, one girl, Ginger, was already having periods and asked how, if her vagina was tied in a knot, could the blood come out? So Victoria pondered carefully before announcing, "Peggy, that's a lie. When people get married they tie the knot, not untie it" (in a flash Victoria realized that's what real people used instead of rubber bands). She continued, "None of us has ever heard of a High-Ban of any flavor, much less Cherry, so your mother must've said that to scare you, like when Kim's mother told her that if a boy puts his hand on your knee you'll get pregnant. As you know, we all tried it with Veronica's brother Stewart, and none of us got pregnant, not even ones with hair down there. So this is just another way that grown-ups lie to us." Everyone concurred with Victoria's ruling. And she wanted to keep her reputation for sagacity; that's why she was experimenting with Barbie and G.I. Joe. She had to figure out the secret. What if girls had their vaginas where their belly buttons are? That would be more sensible. Then a boy and a girl could stand together or lie down face to face, hook up, and cuddle while the mystery of fertilization was accomplished. And then vaginas wouldn't be surrounded by pee holes and poop holes, either, which babies would probably like better on their way out. Which reminded Virginia of another really gross point: Why do boys have to use the same thing they go pee-pee with? Once, Victoria had a dream. She saw girls walking around in hip-huggers and crop tops with their belly buttons exposed. Only they weren't belly buttons. They were suckers, like the mouths of snails. Victoria's mother had an aquarium, and Victoria had watched the snails glide up and down the glass for hours. Up close she could see them scraping off the algae with their radulae, each with a tiny hole pulsating against the glass as it fed. In her dream, each girl had a pulsating orifice in place of a belly button, and they could put their orifices together to impregnate one another. Victoria knew that snails were hermaphrodites, had known since third grade. In her dream, no boys were needed. A world without scummy, mean boys! If she were God, that's how she'd make it. Vicoria had, of course, only the purest intellectual interest in the topic of sex. She'd never had any feelings of sexual arousal, only intense curiosity. She'd never felt arousal even though she talked and thought about sex incessantly. And she never for a moment guessed that human copulation involved a great deal of motion and hard breathing and groaning. But there was something troubling to her about that dream of pulsating belly buttons, something about the pulsating movements, and the hint of vacuum, and mostly the face-to-faceness of it, the tenderness the girls showed, that suggested to her that more than the bodily function of fertilization was involved. Still it was her mind, not her body, that was stimulated. Or maybe her soul. Though she had never experienced lust, she did know desire. She knew what it was to melt at the sight of someone's smile, the glint of sunlight on someone's hair. She had once been moved to kiss Gina Danielson's tender white neck when she turned her head just so, and she had roughly walked away in embarrassment that she nearly actually did it. And her heart danced in her chest whenever Brian G. or Bryan H. looked at her. She considered that angle now, with her dolls. She switched from Barbie to P.J. so P.J. wouldn't feel left out. She put G.I. Joe and P.J.'s faces together, in a plastic kiss, forced their arms to bend stiffly around each other, sticking out her own tongue as she imagined an open-mouthed kiss. Why do people kiss? Are they hungry for each other? She considered that kind of hunger. Victoria did not know every big word, did not yet know the word cathexis, but she did know the concept, in the depths of her being. She imagined G.I. Joe crawling up inside P.J., like a baby in reverse. She pictured them each removing one square foot of skin and grafting themselves together. She pretended G.I. Joe cut open P.J.'s belly and peed warmly inside her, making her feel less empty and alone. Then P.J.slit open Joe's belly and slid her vagina up to him, wrapping his skin around her. They combined in the most intimate of ways and it didn't seem gross at all. Tissue to tissue, fluids merging, blood mingling and circulating through both bodies, hearts melting like Valentine candies, to make one heart beating for both. Victoria knew a fierce longing to be consumed by another, to envelop someone like an amoeba engulfing its prey. In her burgeoning individuation she had a deep, bone-painful ache to be completely embraced, totally understood, exactly the same as, identical in heart and mind with, someone else. Boy, girl, young, old, beautiful, ugly, it didn't matter. Her mother didn't love her that way, nor her father. Neither had ever loved her enough, nor cherished her so understandingly as she desperately wanted to be beheld and accepted by someone now. Could anyone? It seemed to Victoria that she couldn't know about that phenomenal a love unless she'd once known it, perhaps eons ago, so old and deep was the pain of missing it. A yawning hole existed inside her small body, bigger than the universe in its emptiness, a void as bleak as if her soul had been wrenched from the very arms of God to come into this plastic world. The respect of her peers for her expertise was a pathetic substitute for the once-known grasp of the deity, but it was all she had from them. As far as the curiosity of boys and girls about the differences of their opposites was from actual lust, as far as that was any human relationship she'd ever had from the all-encompassing, sublime love she craved and sought to capture in plastic limbs and mouths and imagined viscera in the quiet room of her lonely house in the second week of April, sixth grade. The Resource that you have requested is reserved for paid Supporting Members only. We want you! 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