The Spy Who Loves Me Still

The Spy Who Loves Me Still

Children adopt images from their environment which permanently define gender roles and sexuality long before entering puberty, much less adulthood.  I can cite examples in my own experience.  In my mind, masculinity goes together with any kind of contact sport, arguments, and non-lethal mayhem.  I have three brothers and the male-female distribution in my neighborhood was disproportionately weighted on the side of testosterone by a factor of more than six to one.  The couple of cute neighborhood girls who were not allowed out of their house by anxious parents are not factored into this ratio.  The fathers on my block were tool and die men and mechanics or machine operators.  My father, who drove a Hi-Lo, was a ringer for angry Robert De Niro.  When he entered a room, small children cried and dogs peed on the floor.

In sharp contrast, it is difficult to identify female roles in my early memory.  I have no sisters, so my mother might be the only female image in my earliest consciousness. Because I had a mother, the physical attributes of moms were clearly identified.  I saw moms as short and soft.  According to my early mental images, passengers in a plane crash at sea could be advised to use the nearest mom as a floatation device.

For me, femininity and motherhood are distinctly separate.  Femininity is associated with the anticipation of desire for something secret, something shrouded in mystery, typified by a woman I knew, who lives in the back rooms of my childhood memories to this very day.  She seems almost to belong to an exotic third gender, being neither male nor mom.  This woman, healthy and well-proportioned, is the psychological personification of sex itself.  I knew her well, as we met regularly on Thursday evenings at seven-thirty.  The woman I speak of is Barbara Feldon, of the sixties television spy spoof, “Get Smart”.

It was as if I am the only television viewer who notices her.  She is mine; she needs me.  Words are not needed in such a relationship.  She is intent on me alone, and we have a deep understanding of each others desires, neither one ashamed by the as yet undefined lust.  Her gaze is even without staring.  As I look her way, her moist lips part and she leans almost imperceptibly toward me.  She waits for me to speak.  I savor every minute with her; she is a beauty and deserves to be appreciated.  We have plenty of time, as she has no other engagements.  She looks good in her perpetual Sixties fashion, complete with black go-go boots which do not rise above her ankle.  She does not reveal bare flesh for all to see, but neither does she hide in a cocoon of loose fabric.  Clad neither in taupe nylons like my mother, nor in blue jeans like the girls in my neighborhood, she stalks my conscious mind from darkened corners in black form-fitting spandex slacks or mini-dress with black tights.  This independent power woman, the image and drive of all my sexual energy, the steady girlfriend of my Freudian Id, wears her hair in a bob.

In more mature mental images, sex is associated with distinct scenes of imagined flesh-on-flesh contact and clearly defined action.  Phallic symbols dominate teen memories to the extent that even a routine NASA rocket launch is the object of juvenile humor.  But here, in the earlier memories, sex is a sublime composite of proximity and mannerisms.  A slight tilt of the head and her hair falls away from her bare neck.  She shifts her shoulders slightly while speaking; she nonchalantly lets her hand fall limp, revealing a pale and vulnerable wrist.  When she does speak, her voice is sultry, spoken through red lips.  As I imagine her putting her arms around me from behind and whispering in my ear, I sense her breath on my neck, and my head swims for a moment.  I know in my heart I will become a secret agent.  I will become a CIA station chief and will take the lead on dangerous missions in and around Russia.  I will protect her.  She is strong willed and independent, intelligent and impulsive, and she needs me.

Time passes, and I find that childhood does not last forever, and television shows come and go with the seasons.  By the time I enter Junior High School, Barbara Feldon has competition in the real world.  Debbie, Ruth Ann, and Elaine do not wear mini-dresses or tights, but they have something powerful going for them in the fact that they are present in body.  They are not spies and they have more than ten years to go in some cases before they approach maturity.  They are irritating and silly.  Still, when I am invited to a birthday party, I go.  The party is goofy and awkward, but we have lots of laughs.  My thoughts wander from Ruth Ann to my television spy girlfriend, and back again.  Most of the girls in Junior High wear blue jeans; they perpetually appear as if they are getting ready to paint the classrooms.  Their shoes look like something children play in.  Their stockings are not sheer or silk.  I try to imagine Ruth Ann putting her arms around me from behind, whispering in my ear, but the image fails when she snorts at a face Elaine is making.

Just before the start of my first Junior High Band practice, I am suddenly stunned into silence.  Barb walks into the band room and nonchalantly takes her place in the flute section.  She is petite and energetic.  The band director says something indistinct to her, and she flips back a saucy retort as she lets her hand fall limp, revealing a pale and vulnerable wrist.  She wears a little make-up and has red lips.  Her blue jeans do not seem to be too loose; she does not seem like she is dressed for painting.  I silently watch her from the trumpet section.  She is animated and cheerful.  As she nonchalantly chatters with her friends she tilts her head and her hair falls away from her bare neck.  Barb wears her hair in a bob.  I know I am in love.  She needs me.

Months pass.  Personalities bloom everywhere like flowers as young teens interact and mature in the process.  I am reluctant and my personality stubbornly refuses to pop or snap or bloom.  I ride my bike around, but never see Barb.  I daydream about topics for informed and witty conversation, worthy of James Bond, but the ideas flee when she is actually in the room.  She looks my way and says “hi”, but words fail me.  Inside, I curse my awkwardness and determine that I must be uniquely afflicted.  I feel like everyone has a program of events but me.  Hesitating, I am lost.  Barb begins dating Dan, the charismatic athlete with green eyes.  I hear they are going steady, and I wallow in the sourness of my shortcomings.  Time passes in an odd fashion; the high school years wear away and are gone.  On the one hand, it went by quickly; one day leads to another and without proper warning, graduation is over.  On the other hand, constructing my personality is tedious work, like laying bricks in some massive wall.  I slowly make some friends, talk to a few girls, and remain aloof, but not on purpose.  At some point during my high school years I look at my dad’s yearbook from his senior year.  The quote chosen for him by the yearbook staff was instinctively familiar though I had never seen it before:  “Charles C. Rabourn -- Here I am girls, keep your distance.”  At least I have genetics for an excuse.

I grow progressively older and life takes another path.  I meet someone I feel comfortable talking with in a young adult church group.  She is petite and lively, aggressive and cute at the same time.  In due course, we find so much common ground and affection between us, we are married.  I have little occasion in my early married years to reminisce about my awkward high school years.  Since my wife Dorothy is six years younger than me, we have some distinct differences in our television memories; these memories fade.  The past matters very little to newlyweds anyway.

A little more than a decade out of high school, I sit in the comfort of my own home, a small house in the suburbs of Grand Rapids.  My one year old daughter Amanda is sleeping and my pregnant wife is out shopping with her friend Lisa.  I am not thinking of anything in particular.  My job is going well, my daughter is healthy and growing at the normal rate.  I am in the bathroom shaving when my wife arrives, so I don’t immediately notice she is in the house.  When I turn off the water, she calls to me from the kitchen, “I got my hair cut.”  I walk out of the bathroom as she asks me, “Well, how do you like it?”  I come around the corner into the kitchen to behold my lovely wife, the bearer of my daughter, radiant with color in her cheeks.  Her lips are red and inviting, her voice is sultry and full of promise.  Her pregnant form has never been more beautiful.  Her hair is bobbed.  “I love it,” I say.