CREATIVE NONFICTION 13
ii.
In bed, alone, I think of him. Do you like it when
I kiss your nipples? I picture the words rising in his
mind and alighting from his tongue, his lips. The
way he asked his question so gently. Naturally.
Then I think of my parents. I think of the words
they taught me to seek like low-hanging fruit:
words for obligation (contract, treaty, onus); words
for oblation (sacrifice, offering, gift); so many words
for learning, for study, for sin. In the way of most
spoiled children, I am ungrateful. I know to say,
“They gave me so much,” but I am aware of all
I don’t have: words for the body’s parts, words
for the warmth I feel when another draws close,
words for wanting and having and being satisfied.
I still don’t know how to refer to my breasts.
On paper, it is easier. Breasts, I write, breasts. But
on my lips, the word is too airy to hold, too
delicate for my tongue to catch. Breas—I try to
say, but the consonant cluster departs before I can
speak it.
I have some friends who still, childishly, say
boobs. A few say tits—a crude, joking word, which
makes me cringe when I hear it. There is bosom—
matronly, old-fashioned, pendulous. It makes me
think of my grandmother, and the times she left
the bedroom door open while changing.
Breasts, I say. Breasts. A wisp of a word.
Nip-ple, I try. Nip-ple. The second syllable dis-
solves sharply into my exhale. Nipple, I say, finally.
Nipple, breast, vagina.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
iii.
I am twenty years old when I realize I am re-
pressed. That I should be able—want to be able—
to speak about a body.
You learn to fake it, eventually. You learn not to
start when someone says penis, casually, in con-
versation. You learn not to laugh when someone
speaks about nipples, about breasts and anuses and
the plural of clitoris, which I learn is clitorides.
You learn how to speak in bed, avoiding the
words you hate like gum on the street. You
become an expert in circumlocution.
Like this?
No, here—
Here?
Yes. Like that.
I become brave, or brave enough, with my
hands. I direct where I want theirs to go. I am gen-
erous with the hums and exhalations at the back of
my throat, little muted things I release in moments
of pleasure. When we are really alone—when
there is no one for blocks or the walls are thick or
we are in a hotel and don’t know the people next
door—then I am as loud as I want to be. One
laughs afterward, pleased.
What? I ask with a smile, blushing just a little. It’s
more fun this way. What I mean is, I am trying to tell
you what I want.
I can be very silent, very loudly silent, when
I am displeased. Sometimes I push them away.
Sometimes I say, No.iv.
There is a W. S. Merwin poem I love called “Los-
ing a Language.” It is about many things. One of
the things it is about is the way language becomes
misplaced when it is passed from generation to
generation.
many of the things the words were about
no longer existthe noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I
Merwin doesn’t talk much about how some
referents never change, though their signifiers
morph as they’re whispered or boasted or joked or
hurled. Pussy, twat, dick, cock.
We do not lack words for the parts of our bodies.
Easily, I think of four that correspond to the
space between my legs. Six that speak to the space
between his. There are medical words, babyish
words, so many slang words I still don’t know.
Merwin wrote that the young have fewer words. He
was wrong; we have more. None of them seem
right.v.
Once, before, I wanted all of the words for
the body. I was very much in love. I was very
inexperienced.
I had decided that our clothes could not come
off unless we could name the places we wanted to
touch. And so, when we were both tired enough
not to care—or rather, to care less about how
much we cared—we practiced.