Mr. Dimao, our 7th grade Health teacher, was totally stand-up about it. He stuck to the facts, and he never got embarrassed. At the end of the unit, he made time for an anonymous Q&A. He even passed out scraps of paper he’d cut up himself.
I couldn’t think of a question. I didn’t use my scrap of paper.
I was baffled when Mr. D read the first question out loud. “Do rubbers work?” Way off topic, I thought, and imagined my father standing in our entryway peeling off the galoshes he wore over his wing-tips on rainy days.
Nobody told me anything.
My parents were frequently naked, but obsessively private. Once when I was eight, I watched my mom shave her legs with a yellow disposable Bic razor. When she put the razor on the edge of the tub, I asked, keeping my eyes at the level of the toilet flush, “Can you tell me where a baby comes from?”
“Sweetie,” she said, and stood to get out of the tub, “I think you’re too young for that conversation.”
For years, I believed a man peed into a glass and a woman drank it. I watched my pregnant aunt in gross-out fascination. She must really want a baby, I thought.
One winter Saturday when I was twelve, my best friend Doris showed me a picture book. It all makes perfect sense, I thought, sitting cross-legged on her braided rag rug running my hand through her dog Nugget’s fur.
Mr. D also owned the only lighting store in town. I didn’t know how to talk to him outside of school, so when my mother sent me in to buy light bulbs, I ignored him.
He had overhead transparencies of genitalia. The penis and scrotum looked huge projected onto the cinderblock wall in the dark classroom.
Some of us drew our own versions in our notebooks. I couldn’t even write the word “penis.” I’d never said the word “scrotum” out loud, even though one of my father’s favorite retorts was “Oh balls!”
It was the end of seventh grade. My friends Erica and Pete had been going out all year. She wore contacts and rode horses. He had a mustache. They looked totally bored as Mr. D unfolded the scraps of paper—as if none of this mattered to them.
They’re totally doing it, I thought, and put my head down on my desk.