the birds and the bees
It is hard for me to have grace toward the girl that I was, to not hold over her head my difficulties navigating womanhood. I blamed her for the burdens she carried over to me… but she was only a child when she took them on.
As she grew, she fell victim to the voices of the world around her. They said that desire was something only men experienced, and so she wondered what she was. Perhaps she was a man because she was “visual.” Perhaps she was a woman because her body crippled her with pain, because her legs were suddenly “too long,” and because the older man at church attempted to be her first kiss. They said that God wanted her body to remain untouched by even her own hands, and so she prayed to God not to discard her like the muddied water or the wilted rose or the crumpled paper.
And so she made a promise to God on my behalf. She had me wear it as a symbol of the hope she had, but to me it was a constant reminder of the shame she felt. I grew tired of wearing her guilt, so I cast it aside. Angrily, I cried that God never asked her to make such a promise. She disagreed.
She argued that my fascination with our body was lustful; I argued that it wasn’t sinful to know our body. I told her I questioned her stance on intimacy before marriage. She told me I needed to stay grounded in my thinking. She said that I wasn’t covering enough for wandering eyes. I reminded her that our body wasn’t a stumbling block. I asked that we be more open with people, more vulnerable, and more accepting of our feelings—she was too rigid, too fearful. She said to guard our heart, and that I’m becoming too loose, too different; she worries I’m going off the deep end.
But we both agreed to write about this.
THE PAINTING
Somewhere, a Young Man stands pensively, seemingly unmoved by the two-headed Dragon perched on his shoulder. One of the Heads eyes the Young Man with an unbreaking gaze, and the other stares threateningly at the Viewer with teeth bared. The Dragon holds captive the bodies of two Birds—bleeding, crushed to death, and dismembered in his claws. The face of the Young Man—adorned with honeycomb-shaped jewelry—turns blue from the clouds of smoke billowing from the Dragon’s lungs. Emerging suddenly from the darkness is a Black Dog with its jaws open wide around the Dragon’s belly, its claws ready to pull him below.
The Dragon is the extreme of suppression—snuffing the Birds with his claws and subduing the Young Man wearing the honeycomb jewelry with smoke. If the Dragon does so to oppress, the Young Man does not fight back. If he does so to protect, the Young Man does not seem to cherish it. The Black Dog is the extreme of liberation. It reaches to slay the Dragon, who seems unaware of its sudden presence. If the Black Dog succeeds, what will become of the Young Man in the Dragon’s absence?