PHALLIC JACKSON POLLACK

Could Your Signature Be a Penis?

Sometimes a penis is a vagina

As we live out the real-life soap opera, “As The World Burns,” and civil war saunters up our doorsteps like a sexy pyromaniac, my son had one pressing question for me.

“Mom. Can people sign their name with a penis?”

“With their penis? Or penis-shaped handwriting?” I asked, not sure what I was dealing with yet. Was my son a phallic Jackson Pollack?

“Penis like a signature,” he said. “The signature looks like a penis.” He scribbled a sloppy penis onto one of my orange post-it notes. “Can I sign my name like this?”

I looked at my son’s signature. “Sure,” I said. No one would ever bother asking him how he pronounced his name and if they did, that would be wonderful.

“Do a lot of people use penis signatures?” my son asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I’d lived my whole life never wondering, thus never Googling, and never discussing whether a penis was a signature. I’d lived a fairly penis-signature-free life until I had a twelve-year-old boy.

“I think I want my signature to be a penis,” he said. He looked like he’d decided, so I nodded approvingly.

“Why not?” I asked. “At least you’d be doing art.” I can never get this kid to do art. I love art.

When my son was four, in my futile effort to turn him into a starving artist, I took him to a Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute every day for a week. It was my idea of summer camp. It was also cheaper.

At the end of the lengthy and compelling surrealist exhibit, we stood in a dark room with several other people. The above Magritte painting was lit up and we all stood silently observing it. Not the above penis on the post-it, but the above vagina on the face. I do think Magritte would have approved of my son's signature, however.

“Look mom!” my son yelled in his squeaky little kid voice. “A penis!”

Laughter rang out in the shared dark gallery because a child was claiming a vagina was a penis. It was funny because we all knew the difference between vaginas and penises. We were clever.

Reader, let me stop you here. If you are uncomfortable with the words vagina and penis, as I have heard many people are, the remainder of this essay may offend you.

On the other hand, if you are hoping to immerse yourself in the words vagina and penis, perhaps healing from your aversion, this is the essay for you. By the end, you will think no more of the word penis and vagina than you think of the word pen or lamp.

Back to the Magritte exhibit and the people laughing at my son yelling, “Look a penis!” at a vagina.

I thought about correcting him. But why? This wasn’t an anatomy class. There was no penis-vagina quiz after the exhibit, as far as the tour foretold. There were no Matrix agents following us around this surrealist labyrinth demanding we tell them where Neo was and insisting we know the difference between a penis and a vagina.

My son wasn’t going to show up to the first day of Kindergarten and defend his vagina-penis dissertation to the lunch lady, the vice-principal, and the beloved Mrs. Novak.

One day he’d have sex. Pre-coitus, does anyone ever say, “Hey before we get this party started, what’s the difference between a penis and vagina?” My son would be fine.

In the future, he wouldn’t need to know the difference between a penis and a vagina to get his driver's license or fill out a job application. I’m fairly certain differentiating a penis and vagina is not on the SAT, LSAT, or a mortgage agreement.

If he did end up studying penises and vaginas in college, academically, and he hadn’t figured it out yet, he could always ask that very smart friend of his who passed that Mensa test in 3rd grade. My son knew people who knew stuff.

But at four years old, why would I need to correct him? Did I need to look like a penis-vagina expert in front of a bunch of people who had time to drink wine and go to art exhibits at 2 pm? I didn’t know those people. I didn’t care what they thought about my son’s genitalia IQ.

As we walked out of the show, a wine-scented, gorgeous, elegant older woman wrapped in many shawls took my arm. “You are a wonderful mother,” she said. I could tell she’d heard my inner monologue.

Thanks, BOF and Holly J See for editorial help. When your brain is on the fritz, it’s good to have wordsmiths in your corner.