Raquel Welch.

When I was around 10 or 11, the name Raquel Welch had a sort of talismanic power with other boys, just uttering the name would charge the air. I had no idea who she was, had seen no photos of her, no movies she was in, but eventually I realized it was her breasts the boys were concerned with, that her name meant breasts, or I guess meant the things boys think about when they think about breasts. Hm. I was beginning to think I wasn’t like the other boys, or, more precisely, not having those feelings boys had about breasts, I started to question whether or not I was a boy. Not that I wasn’t similarly preoccupied with body parts. Was the Six Million Dollar Man about anything but Lee Majors’s hairy chest? Not that I remember. But I had no inkling that my feelings and theirs were the same thing — theirs being a group activity and mine being somehow monstrous and shameful and definitely not to be shared with anyone.