Mommie Dearest, or Joan Crawford Has Risen From the Grave

Although it's pretty common knowledge that Anne Sexton was sexually abused as a child, as an adult she was a pedophile. She used to sexually molest her daughter Linda (although not her younger daughter Joy). I find this fascinating, although I don't know why. Fascinating enough to dream that I was Linda and that Anne (played by Joan Crawford, egads!) was molesting me in a TV movie. I am fascinated by sexuality: when it begins (I remember thinking about boy's winkies in the first grade), when it crosses over (I began thinking about girls much later than that), the effects of inappropriate intimacy (was Anne just trying to recreate, with Linda, the security she felt in her earlier life with her molester [her aunt], with whom she was very close?) Does our first sexual fantasy always replay itself in our subsequent relationships? Do we always marry our mother or father? Why are we so fucked up?

So how did I feel being Linda? I don't remember much of it. I remember seeing Mom (Anne) in that crisp white dress she's always wearing in the pictures. She's tall and gangly and strong and not chubby and weird-faced after the thorazine treatment. I remember thinking she was strong, powerful, yet thrilled that I was her Achilles Heel, her weakness.

And maybe that's sex in a nutshell: power.