How to Have Sex

“Can You Touch Your Elbows Behind Your Back? I Bet You Can’t”

Lifting and memories of young boys playing jokes on girls growing boobies

This joke was played on countless friends of mine by boys of a certain age who learned from other boys of another certain age that when they called out a girl for being a girl, it was advantageous. They got to see boobies.

It worked. Girls would be like, “Oh yeah, I bet you I can.” And the boys would say: “Prove it.”

Enter one of the earliest forms of over-the-clothes, peep-show-style action without consent.

The girls would try. Most of them would succeed as the boys stared at the flared, adolescent chests of their victims.

The first time I saw it, I didn’t get the joke. Another girl in my grade had to fill me in. I don’t remember a specific time it was done to me, but I do remember feeling embarrassed at being tricked.

This school-age joke is on my mind because a few mornings ago I was working out at the gym with a friend when we fell into a discussion about our form during a particular exercise. She was having a difficult time hitting the right muscle group.

“I don’t think I’m doing this right.”

I put down my weights and looked at her spine. Her upper back was rounding down into scrunched shoulders.

“Keep your elbows in,” I said. “Oh, and try squeezing your shoulder blades together when you row.”

She pulled her shoulders back slightly, squeezing only partway before she quickly rounded them down and forward again, giving me the sweet sad face she does when she’s a bit embarrassed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She was still looking sheepish. “I don’t do that in public.”

“You don’t do what in public?”

Her eyes fell. She repeated a couple of tiny shoulder squeezes to show me what they did. Just like the joke was on her, her breasts pressed forward and swelled with every tiny squeeze.

I smiled, razzed her a little, and told her that if she wanted, she could choose to have no fucks for that.

It’s interesting to me that my young breasts remember the feeling of embarrassment, a feeling that followed breast growth and others noticing that growth.

Since my workout, I have come to know my early embarrassment as more and less than I thought.

The emotions that I felt surrounding this joke and other “harmless” breast-noticing devices were beyond embarrassment.

I know this because I saw the same emotions flash and then settle into my friend’s features. What I had labeled as embarrassment was actually a combination of guilt and shame.

That tiny-tittied, flat-breasted, barely nippling little girl felt the guilt of having been exploited and got a foretelling taste of the shame that goes hand-in-hand with something having been done or said to her that was without her consent, objectifying, and beyond her control.

I’ve come a long way since then. I even squeeze my shoulder blades together in public.

I’m Brett Jenae Tomlin, The Anxious Enthusiast.