Things I Didn't Know I Loved*

* If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in! Come in!
(Shel Silverstein)

August 18, 2006

Being a boy

I have a male alter ago called William. Just a long-running joke among friends, with endless comic possibilities (start with 'Willy' and take it from there). Can't even remember how it started, and never really thought about it too closely: nope, no penis envy, I love being a woman.

Yesterday I watched a friend's little son (the friend being yet another one of those overworked, too-busy-making-his-fortune-to-be-a-father fathers) sitting in my dad's lap. They were getting along like a house on fire: their heads drawn close together, two conspirators chattering away, my dad answering the kid's unending stream of strange, curious-child questions in that gentle, random way of his. And I wondered if, instead of two feisty females, he might've liked to have had a boy.

The Little Mute Boy

The little boy was looking for his voice.
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

I do not want it for speaking with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger

In a drop of water
the little boy was looking for his voice.

(The captive voice, far away,
put on a cricket's clothes.)

Federico García Lorca

posted by Reformed Cynic # 9:15 PM

Comments:

Despite what you may think , i'm sure u'd very much enjoy a penis .
It's such a fantabulous tool ... really !

# posted by

maxxedout : 5:10 AM

You just reminded me of a (female) friend, a few years ago, blurting out in the middle of a totally unrelated conversation:
"If I had a penis, I wouldn't know what to do with it."

I WOULD know what to do with it though. And you're right - it would be fun! But only for a little while though. After that it would become a liability.

# posted by

Reformed Cynic : 4:59 PM

u told me actually - the teachers at ur school thought your name was a misspelling of william.

# posted by

Forsoothsayer : 1:36 AM

My parents named me Sherien. I had it changed to Mohammed when I was seven years old, because I was getting picked on so often at school. It cost me days of crying and it cost my parents thousands of pounds (and this was in the 1970s).

It was a pretty defining experience because it helped shape me into the man that I am today: rebellious, individual and a little pissed at the world.

When/ if I have kids, I only want girls. They're sweet.

# posted by

Basil Epicurus : 8:53 AM

it's a wonder you're not too traumatized to chat to me :)

# posted by

Forsoothsayer : 11:55 AM

Serious, Mo? Wow. Sorry to profit from your trauma, but:
Boob: that blows your whole only-christian-men-are-called-shereen theory all to hell!

# posted by

Reformed Cynic : 12:13 AM

Things I Didn't Know I Loved*

August 18, 2006

Being a boy

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