That Facts of Life Talk

   

   'My spoken material is about the facts of life,'  I was explaining to the Mother Superior.  'I've been asking people what they were told, how they were told it and did they ask questions.  Terrible funny...'

  

 During my show at the Metrodeco Café, Brighton, a superfluity of nuns stopped at the window to listen.  In the street later that week one of them glided up and said how much they had enjoyed hearing me sing.  "And we wonder, might you please sing something for our charity evening?"

  I said, of course, sister.  

  The nun nodded.  "That's very good to hear.  But just to correct you: not sister - but Mother Superior."

  She then asked about the spoken material in the show, in case we might include some of it on the night?  I said I had asked people how they had been told the facts of life...

Bernard, 72.  
  My sister read about Dutch caps.  We looked at Old Masters paintings and wondered how having those funny big white hats on their heads would stop women getting pregnant.

Susan, 46.  
  At school we were told: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost". We were also shown a very awkward public information film which made us all scream "Yuk".  Our biology teacher paused the film and said if we didn't behave she'd put on again Root Canal: The Musical. 

Raymond, 51.  
  With the individual sperms themselves being so microscopic, I didn't understand how you would know they had been ejaculated.  Surely you wouldn't feel it?  My physics teacher explained that the emission process started a pump action going - virtually impossible to ignore. 
  Which has very much proved to be the case. 

Cassie, 19.  
  My eleven year old twin sisters are going away to my old school.  The head of year asked if they could be told about periods, definitely, and the facts of life, if possible.  Mum sat them down at the kitchen table, separately.  Milly worked herself into a state of dread about periods and cried herself to sleep.  Next day when mum tried to tell her the facts of life, she stuck her fingers in her ears and sang One Direction.  Carolina said that periods sounded a bit drastic, actually.  She listened in silence to the facts of life, then said that she hadn't quite got it, so maybe when mummy and daddy next had a go at it she could watch?

Marion, 42.  
  My mother said that the sexual act was something I should use.  I should flaunt the potential of a man getting it from me.  I should manipulate.  I should cajole.  I should go so far and no further with it.  I could be voluptuous with it.  Flagrant; bestial even.  
  I asked her, "But what about the act itself?" 
  She said, "What do I think I am, a bloody biology teacher?"

Mikey, 29.  
  At fourteen, my dad warned me off booze and drugs and told me where the condoms were.  He later asked me to stop traumatising my autistic younger brother by inflating the condoms into Gremlins.

Trudy, 71.  
  I was told not to worry when I started periods because even the Queen and Princess Margaret had the same.  When we had whooping cough, we were taken down to the local livestock market for the good of the cows' sweat.  If ever a bull mounted a cow, we were told to look away and remember that we had to keep ourselves pure.  
  When local girls got pregnant, it was all "she doesn't know how it happened".  It made me terrified that even if I stood next to my boyfriend to kiss him goodnight by some mysterious happening I could have a baby.  I never sat next to my male cousins at tea, either - always at least one away or diagonally opposite.  And I always moved seats when a man sat next to me on the tram.  This was when trams were just plain trams.  Not like today going from East Croydon to Elmers End by enhanced tram.

Gareth, 42.  
  My uncle pointed to a bull and said, "Bull has cow, cow has calf." 

Larissa, 82.  
  Oh, you've been talking to me lovely friend in the John Lewis Food Hall, haven't you? Has he put you onto me?  Oh.  That's...well, I did think he was my friend.  It's always been a bit up and down with him, I'll admit.  The other ladies in the Mansions said I was wrong to talk to him so much.  Kalia said I didn't even know his name.  I did - it was on the badge on his shirt pocket.  Eric.  But I'd noticed he did seem to just be staring at me the most recent times I've been shopping.  I got so worried and asked him if the ladies - Kalia and the rest of them - were right and I shouldn't have been talking to him all those times?  Telling him about my health scares.  That's all it was, you know. That particular time I was speaking to him I'd just had a particularly serious scare.  My implants.  But I was getting the succinct impression that Eric didn't want to know.  My fourth husband paid for my breast implants; and he's kept the receipt.  Oh, I was anxious.  The next time I saw Eric was after I'd been for my check up for the implants.  I decided not to bother him.  He was where he usually is, opposite the tea.  I just kept my eyes on the display. And he - oh, I was so happy - he said hello and asked how I was.  I gushed.  I couldn't help it.  Gushed about how relieved I was that he was talking to me, as I'd been so afraid that he had never wanted to, really.  He explained that at his age, nineteen, he just felt that he had so little experience in such matters as mine and could offer no advice.  I said that he should never have worried himself, the scare about my implants was over.  I wouldn't need to have them taken out after all - I just needed to have my nipples moved.   

  What?  So, you weren't speaking to my lovely friend Eric?  What was the question again?  Ah...I was a debutante and lived in the town rather than the country, so knew nothing.  If I'd known what my second husband in particular had in store for me, I'd have likely taken the veil.  

Thomas, 76.  
  We used to go to Leicestershire every summer for six weeks and there were chickens. 

Jillian, 38.  
  I was actually told the fucking crap about the stork!

Sonia, 46.  
  My mother drew a picture of an erect penis and then of something that in no way resembled a vagina and said, "That, goes into there.  But only when the people concerned truly love each other."  I later found out that she had been asked to give me this talk by Miss Cavendish, my house mistress.  I also found out that my mother had told Miss Cavendish how when I watched cartoons I masturbated.
  "Except," Miss Cavendish said, "your mother being such the scholar didn't say that you masturbated, but talked of your auto-erotic tendencies!"

Sian, 62.  
  My mother caught me masturbating when I was nine and a bit.  She dragged me in front of a mirror, made me open my mouth and pointed at my uvula.  
  "See that thing dangling there at the back of your throat?" she said. "Every time you touch yourself like you were just doing down there, it grows a bit.  And a bit more.  Until eventually it chokes you."

Sarah, 53.  
  When I was about nine, I started asking mummy.  When I was fifteen, she said, "You know when we let Saltash off her lead in Stanley Park that time and that boy dog came ever so close to her and did that funny dance with her?  Well, mummies and daddies do that.  It's natural and nothing to be ashamed of and might be lovely."

Peter, 72.  
  My mum refused to tell me and told me to ask my nan.  I asked nan. She said, "No, sorry, Peter.  I never even told your mother or your uncles any of that.  If push came to shove we might maybe have taken them to the aquarium."

Fiona, 68.  
  I was told that as soon as the ring went on my finger in the church a baby would begin to grow in my belly. 

Francis, 73.  
  When I was fifteen my father said he had something to tell me, took me into the bathroom, went bright red and locked the door.  I thought, oh god, he's going to tell me that he's gone bankrupt or that mummy's died.  Such a relief when he started squirming his way through telling me the facts of life!  I already knew them - we had a gypsy family in the village and I was at school with one of the sons - but I wanted my father to be uncomfortable.  I only remember certain details of what he told me, such as him calling the penis your person and describing the inside of the vagina as like the nasal passages when one is suffering from a very bad cold.  Oh, and he used the full spermatozoa and said it was like live, bleached tapioca, could I imagine?  No, frankly, I couldn't. He ended his talk by saying that if I caught anything it would break my mother's heart.  
  "And homosexuality is just silly."

  I didn't get to tell the Mother Superior any of the above.  As soon as I'd mentioned the subject of my spoken material she interrupted:  "How lovely that you will sing for us.  But about you going around and asking what you have, can I just say this:  God does not want us to overreach ourselves."