Everyone Is Beautiful

by Katherine Center

  And I don't know how we started calling our boys' penises “noodles.” The books say to call private parts by their proper names like any other body part. You wouldn't give a foot a silly, totally unrelated name like “foo-foo.” A foot is a foot, and it's not a big deal. But “penis” is kind of a particularly daunting word, one that sounds so out of place when you're talking to a baby—and the girls' equivalent is even worse. Somehow, despite the experts' advice, we just started saying “noodle.”

  Toby was the one who shortened “noodle” to “noo-noo.” If Alexander could hold it, he didn't have to talk about it. But Toby—always verbal—talked about little else. He'd sit in the bathtub with the thing in his hand, saying over and over, “Noo-noo! Noo-noo!” If he resisted getting out of the bath, I'd point out, “You can bring your noo-noo with you,” and he'd suddenly consent.

  Toby's noo-noo, in this way, became a kind of character in our lives. If I needed to finish a diaper change in a hurry, I would tell Toby that Noo-Noo was sleeping, and we'd tuck him into his diaper bed together while I fastened up the diaper with ease. If Toby was fussy, I could distract him by inquiring about Noo-Noo. “Tobes,” I'd say, “how is Noo-Noo doing?”

  And he'd pause from his tantrum for a minute to really consider the question. Then he'd answer, “Happy.”

  And after three boys, I understood Freud for the first time. Not just the penis envy thing—though I did get that now, too: Who wouldn't want one of those great things?—but the whole concept of the civilizing force of the superego. A whole semester of college psychology had come into clear relief for me, all these years later. Freud was saying that humans slowly learned to value things other than their penises. Not the most accurate theory for girls, but, now that I'd had a glimpse into the infant lives of boys, pretty spot-on for them.

  Girls, of course, were a different story. We, as a gender, were a whole other kettle of sexual fish. I asked Amanda about it one time, to see if Gracin ever noticed all the fun stuff she had down there, eager to affirm that female sexuality was just as big a deal as male.

  “Sure,” Amanda said. “I've seen her feel around a couple of times.”

  I hooted with laughter. I didn't even know how to count the number of times my boys had gone for the gold. It would have been like trying to count the stars.

  “Infinite?” Amanda asked.

  “And then some.”

  So boys—our boys, at least—were noodle guys. But Baby Sam really took the whole thing to the next level when he said his first word—”noo-noo.” He was not alone, of course, in wanting to talk about his penis. Peter pointed this out. Men talked about penises their whole lives. “I bet there are a thousand slang words for penis.”

  “I don't know that many,” I said.

  Peter looked at me and raised one eyebrow very slightly, then rattled off a partial list: willie, winkie, knob, Johnson, John Thomas, bishop, Oscar Mayer, love rocket, meat, beef, man-handle, cock, dick, doink, sausage, frankfurter, and Tall Texan. “Give me ten minutes,” he added, “and I'll come up with fifty more.”

  I tried to think of an equivalent list for girls—not names that guys had made up for girls, but names that girls used for themselves. I couldn't think of any at all that girls had invented. The truth of it was, girls really just didn't chat too often about such things.

  “Maybe you should start,” Peter suggested.

  “Clearly, we're way behind,” I said.

  I asked Amanda at the park later. “Do you know any slang words for clitoris?”

  “Sure,” Amanda said, and ticked off a bunch of them off while she set up a snack for the kids at the picnic table. “Clam, candy, pearl, doorbell, love button—”

  “Those are guy words,” I said, stopping her. “Can you think of any words that women use for themselves?”

  She thought about it, but she couldn't.

  I was still impressed with her list, though. “Were you this raunchy when you were a cheerleader?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “You have no idea.”

  We walked a little. Then I asked, “What do you guys call Gracin's—” I didn't even have a word for it—”stuff?”

  “We don't,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  All this noodle talk eventually brought Amanda and me to the question of what it all said about men. Amanda was pleased to be able to contribute that she had just seen an article about how often men thought about sex—a study done at Johns Hopkins and summarized in Glamour.

  “How often?” I asked.

  “Guess,” Amanda dared. “What percentage of the day do you think men are thinking about sex?”

  “We're talking about the waking hours?”

  She nodded.

  I thought about it. I tried to think about how often I thought about sex—which, in recent years, was not nearly often enough. I figured I'd start there and then add twenty-five percentage points. Or maybe thirty.

  But I couldn't seem to figure out how often I thought about sex. If I was thinking about it, I wasn't thinking about it very hard. And usually, if I did think about it, it was because Peter was thinking about it. But I didn't know how to assign a daily score. There were far too many days that passed when I didn't think about it at all.

  In my defense, I certainly had streaks when I thought about it daily, at least. But like it or not, I had to give myself negative points for the days I forgot to think about it. The truth is, I wanted sex to be an expression of passion. But, spending my days up to my knees in fire trucks and playground sand, listening endlessly to Alexander's stories about big dinosaurs that ate candy and ripped people's heads off, I wasn't exactly in touch with my passion. Mom-life lacked a certain dignity that, for me at least, seemed essential for something like desire to ignite.

  Which is not to say I couldn't be talked into it. I could. But I was coming more and more to believe that women's desire was different from men's. Women's desire seemed to come from their feelings—a physical ache in the heart that ravaged the body. And I confess it had been awhile since I'd felt anything like that.

  All figured together, I probably should have given myself a zero percent. But that was so depressing, I just couldn't. I fudged a five, then added twenty-five for a guy total of thirty. But somehow that seemed too low. I added ten more. Forty percent of the day. It seemed impossibly high and, at the same time, not high enough.

  “Forty,” I finally guessed.

  “Nope,” Amanda said, delighted to have the answer.

  “What is it then?”

  She pointed at me. “Fifty. Fifty percent of the day. Fifty percent of the day men are thinking about sex. On average.”

  “That's truly amazing,” I said.

  Amanda nodded, as I paused to take it in. And just at that exact moment, I glanced over to catch Toby—who had just recently started offering snacks to Noo-Noo from time to time, telling me it was hungry—bend the straw of his juice box, poke it into the top of his diaper, and squeeze in some refreshments.

  When Toby looked up and saw the two of us staring at him, he just announced, “Thirsty,” and continued on.

  Amanda nodded again. “Just another reason,” she said after a minute, “why women should be running the country.”

  Chapter 12

  Back in college, I had not seen Peter again for days after he'd fallen speechless in Connor's room. I had looked for him in the cafeteria and on the bike path. I had hoped to run into him near the mailboxes, and I had visited Connor every day in the hopes of bumping into him. Finally, on the day of our art class together, I knew I'd see him. I got up an hour and a half early and not only shaved, but tried on three different outfits. I stood in front of the mirror for so long, and changed back and forth so many times, that my sleeping roommate finally shouted, “Just pick one!” through her comforter.

  I was the first person to class, but Peter was late. I watched the door as each person came in and sat down. Fifteen minutes into class, he still wasn't there, and I felt anxiou
s, like I wanted to go out and look for him. It made me worry that Connor and I had celebrated for no reason. If he felt about me the way I felt about him, he ‘d have come to class early, too.

  And then, just as I was deciding that he never liked me to begin with, he appeared in the doorway—on crutches, with his leg in a cast. My face got hot when I saw him. I ducked my head. I tried to pretend that I was very busy drawing the nude art major posing in the middle of the room. A girl from Peter's dorm had helped him carry his sketchpad and portfolio to class—and I could tell by the way she carried his art supplies that she had a crush on him, too.

  Everybody but me stopped drawing when they saw him. Even the nude shifted out of position to get a better look. He made his way across the room, careful not to knock over any easels, and perched on a stool right across from me. The class crowded around and asked what had happened. Peter just shrugged and said, “I fell off a roof.” That seemed to satisfy everyone, and a guy from the rugby team grabbed a box of Sharpies so we could all sign the cast. By the time I had a turn, there was barely any room left, and so I just drew a little heart near his big toe. His smooth, pink, neatly trimmed big toe. I was tempted to try to touch it—just brush my fingers past it somehow—but I couldn't figure out how to pull it off.

  I did not look at him once after that for the rest of class. I gazed at the nude model and worked on my charcoal drawing as if nothing else were in my head. Of course, the only thoughts actually in my head were about Peter, and how he was feeling, and what kind of a stupid boy falls off a roof. And if my lipstick was still shiny, and if he was looking at me—because it kind of felt like he was, but I didn't dare lift my eyes to check.

  Near the end of class, with fifteen minutes left, we tacked our drawings up on the critique wall, as we always did. Twelve nudes went up. And then Peter made his way over—his drawing dangling from his fingers and flapping against his crutch as he moved. And when he lifted it, I saw—we all saw—that it was a drawing of me, at my easel. We'd all been sketching the nude, and Peter had been sketching me. The sight of it made me bite my lip. I couldn't imagine at that moment that anything better could ever happen to me.

  Peter came over to stand side by side. “What do you think?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the drawing, as if we were at a museum. Our instructor was just stepping up to examine the drawings.

  “I think you're about to get in trouble,” I said.

  As the critique started, our teacher, Shane, a wild bohemian missing a front tooth who was famous for ripping up drawings he didn't like, lingered in front of Peter's for a long time. I was sure he was going to rip it down, crumple it, and make an example of Peter about following directions. But instead, he turned around with a delighted, snaggletoothed smile. “This is the best one of the bunch,” he said. Then he narrowed his eyes at us. “Why?”

  “Because it's not like the others?” the rugby player volunteered.

  “In what way?”

  “It's not a picture of the model.”

  “Wrong!” Shane shouted. “Wrong!” Then he looked around at all of us. “What makes this drawing beautiful? What makes it strong? What makes it work?” The rugby player raised his hand to try again, and Shane pointed at him as he walked over, leaned in, and said, “Get it right this time.”

  “Passion,” the rugby player shouted, as if Shane were a drill sergeant.

  Shane reached over, grabbed the rugby player by the face with both hands, kissed him on the cheek with a big smack, and then shouted, “Passion! Goddamn right.”

  I have never in my life, not even for five minutes, looked as good as I did in that drawing. As I stood in the art room during the critique, I wondered if Peter really thought I looked like that, or if he just lacked the skills to draw the real me. Or if, impossibly, he thought the person he'd drawn on that paper actually was the real me. Or even if, by some miracle, that beautiful girl was the real me—and I'd just never noticed.

  Chapter 13

  On the day my mother's cameras arrived in Cambridge, I did not open the box. As soon as the tape was off, the boys would want to touch, carry, drop, and dismantle everything inside. As much as I found myself wanting to see the cameras, I put the box on top of the fridge for after bedtime.

  When I finally got to it—after the gym that night, while Peter shelved all our books alphabetically—I found three cameras. They were like no cameras I had ever seen. They were, I'd later learn, “twin lens reflex” cameras—little boxes that hung at your belly as you peered down through the top. One was very nice and heavy, a Rollei, and the other two were plastic—toy cameras from the sixties that my mom had picked up for fun. I had no idea what to do with them.

  “Take a photography class,” Amanda said at the park, as she leafed through a copy of Vanity Fair. “They have them at Harvard Extension.”

  “I can't afford to,” I said, knowing full well that Amanda would not understand that limitation.

  “They have scholarships,” she said. “Didn't you do art in college?”

  “I did,” I said. “But that doesn't mean they'll give me any money.”

  “We should tell them your grandfather was Ansel Adams,” she said.

  I laughed.

  Amanda didn't laugh. She said, “People go crazy for fame. Famous people get whatever they want.”

  “But I'm not famous,” I said.

  “But your grandfather is.”

  “Amanda,” I said. “You can't just make things up like that.” This should have been obvious, of course.

  “Sure you can.”

  I looked at her with new eyes. “Is this how you get what you want?”

  “Honey,” she said, putting on her sunglasses, “I have everything I want.”

  She insisted that we pack up the kids that very moment and stroll over to the Extension office to fill out an application on the spot, though I made her promise to keep quiet about my famous grandfather when we got there. She promised she would, but from that point on, she talked to me as if my grandfather had in fact been Ansel Adams.

  “I won't tell,” she said, winking at me. “But I think your grandfather would be very disappointed for you not to use him to your advantage.”

  As we got closer to Harvard Square the sidewalks were covered in shade. We were deep in that part of Cambridge where the trees that edged the road felt ancient and wise. The sidewalk was warm, but the shade was cool, and my sandals flapped against the pavement. I'd been outside this summer more than any other since I was a kid. I found myself suddenly glad to be exactly where I was.

  Within fifteen minutes, we arrived at the office to find that the signup period and financial aid deadline had already passed—and that, in fact, notifications were set to go out the very next week.

  “Look at her,” Amanda said to the freshman manning the desk for his work-study job. Then she squeezed my cheeks. “She's going to make this place famous.” She leaned way over the desk to give the freshman a little peek down her shirt.

  Then things got flirty. “Harvard,” the freshman pointed out, “is already famous.”

  Amanda was ready for that. She reached out and touched the tip of his nose. “But not the extension school.” She looked over at me. “Not yet.”

  In the end, he wound up taking my forms, changing the date stamp, putting them at the top of the stack, and inviting Amanda to a keg party at his dorm.

  “I'm married, babe,” Amanda had told him, tucking his number into her pocket. “But I'll think about it.”

  On the walk home, I wanted to clarify: “You're not really going to think about it.”

  “Hell, no,” Amanda said. Then, after a second: “Or maybe I will.”

  I looked over at her then, as, in a pleasant voice, without meeting my eyes, she added, “I think my husband is having an a-f-f-a-i-r.”

  I stopped walking. “What?”

  Amanda did not even slow her pace, and I had to scramble to catch back up.

  “I'm just getting a weird vibe,” she sai
d.

  “What kind of vibe?”

  “A perfume-on-the-clothes vibe,” she said.

  “That could be anything,” I insisted. “Women in the elevator. A coat in the coat closet. A department store sample.”

  “I guess,” she said, still not looking in my direction. “But it's the same perfume every time.”

  “Maybe it's not perfume. Maybe he changed deodorant.”

  She nodded. “I hadn't thought of that.”

  “Or shaving cream. Or shampoo. Or aftershave.”

  She was still nodding. “I'll have to do an inventory of his products,” she said. “That's a good idea.”

  “Have you asked him about it?” I asked.

  “Hell, no!” She checked to see if the kids had caught the curse word.

  “Do you think he would lie?”

  “That's what I would do,” she said. “If I were c-h-e-a-t-i-n-g and he asked me about it. I'd lie and say I wasn't, and then I'd take it even further underground.”

  I almost spoke, but she wasn't finished: “Or try to cut things off, but then accidentally ratchet up the passion because I couldn't have the person I really wanted.” She'd given this some thought. She shook her head like she'd decided something. “Nope,” she said. “He can't know I'm onto him.”

  I wasn't sure how Amanda felt about all this. Most women would be absolutely hysterical at the prospect of being cheated on. But Amanda was not most women. She was particularly poised. She was particularly strong. And she was particularly beautiful. Even though most beautiful women I knew didn't feel beautiful or understand how beautiful they were or feel secure in their beauty, Amanda had more social capital than your average girl. After all, not long before, she'd been leafing through a magazine. Granted, I had never been in her situation, but I couldn't help thinking I wouldn't be reading about fashion and style if I were. Though who knows what I'd do if I'd actually been in Amanda's shoes. And thank God I wasn't.