BREAST STORIES
The Women Behind the Boobs Part 2
Return to wonderland
My son brings his basketball everywhere the way a musician carries his guitar.
Basketball is a lot like music. It can happen anywhere anytime. It can sneak up and transport you to another time.
After a four-hour car ride from Chicago to Iowa, my son was ready to practice his handles — but, as soon as he started to open the car door, he stopped.
‘I’m not getting out until that weird man leaves,’ he said, pointing to a hunched-over figure smoking in the alley.
Smoking, not vaping. Old school.
It almost brought tears to my eyes. Tape decks and cigarettes. Pre-cell phone, pre-text. Pre-everything stupid and modern. I know Iowa has modern technology — but to me, Iowa is permanently soaked in the past.
I went to school there so when I return, I am 20 again. I smoked when I lived there, so when I see someone smoking cigarettes in Iowa City, I sigh. Oh, to be young and capable of running ten miles after staying out all night, smoking and drinking.
I looked over at the smoking man. Iowa City is small. I might recognize the weird man from my past. Maybe back in the day, we’d shared a smoke, a drink, or a summer.
I squinted, focusing on him.
Holy crap. It wasn’t a guy at all. It was the Sue.
That's not a man, I said to my son. That’s Sue.
Wait, my son said, Sue from your boob story? The one that made you thousands of dollars?
That’s the one, I said, feeling like I should get out of the car and buy Sue a case of Marlboros as a thank you. As a debt.
She made me a lot of money just by writing about her, remembering her — the woman who sold cool clothes in a hipster store beneath my apartment, before hipster was a thing.
Had I not known Sue, I would have never walked around town, half-naked with two tied bandanas over my breasts as a shirt.
Sue was wearing tan dress pants pulled up with black suspenders, a white thin worn t-shirt, and a navy blue Newsboy cap. She had a bit of a pouched belly, like she’d always had, but weighed no more than 99 cents.
Sue. God. I felt like I was making her up. How was Sue the first person we saw since we came to town? What was the universe up to?
Mom, my son said, you should say hi.
It’s been thirty years, I said. She won’t remember me.
Why not? he asked.
Thirty years ago doesn’t make sense to a thirteen-year-old, so there’s no point in explaining.
I was only one of many pretty young things, I said. She flirted with all the young girls. I wasn’t even her favorite.
What do you mean, young girls? he asked, clearly weirded out.
College young, I said, defending Sue. Not elementary young,
How old was she then? he asked.
In her 40s, maybe.
That’s gross, he said.
Why? Because she was a woman?
No, because she was old, he said.
No older than our professors, I said, still defending Sue.
Wait, he said, your professors flirted with you too?
Sure, I said, some of our professors even married some of us college girls.
My son looked perplexed. I shrugged. How could I explain teachers dating students to a thirteen-year-old without looking like a deviant myself?
I wanted to think about Sue anyway, not middle-aged male professors who batted their eyes at us and the women who batted back.
Time normally slowed down in Iowa, but seeing Sue stopped time in its tracks.
Are you sure that’s Sue? my son asked. You said she was beautiful.
She was, I said. That’s why she cut off her breasts. She was done with being objectified. She was a model who became a radical, a lesbian, and a leader among young lost girls.
My son had trouble rectifying the way he’d imagined her from my story to what he was looking at now.
Don’t meet your heroes or the women your mom writes about. That’s my motto.
You sure that’s not a man? my son persisted, unable to come to terms with the visuals.
Oh, I’m sure, I said. Even if she looked a little different, she occupied the universe in an acutely specific way. Her form was secondary to her essence.
I could identify Sue’s stance the way I could identify other people’s gaits. Nobody stood like her. Nobody who looked like that.
She leaned forward like she had an invisible tortoise's shell on her back. She guarded her cigarette's heated ash even though there was no wind, rain, or snow to douse it out. She looked more like a fisherman returned salted from the sea than a once-model turned boutique owner.
She reminded me of a dragon masquerading as a human, cursed by some God because of some sin she’d committed hundreds of years ago. Forced to reside on Earth, in this tiny city until one day she was mistaken for a man by a thirteen-year-old boy.
Maybe my seeing Sue and my son seeing the fisherman simultaneously would break the curse. Perhaps, Sue would now metamorphosize back into her previous form of a dragon and fly away.
God. How I wish that was how the world worked.
