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2409 Jefferson Street
Port Townsend, WA
360-379-1086

Carolyn Latteier is author of Breasts: A Woman’s Perspective on an American Obsession, “a fascinating mixture of social commentary and cultural history” (Leroy Ashby, PhD, Johnson Distinguished Professor of History, Washington State University). She has given her slide presentation The American Breast Fetish before numerous audiences, including the 1996 Lewis and Clark Gender Studies Conference and the 2005 University of San Francisco Davies Forum Public Lecture Series. The publication of her book capped a 15-year career as freelance journalist specializing in health and psychology, during which she received five awards from the Washington Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism. Her short story “Ozette” appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Red Wheelbarrow. She is currently at work on a novel.

Carolyn Latteier  

from “Lake Ozette”

            We glide through the shallow edge of Lake Ozette, tannin brown water that smoothes out into liquid glass ripples, we two middle-aged women glide through it toward the men. They aren’t men, really. They are just boys, teenagers wearing baggy shorts and no shirts, sporting sunglasses that point up at the corners. I am wary of them, but my friend Cappy is stunned by their fierce beauty: the flat planes of their chests, their necks that rise like young tree trunks, their deep navels, the peach fuzz on their chins. Cappy is not young. She is nearly 45, but when she sees these sirens, the beautiful lake boys, one with hair shaved close to his head, the other with merman locks scraggling down his neck, she is back in the game.

            The boy standing on the stone beach by the water, the one who’s been watching us, grabs the bow of our canoe and holds it while we clamber out, our feet squishing in the mud, the bottoms of my rolled-up pant legs soaking up lake water. In front of me Cappy’s bare legs are etched with magenta-colored spider web veins; she doesn’t cover hers like I cover mine. Her naked legs swish through the water on the edge of the lake.

            How you ladies doing, the boy says. Notched bones stand out on top of his shoulders. He doesn’t have a hair on his chest.

            My friend Cappy loves men and in her day used to love them everywhere: in hotel rooms, under beach blankets, in cars, on airplanes, in buses and trains, in bathrooms, in hallways, even in bed. Cappy, who preferred exotic men, African American, Jamaican, Japanese, Arab, Guatemalan, their brown skin up against her cream and rose-petal body, still likes to flirt—even now that she is so sick.

            We’re just fine, sweet cheeks, she says to the boy.

            Sweet Cheeks. The lake boy’s mouth goes slack, then he spins, he turns, glances at the other and like flocking birds reacting in unison, they bend toward each other, their bodies shaking with laughter. The handsome one grabs his buttocks and that sets them off again; they hoot, their bodies rocking with it. A third boy comes out of the woods ready to join the merriment.

            What are you boys doing here? Cappy asks.

            More honking between attempts at composure. Cappy’s right there with them. She chortles, flaunting her heavy bosom, pushing her hair behind one ear so one earring twinkles, and I, I feel my mouth stretch into a smile, uneasy as always with strangers, my imagination building a threat, sniffing out possible harm: What might they do to us? Take our canoe, our money?