First sexual encounters and shame

So I have to change her name. Well, at least to the name I have chosen to use in a semi-autobiographical novel I am writing, tentatively titled Shame. Well I remember being attracted to Alexis in what was then a rural part of Boksburg. She had a younger brother, Cosmo, and the three of us splashed through the nearby vlei, picked peaches, threw figs at one another, chased after cattle with my dogs. She was about 11 and I was about 12. It was more her eyes, her electric smile, and less her body that interested me (and the fact that she was not a boy). At least I think so.

Her face was sweet water brought into focus by those twinkling pebbles, her eyes. Bright pebbles. Later on in life in memory they would stare from deep inside a still pond up at me, unreadable, unattainable, with (I think) a hint of remorse, even shame, for what we had done. Of course, after our episode, which I will come to, Alexis was no longer the easy “catch” she had been. Why the metaphor of water for her face? Her face reminded me of a pond, which, like any body of water, puckers and wrinkles under a breath of wind. And her face would ripple with the moods and a child’s fancy of the moment. Whenever I secretly looked at her, and she knew that I was, Alexis’s favourite trick was to throw her long hair over her face and then stare at me, eyes hidden behind the astonishing fronds and watch me watching her, not knowing I could see her staring back. But she probably did know. And flicked back the mane, then looked for the next diversion, a fig to throw.

We had a small orchard of fig trees on the huge plot we lived on. The bees thickened and glittered around the sweetly rotting globes that had fallen till it seemed the critters would float off with the treasure. There were afternoons of flinging figs at one another, mud-caked neighbours’ children joining in the screaming, scampering and dodging. Alexis and I were never on the same side in those wars. I was too shy, preferring only to watch from the other side. I don’t know what she felt. By the time we were called in to wash before dinner the pink fruit innards lay splattered all over the veld, gaudy dead butterflies under the nearby creaking windmill.

Her body. I was alarmed by it, stood in awe of it, an almost boneless lightness as she skittered giggling away while her brother and I hurled figs at her. Often Alexis and Cosmo stayed over on weekends. We swam in the pool or the nearby Carlos Rolfe’s vlei. Alexis would be in a wet shirt and shorts. There was nothing to see; we were both too young to understand what seeing meant anyway. Just the rough jokes of adults overheard: a skin of words masking things, no depth. The play of her body under a veil of cotton, light and water simply enticed. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with sexuality. It had everything to do with sexuality. That is before the word “sexual” came along like an accusation with reverberations that knolled the death bell of received norms, such as what was taboo, disgusting and sies. Or as one aunt would often say about matters to do with the lavatory or the sexual: oh poof, Roddy. (The excretory and the sexual went together, I was then already noting, as suggested by the sheer proximity of the anus and genitals.)

Cosmo bought into the idea of how to get Alexis and me into bed together probably because he was keen for any naughtiness. Which of course meant he and I were like blood brothers. We only used the plan once. Whenever the two kids did a stayover at our home he and I shared the bed and Alexis was put in the guest room. So, that night, long after the adults had gone to bed, Cosmo stole through to his sister’s room, woke her up and she came padding over to join me. Alexis didn’t giggle now. Quietly she lay on top of me, warm as earth. We kissed till my mouth felt like one of those bruised figs and we swore eternal love, all that jazz. But we didn’t have the faintest clue what else to do with each other’s bodies. I was just a little too young to have any genuine arousal. Well … surely I would remember that. That first sexual encounter reminds me now of seeing a silly mutt chasing a pigeon and then one day miraculously catching one. He sat back on his backside and cocked his head and ears without the foggiest notion what to do with this prize he had hunted for God knows how long. Thankfully Cosmo remembered to wake up Alexis and me at some early hour to swap beds again.

It was to be our secret. Initially, was there shame? Guilt? I know I just felt uncomfortable around our parents the next day. Then I noticed over breakfast Alexis’s father (much later I learned he was the stepfather), grinning at me, Alexis sitting next to him, a little pale and withdrawn. The pond had iced over. My discomfort grew over what we had done. Only some time later could I name our experience with the words shame and guilt. We had been dirty. Poof, Roddy. But her flesh like earth packed against mine as we fell asleep was my first sexual awakening.

Our childhood relationship was never the same again. Sometime later Alexis’ mother divorced once more and she and her kids moved to Johannesburg. Alexis and I didn’t see each other again.

In the novel I am writing I am trying to grapple with just what a sense of childhood shame is and its consequences later in adulthood. Following the thinking of a child character loosely based on me I have written: “Sin: he had learned that word at St Andrew’s boarding school in Bloemfontein. The pale fire of the word burned into him long before he ever paged through a dictionary to find its definition. He felt so sinless, but the word echoed through him as if through an empty space as he lay in bed that night. So he looked up the word in his dictionary. The definition spoke nothing to him. It was then that he dimly began to realise that definition and meaning often parted ways.”

It’s now about 35 years later. That rural part of Boksburg is long gone, replaced by office blocks. I have seen Alexis on Facebook and sent her several messages, said hi, made a joke about the fig fights. She does not respond. In her online photos she still smiles the same way.