Sonnet 130

When I was at school Samantha Fox had a hit called Touch Me. Sam Fox was a British page three girl with large breasts. At the end of the song she made a lot of moaning and groaning noises presumably suggesting sex, although she may have just been having a nice ice cream. She was supposed to be every teenage boy's fantasy of a perfect woman. I say supposed to be because she really didn't do much for me. In fact I always thought her large breasts made her look a bit uncomfortable (or maybe it was that all her tops were too tight). The best thing about the Sam Fox story is that I believe she is now a happily married lesbian.

At the time Sam Fox posed a problem for me. I knew that I was supposed to fancy her but I didn't so I had to fake it. If I had been insecure (instead of being lumpish and unthinking) I might have worried about my sexuality. On the other hand I did fancy girls, just not the girls I was supposed to fancy. I wrote love poems for these girls (of course I never showed anyone them). These poems were filled with lies. I can't remember an example so I'll make one up:

I love you, you're so perfect...

Your eyes are like pools

This kind of poetry is like make-up: it conceals the blemishes that make people really beautiful.

A body is a map of a life, and on it are marks of pain, of laughter, of age. The feet and hands have a roughness; the neck and inner arm are soft, pale. Real love poetry is specific and honest. It tells us not about what somebody should look like, but about who they really are.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

I don't know if Sonnet 130 is honest or not. I don't know if it describes a real woman, but it certainly has the feeling of truth. It's a neat trick Shakespeare pulls because he actually describes this woman by saying what she isn't.

She isn't Sam Fox.