I was surprised when I finally read the first
section of Felice Picano’s “memoir in the form of a novel,” Ambidextrous. The first section is titled “Basement Games,”
and I had started reading several months ago but quit. In the first few pages we learn that Picano
grew up ambidextrous in the early 1950s.
He talks about learning to print by copying his siblings and then moving
on, in elementary school, to cursive writing.
He would switch hands from line to line.
I didn’t find this very interesting so I quite reading and went off to
finish Andrew Holleran’s novel Nights in
Aruba.
I came back this month, but with some
trepidation. I knew from reviews that
Picano became sexual at an early age. He
started having sex with girls when he himself was only eleven. A few years later and he was also sexually
involved with boys. Some reviewers felt
uncomfortable with the sexuality, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel.
And indeed, in “Basement Games” we see Picano drawn,
at eleven, into a sexual initiation orchestrated by “the girls next door.” For me, who grew up sexually isolated until
sometime in college, it seemed pretty unbelievable.
But at the same time, Picano is continually humiliated
by his fifth-grade teacher for being ambidextrous. I’m not sure such behavior would be tolerated
in a teacher today. This was
particularly significant for me because I
felt humiliated myself in the fifth-grade, to the point where I came into conflict with the school
system. So I developed quite a bit of
sympathy for the young Picano. The
climax of this first section certainly gives you something to think about!
The book is over 300 pages, divided into only three
chapters. This also discouraged me from
reading it at first. However, I enjoyed
the first section and now intend to read the entire book. It looks interesting and I find Picano’s
perspective insightful. I don’t know
whether the youthful sexuality will bother me; but I know now that there is a
lot more to this book than just the sex.
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