Mamory Memories

..or, The Dangers of Chasing Pencils

In second grade Ashley Armento wore training bras. She showed me hers when I stayed over. She said she wouldn’t be friends with any girl who wouldn’t wear a training bra because they were gross, even though neither of us were developing. The next evening back at home I asked my mom to buy training bras for me, and she refused. The next time Ashley and I hung out I tried to pass off one of my shorter spaghetti tops as a bra but she said it didn’t count. Ashley and I didn’t stay friends long.

My breast started growing in the middle of fourth grade; painful bottle caps of tissue under my skin. I would try to catch my pencil as it went to roll off the far end of my desk and bash my chest against the edge of the desk, shuddering in pain, hating my pencil, and boobs.

My breasts gave up growing for another year after that. There’s a picture of me from the summer after sixth grade sitting on the curb next to a boy. I was at a parade and the boy was Jeff Scott—I think I scared him. That was the first and last time we hung out. In the picture there’s already a shadow of cleavage creeping up from under my tank top. I think I was already at a size B that summer when I finally decided to go off of sports bras and start into the form fitting ones.

I’ve always hated the feeling of cold breast, the nipple puckering like a clot of goose bumps, and poking out—sticking out and the way that people stare like it’s unnatural, dirty or sexual. My breasts have never felt less sexual than when they were cold. I was in tenth grade at my public high school, walking the rounded halls lined with blue and orange and red and yellow lockers. I was going to the library in the center of the buildings circles. It was chilly out that day. I’d dropped my coat in my locker, and had my hoodie on, unzipped over a shirt. There was a girl who had spit gum into my hair when I was in the seventh grade, she strut passed with her boyfriend. She looked at me, and turned to her bleach blond Abercrombie boy and said “It must be cold in here, maybe some of us should put on a jacket.” I’m sure I spat some phrase back at the girl before strutting into the library only to sit down at a table and zip the sweatshirt up. I was horribly embarrassed. After that I started buying thicker bras, so that no one would be able to tell. I never bought a soft cup again, until last year when my mom brought home three for me she’d gotten cheap. I wear them on occasion-too broke to buy new ones on my own… but I always wear a dark colored shirt with those, and if I’m going out, I dress extra warm.

The day I turned eighteen my friend and I wandered the Arts High campus taking birthday donations to go to Saint Sabrina’s. We left the dorms in her powder blue jeep and arrived at the piercing parlor and purgatory. I went up stares, filled out the forms, gave them the fifty dollars and went into the back room. A warm and friendly man with gauged nostrils, and scarification tattoos above his eyebrows carefully drew the small dots on either side of my nipple. “It’s crooked looking” I said. He redrew them, then laid me down. He gripped my nipple tightly in the clamps, lining its holes up with both of my drawn on dots. He took the ten gauge hollow needle, had me breath in, then the moment I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, palms sweating, eyes closed, I exhaled and the needle went though swiftly. He threaded the jewelry in seamlessly after the needle, clipped in the ball to the hoop, and I went back to the dorms with a little bit of kleenex tissue tucked into my bra for the blood.

My eleven and twelfth grade years were the prime time for my breasts. My theatre class flashed each other many times, frequently hanging out naked around each other’s rooms if not streaking around the campus, or skinny dipping, or nipple comparing. By the end of senior year we each had our nipple doppelgangers picked out. I think Sarah K was mine; we were both pierced pink and similarly shaped. None of us found this the least bit unusual at the time, after all: They were just boobs, and a boob was a boob was a boob.

My breasts have brought me a lot of interesting experiences in life. They’ve been made into art work, drawn on, photographed, pierced, touched, hit, and have commonly been an annoyance. They’ve nearly ruined my posture and have always been a concern of self image. They’ve been fawned upon and been made fun of. Sometimes I wish they were smaller, some days I think they’re not big enough, or round enough. They’re heavy tear drops, rounded, but not round.

When I’m naked and alone, sometimes I’ll lay on my back, bored, tired or frustrated. I’ll prop my head on my cloud pillow, place a hand to the outer side of one of my breasts and pat it quickly, watching it water bed back and fourth, sloshing inside my skin. “Heh, boobs,” I’ll mutter, eventually rolling over to keep them warm. Neither one is pierced now. I took the piercing out fifteen months or so after I’d gotten it. Don’t get me wrong, I do like breasts, particularly the fact that I have them, but, they still get in the way of lifting heavy things.