3.16.2008 morality

Last weekend I went out with Jean and a recently arrived academic transplant, and what a treat he proved to be: a writer, art critic, media studies maven and, best of all, North American.

Oh, glorious good luck! A new friend is always great fun, but one with a similar vocabulary and set of interests is a rarity in this town.

During the course of the conversation someone told him about my memoir, punctuating remarks about the quality and merits of the book with She has something like a thousand scars on her body!

I frowned and corrected No, just shy of four hundred.

My new companion looked disbelieving, and the others told him to take a look. I obliged by pulling my collar down and he proceeded to rummage around my torso, examining the traces of surgical interventions before kindly commenting that they are not frightening.

Maybe, now - because, without my informed consent (I was just a child) every single skin cancer scar was injected with cortisone. Over the years they leveled off and faded to silver, and since my immune system destroyed all the surrounding pigment, they are almost invisible.

Of course I didn't show him my abdomen, hacked open and poorly mended on three memorable occasions, and striated with the evidence that I have birthed children. My belly is reserved for special occasions.

Jean commented that it is odd I am such an exhibitionist but I just shrugged; I grew up on display for the benefit of doctors. Showing the scars, the proof of an unbelievable story, is simply routine.

Beyond that, it has never bothered me if people cop a feel, chew on my neck, or take almost any other liberty, so long as seduction is not the goal. Jean should know this; he has certainly had more access to my cleavage than could be described as strictly necessary.

Yet he persists in a series of quaint, sentimental, stereotyped ideas about women. Later we were reminiscing about a scandalous evening when a much-missed friend seduced a stranger at a party (without asking permission to borrow the bedroom, or caring that the antics kept the rest of us trapped in the room next door trying to stifle our laughter).

Every other time the encounter has come up in conversation I have been called on to deliver lectures about physiology and female ejaculation but this time Jean was more intrigued by the morality implied.

I asked Why, because boys are the only people who can fuck without love?

Jean laughed and had no reply.

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