How I become a Neo-Feminist Lesbian Spinster English Professor, or, Thank You Mom.
Houma, Louisiana, or “Coma” as my cousins from Colorado call it, is a Catholic town of less than 300,000 people, set on the winding brackish bayous of the most southern tip of “Louuusiana”, as the locals say it. Ten years ago, the population was less than 100,000. There are many stories about how people come to stay there, ranging from the typical story of being born there, to cars breaking down on their way through that held families who never left. My reason for being there was the former, though I understand the latter. The town is something of a black hole. Whole days are spent planning escape, yet little comes to fruition. My family was no different. The weeks were spent working the 9-5, living good Catholic Republican lives. That included us, on the surface. When I was a pre-teen, my mother decided I would no longer go to public schools. She enrolled me in Vandebilt Catholic High School, the one private school in town, ignoring my tears. She stood her ground. He reasons were sound: she wanted me to get a good education and have the right kinds of friends. She was very strict about the latter. The right kinds of friends were the kind whose mothers watched over them (and me) like hawks; the kind of friends who stayed away from drugs and alcohol. When I was a young child, she made me call my best friend at the time and tell her I could no longer hang out with her. Through tears, I asked my mother why, and got the worldly answer of “she’s not going to end up in a good place in her life.” At ten, this answer seemed mystical, and my mother, powerful. She could see into the future. It turned out she was right. The friends she picked for me graduated with Masters in Business and Law while the friend she made me leave behind ended up pregnant at sixteen.
By no means was my mother a “Southern lady.” First off she was as atheist as the day was long. “You’re gonna go to Vandebilt,” she said to me, “but you don’t have to believe any of what they tell you. Remember, you’re there for the education. There is no Jesus.”
My mother also was a liberal. She taught me masturbation was ok as long as it was in private, and that My Body Is My Own. The latter was a record she made me listen to over and over while pointing out the parts of my body that were not ok for strangers to touch. She ran a Montessori school in our house when I was young. At the time Montessori was considered an “alternative” style of teaching children. That’s why she chose it. She had me reading at age three and introduced me to Jack London at age eleven. I thought Call of the Wild was the most boring thing I’d ever read. I traded it in for Stephen King’s It at the used book store by the mall. She was tall, and sweet, and gave good advice, and knew how to cook where the other moms just ordered pizza or took us for burgers. My hand-picked friends would curl up in her lap, and preferred sleepovers at my house because my mother would help us build tents and teach us games and stories. When I got older and it was time to steal our parent’s cars, I was the only one who wasn’t punished, because she had done the same when she was young and she didn’t believe in punishment really, anyway. When I was twelve and my father refused to give up marijuana, she came into my room and told me calmly that they were getting a divorce. When my Dad left her with nothing, she worked impossible hours and still was there to be my best friend. Today she lives next door to me, and I see her constantly. So looking back now and knowing that I never gave her the one thing she wanted is a rather hard pill to swallow.
She only wanted one thing. This thing she wanted was carefully sounded out with warm lips pressed to my young ear at quiet sun-lit moments of my life, probably carefully chosen by her to remain like shining diamonds in my memory. “You catch more bees with honey than vinegar” was a favorite saying of hers, and she lived it. Her favorite time to tell me was as I was sitting on my four-post bed, the afternoon sunlight gently bathing the room with soft striped shadows of light. She’d brush out my long dark hair, identical to hers in every way, and repeat it to me like a mantra.
“I want you to marry an English professor.”
So simple, this one thing my mother wanted from me. I could give it to her. How hard could it be? And so began my quest for my mother’s approval.
In retrospect, I tried, I truly did. My first few years in high school passed by quickly, but as I my body changed into a woman’s I found myself looking at the boys around me knowing that they’d never be good enough for Mom. In tenth grade, my English teacher was a woman. In eleventh; a closeted gay man. In twelfth; another woman. I struck out there. But in truth my high-school thoughts were elsewhere. They were on my body and on the changes in me. My hair got longer, my breasts fuller, my hips wider. I started to notice boys as they became more than just basketball friends. Mom thought it was great I was “becoming a woman”. She took me shopping for bras and had responsible conversations with me about abstinence and sex. I examined every inch of my body in the mirror in the bedroom, giggling at the changes. I poked and prodded. Things bounced. I poked my friends. They bounced. We giggled. We wore our socks higher and our plaid uniform skirts shorter. I don’t know if the boys noticed, but one teacher did. Mr. Moreaux, my ninth grade science teacher, began winking at me before class and in the halls. I’d hang around after class with a few other students, and he’d tell us of his dream girl, describing me while staring into my eyes. I fell, hard. I started lining my eyes, my lips and my fingernails with paint, hoping he’d notice. My afternoon mirror examinations became more critical. As I walked the halls of my school my eyes wandered over the other girls’ bodies, and every inch, every strand of silky hair I mentally compared with mine. Every body part stood up to theirs, except one. My butt was flat as a pancake, while many of theirs were round as the sun. Their skirts fell over their behinds in perfect bell-shaped forms like drops of Hershey’s Kisses. As I climbed the stairs behind them, their oval derrières bouncing with upright glee, my own pancake anterior fluttered in shame. My friends confirmed it through relentless teasing. “Pancake butt!” they’d giggle, laughing. I’d grumble and spin around so they couldn’t see the lack of bell shaped perfection. Oh, the horror of being so bubbly challenged!
Soon, I couldn’t take it anymore. Mr. Moreaux’s flirtations began to taper off. Surely it was because of this burden on my backside. How would I ever attract the English professor mom so vehemently wanted me to marry with this thing? There must be a way, I thought. I sat and racked my brain for hours. Then suddenly, it came to me. Socks. My heart raced as a smile slowly rearranged my face. The answer was socks. Socks I whispered out loud. I could put socks in my underwear! That school day dragged on and on as I waited impatiently to go home and raid my sock drawer. Daydreaming of socks and the perfect plaid butt, I spent the day in a daze. I wondered during History if I should use the long white socks we wore to school? Science came and went and I wondered if tape would hold them in place, or some levied system of shorts and tight underwear. I impatiently tooted my way through clarinet practice until finally I raced upstairs, fending off mom’s questions about my day, and found myself in my bedroom, door shut and locked, facing my wooden dresser. I slowly opened the sock drawer. Where to start? I picked out the long white socks, turning them thoughtfully in my hands. Yes, they would work. Giggling to myself, I put the white socks in my cotton undies, rearranging them so that they looked like two cheeks, a perfect bubble. Then the moment of truth came: I pulled down my plaid skirt over my new butt. Twirling around in the mirror, my reflection beamed at me with a smile, and a perfect bell-shaped buttock. Success!
The next week or so was the best week of my high school life. Attention: I had it. The popular girls stared at me through narrow eyes as I took my place next to them on the stairs, my butt now one of the bouncing leaders. Other unlucky pancake-shaped girls now followed my backside gait to their classes, the fruit of my labor level with their eyes. I’m sure they wondered. I didn’t care. I flaunted my new found half-pound freedom all over campus, and especially in Mr. Moreax’s class. Oh, those days of bliss! Was it my imagination or did he pay me more attention than before? It seemed his clear blue eyes followed me out of class. But I was soon to learn anything good didn’t last, not for girls like me, the awkward, smart ones.
It was a stormy day in English honors when it happened. So stormy, in fact, that I was late waking up, and didn’t take the time to wear my usual under-skirt shorts that held those soft white cottons of confidence in place. I figured, what the hell, one day won’t make a difference. Besides, I’d gotten so used to them that I almost imagined they would stick to me out of habit and loyalty. Surely they were as happy with their newly appointed importance in my life as I was!
It was a test day and the class was quiet with eyes on their papers. This diversion of attention is the only thing that kept me from transferring out of state and possibly out of the country after what happened. It went like this: I got up, turned my test in, and sat down. The next one up to turn in their test was hands down the most popular, beautiful and smart boy in my eleventh grade class, Matt Matherne. He came from a long line of Dr. Mathernes and had class and wealth along with looks, intelligence, kindness and the role of the high school quarterback. You know the type. Blond hair, blue eyes, tall. Everyone loved him, popular or not. He had the locker next to me and I still remember the first time he told me “Hi”, in eighth grade. He was THAT guy. Ah, Matt Matherne. How many girls wished they’d get close to him? How many girls wanted an intimacy with him, of any kind? Well, I got it, just not in the way I’d ever dreamed of.
Matt stood in the middle of the class, holding a long, white, slightly damp sock. “Hey, Mrs. Manns, how’d this get here?” He asked our teacher, interrupting the class. He turned it over in his hands, his eyes lit with curiousity. Of course! It was strange! Everyone thought so. Everyone but me. Oh this was not just any sock; it was the sock that moments before had been nestled tightly in my underwear for a period of hours. The whole class looked up from their tests as he stood there, dangling it from his fingers. He shook it a bit. “Does this belong to anyone?” Mrs. Manns asked the class. She and Matt stood waiting. The class looked around at each other, giggling, while I tried to avoid eye contact without looking guilty. My face was bright red; I could feel the heat rising off my cheeks. It was mine; it had to be. I shifted in my seat and felt it--one half of my butt was flat as the horizon, while the other sock, the non-traitor sock, still sat snuggly against my behind. My thoughts raced forward at a rate that surely broke Newton’s and Einstein’s laws combined. One thought stood out from the others like a giant gold glittered blinking Vegas Casino sign: HAD ANYONE SEEN IT FALL????
As class let out I raced to the bathroom and pulled out the one lone sock that had stayed loyal till the end. I stared at it, then wrapped it in toilet paper and threw it in the trashcan. The rest of my day was spent with my ears bristled, jumping at every girl’s giggle. Paranoid beyond belief, I wondered if every whispered conversation was about me and my sock. The story spread throughout our small Freshman class as people told and retold it during recess, then again at lunch, then before and after class. “Where had it come from?” It was a strange occurrence, I agreed, face burning. I tried to laugh. It came out high and nervous. The image of Matt Matherne holding my sock, probably still warm and damp in his hand played over and over in my head for days. I lived in constant terror, torturing myself, waiting to hear the words that would mean the end of my high school life, and probably the beginning of my stint as a missionary in Africa. Finally the day passed, and the story died out, replaced by new ridiculousness that is the gossip of high school. I silently said a thank you prayer and joined the ranks of the pancake-behinds, once again watching the bell-shaped bubbles dance in front of me on the high school stairs. It was better this way, I thought to myself, and I didn’t even mind so much when my friends teased me. If only they knew what kind of ammo I almost gave them. I decided never again to try to change myself in this pursuit of mom’s dream. If I was to nab a professor, it would have to be with the gifts God gave me.
I graduated from Vandebilt a few years later. I saw Mr. Moreaux at an outdoor festival not long after. He kissed me on my cheek, dangerously close to my lips. He’s the closest I ever came to my mom’s wish. But as time went on and I entered college, my mom’s enthusiasm doubled. Surely now I would make all her dreams come true! Who could resist her daughter’s beauty, creativity and intelligence? She told me, “Now is the time, now you’ll meet him! Your life will be perfect.” Perfect—what was so perfect about marrying an English professor? Did she think her life would be full of evenings of mother-daughter-daughter’s husband-readings of Thoreau by the fire with glasses of fine red wines? First of all, we live in the South. No one lights fires and hardly anyone reads Thoreau. What kind of psychological bullshit was she trying to pull; was this her having me live out her own dream? Why was the title “English Professor” so profound? To this day, I’ve never gotten an answer that made sense. When asked, she only says, “It’s just how I picture your life.” Well ok.
I took a break from school and traveled to Turkey to teach English. I told her before I left that I’d come back with a husband. “An English teacher!” she called out to me as I walked to the plane. I rolled my eyes. But in essence I tried to find the closest thing. I came home with a Turkish opera singer with multiple degrees. A true metropolitan, he stole her heart. We listened to Debussy and he sang her songs in Italian. He won awards for his wild-life photography. He knew how to fold his napkins and what forks to use at dinner. He loved to shop for shoes. Our first date, his friend played the violin while by candlelight he sang a cavatina from Don Giovani. He picked out my first bottle of women’s perfume. And most importantly, he talked to my mother. Maybe I should have known him longer than a month before we married. I’m still surprised it lasted two years, though strangely enough that’s the time it took him to get his visa.
After that….whatever it was, I enrolled at the University of New Orleans. My mother not-so-gently reminded me of her wish, and that I was getting older. “Maybe it’s time you find your life partner and settle down?” But every English professor I had was married, until my junior year. Studies in American Literature with Dr. Hazlett: a divorced bachelor with small children. Older, for sure, but brilliant. I sat in front, and it was Mr. Moreaux all over again, at least in my head. Was that a wink? No? I thought I saw it...in reality it was the sun in his eyes, but that didn’t stop me from making a fool of myself and inviting myself over to his house for wine. How shocked he must have been, and what a gentleman he proved himself with his response.
“I’m out of the country right now, but maybe when I get back? “
Then later: “Saturdays, Sundays aren’t good for me.” “ Oh?” “ Sorry, Wednesdays are kids’ night.”
At least I had some integrity and gave up at that point, bowing out with a simple, “I do hear that kids change your life.”
I’m thirty now, and what may look like straight out rebellion to my mother is just really me giving up. I’m tired of trying to fulfill her dream; honestly now I just want to be alone. Alone with cats. And music, and what I want to watch, who I want to see. I hear there have been great strides in vibrators. It’s enough. I even thought about girls, but that would break my mom’s heart. I mentioned it once to her, just gently, asking in a round-about way what she would think of one of her daughters coming home with a woman. She looked me in the eye and told me she could never deal with it. I imagine her liberal strength evaporated with her ovaries after her hysterectomy. Or maybe everyone has their limits. So that was the end of that. But surely anyone would be better than who I’m with now, the Cajun Redneck. She hates him. Perhaps that’s the real reason why I’m with him, because truly I’d rather be alone.
So it may seem I’ve gone the route of rebellious daughter to some, surely to her. I can only laugh at what I’ve become. My stumble from poetic grace to white trash has been thorough. Just last month, I chained a used transmission from an old truck my boyfriend owned to my porch so no one would steal it; I have dirty glass cups, a beer can, and smashed cigarette butts on my lawn. I don’t have a washer or dryer; I hang my clothes up on a line. I hung my wet underwear out of the window on a ride to my hometown so they would dry by the time we got there, while the Redneck and I rode in my jalopy with no bumper, radio, or a/c; decorated by window wipers that no longer worked but stood straight up to the sky, he in his “wife-beater” t-shirt with a beer in each hand, the two of us sharing a single iPod. On the way there he thought he saw a UFO. Oh, how Mother is so proud. “Is THAT a life choice?” she asked me, pointing toward my house, toward him. I walked out. It’s too much to be unhappy and have your mother know it also.
She’ll win in the end. She always does. Don’t ever fool yourself: as long as they are alive, you are never free from your parents influence. The lucky ones are the ones who are free after they are dead. Sometimes that’s not even enough to break the intensity of the mark they have left in your brain. So whether it’s a Redneck, an Opera Singer, or finally one day: an English professor; it’s still her life I’m living. But I have a surprise for her. If she keeps on pushing me this way I’m gonna end up with an English Professor, all right. A Neo-Feminist Lesbian Spinster English Professor: Me.
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