Salon.com > Melissa Febos

My big, strong, manly hands

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:15:00 +0000

I inherited a lot from my mother, though I first recognized my hands. Long fingered and wide palmed, we are women with muscular hands, working hands. In adolescence, it struck me as unfair, because my mother was beautiful — pale and ethereal, with fine features and blue eyes — and no one was ever going to be distracted from her face by her hands. But me? I felt too animal to be beautiful.

Before I gave thought to beauty, I delighted in my body. I was a strong, brown, passionate child, with lots and lots of words. I talked fast, and I moved faster – through the woods around our Cape Cod home, up trees, into the ocean’s crashing surf. I also felt a lot, finely tuned to the swells of my own heart, as well as others’ wants and hurts. I sensed a deep well at my center, and sometimes it bubbled over. I’d read or think or feel myself into a brimming state, then lie with my back to the ground, body vibrating, heart thudding, mind foaming, fearing I might combust – suffer a supernova of brain and heart, annihilate myself. I also fell down a lot. I banged into walls and trees, and tumbled up and down stairs almost daily. The refrain of my childhood was “slow down, Melissa!” and my nickname “Crash,” but I always got right up — skinned knees, purpled thighs, stinging palms — and brushed myself off, kept going.

Rebel girls

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:59:00 +0000

“We need to talk,” said my mom. I was 14, and this could have meant any number of ominous things. We’d had many “talks” over the years, most of them related to my adolescent misbehavior, which arrived at 12 in particularly worrying form.

We sat together at our breakfast counter, she with a mug of Bengal spice tea, me with a glass of OJ. My mother was, and is, a very pretty woman, with bright blue eyes, skyscraper cheekbones, and an easy laugh. She sipped her tea and took a breath.

“Karen and I aren’t just friends, honey.” Her features tightened, but her eyes met mine, clear and steady. “We’re more than friends.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said.

“You did?”

“Of course!” I gulped. “Jessica and me aren’t just friends, either, you know.”

“I had a feeling about that.” She nodded with a faint smile.

Mine was the most amiable coming out story I knew. If only the experience of my early sex life were so breezy.

A dominatrix moves to the country

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:30:00 +0000

When we pulled up behind the moving truck in front of our new home in Clinton, N.Y., my girlfriend and I looked at each other and grinned. May sunshine bathed the little house in radiance and stretched down the street, lined with thick-trunked trees and well-groomed lawns. I jumped out of the car and led our 70-pound pit bull out of his nest in the back seat. For a moment, Red stood dazed in the brilliant light, ears lopsided, watching a bumblebee hover over the overgrown lawn. He tilted his head toward the ground and collapsed onto the grass, flinging his legs into the air and rolling with glorious abandon.

Next door, our neighbor weeded her garden.

"Hi there!" I called out, peering around a tree.

"Hi!" she called back, pulling off her gardening gloves. "I'm Patti."

Patti introduced herself as a college professor and area native. I told her I'd recently accepted a full-time position at a nearby college and (a bit more nervously) that my girlfriend and I recently moved from Brooklyn. I didn't tell her that before joining the professorial ranks, I'd been a professional dominatrix and drug addict, or that I'd recently published a memoir about my days of spanking and shooting heroin. It unnerved me in that moment how much my recent success felt like something to hide. It just seemed impolite to mention.