My parents didn’t talk about sex. As far as I could tell, my sisters, my brother and I were products of immaculate conception. “Don’t ask, don’t tell," originated with Mom and Dad, leaving me ignorant but not at all apathetic.
Eager to learn, I tagged after Marianne, an eighth-grade Catholic school friend who claimed extensive sexual knowledge. At sleepovers, Marianne conducted classes in human sexuality
“If you want to turn a man on, I can tell you how to make him crazy with lust.”
“How?”
“Just run your fingernails lightly over his belly, right below his belly button.”
“What would he do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what would a man do if you made him crazy with lust?”
“You know.” Marianne and her 8th-grade friends would nod. I was the only one who didn’t know.
Luckily, my school had a health class. The teacher segregated us by sex and herded us into the basement to watch a diagrammatic film strip about human reproduction. The strip only showed the internal organs, with long names like “epididimus” and “corpus spongiosum”.
This film strip was part of a series entitled “The eye is the gateway to the mind”. I didn’t know if I was blind or stupid, but it didn’t make any sense to me. Clearly I wasn’t a visual learner, although I did pick up enough to embarrass my brother by saying “I can see your cowper’s gland”. That was sex education in the fifties.
Sex-ed in the late sixties was more of a hands-on experience, culminating in the birth of my son, Willy. At age four, he was asking me a lot of questions about reproduction. Unlike my mom, I was determined to do a good job answering him. After all, I was a physician.
“We’re Jewish,” I told him, “people of the Book, so let’s go to the library and we’ll find a special book to answer all of your questions.”
We had always spent a lot of time at the library, but lately Willy had developed an interest in a neighborhood comic book store, The College of Comic Book Knowledge.
“I’m only half Jewish,” he giggled, “so I’’ll be people of the comic book.”
We compromised with the classic toddler sex-ed text, Where Did I Come From. It featured cartoons of naked obese people giggling in bed. One quote was particularly memorable: “Mommy and Daddy enjoy being together in bed and when they are very close they make love. It feels good——like a tickle.”
The next day was cold and snowy. Willy and I were sharing a cup of hot chocolate and reading Where Did I Come From. Snuggled with my son in a blanket on the old green couch, I reveled in the perfect innocence and intimacy of that moment. Like Madonna and child, we were bathed in a halo of golden light from the fireplace. Willy’s curly brown head rested against my chest.
“He’s not home,” Willy said darkly, referring to his dad.
“Yes.” I said.
“Well, you’re a girl and I’m a man, right,”” Willy continued, “because I have a penis.”
“Yes,” I said, “you’’ve been listening to the story.”
“So let’’s make love and have a baby,” Willy suggested confidently. “It would feel good, like a tickle.”
In that moment, my life changed.
