the doll games
shelley and pamela jackson

PENISES

P: I was just wondering whether I even knew the difference between an erect penis and a regular penis.

S: I don’t think I did.

P: I don’t think so either. Did our penises have balls, I also was wondering?

S: I decided they didn’t, because–this is in my body piece online — I remember my coming of age in terms of testicles when my friend and I made dolls out of clay and we were trying to make them anatomically correct and she put testicles on hers and I was really humiliated that I hadn’t known they were there. Or I knew something was going on down there but I didn’t know it was an entity, I just thought it was like, hanging stuff. A mess.

P: But was there a hanging portion of the clay penises when we built them?

S: I think not. Though that change might have happened while we were playing those games. But anyway, yeah, an infantile model of sexuality.

P: Whereas Dawn was a grown-up femme fatale type who was more mature sexually…

S: And more dangerous to our heroines, like it was possible she could take the boy hero away from our heroines.

P: Because she was genuinely beautiful and sexy.

S: And willing to fuck anyone.

P: And she was bold about it, and didn’t have to wait around for both of them to be unconscious and thrown into the same sleeping bag.

S: Right, for those rare events when the earthquake hurls you together in just such a position that you become penetrated…[laughter] So we were staging little anxiety dramas about whether being a more interesting, better person would win out in the end; could that make you more sexy in the end.

P: How disturbing.

S: I know, and embarrassing as well. But that’s what was so great about the doll games, we always won. There is no tragic model in that narrative.

P: Was there ever conflict between good girls for the same boy, or between good boys–like between Big Josh and Jesse?

S: I think there was, but more between the boys. I think between the girls would have called more dangerous things into question. We liked the idea of the boys competing.

P: And there were always enough good girls for the boys we liked to be happy in the end.

S: A slightly less great boy could be satisfied in the end by bringing in Phyllis.

P: But I’m wondering if big Josh and Jesse ever went head-to-head over–

S: You mean fought?

P: No not fought, but both wanted Mara, say–

S: I think probably yes.

P: It would be okay because one of them could meet someone equally fabulous, like Melanie or Aina. I don’t think there was a hierarchy between those girls. And there wasn’t a hierarchy between big Josh and Jesse, either. But–

S: But we did have a sense in some games of the destined couple. And it seems to me that it would usually be big Josh who got bumped because he was more of a doofus. He wasn’t a romantic hero.

P: Really? I thought he was— [falls into frog pond]— more conventionally romantic.

S: Well maybe I’m wrong. And maybe it was different from game to game.

P: I’m sure that sometimes big Josh was the chosen romantic hero. But we may have gone through phases. There was the problem of his penis having to go on over his underwear, too.