In third grade, I will discover a woman’s power when I decide I need to make some money.
If I buy lunch every day, I cannot buy pogs on my walk home at McNulty’s Ice Cream Shop,
And then I cannot impress
Chris Brady, who has a Tazmanian Devil lunchbox and a gaping, toothless smile.
My best friend, who’s also named Lauren,
which is the main reason that we’re best friends,
decides we should start a business.
She says, “boobs are becoming really important”. I don’t know what she means
But she sounds very serious. I nod, knowingly. “Yes,” I say.

That evening, we go to her house.
Her step-brother, at sixteen, has a very large supply
Of pornography hidden in a trunk under his bed.
He keeps a sock in there, and a bottle of baby oil.
For a long time, I think this is because he has smelly feet
And doesn’t want anyone to know.

Lauren and I gasp over the illicit images
On the glossy pages of his magazines.
We are scandalized, but intrigued.
We have seen our mothers’ in various
States of undress and their bodies do not look like these.

“I want to look like this one,” Lauren says.
This one is a hairless, shiny blonde with a globular rack. Her dead eyes terrify me.
I flip through a Christmas themed Hustler.
I cannot find a girl to personify with, but there is a
Small dog being cradled in the cleavage of a naked elf.
“I like this one,” I say. She, at least, has pets and a costume.
Lauren will grow up and get breast implants.
I will grow up to love theme parties and then adopt a puppy.

After our extended research,
“Look Miss Tits July has a tattoo on her butt
that says Naughty Angel!”
We decide that this is our goldmine.

“But your step-brother will notice when his magazines go missing!”
For a moment, we debate on many things: breaking into my dad’s office to use
His photocopier, taking pictures of the centerfolds on our cheapo plastic cameras
and developing them in disguise at the pharmacy. But we are limited by our littleness,
Resentful and too smart for our own good.

Alas, it hits us. Our creativity knows no bounds.
Back at my house we break out all my art supplies.
Within the hour, we have created a masterpiece.
Twenty copies of our very own, hand-drawn porn entitled,
“Lauren and Lauren’s Lovely Ladies.”
The figures we have drawn look, to us, like erotic works of art.
We focus on the breasts, first and foremost, making sure each girl
Has perfectly round attachments on her chest. I have a stencil with a circle scale.
Small, medium, and large.

At school the next day,
We publicize this with impeccable marketing.
Lauren’s house is full of junkfood.
Buy a copy of our magazine, get a free handful of peanut m&ms.
We advertise during computer class just in time for lunch.
We print out a paper that says, “50 CENTS FOR BOOBS PASS IT ON”.
Our friend Ryan gets some royalties for keeping it quiet and getting us the money.

We are sold out by recess.

Lauren and I become entrepreneurs overnight.
Fourth graders are finding out about us. Other kids are trying to sell knock-off mags.
But we are the originals. We are famous.
We start getting special requests. “Draw me Buffy. Make her boobs medium-large.
I want a picture of Kelly Kapowski in a grass skirt. Huge boobs.”
We’re working at school, drawing practice circles in the margins of our math problems.
I can’t look at the light fixtures in my bedroom anymore.
How did I never notice they were just huge boobs?!

Eventually, some dumb kid leaves our fourth issue in the backpack
That his mother checks for homework every night. She is horrified. Disgusted.
He rats us out immediately.
The next day Lauren and I are promptly
excused from our morning classes and escorted to the pricipal’s office.

“She can’t make us talk,” I say.

I betray our pact immediately when Mrs. Hodun holds up our magazine.
“Are you girls responsible for this?” she asks.
I burst out into tears. “I just wanted pogs!” I wail. “And boobs are a really big deal!”

Lauren nudges me in the side. “FREEDOM OF SPEECH!” she yells and between snotty sniffles I agree,
“We were practicing our constitutional rights.” We both own at social studies.

Lauren and I get detention for a week. We have to sign a form that says we will not take lunch money from the boys in our class. But Mrs. Hodun thinks we’re clever and she doesn’t tell our parents. I know she is a feminist without knowing what a feminist is. She says, “women don’t look like this.” She even laughs at some of our pictures. We have to be kids again she says, and wait for time to defile us naturally, to skew our imaginations into the expectations we never knew we had of ourselves while we were drawing circles on stick figures with crayon.

11/12/2012

Posted on 11/12/2012
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer