Wander Lust | By Giovanna Coppola

Photo: Pregnant, by Giovanna

Sartre said that existence precedes essence, meaning that there is no defined human nature that we are born into. We exist first and then we become who we are. No one creates us, except ourselves. So there is nothing behind us, nor before us, which gives us the freedom to do whatever we want, to be however we want.

But the thing about Sartre that i have a problem with is his denial for any sort of connection, either with a higher form, with another human being, or with another animal. Since we exist before we are 'created', then that means that there are no primordial ties to us with another being. Our souls hold nothing in common, there is no fabric, no pattern, no 'story' to our creation.

"Mom, tell me the story of when i was born."

Each one of us begins with a myth. We want to know when our parents fucked each other, the moment we planted ourselves in the blood room.

"Mom, was it in the morning, afternoon, evening, were you tied up, spread eagle, fucked from behind, tell me mom, i want to 'know', did you come?"

The word conception comes from the latin word 'concipere', which has multiple meanings including 'to conceive', 'to thoroughly take', 'to thoroughly receive', 'to suck out', 'to catch fire' and 'to hold'. Is it any wonder that the word to conceive in the English language has both cerebral and sexual meanings? To conceive something we can hold it in our minds or we can hold it in our bodies. With a thought and an action held so close together in one word, the story of our creation has ties to the bodies and minds of our mother and father.

So it's only natural to want to know if the sex was hot. Because a part of that story is pushed into us at the moment of conception, the moment we became a life form, whatever our mothers were thinking became a part of our essence.

I have an old-fashioned Italian mom, born and bred in Italy by a commune of devout Catholics. So it's probably safe to say that she grew up and raised her children under the atmosphere of body guilt. Even though i like to shock my mother with all kinds of things, i hold back on her when personalizing sex and using swear words.

Sex and my mother have been severed from each other (based on her actions, that is, she would never admit what she does behind the door, cool to think about it though!!!), especially since my father is dead and there's no one to make her feel that she has a body anymore.

"Mom, tell me the story of when i was born."

'What if I'm pregnant?' my mother thought when she didn't get her period one winter when she was forty-two years old. With three children almost grown, my mother was embarrassed what others would think about her growing belly, hard stomach and protruding navel.

'MY MOTHER HAD SEX!' i screamed when my heart was forming and my fingernails and my legs and my little tiny cunt.

One morning i woke my mother up, three weeks before i was predicted to crawl out of her. She was sleeping on a mattress underneath the window because it was the closest relief from the August heat.i can only imagine how my mother had to reach her arm up and shake my dad (who always slept on the left side of the bed), with anger, with frustration, with laughing sacrifice, and tell him that their coyote child picked the day when their new restaurant was to open.

No one was there with her, it was just me and my mother when she spread her legs and heard no cry. No one to share the fear that this baby that filled her with love and embarrassment might die.

i took too long in the birth canal, anxious to get out but at the same time still tied to her, something about our bodies, still wanting to be connected to hers, maybe her embarrassment made me afraid of my own or maybe i wanted to break out and she was still holding back. When i finally emerged from my mother's pungent cunt, i couldn't cry because i had pneumonia.

It's today that i have a dead dad, married sisters, brother far away, so it's just me and my mother alone in this house. We have separate bodies, but we're still connected and i test her by talking about bleeding, and sweating, and puking and peeing.

Sometimes it's not worth it, i don't want to change what sixty-six years of her life have taught her, i just want her to not be embarrassed for me. With all the women in my family surrounding each other, sisters, and aunts hitting their sixties and seventies, no one talks about bodies at all. And shit, these women 'used' their bodies. How can you ignore it?

Was i conceived in anything other than the missionary position? Perhaps they tried something new, maybe my dad licked my mother's clit, sent her waves of shame and pleasure, embarrassment and love, so when sperm and egg hit the big one, i took it on to pound it back to her. ++

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