Sarah could not track
what might be a healthy sexual way of expressing herself when she came
face-to-face with people outside of her intimate relationship with her husband. She swung from feeling sound to slutty--confident
to insecure. She wondered how she could
show her curves and not feel wanton when others watched her move? If her
bosom moved when she moved, was this flaunting? She wondered, “Must I sling and bind my
breasts still and pad the nipples shapeless, to be accepted without stares or ostracism
when I feel and am a sexual being?”
Her isolated living in a
conservative, patriarchal community was clearly a confusing place to live for
Sarah as she reflected upon her maturing womanhood while exploring her
sexuality. A neighbour woman, who had
lived there for some decades before her, had warned that being physically
“conservative” in dress would garner more respect among the men and not throw
her to their ghoulish preying—that if she clothed her breasts and nipples too loosely
to their eyes, she could expect roughness and abuse to follow.
Sarah was a beautiful,
sexually aware woman—full of energy and enthusiasm for life. Relationships
meant everything to Sarah, and she met people, animals, and Nature full-on,
ripe to learn and engage with everyone who was wanting to be a loving and kind
person in return. She understood in her
heart that we were all “one” and in the Rostapherian mindset, shared “one love.”
Sarah wondered if everyone,
or at least every “community” had its own definition of sexual acceptance. As she tracked this response Sarah concluded that she did not know how to
deal with the results. Her obese neighbour’s breasts hung at her elbows--nipples
and tummy bursting beyond the confines of the already over sized frumpy, often
food-stained cotton jersey tank top with bra straps and flesh bursting forth
from all edges of what seemed inadequate to cover her upper body. Sarah’s husband, Don, said that it was
accepted because she was fat, and that no one was titillated anyway. She wondered--she is a woman is she not? Those are
breasts. She has a loving husband, and must have her own definition of
her own sexuality. Why would Jennie be
exempt from the same standards as she?
Sarah did not allow
herself to limit her relationship with people by judging them superficially,
but chose to look deeply into the heart and soul of each and every person. More than a few people had called her
“Bohemian” in her ways for her capacity to engage in such open, loving
ways. Sarah lived with her heart on her sleeve and took the brunt of this when misunderstood time and time again.
She followed every woman she
saw with a tuned sexual-awareness radar—and pondered how they might establish
their own private “place” in the world
of sexual ease. For what Sarah was
experiencing was most definitely a dis-ease.
Women who dressed and walked with ease and abandon caught her gaze the
longest. For she wished to be of that group---a group that represented
to her a freedom that she felt was missing within herself, and longed for.
Fiona danced the Highland
Fling with beauty and poise that evening
in Edinburgh when the conference day ended and it was time to kick back and
party. Her bosom caught all their gaze—men and women both.
How could it not? Her dress and movement revealed it all to them. She
slept with John that night, calming his scattered sarcasm and quieting him as
only sex can do--Sarah knew full well the outcome of satisfying sexual
intercourse. Fiona and John missed that next
morning’s lectures and were noticeably missed by Sarah, and no doubt others in
the group as well.
And when she flirted that
night with Sarah’s husband, Sarah watched and wondered if Fiona’s abandon had loosened
her husband’s morals as well. Sleep took
some time coming that night.
Don, she had noticed for
some time, had eyes for women who moved with ease—women who flirted with their
bodies clothed in suggestive fashions. Simple. Revealing breast and thigh and
pelvis. When strong and lean, the forms
drew closer inspection. Not the hard
muscle of gyms with weights and repetitive workout, but the long, leanness from
healthy living—good food, enough sleep, perhaps yoga or long walks. It was the balance that seemed to catch his
eyes—and cause him to linger. Sarah thought
about the waitress at the brew-pub whose close-fitting dark skirt, just below
her knees, and the close-fitting top, revealed just enough lean breast and pelvis, and long, lean legs. Her walk was as if on air. He liked dining there—and spoke easily of her
to Sarah. But in time, she grew to
resent his comments and felt humiliated by what she thought of her own broguish
attire and aging body.
She could not help but
compare. For she was the one he had eyes
for at one time—and now, she had become his confident in his sexual attraction
to this younger sexy woman. She knew
intellectually that it was healthy for a man and a woman to be attracted
sexually to others—even while married.
What she did not know in her heart, was to what extent his continual
gazes and enthusiastic conversation with this waitress and then with her, would
ultimately bare upon their own intimate relationship and her own sense of
sexual self love and respect.
At what point would this
external admiration of other women’s sexual presence turn against and perhaps
loosen and ultimately harm the bond
between the two committed in
love? She truly did not know this
answer. Yet she knew that inside she
wished he could continue to silently admire other women, and continue to speak
his loving, endearing, desires for her, to her, with that awe and delight they
used to share together. Was this not
possible, she pondered? Must she become
a confident now, for her husband as if
somehow their day-to-day ease and familiarity over road what she held sacred and
delightful still in her own heart and body after years of marriage and their
own sexual intercourse?
Sarah and her husband
were soul mates. Best friends, and had a
developing, ongoing sexual relationship that was neither over-the-top nor
failing, but a physical expression that
sustained their connection and kept them committed to one another. She had always, even in her first marriage,
enjoyed and delighted in sex with her husband.
And stayed true to him, even up until leaving the marriage. Sex was something Sarah found not only
fascinating, but exciting, and a part of her total health—both physically and
mentally. She could not imagine life
without being able to express herself sexually through masturbating and
copulation with the man she loved.
In a time when sex is
flagrantly exposed in tabloids, TV, & movies there is everything available
for the viewer. Sarah sensed that she
wanted to feel more freedom about herself—to feel the ease in movement and
dress. To not wonder about how she moved throughout society. She was at ease and peace when at home—on the
land, in her gardens—but she inevitably wondered if she must drape her breasts
with cloth to cover nipples and excess movement when she went to the post
office, to town or on visits to friends. She deeply pondered why this mattered to her—why it
should matter to others—particularly when society exploits everything sexual.
Judy’s breasts are so flat, Claudia’s nipples do not seem to stiffen—Susie is
too fat for others to care. Erect nipples are suggestive, she has
experienced, only too clearly. A
come-on. A taunting—a tease. “Put out,” is the word. And with this experience throughout her life
now, she has covered herself and hidden her freedom to express her sexuality.
Jacob once told her that
a woman dressing flauntingly deserves to be raped. Harsh she thought—whaco! And
he was her homeopath. How could he help her
integrate how she felt about her own body with thoughts so repressive and
patriarcally limiting? He believed
hugging is bad—with clients.
Sarah felt ashamed in her
youth when her nipples showed through cotton T shirts, but she felt the need for
her breasts to be free if she wanted them to be—and not be restrained
by a bra or the “world.”
In her hometown in 1970, she
stopped wearing a bra one morning. It
happened one early morning dressing hurriedly after a morning swim before high school class when she quite simply forgot to put it on. She found the absence, a personal freedom, a
feeling of self-expression, well beyond anything what she thought
possible. Within the week, she endured a
physical assault upon her breasts by a boy who, when she was in grade school,
used to hide in the bushes and punch her in the gut when she traveled to visit
friends after school. This did not deter
her from her path—but she would hope each time, in vain, that Charlie was
elsewhere. She wondered if perhaps these assaults on her in her younger years toughened
her to those yet to come.
Charlie was sitting in
the backseat of the car when the guys on the basketball team pulled up next to
her as she left the pool that morning on her way to school, asking if she would
like a ride. Sarah accepted, quite
unaware of their motives when she jumped into the back seat and was immediately
man- handled by Charlie as he struck at her breasts as she fought and hollered
for him to stop. Charlie was a runner--
an athlete, and impossibly strong and tenacious. Sarah bore the brunt of his attack yet again and
again.
An only girl, Sarah sought
out other childhood female playmates. Her desire to be with them obviously
eclipsed the fear she had of Charlie and his
brutish ways in those early days.
Years later, did it help to hear the murmurings of Charlie’s mom’s struggles? The trouble their
youngest had? She knew his dad, Dr. Jordan, saw patients at the town
clinic. He helped heal people—yet his
household was ill and his son raging out at her physically, sexually.
Was this about
sexuality? Sarah’s? Charlie grabbing her breasts because she no longer wore a bra? Because she was acting wanton? Beating her up because she was young, a girl,
vulnerable? Was expressing one’s own
sexual preference for dress, weight, movement, a message to some that OK’d
abuse? To others, confidence? And to some, an abandonment of their
boundaries and moral responsibilities?
Kat
22 July 2007 ©
