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don’t recall as a child being very curious about my own penis. It was the organ with which I urinated, a casual part of my identity, c’est tout . By an imperceptible cultural osmosis I gathered that it was a “private” part, but this did not turn it into a source of interest, let alone of shame or embarrassment. It was private in much the same way that a bedroom is: guests are invited to sit and chat in the living-room, and only once they have achieved a sufficient degree of intimacy may they be shown around the house and see the bedroom. At puberty my level of interest would change dramatically and my penis would become the object of dedicated attention, the source of a pleasure so powerful that Imight call it extraterrestrial, but even then I never felt that this small member — for that is what it is — was an inspiration for architecture or organization charts or anything else.
    I have a black and white photo of me when I was very young, perhaps three. I am outside on a hot sunny day, naked and standing at the top of some wooden steps. I am holding onto my adored, tattered towel. The photographer, my father, is below me and I am looking at him gravely. I am not yet inhibited by modesty — the way I stand then, every square inch of my skin is equally presentable. My sex seems very large for the size of me. Perhaps sexual organs have their own rate of growth, or get started earlier. Yet it’s tiny: a scrotum like half a walnut shell and a penis attached to it that is no more than a stubby cylinder of skin. But what really surprises me is the way the two float on the surface of my body. Atop my layer of baby fat, they seem unconnected and unimportant. They are there, but they could be elsewhere, like a large mole — and could seemingly be excised like a large mole by a simple operation should they become malignant. There is no hint of how deeply rooted in me they are, how, in a way, they are half of me, and how the point at which they join my body is a fulcrum.
    A short time after that momentous car ride with my mother, I showed her a thick, juicy worm I had captured in the garden.
 
 
 
     “Il est femelle ou male, ce ver de terre?”
      
     “Is this earthworm female or male?”
    My mother, a cool woman, a woman who always displayed grace under pressure, hardly squirmed. She carefully gathered up the papers she was working on from beneath my dangling worm, and she looked at it and at me.
     “En fait, les deux. Le ver de terre est à la fois mâle et femelle. C’est une exception à la règle.”
     “Well, as a matter of fact it’s both. The worm is both male and female. It’s an exception to the rule.”
    Both male and female! I looked closely at this supreme brown creature as it twisted limply in my fingers. Both! How extraordinary.
 
 
     “Où sont ses organes sexuels?”
     “Where are its sex organs?”
     “Je ne suis pas sûre. Ils sont très petits. Tu ne peux pas les voir.”
     “I’m not sure. They’re very small. You can’t see them.”
     “Eh bien, son nom est Jésus-Christ et elle est ma meilleure amie!”
     “Well, his name is Jesus Christ and she’s my best friend.”
     “Et aucun des deux ne reste pas dans la maison. Ils seront plus heureux dans le jardin.”
     “And neither one of them is staying in the house. They’ll be happier in the garden.”
    I carried away this miracle of the universe. Every time the words occurred to me — “Both male and female!” — I was amazed anew. Surely if God existed — ? — He, She, It must have the wriggly blunt head of a worm. I looked up at the sky. I could see it very well: an enormous, beautiful worm circling the earth, gracefully moving around and through the white clouds. I played with Jesus Christ for a few minutes and then cut them up into very small pieces with a sharp knife, trying to find their sex organs. Both female and