For my first sexual experience with another human being (see how carefully that was phrased, I should be a practitioner of constitutional law), I ran out and bought the single of José Feliciano’s Light My Fire. I already owned the album, but my plan required the facility to play that one song continually, for hours on end if need be. Ok, I hear you: you think I should have gone with The Doors’ version. Let me tell you something: I think Jim Morrison was a sulky, self-indulgent pissant. Eh, what do you think about that! José, on the other hand, not only had that fiery Latin guitar thing going, he was blind! The guy didn’t get that many chicks. When he implores Maria to light his fire, he really means it. You can hear the anguish.
And that’s the ambiance this fourteen-year-old was looking for.
On the other hand, if I never hear Feliz Navidad again, I’ll die a grateful man.
Dad and I did a nice job building out the basement: a spacious area for ping pong and darts, workroom and a paneled, carpeted TV room with a wall full of Time-Life books: very classy, like a fine British Club. Wherever we lived, the TV room was always in the basement, about which, frankly, I had mixed feelings. Being a solitary child and terribly scared of darkness and spiders until – well, now that you mention it – up to and including the present, descending below-ground never lost its reek of the black, demented, ghoul-populated tomb.
“Hello!” I peeped, “ anybody down there?” FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, as if that was no big thing. The problem was, I really feared fear, and oft times offered to die quietly, as long as “they” didn’t let me see them coming. I couldn’t admit this then because of what Gypsy called my "mandago bag."
Gypsy
Gypsy’s influence still pervades my life over three decades later. In fact, I’ve often thought of tracking him down, perhaps through the Internet, but then stop. What if he’s a Rajneeshee named Rama Lama Prahpupada now? Or a born again, NRA Republican? That would be creepy and uncomfortable for both of us. Or he might well be disappointed in me, a Socrates whose Plato became a Red Carpet real estate agent. In any case, at the time of this story, Gypsy was my next-door neighbor, sixteen to my fourteen. At a critical pre-pubescent point in my life, he took me under his wing and shed light, admittedly of a dubious quality, on a dangerous, belittling, unfathomable world.
Among other things, Gypsy introduced me to drinking, dope smoking, pool playing, Playboy, Blind Faith and Cream, vital insider information about the female sex (I was astounded at how their bodies worked), and to the subtle and powerful concept of the mandago bag. Gypsy was a man of style: thin as a whippet; lank, black hair falling over the shoulders of a magnificent purple, fringed, suede jacket; who didn’t so much walk as disdainfully amble among us. He also had the classiest nickname around (pre-dating, I might add, the Allman Brothers’ Melissa). For my part, I lived in terror that my sister-bequeathed nicknames, Bubu and Sniffy, might leak out to the general public.
In my many expensive conversations with those in the psychiatric industry, no one has ever been anything but quizzical about the term mandago bag, an expression encompassing, like a bag if you will, everything to do with one’s masculinity. Perhaps Gypsy came up with it, I really don’t know. In any case, I’m fond of it, and would like to see it get wider play.
Cherise
The TV room was to provide the cozy scene where Mr. Feliciano would strum away my virginity. Cherise and I would be unlikely to be disturbed there and, if necessary, we could always duck into the closet hidden in the paneling and play possum until the coast cleared. I settled José upon the record player, put down floor cushions and filled the room with romantic candle light. In my pocket, my sweaty, little hand fingered the condom Gypsy had bequeathed me with such solemn ceremony.
My relationship with Cherise had been forged on a class field trip to New York City. (I believe dioramas of trumpeting mastodons, snarling hyenas and hairy cave people were viewed, which may have subconsciously gotten me in the mood for what followed.) The pertinent sequence of events is hazy, but the crux of the matter is that for several hours on the ride home, Cherise allowed me to clasp her small, soft breasts! The first of my acquaintance, like cupfuls of warm, jiggly, vanilla pudding, raisin topped, they were a cataclysmic revelation. I held on like a drowning boy grasping for Christmas bulbs bobbing on the water’s light-dappled surface. Arriving home, my atrophied arms had to be crowbarred from her chest by a helpful classmate.
Other than her breasts, my hot, moist hands and future lecherous plans, we really had nothing in common as she fundamentally reminded me of Daffy Duck, ditzy as compared to my deep intellectualism. Unfortunately, the real object of my affections, the lovely Linda Lashkey, only went out with older hoodlums of the rougher sort. In any case, no relationship is perfect: you work with what you're given with tenderness and honesty.
Henry
But enough about supporting cast, let’s talk about me, then standing upon the threshold of manhood. We’ll need to back up a little for the necessary perspective. In second grade, I was one tough motherfucker. A swaggering, two-fisted desperado, I led a large gang armed with spears and stink bombs -- being what was later referred to as a big swinging dick. (In the metaphorical sense of the term as my childish pinto bean did little actual swinging.) Class photos of the era reveal a defiant, skinny tyke with an oversized head.
This turned out to be the crest of my virility.
By ninth grade, when some classmates attained man size and began to cultivate sparse, well-stroked moustaches, I weighed 87 pounds, stood five feet tall and was as yet totally devoid of pubic or armpit hair. At some critical point in the late elementary school years, my physical development had lagged and my toughness disappeared like a dandelion in a sirocco. Now puny and longhaired in a small, socially regressive town, sometimes wearing a zippered, leather Nehru shirt that positively begged for retribution, I was a wise-ass baited and slapped around with disheartening frequency by greasy-haired punks named Tony. My early teens were thus spent scuttling through hallways, lavatories and locker rooms like a mouse trapped in a weasel exhibit: squeak, squeak, please don’t hurt me again … oh, and by the way, fuck you, douche bag! This combination of weakness, terror and mouthy truculence put me into a hamster wheel of pain.
In my experience, only the lucky few, such as psychopaths and varsity wrestlers below 130 lbs (usually one and the same), overcome the runty/toughness disconnect, and though I certainly had psychological problems, they were, sadly, not of a quality to compensate for physical deficiencies and deep-in-the-bone cowardice. Gypsy tried to protect me, but he was a flamboyant longhair himself and had to contend with his own, even larger and greasier persecutors. It was not until I made friends with one of the only two black families in town, that 6 foot, 2 inch, 195 lb Clayton Johnston, superstar of basketball and football and by far the most popular guy in school, put out the word that people should “stop messing with little Panky.” He also deposited a few recalcitrant tormentors upside down in locker room garbage cans.
It still brings tears of gratitude to my eyes. With all my heart, I hope life has treated him kindly.
Community
The Johnston house was ruled by day by the cranky, gold-toothed, generous (at least to small white boys) and night-working mother, Atlanta. But come evening time, the three brothers held sway: Clayton the African prince, older Willie, already out of school and always smacking his lips about “sweet pussy,” and the youngest, Martin, a cheerful, laughing gnome who became my best friend. It was here that I unexpectedly became the mascot of the town’s small and secret society of drug users, a very mixed bag of hippies, hoods and athletes who liked to get fucked up on whatever was available. The Johnston brothers would never have depraved such a young, puny white child, except that I had arrived at their house one summer evening with a lid of ass-kicking grass and a corncob pipe rubber-banded to my ankle. (Gypsy, you were my first and greatest mentor.)
“Who wants to get high?” I squeaked, thus becoming a minor legend in my own time.
After this excellent first impression, I spent almost every night sitting safely behind the leafy plant in the corner of the living room, profoundly stoned and getting funky to Hendrix, The Jackson Five, Sly and the Family Stone. Oh, we danced to the music all right, sometimes doing a conga right down the middle of those dark suburban streets. Though a cornucopia of harder drugs abounded, I was forbidden their taste in case they might stunt my growth.
When the new school year began, I stopped my dope smoking due to fears deeply inculcated by US Government advertisements. (Here’s your brain: a fresh, white egg; here’s your brain on drugs: a fried egg; and à la Timothy Leary, here’s your brain on drugs with a side order of toast and sausage.) After three weeks, apprehensions faded and the pipe was eagerly resurrected. This is not to cast aspersions on the anti-drug campaign, which I believe, by and large, illustrated my developing situation relatively accurately.
Kids, listen to me. There is no high like Jesus or if you’re Jewish, jeesh, I dunno, like Moses? Or maybe sports. Stay Away From Drugs! "You don't want no part of this, Dewey Cox!" However, if you’re already on drugs, call me. At my age, I’ve lost all my connections--and the junior high schoolers run from me, even when I wear a wig and wave large denomination bills--and a couple hits of Ecstasy aren’t going to do me any harm. Quite the contrary: floating in a universe of warm, liquid, golden love could only be therapeutic.
Despite my many physical drawbacks, I had a certain je ne sais quoi and was kind of popular with the nicer girls, being favorably compared to Davy Jones of The Monkees. Of course, the hottest looking, not-so-nice girls had their eyes on much bigger pickings than me and Clayton, the coolest of aristocrats and a senior, deservedly had the best-looking girls in town. Lamentably, due to luxuriant Mandingo fears, he was rarely welcomed warmly into parents’ homes. Stereotypes aside, just the bald truth, he undoubtedly had the biggest hose I’ve ever laid eyes on outside the movies. Clayton was the sultriest, sexiest male I’ve ever known, besides being a total sweetheart, and if I was a woman or gay and wasn’t terrified of a dick that size, Clayton would be the man, hands down.
But let’s not get bogged down in what-might-have-beens.
Seduction
The TV room was set, pillows plumped, candles lit, Light My Fire on automatic replay. I had Gypsy’s condom and spurious advice. After escorting Cherise into my playboy’s lair, we engaged in some warm-up dry humping and breast fondling until moving resolutely to the goal, her jeans and panties were pulled down about six inches. The fire, “she was lighted.” I pushed my bellbottoms down a few inches, modestly eased my aching gherkin through the fly of my Fruit of the Looms and fumbled on the condom and rubber band. For five, eternal minutes of paradise I rubbed my rubberized and unfeeling doodle against her virgin mons, and then with neither penetration nor ejaculation I rolled off, we both pulled up our jeans, and went our separate ways. All in all, an encounter remarkably similar to the steamy Bill Hurt - Kathleen Turner sex scene in Body Heat.
I headed to Gypsy’s for a congratulatory pipe of weed, a game of pool, and some serious mandago-bag talk.
When I returned home late that night, yes, wasted again, jeez it smells a little smokey, the basement room was on fire. The romantic candles left behind unsnuffed had kindled the library of handsomely bound Time Life books into an inferno. (We lost the entire ancient world and renaissance.) The house was slowly filling with the smoke, while my parents and sister snurfled in their dreams, quietly awaiting death. I raced downstairs, surveyed the wall of flame and hurriedly blew out the remaining candles before rousing the household. (First rule of adolescence: cover your guilty tracks.) Fortunately, the fire had not yet jumped floors; father and son battled the flames elbow to elbow laughing like maniacs (ok, not true, but a nice image), fire trucks arrived; the fire was quelled.
The TV room did not survive. Standing in the ashes, we vowed to rebuild!
Must have been an electrical fire, what other explanation could there be, Mr. Fireman? Suspicious glances slid to my bland, innocent face. (The prejudice we longhaired kids faced was horrendous in those days.) I had come within an hour or so of charbroiling my family, not to mention Licky, my beloved cocker spaniel, and think about how that might have fucked up my life -- and I was already a twisted little shit. I could have ended up in foster homes peopled with ghoulish perverts, like in the heebie-jeebie, anti-drug docu-drama, Go Ask Alice. Or because of the sex/death/guilt connection, I might have been tortured by ghastly hallucinations of leering, many-eyed goats’ heads floating in the flame-whipped dark every time I came to orgasm.
Don’t laugh: this very thing afflicts the Catholic wife of a good friend, and it really casts a pall over their bouncy-bouncy licky-pokey.
In any event, my inchoate relationship with Cherise did not survive our firestorm of passion. We were both frightened by something so big, so feverishly out of control. Subsequently, I behaved badly, yet with enhanced community stature. She got several months of highest quality girl-chat and spread the rumor that she was pregnant. For certain scientific reasons I can’t explain here, Cherise never actually became heavy with my child.
Puberty
The following summer, my family moved to New Jersey, I painted my room black, smoked pot in solitude, and grew increasingly paranoid. (What was that?! No one’s there! Echoing, pulsing, malevolent silence.) Upon puberty’s long-awaited flowering, I grew ten inches, added fifteen pounds of weight, celebrated my newly-sprouted body hair, and meticulously measured biceps and erection on almost a daily basis. You can well imagine my relief when the latter at long last attained “average size” as codified by respected authorities. (I’d rather not get into specifics in case standards have changed. After all, look how tall people are getting!) All measurements were scrupulously adjusted to account for the submerged “root” of the organ beginning well below the nutsack. Though understandably confusing to women, this is the accepted standard among layman anatomists of the male persuasion.
And on a gloomy day in March, eyes clenched shut, alone in a cooling tub with a soapy, demanding, Portnoyian washcloth named Linda Lashkey, I became a man. I could build that sod cabin on the lonely plains, furrow the fertile soil, plant my seed, sire a family of good Americans. Or, minimally, I became a practicing pubescent--Lord knows how much I began to practice.
And as the bathtub drain sang its glug-glug song, did I pump the air in exultation?
"I don't avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence."
General Jack Ripper, Dr. Strangelove
Henry E. Panky
"Nobody knows me like the Lord...and He don't like me"
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