I'd like to start off by saying that I've always been a voracious reader. I taught myself to read by the time I was 2(you can ask my mom, she'll verify that). Ever since then, I've always enjoyed reading. When I was a young lad of 4 or 5, if I had nothing better to do, I would find a book or magazine, or something, and keep myself occupied for an hour or 3. When I was about 4 or 5(as this tale takes place in 1974), I was living in the bosom of Suburbia, in a suburb of Los Angeles, California, a little town called La Habra. Like a lot of women in Suburbia in the mid 1970s, my mom occasionally bought cosmetics and the occasional fragrances(in the ever popular collectible decanters), toiletries, and on rare occasions, jewelry and clothing from the friendly neighborhood Avon Lady(although for the life of me, I honestly don't remember her ever buying jewelry or clothing, and she might have bought the occasional decanter, I remember my maternal grandparents did have a few decanters). As she did make the odd purchase from the Avon Lady, she would get Avon catalogs, which I would occasionally read(believe me, back then, I would read just about everything). One day when I was about 4, I was looking at one of my mom's Avon catalogs, and I saw something interesting. Something I had never seen before. It was a page for a skin care line called Perfect Balance. Now, the fact they were advertising skin care wasn't the thing that intrigued me, it was something else on that page. A photograph. Two women, with their backs to each other, appearing to be naked(it was a head and shoulders shot, last I checked, Avon catalogs were pretty family friendly reading), wearing nothing but a single shared headscarf between them, with a knot between their necks. But what really intrigued me was something else... The fact these women were joined to one another at the back. That was something I had never seen before, two people joined to one another. First thing I did was to show my mom, and ask her about it. She told me they were Siamese twins. I do distinctly remember her telling me a story about how Siamese twins cope with being joined, using the example of when one wants to go to bed while the other one wants to eat dinner. She said the one who wants to eat dinner could eat dinner in bed. I don't know why, but I almost instantly became obsessed with that picture, and with Siamese twins in general. I don't know what it was, whether it was seeing two people who were physically joined to one another, or the idea of two people being joined by their own flesh. However, I was only 4 at the time, I never thought about things like that. Another thing I never thought about was how they did it. As far as I was concerned, those women were Siamese twins. They were joined back to back. I never thought about things like Photoshop(of course, being I got that picture out of an Avon catalog from 1974, which predates the invention of Photoshop by at least a decade) or any other type of photomanipulation or other trickery, makeup, prosthetic devices, or any other way to make a couple women appear to be joined back to back. As far as I was concerned, they were born like that. I thought finding the picture back in 2013 would answer the questions I've had all these years, but ironically, seeing it has got me asking questions that I didn't even think of all those years ago... How did they get those women to appear as if they were joined like that? Did they find a bona fide pair of rachipagus(the medical term for that type of conjoinment) Siamese twins? Did they use photographic trickery? Double exposure? Some sort of optical printer? Did the women use makeup and/or a prosthetic device? And what's with the headscarf? Is one or both of the women bald? Do they wear it to hide the fact they have different color hair? Or to hide the fact the women may not necessarily be identical twins? Or to make it look like they're also joined at the back of the head? To make them look more like the logo for Perfect Balance(which does kind of look like a female version of the Roman god Janus)? Personal preference?
Of course, since I was obsessed with that picture, I took the catalog into my room, and stared at that picture. I have no idea why, but one of the reactions I had to that picture was, let's just say it involved a rush of blood below my waist. And I'm pretty sure it's unrelated to that, but another thing triggered by that picture was a recurring dream I had for a short time. I dreamed that my mom and Shirley Partridge from the Partridge Family were Siamese twins, joined back to back. I remember having that dream a few times, I vaguely remember at least once part of the dream was that my mom and I were part of the Partridge Family. Aside from the fact that the whole family was there(I remember Danny, Chris, and Tracy, although Keith and Laurie were probably there too, but for the life of me, I can't remember if Reuben Kincaid was there...), the only thing I do remember was one time, my mom and Shirley Partridge glued themselves together using an extremely generous portion of Perfect Balance skin care cream. I would bet if I asked a few people what that meant, I would probably get a few different answers, but here's what I think it was: When I was 4, I probably spent more time with my mom than with any other person, the picture from that Avon catalog of Siamese twins who were joined back to back, and the fact that the first night I had that dream, I probably saw an episode of The Partridge Family that day. While I was sleeping, my subconscious mind took those unrelated images, and combined them into a dream. A very interesting and possibly weird dream. Yeah, that's it... It was just my subconscious mind creating a mash-up out of some random images.
Anywho, ever since I saw that picture, I had become obsessed with Siamese twins. Over the years, my obsession may have dwindled a little, but has never gone away. For the longest time, I had never said a word to anyone, I kept my obsession to myself. People thought I was a bit weird as it was, why scare people. Over the years, my obsession has manifested itself in several different ways, from wanting to meet Siamese twins, to a fantasy of mine of having sex with Siamese twins(that came years later), to actually being a Siamese twin myself(of course, the fact that the technology to conjoin people doesn't exist, and I can't find anyone I would like to spend the rest of my life joined to).
Anywho, that's my story. It's been a long time since I had that dream about my mom and Shirley Partridge being Siamese twins for somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years, but that doesn't mean I haven't stopped having dreams about Siamese twins. I have a dream involving Siamese twins every so often. One in particular I remember was from when I was about 16, I had a dream which was sort of about the twins I saw in the Avon catalog. From what I remember, the twins in that particular dream had suntans, and were wearing matching black bikinis with strapless tops, and were joined just at the shoulder blades. They weren't wearing headscarves(until I found the picture in 2013, I remembered the women wearing separate headscarves, which were knotted together between them) in that particular dream, although I vaguely remember them having dark hair, and for some reason, I want to picture them wearing red nail polish on their fingernails, and possibly their toenails. Another dream that comes to mind is from when I was about 7, it involves 2 sisters I was acquainted with at the time. One was about my age, her sister was a year or 2 older, and I remember having a dream that they were Siamese twins. Of course, I didn't know at the time that Siamese twins were always identical twins I was a bit too young to know about that stuff. Of course, at the time, I actually thought that Siamese twins were caused when a woman who was pregnant with twins somehow swallowed glue(nobody ever sat me down and told me about how sometimes when a fertilized egg tries to split into 2 embryos, the split is occasionally incomplete or anything like that, so I had to make up my own theory).
I could probably go on(and on, and on, and on, and on, ad nauseum... Believe me, if I could remember everything, I could probably go on until your grandchildren's grandchildren have grandchildren of their own), but I think I'll stop here. First off, I've pretty much covered everything I can recall at the moment on the subject of Siamese twins, and how seeing a picture of one particular pair affected me. Second of all, this is supposed to be a short story, and if I don't stop myself, my "short story" will end up making Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix look like the Reader's Digest version of The George Foreman Book of Names for Boys... Anywho, I want to leave you with one final word... Snozzberries.
Of course, since I was obsessed with that picture, I took the catalog into my room, and stared at that picture. I have no idea why, but one of the reactions I had to that picture was, let's just say it involved a rush of blood below my waist. And I'm pretty sure it's unrelated to that, but another thing triggered by that picture was a recurring dream I had for a short time. I dreamed that my mom and Shirley Partridge from the Partridge Family were Siamese twins, joined back to back. I remember having that dream a few times, I vaguely remember at least once part of the dream was that my mom and I were part of the Partridge Family. Aside from the fact that the whole family was there(I remember Danny, Chris, and Tracy, although Keith and Laurie were probably there too, but for the life of me, I can't remember if Reuben Kincaid was there...), the only thing I do remember was one time, my mom and Shirley Partridge glued themselves together using an extremely generous portion of Perfect Balance skin care cream. I would bet if I asked a few people what that meant, I would probably get a few different answers, but here's what I think it was: When I was 4, I probably spent more time with my mom than with any other person, the picture from that Avon catalog of Siamese twins who were joined back to back, and the fact that the first night I had that dream, I probably saw an episode of The Partridge Family that day. While I was sleeping, my subconscious mind took those unrelated images, and combined them into a dream. A very interesting and possibly weird dream. Yeah, that's it... It was just my subconscious mind creating a mash-up out of some random images.
Anywho, ever since I saw that picture, I had become obsessed with Siamese twins. Over the years, my obsession may have dwindled a little, but has never gone away. For the longest time, I had never said a word to anyone, I kept my obsession to myself. People thought I was a bit weird as it was, why scare people. Over the years, my obsession has manifested itself in several different ways, from wanting to meet Siamese twins, to a fantasy of mine of having sex with Siamese twins(that came years later), to actually being a Siamese twin myself(of course, the fact that the technology to conjoin people doesn't exist, and I can't find anyone I would like to spend the rest of my life joined to).
Anywho, that's my story. It's been a long time since I had that dream about my mom and Shirley Partridge being Siamese twins for somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years, but that doesn't mean I haven't stopped having dreams about Siamese twins. I have a dream involving Siamese twins every so often. One in particular I remember was from when I was about 16, I had a dream which was sort of about the twins I saw in the Avon catalog. From what I remember, the twins in that particular dream had suntans, and were wearing matching black bikinis with strapless tops, and were joined just at the shoulder blades. They weren't wearing headscarves(until I found the picture in 2013, I remembered the women wearing separate headscarves, which were knotted together between them) in that particular dream, although I vaguely remember them having dark hair, and for some reason, I want to picture them wearing red nail polish on their fingernails, and possibly their toenails. Another dream that comes to mind is from when I was about 7, it involves 2 sisters I was acquainted with at the time. One was about my age, her sister was a year or 2 older, and I remember having a dream that they were Siamese twins. Of course, I didn't know at the time that Siamese twins were always identical twins I was a bit too young to know about that stuff. Of course, at the time, I actually thought that Siamese twins were caused when a woman who was pregnant with twins somehow swallowed glue(nobody ever sat me down and told me about how sometimes when a fertilized egg tries to split into 2 embryos, the split is occasionally incomplete or anything like that, so I had to make up my own theory).
I could probably go on(and on, and on, and on, and on, ad nauseum... Believe me, if I could remember everything, I could probably go on until your grandchildren's grandchildren have grandchildren of their own), but I think I'll stop here. First off, I've pretty much covered everything I can recall at the moment on the subject of Siamese twins, and how seeing a picture of one particular pair affected me. Second of all, this is supposed to be a short story, and if I don't stop myself, my "short story" will end up making Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix look like the Reader's Digest version of The George Foreman Book of Names for Boys... Anywho, I want to leave you with one final word... Snozzberries.
