Tarotica

The Fool

The fool is entering upon a new world of unlimited possibilities and self-expression. . . . The fool personifies the spirit and enthusiasm of youth possessed by the boundless range of possibilities one perceives when setting forth upon a new undertaking. (Stewart R. Kaplan, Tarot Classic)

The fool appears when you are about to embark on a new phase in your life. The card suggests the need to take a risk with childlike optimism and innocence. . . .You may feel like you are standing at the edge of a cliff about to fall off. (Anthony Louis, Tarot: Plain and Simple)

What is the first step on the sexual journey? Where and how does it begin? With a look? A smell? A furtive touching of oneself, born from a mysterious, curious itching? That first touch – hesitant hand to clit, then to cunt – wondering, indeed, if hands enter there.

When I was younger, I rode the school bus home one afternoon – as I did every afternoon, every weekday, every week, every month. I was the daughter of a Midwestern farmer – my life was consistent, scheduled, regimented, comfortable – some day in the future, in a future poem, I would refer to the Midwest as a “monstrous armchair” – and so it was, comfortable, cushioned, entrapping. That day – that specific day – I remember, quite vividly, the feel of the bus window on my forehead, the way the farms looked – three-dimensional models springing from the flat landscape. It was spring, and hot. The bus had no air conditioning. In the upper Midwest, hot spring days are always humid, and the wet, flattened air pressed against my chest, my arms, my thighs. I was thinking of – who knows? -- school – a math test – some old anxiety or another – when – from an utter, utter nowhere – a chill – a shudder – crept, slowly, deliberately, from my ass to my cunt to my stomach to my spine. I glanced around – Had anyone noticed? My world, though, had not changed. The students – the backpacks – the arrogant, quiet teenagers – all were in the same place. No one was staring. I glanced back out the window and, for the first time, began to think of sex.

Of course, I didn’t know, really, how to think of sex. I had seen the pigs, the cows, the cats, on the farm – had watched them mount each other frantically, maniacally. I had seen birth – of kittens, of piglets, of calves, and knew, of course, of the connection. But human sex – I knew of furtive, whispered, heated conversations between my sisters – I knew my mother was concerned if my brother and his girlfriend were in the same room, alone. But specifics? I knew, really, nothing – but I did know, at that moment, that this wonderful chill had something to do with it – that this thing – this sex – could, and should, feel good – no, not good – beyond good, a word I could not even yet imagine. Perhaps a word that did not yet exist. I shivered, pressed my head against the window pane, and thought of the boys in my class.

That night, I took a bath. I touched my tits – I had never done that before, and, at the time, was unaware that this touching – the light caress of tight young nipples – was a common part of foreplay. But it felt good, that caress, and I continued it, lying in the warm bath water, looking at my body with wonder. I was jolted out of this new kind of reverie by my sister’s desperate knocking – we were, after all, eight kids and only one bathroom.

My sisters – they were twins -- were four years older than I was, and, I thought, much more cosmopolitan. I had heard them speaking to each other in flushed whispers. I had not cared to know, at the time, but of course they were talking about sex. After my bath, as I lay in my bedroom, watching the cottonwoods sway through my second story window, I conceived a plan. I knew how they spent their weekends – they would lie out, they would tan, they would talk on the phone – but also, they would read. They didn’t read what I read – not into the classics, my sisters, or Trixie Belden, or Nancy Drew. But I’d watched them devour whole books in single days, sometimes lying in bed to do it, sometimes lying out, barely clothed, on the deck. My mother would sigh and say, “I don’t know what you see in those books,” and “You know – you really don’t have to bring those books to church with you.” I saw them exchanging these books, grinning and sometimes whispering, “Don’t let Mom read this.” That was the secret, then – there was something in those books.

I seized the opportunity that weekend. They were going out – they always went out together – and their room would be unguarded. After they had gone, leaving behind faint waves of perfume and whiskey, I walked down the hallway to their bedroom. I made no attempt to sneak. Were Mom to see, it would only have made it more suspicious. The books were not hard to find – they were stacked in uneven towers on the two bedside tables. I grabbed one near the bottom, and glided carefully out the hallway, down the steps, and out to the small woods behind our house.

There was some privacy here, at least. Sometimes the cats would follow me, sometimes the dog, but they were an innocent audience. I inhaled the smell of dirt and rotting wood, of new spring flowers and wet bark. In the small tin playhouse, so carefully made for us by my brother, I lay back, in the dirt, my head on a small log, and began to read.

In the book, there was -- touching – and words I had never heard, nor read – cunt, cock, clit, blow job, pussy – along with a vague sense of guilt and sin, I felt the chill again, starting right there in the depths of my ass – working its determined way up through my cunt, up through my spine. It was hot – I was wearing shorts – I trailed my fingers, slowly, torturously, up my own thigh – with my other hand, I still held tightly to the book. The man in the book was ravishing the heroine, pinning her hands behind her back, tearing her dress – I could feel the tear of the material, could feel his hands on my hands. I was breathing heavily, and my own hand became more adventurous. It snuck under the shorts, tucked itself under my cotton underwear. When I touched my own clit, I gasped – the sensation was foreign, intense, and almost languid. My hand moved from the swollen button to my cunt, tracing my lips, pulling on the sparse thicket of hair. I read on. My hand went back to my clit, and I pressed it. The chill was back, but more intense, and the woods around me seemed more vivid, the smell stronger, the colors brighter. I dropped the book, leaned back against the log – I was lying in the strong-smelling dirt, but I didn’t care. I arched my back, thinking of the man in the book, thinking about the boys in my class, thinking about my sisters, thinking about the smells and the colors and the heightened blue of the sky. I pressed my clit against my own fingers, which rubbed with a knowledge I did not know they had. I was breathing hard, rolling a little, and I thought of cock – of cock entering my very own cunt, of how that penetration must feel – so full, so complete. I thought of cock in my mouth, of a mouth on my clit – images I had never before entertained, things I had never before known. It was all too, too much. I came, pumping hard against my fingers, breathing in the woods’ scent and knowing, somehow, that I finally knew the secret. Or, at least, I was onto it.

When I returned to the house, I put the book back, making sure, again, it was in its appropriate place in the leaning towers of literary sex. But – I took another one.