Tomboy

Tried and True

Kay, 9 years old

In one of my earlier lavender stories, I shared a story about the first time I revealed my true self in public – second grade, when I took a canteen and Army mess kit for show and tell, which moved my teacher, Mrs. Miller, to notify my mother that I might be a homosexual.  Here’s that story.

See below for more stories to add to the collection.

Dresses were not my thing as I was growing up in South Texas in the 1950s.  They did not fit with my body, or more specifically, my spirit. Witness the snapshot above of me in what I labeled at the time my Cheerio dress, named after breakfast cereal made of oats that float in milk, but sadly, not for the cheery British way of saying adios.   The dress was red, not really my color.  

In this picture I see myself, a little soldier in the girl ranks.  “Yes, sir!”  That call out a routine homage to well-established patriarchal rules, such as those dictating appropriate apparel, for example, skirts and dresses, which the patriarch l-o-v-e-s. They are hard to run in, make sliding into second base tricky, and get in the way every time when peeing.

For some of us girls under the age of 12 and before the age of adolescence, it was easy to get away with gender-bending stuff back then.  The word tomboy was often spoken affectionately.  And why not?  Us tomboys were not threatening.  Some even thought us adorable.  We were gender neutral, if you will — no breasts, no pubic hair, no lipstick.  Some tomboys even grew up to be heterosexual. 

While my mother did not disparage my tomboy-ness, she was intent on passing along to the next generation — that was me, and all the other female baby boomers flooding the Fabulous Fifties – the cultural norms instilled in her as a child and then as an adult.  She was following random patriarchal instructions like many other mothers with their young girls.

The indoctrination worked like this:  On one particular day near the end of third grade, I was leaving the house to ride my bike late one afternoon —  shirtless, a style I often embraced when outside.  My mother stopped me.  This was a first.

“Kay, why don’t you go put on a blouse,” she said, one of her consistent reminders that girls wear blouses and boys wear shirts because words matter. She smiled sweetly and touched a few of my dishwater blonde hairs ever so gently with her long, slender fingers and manicured fingernails, finished off with Apple Red glossy nail polish.    

“Why?”

“You’re getting older now and it’s better to wear a blouse when you are riding your bike.”  

 “What do you mean?”  I asked the question without expecting a meaningful answer.

“It’s time for you to always wear a blouse when you are in public.”

I wanted to argue, but chose to negotiate.  “Ok.  I just want to ride my bike one more time without a shirt on.”

Mozelle acquiesced.

I was sad, but happily relieved that I had one more chance to feel the wind on my chest, my hair blowing across my face.  As I turned the corner onto the next street over from my house, I told my observer self to feel this ride so very deeply, the memory woven with verve.  My nipples were hard.  Tits to the wind! 

So, as third grade came to a close, I learned it was against some unwritten rule that I was not allowed to be outside without a blouse, or in my parlance, a shirt.

A few months into fourth grade, I considered shaving my face.   

It was a muggy fall morning at the tip o’ Texas. I stood up from my desk, which was on the aisle of the classroom, third row from the front. Miss Allyn, our teacher, had her head bent down, eyes hovering over a writing assignment we turned in the day before, red pen poised for a nose dive.  Her wavy brown hair was punctuated by shades of gray, and she rarely wore lipstick.  Not much makeup, just enough to tamp down the soft brown age spots. 

I asked permission to go to the bathroom.   Miss Allyn’s shoulders moved upward and she lifted her head back ever so slightly. She took a look at me.  I had startled her a bit.  Rarely, if ever, did I, or most other kids for that matter, ask to go to the bathroom.  In my childhood, that was frowned upon. Bad manners, maybe?  Adults with control issues?

She obliged my request, and I walked back towards my desk, leaned over, and gripped my scissors, which were on the metal shelf underneath the desk. I held them tight in my right hand as I left the classroom.  Miss Allyn had put her head back down, eyes fixed on the paper, her red pen marking up one paragraph and then another.

I turned right as I walked out of Miss Allyn’s classroom, headed to the girls’ bathroom two doors down. There were no enclosed hallways at Ebony Heights Elementary – instead we navigated concrete walkways covered by a wide overhang of the school’s flat roof, a mid-century industrial look.

Walking towards the girls’ bathroom, I kept my head down and my eyes on the concrete, one foot in front of the other, keeping up a pace.  I did not have much time to waste.  Miss Allyn would know if I took too long.

But I was intent on performing my experiment, the reason for which I didn’t yet understand, but which, regardless, bubbled up in my imagination after TV commercials bombarded my brain, bragging about the best foamy soap for men to use when shaving their facial hair, the voice of the commercial promising ladies a lingering, manly scent.

That shaving of the face thing with men was something I wasn’t really witness to while growing up – the consequences of Mozelle’s early-on divorce from my father, which included banning him from anywhere near or far from us, and her post-divorce decision to never bring men home.  She was particularly discreet with her dalliances.

Once in the girls’ bathroom at Ebony Heights Elementary a quick look-see told me the stalls were all empty.  Finally, I was by myself, alone with my scissors, the short, pointy ones, not the ones with the rounded tips.  First off, I had to get ready for the scissors so I lathered my hands with soap.  

Standing in front of one of the mirrors over the sink, I spread bubbly lather on my cheeks and chin, stared into the eyes of my mirror image, opened the scissors and began to shave my face, one clean easy-does-it stroke at a time, each glide of the blade pumping up my confidence.  

In retrospect, I figure I was looking for a way to understand men and boys. At that stage in my young life I only knew the guys who worked at my grandfather’s grocery store. When I wasn’t feather dusting the canned goods I was chatting it up with the two butchers behind the meat counter. I loved the energy I felt in the grocery store with the fellas, who were really nice and polite to me.   

After my shave, I washed off the soap, grabbed a paper towel and dried my face, then patted my cheeks, pretended I was putting on aftershave.  I looked into the mirror, turned, and headed back to class. I never felt the need to shave my face again.  Whatever vibe I got, once was enough. 

I was glad Miss Allyn had not come looking for me because she would have most likely called my mother to set up a conference and reveal to her that I had been doing something unnatural, like exposing the homosexual side of me. It would have been the second violation in less than three years. 

First time it happened was in second grade when I took an Army canteen and mess kit for show and tell, after which my teacher, Mrs. Miller, warned my mother at a parent-teacher conference of the possibility of me being a homosexual. 

My mother let that one float off like a feather caught in a quick puff of breath.

After I finished fourth grade we moved from Brownsville, Texas, to Salina, Kansas, of all places. My mother, three months earlier, had married a stranger named Bill. He would be our step-father, the man of the house, a frustrated male who did not like women or girls very much. I figured that in another lifetime he would have been gay, and much happier in life. Now that’s another story that’s gonna have to wait.

…..to be continued