Life’s Little Bloodlettings

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

Oh, there’s a dozen on my cousin’s,

I can hear the bastards buzzin’.

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

Not exactly a song destined for the songwriters’ hall of fame.   I’d heard it at school and was now unable to dislodge it from my tongue.  It was a Saturday and mom had yelled me out of bed at seven o’clock to go to the golf course.  I protested because the swimming pool didn’t open till noon, but she cheerily countered I would have time to be her caddy then.  Oh Joy.  This was going to be agony.  It is every 8-year-old’s dream to be his mother’s caddy while she piddles around the golf course.

Our first stop was the practice range where I was the designated target and fetch-it boy, the layman’s definition of which is slave boy.  I stood at 90 yards and she hit 9-irons at me, then at 125 yards she unleashed her 7-iron at me.  She would hit a ball, I would fetch it.  If it didn’t fly straight, I would chase it.  And I did a lot of chasing.  She wouldn’t be turning pro any time soon.  I had to stay on my toes, though, because occasionally she would loose one right at my head.  Times like that I was thankful my parents had discovered how blind I was and had me fitted with glasses.  If they hadn’t, it would have become apparent when I stood there and watched a ball bury itself between my eyes.  On the positive side, I wouldn’t have needed glasses after that.

Actually, come to think of it, I always did have the nagging suspicion mother was better than she let on.  I could swear her aim improved on days she was pissed at me.  And maybe this was just another strategy that she was employing today, calmly lulling me into a false sense of security with the wild shots…and then BAM, right between the eyes.  Paranoid?  I don’t think so.  She was a lefty, not to be trusted.  I had to keep an eye on that woman.

In the meantime…

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

By the way, in golf parlance what my mother was doing was called “hitting shag balls,” and what I was doing was called “shagging.”  I’m not sure where the term comes from.  I think it is borrowed from baseball, where shagging is retrieving balls that have gone over the fence.  Anyway, the term bears a special irony for me since years later I would be doing quite a different kind of shagging on that very, er, “shag range.”  As convenience would have it, a road runs next to the range and near the 200-yard marker the greenskeeper had cut a path into the range for his tractor.  It was an ingress that I conspired to sneak into on many a dark night as part of my earnest conspiracy to explore other ingresses (so to speak)…Or to shag (to speak more bluntly)…Or to fuck (to just come right out with it)…because it was behind the 250-yard marker and under the towering elm that I was in the habit of going parking (another euphemism for the aforementioned frivolity).

Actually, the term “parking” is something of a bad memory for me because the first time I took a girl there I was so distracted by what was to come (chuckle) that I forgot to put the car into park.  And of course we rolled back into the elm tree.  The only tree in three-hundred feet and I managed to hit it.  Luckily, no teeth bit down on anything delicate when we went bump, but, I repeat, the only tree in three-hundred feet and I hit it.  Sigh.

The next morning my dad saw the dent in the rear bumper and came in to brace me about it.  I panicked.  Then I lied.  I told him somebody had run into my car while it was parked and didn’t leave a note.  Big mistake.  I should have known he would get down and examine the dent closely.  He had and noticed tree bark in the scratches.  Ooops.  To my surprise, however, he took it with humor.  Sitting down across from me, stirring his coffee, he said, “Well…he shouldn’t be hard to find, Jon,” then looked up with a smile and continued, “because he was driving a tree.”

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

Anyway, speaking of parking and wood, it was under the elm that I discovered the horror of cunnilingus.  Even the word sounds horrible.  Cun-ni-ling-usssss.  Sounds like a disease.  Something that requires shots.  I mean, think about it, if you had to choose between performing fellatio and cunnilingus based solely on the image created by the way the words sound, wouldn’t you choose fellatio?  It sounds dreamy and pleasant compared to cunnilingus…cunnilingus sounds like something that oozes and drips.  And I must say the act lives up to its billing.  The first time I came face to face with a vagina, I was convinced I was looking at something in dire need of medical attention.  But, no, I was assured that what I was seeing was indeed a normal, healthy vagina—without a doubt, the most convincing argument I had ever witnessed for homosexuality.  But I stayed strong.  I had to at least give it a sporting try, if only for appearance’s sake.  I had a reputation to build, a resume to write.  And I figured, based on my extensive research, it was what girls really craved.  So I did it.

By all accounts, I performed well and passed my oral exams with high marks.  I made a sacrifice (I hope it is duly noted).  I aimed to please.  I do admit, however, that if it were at all possible, cunnilingus is something that I would prefer to phone in.  That’s right, I think there should be an iPhone app for it…the Cliterator or something…programmers, get on it.  (Honey, just put your iPhone on vibrate, stick it between your legs, and I’ll call you…from Detroit.)

… OOOOOOHHHHHH, there’s a skeeter on my peter,

And I think it’s gonna eat’er.

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

Mother’s friend arrived and we met up with her at the first tee.  And the cackling commenced.  I have no idea what they talked about.  Grownup smut, I imagine.  Secret words were spoken in hushed tones, or mouthed behind a palm, or spelled out.  I had my own smut, a song with the word peter in it, and I was careful not to sing it so the grownups could hear.  They had their smut…I had mine.  So there!

It was still early.  The dew had yet to burn off and sounds carried with extra crispness.  There wasn’t another player in sight.  We had the course all to ourselves.  Later, around noon, the first tee would be abuzz with banter and bullshit.  It was the one place where you met up with the foursomes in front of and behind you.  Bets were placed, jokes were told, and gossip was whispered…it was a regular party.  Years later, I would overhear something amongst the bantering that I never forgot.  It was, to me, a poetic condensation of middle-class W.A.S.P. America.  It was sort of like a Norman Rockwell painting but in words…

The day was a Sunday, noonish, the mood on the first tee, roguish — the main rogues were three elder golfers known to all as characters.  Their fourth was late.  He was always late for one reason or another, and his three friends were making sure the rest of us knew all about it.  Jovially, of course.  And then, there he was, rolling down his window as he pulled his car to a stop on the road next to the tee.  His three buddies let out a scolding whoop and demanded to know where the hell he’d been.  “Where do you think I’ve been?” he snapped back at them. “I was at church, you goddamn atheists!”

It was irony with a twisting groin kick.  Art.

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

I’m pretty sure mom’s friend was insane.  One day as I was eavesdropping on her and some of mom’s other friends (yes, I eavesdropped…it was one of my great talents as a child), I overheard them whispering about using Preparation-H on their faces to tighten the skin.  They were saying how it was like a facelift without an operation.  That night, after doing research at the dinner table by asking my parents a few cryptic questions, I decided my mom’s friends were completely nuts.

The next day I saw the group at their usual table, engaged in their usual whispers.  As I walked past them, I sucked in my cheeks so that my mouth formed a tight little anus shape.  My eyes popped out a bit.  As I was exiting through the door, still puckered up tight, I heard one of them say, “What a strange boy.”

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

The first couple of holes all I could think about was getting to the swimming pool.  I wanted to get there before anyone else so I could pretend to be James Bond in peace.  That’s right, Bond, James Bond…in particular, the Bond of the movie “Thunderball.”  I would put my exceptional imagination to work and swim amongst the sharks in Largo’s pool, something much easier to imagine without little legs dangling under donut-shaped tubes with horsey heads.  Anyway, crowd or no crowd, I would look like Sean Connery.  The women would all swoon.  I would be brave, handsome, dashing…and my gun would have a silencer.

Actually, and I don’t mean to brag (yes I do), I was quite the swimmer.  I could hold my breath for an extraordinary length of time and I was damn near impossible to drown.  I know this to be true because I overheard the lifeguard tell my mother one day that his considerable efforts to drown me had remained unsuccessful.  I thought at the time it was a strange thing for a lifeguard to be confessing to a mother, but she didn’t seem the least bit surprised or upset.  In fact, she laughed at the confession.  (Indeed, I needed to keep an eye on that woman.)

But I probably deserved it.  I tended to be a nuisance.  I would search for ways to make the lifeguard chase me, and I usually found them.  For example, I would watch patiently while he methodically applied Coppertone and nose cream, and when I saw he was satisfied that he had covered every exposed piece of skin, I would hurl a bucket of water on him…freezing water I had retrieved from the baby pool, water pumped directly from the Arctic.  Two to five minutes later, depending on how successful I was at eluding capture, I would end up on all fours by the side of the pool, expelling chlorinated water from my lungs, gasping for life.  Then I would look for my next opportunity to irritate him, or some other victim, and the process would be repeated.  It’s amazing that I survived childhood.

… WEEEEEELLLLLLLLL, slap it on the keester,

And it won’t be such a bleeder.

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

Ah, the pool.  I do have some good memories of the pool.  My favorite memory marks a major milestone in my life.  It was the first time I was ever slapped by a woman—well, the first time I was ever slapped by a woman other than my mother.  I look back on that slap fondly because it was entirely worth it.  I earned it with an act of cunning and bravery, and I wore it with honor.

Perhaps I should explain…

I had been told that She-Who-Slapped-Me was the homecoming queen.  I was too young to know what a homecoming queen was, but she was stunningly pretty and looking upon her I acquired a deep respect for royalty.  Every day I hoped she would grace us with her presence at the pool, and I always felt rewarded when she did.  Let me keep it simple and say that she was constructed specifically with the bikini in mind.  She was probably born wearing one.  She had a smooth, buttery belly and lonnnnnnng legs set apart by a space wide enough to park a Buick.  She looked like a very young Cheryl Tiegs.  Looking at her made my teeth hurt.

She liked to hang on the side of the pool and dangle there for long periods of time.  I knew why she did this, and why she picked the same spot to do it.  That was where a jet of perpetual water was emitted from a hole on the side of the pool.  The hole was precisely matched up with the (did I say wide?) space between her legs.  That’s right, and she wasn’t fooling me because I had long before discovered the joys of that hole.  I had even contemplated inserting myself into that hole but it was kind of small and I didn’t want a repeat of a certain incident with a Hoover vacuum cleaner.  Explaining to the lifeguard why I was affixed to the side of the pool was not a place I wanted to go.  Oh, he would’ve loved that.

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

I was enthralled, nay, obsessed with the space between her legs.  I wished she would sit, stand, or lie still so I could adjust the focus of my eyes and study it in earnest.  She was seldom still, though.  The only time she wasn’t in motion was when she was hanging on the side of the pool in front of the water jet.  I tried to take advantage.  I swam up from behind her…underwater…like a submarine…the picture of stealth…and feasted my eyes.  The space between her legs was indeed, er, spacious, and the bikini’s crotch rippled and pulsated under the force of the water jet.  I wanted to reach out…and touch…If I…could just…feel…

I swallowed some water and almost drowned.

As I sat on the opposite side of the pool and recovered, I came up with a plan.  I would start a series of underwater laps, starting about ten feet from the bikini.  This would not be suspicious since everyone knew that I always did my swimming underwater.  I would end each lap a little closer to the bikini until, finally, my hand would brush up against heaven just before touching the wall.

I walked around the pool and sat on the edge at the planned starting point.  With a splash, I began my first lap.  I finished it about eight feet from the bikini, two feet closer, and came up with a splash, loudly and dramatically sucking in air.

Yes, notice me, Bikini, I am doing laps…quite innocent here…just doing my laps…seeing how long I can hold my breath…nothing to worry about over here…just a-doin’ my laps…

I started my second lap.  Then my third.  Each lap I veered a little to the right, like a guy with one leg shorter than the other veers when he walks.  By the fourth lap, I was almost there.  This next one would land me in paradise.  I was nervous.  The anticipation was making it more and more difficult to hold my breath.  I began my fifth lap.  My heart was beating like the climax of the Jaws theme.  It wouldn’t be long now.  I could see her…and the space…coming into focus.  I lined myself up.  I would let the back of my fingers and hand brush up against…it.  I needed to concentrate.  The moment would be brief.  I wanted to savor it.  Almost there.  Here…it…came………….

What I didn’t expect was for her to jump so violently at the first moment of contact.  She shot straight up and simultaneously performed something like a pirouette.  She did this with such suddenness and force that I’m lucky it didn’t snap my arm clean in two.  Instead it flipped me around as if she’d performed a judo move.  After regaining my bearings, I surfaced.  I had no choice in the matter.  The combination of swimming for such a distance underwater and then being pummeled in a Judo exhibition had left me bereft of air.  Unfortunately, when I surfaced, I was within striking distance of one very pissed-off, bikini-clad homecoming queen.

And slap she did.

She also called me a name but my ears were ringing too loud to make it out.  I’m sure it was apt.  I put on my best what-did-I-do look and feigned innocence…and backpedalled.  I worked hard to hide my elation, but I admit it was difficult.  My hand had tasted ambrosia.  I looked at it with awe and envy.  From that moment forth, or at least until puberty, I held the back of my right hand in the highest esteem.

By the way…

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

We were now at the pavilion.  The pavilion was where the 5^th and 8^th greens and the 6^th and 9^th tees all came together for a party.  That was because holes 6, 7, and 8 formed a triangle that started and ended at the pavilion.  There were two things worth noting about the pavilion.  It had a concession that made the best damn hamburgers you ever did taste, and it had one of those old-fashioned hand-operated water pumps that delivered cold and delicious well water regardless of how unbearably hot the days got.

On this morning, the concession hadn’t opened yet.  Besides, it was too early for hamburgers, no matter how mouthwatering they were.  But I can’t stress the word mouthwatering enough …half a cow, I think, cooked over a charcoal grill.  People’s scores generally got higher on the holes immediately following the pavilion, though this may have been mostly due to the beer that the concession also sold.  On the other hand, it is hard to swing a golf club with a half a cow inside you.  Anyway, none of that mattered on this morning, because, like I said, it hadn’t opened yet.  The water pump, on the other hand, was always open.

Working the pump handle was one of the highlights of my young life.  I would pump water for all the grownups.  They would thank me.  It made me feel important.  I was the Pump Master.  However, I couldn’t pump the water for myself—my arms weren’t long enough or strong enough—and this proved to be a source of entertainment for all the adults, including, I am sorry to say, my mother and father.  The traitors.  I would push the handle down, sending a gush of water pouring forth, but by the time I had run around to take a drink, it had petered out.  If I was lucky, I got a drop or two.  And, oh, the adults thought this was so funny.  They all stood around refreshed because while I was pumping for them, they were drinking and splashing their faces.  But would any of them offer to help me?  No.  It seemed much more fun to slap their thighs and belly laugh.  I hated them all.  (I put it to you, this is why children are not allowed to purchase firearms.)

Finally, once I had given them a good show, one of them would come and give me a hand.  Thank you (you jerk), I would say (and think).

Then, one day we found that the greenskeeper had chained one of those long-handled dippers to the pump.  Once again, I played the role of Pump Master and they played the role of Bunch-of-Assholes, but on that day, a new character was introduced to the play…and his name was Vengeance.  Vengeance let them have a few laughs.  He even praised them for being able to find humor in his misfortune.  Then he surprised them by finding a way to fill the dipper, and, in one fluid motion, he slung it gracefully at the all-of-a-sudden-not-laughing bunch of assholes.  Then he slapped his thigh and did a belly laugh.

Speaking of which…

There’s some jelly on my belly, lick it off!

There’s some jelly on my belly, lick it off!

Someone spilled some Smucker’s,

So on your knees, you fuckers.

There’s some jelly on my belly, lick it off!

Okay, I didn’t really sing that verse.  I made that one up just now.  But the skeeter song was driving me mad and I started looking for ways to change it up.  What I really wanted was to stop.  Stop singing.  I tried.  I was determined to think of something else and forget the song, but before I knew it I heard myself singing it again while thinking about that something else.  My mother and her friend almost caught me a couple of times.  I thought of switching to a limerick…

There once was a man from Nantucket,

Whose dick was so long he could…

Wait…hardly an improvement.  Okay, how about…

There once was a woman from Azores,

Whose cunt was infested with…

Nope, even worse.  Jeez-us!  Where did us kids get these things?  If our parents had any idea the things we learned at school, they’d never let us out of the house.  Of course, I learned some pretty naughty things at the golf course, too.  In fact, we were now on the 7^th hole, where later, when I was twelve, I would learn something very naughty indeed…

Around the time I turned ten, I started spending more time playing golf than I did playing James Bond at the pool.  Most of the boys I played with were older.  They tolerated me with equanimity—and to my defense, I was almost as good as they were so it wasn’t like I was holding them up or anything—but it was clear I wasn’t accepted as a complete equal.  I knew this because I wasn’t allowed to join their conversations about girls, and when I asked them to explain some of the words or phrases they used in those conversations, they would reply with “None of your business, numbnuts” or “Someday you’ll figure it out, numbnuts.”  And that’s another thing…they all had names and I was numbnuts.  I wasn’t entirely sure what numbnuts meant, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t flattering.  And then there was the mystery of the 7^th hole.

The 7^th hole was the hole farthest away from the clubhouse, out in the boonies, and a dense wood sidled up against the left side of the fairway.  The older boys would often disappear into the wood together and tell me to wait for them on the green.  They told me they were looking for balls—you know, balls people had hit out of bounds into the woods and couldn’t find—but it seemed to me that they never found many balls for all the time they spent looking.  I began to suspect they were sneaking smokes back in there…if I had known what marijuana was at that age, I would have suspected that’s what they were puffing.  Anyway, it was all very suspicious, and I was never allowed to go with them to see for myself what was going on.  When I asked why I had to wait on the green, they would say simply, “Snakes,” to which I would reply simply, “Yes, I’ll wait on the green”—I was not the bravest ten-year-old.

And that was that.  Then, one day, in the middle of my twelfth year, an older boy named Mike initiated me into the secret of the woods.  The secret being, yes, they were looking for balls.  But not golf balls.  It was an eye opening experience.  In fact, my eyes nearly popped out at one point.  (So that’s what the vacuum cleaner was supposed to feel like.)

Mike, who was fourteen at the time, was this natural athlete who excelled at everything he did and had every girl in school chasing him.  Why he fancied a little same-sex roll and tuck with me, I didn’t have a clue, but the girls could eat their hearts out because it was all good as far as I was concerned.  I was game and ready to be tamed, baby.  (Well, what do you expect from a 12-year-old?)  That’s right, I was naughty, I was very naughty, and, on that day, there were indeed snakes loose in the woods.

Which reminds me…

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off!

There’s a skeeter on my peter,

But two lips would be sweeter.

There’s a skeeter o……………………………

Well, it had to happen.  And it did.  We were headed up the 9^th fairway and I forgot myself.  I was singing out loud.  Mom and her friend had gone silent, their nonstop chatter had paused.  I felt my heart spike with a shot of adrenalin and stopped in mid-verse.  I looked over my shoulder, my mouth still in mid-o. There they were, not five feet away over my right shoulder, both their heads turned 45 degrees in my direction…staring at me.  Then, they burst out laughing…loudly…in stereo.

Oh, the humiliation.

And the worst part, the 9^th hole is a par 5 and we still had 450 yards to go before we reached the green.  450 yards of Teeheehee “Where’d you learn that little song, Jon?” Teeheehee.

Sigh.  Someone kill me.

Or, better yet, fuck it.  Are you with me?  Okay then…

All together now…

There’s a skeeter on my peter, knock it off…

***

[I thought long and hard whom I should dedicate this to and have decided, screw you all, I’m dedicating this one to myself.  This is my first post after quitting smoking and I feel I deserve it.

Quitting wasn’t easy.  When people asked me how the quitting was going, I would tell them how I hardly noticed not having a smoke, how easy it was for me to quit…I was lying through my remaining shreds of lung.  It was agony.  I was kicking dogs, stealing candy from babies, and beating up little old ladies.  Just kidding, I would never kick a dog, but you get the idea.  It was very difficult indeed.  In fact, it’s been two months now and I am still trying to think of some logical excuse why it would be a good idea for me to have just one smoke.

So, yes, I dedicate this one to myself.]

***

 

Halloween Horror Story: Embarrassing Memory #3

What follows is a most horrifying Halloween tale.  I am sure some of you will find the story amusing and resort to giggles, but that would only be the ones among you that are evil and beyond all hope.  The rest of you, those who are innately good, will understand and feel the horror that left an unfortunate five-year-old boy, me, scarred for life.

I awoke that fateful Halloween morning in a state of ignorant bliss.  There was no sense of foreboding, no Hitchcockian background music playing that warned me of my impending doom.  I guess, looking back, I should have known.  My mother had been busy for weeks at the sewing machine constructing something bright red with white polka dots.  She had been calling me in from the yard to measure various parts of my anatomy, which I thought strange but no stranger than any of her previous behavior.  She was a parent, and, thus by definition, strange.  I had learned, like most kids, to accept this and not to question it.  A parent’s strangeness was to be tolerated…asking too many questions never led to enlightenment but could result in being sent to your room without dessert.  But perhaps I should have taken more notice of my mother’s cheerful disposition that morning.  Well, not really her cheerful disposition; she was always a morning person, flitting around in a caffeine high with a joviality that wasn’t quite fitting normal human behavior.  It was more the way she stopped, mid flit, and looked down at me with her head cocked at a slight angle and smiled…and then giggled.  I looked down.  My fly was zipped.  I had no idea what the silly woman was giggling about, so I made the mistake of ignoring her.  She was obviously crazy, and I had better things to do.  For one thing, I had to get my Halloween costume ready.

My plan was to be a vampire.  I took a torn t-shirt and went to work bloodying it up with a tube of Acrylic #637 blood-red paint.  I had surreptitiously acquired some of my father’s Brylcreem and some eyeliner from my mom’s dresser.  I would finish the costume with blue jeans, white socks, penny loafers, and a set of Dracula choppers I had bought at the 5&10.  I would be James Dean with fangs.  All the other kids would be in awe of my coolness…the girls would swoon and be powerless under my penetrating gaze.  I would be the hit of the Halloween party.

Just before noon, my brother came into my room to show off his costume.  He was a cowboy.  He had this silly hat on that came with a drawstring.  It was decidedly uncool.  Clint Eastwood wouldn’t be caught dead in such a hat.  Nor would Clint Eastwood be caught in that shirt, which sported little bronco-riding, lasso-twirling cowboys.  The rest of the ensemble was equally goofy.  It consisted of a silver-studded black leather vest with matching chaps, a baby-blue bandana tied around his neck, a two-gun holster strapped to his waist, and the silliest looking pair of red pointy-toed boots.  He looked like Roy Rogers only gayer.  Imagine Liberace at a rodeo.  I looked him up and down and shook my head.  How, I wondered, was I related to this dork?

I told him to wait downstairs and I would be down shortly to show him what Halloween was all about.  In response, he drew his six-shooters and filled me with holes, and then awkwardly attempted to twirl them back into the holster.  After bending down to pick them up, he made a less than gallant exit.  This was going to be no contest.  I hadn’t planned on dressing up so early but the Twinkle-Toed Kid needed to be shown who’s boss.  I donned my outfit, primped a bit until I was happy with the finished look, and struck a few poses.  I was devastating.  I emanated cool.  Cool dripped from me in Acrylic #637 drops.  All I needed was a cigarette to dangle from the corner of my mouth, and a few minutes of craftsmanship later, I had one.  I was ready.  I would make the campy cowboy quake, not just in fear but also in defeat.

When I got downstairs, my brother was eating a grilled cheese sandwich in the dining room.  Not exactly cowboy grub, I thought.  I snuck up behind him and hovered.  My mother spotted me hovering from the kitchen and shrieked, which startled my brother into looking around to see what my mother was shrieking about.  His already wide eyes landed on my fangs and it was as if he’d been shot out of a cannon.  He headed for the kitchen, and, since the dining room table was between him and the kitchen, it went, too.  Success.  I was so happy with myself, and I was enjoying a grand chuckle about it when I heard my mom say, “Unh-uh, no you don’t! You go wash that crap off. Your mother made you a Halloween costume and you’re gonna wear it.”

I stopped laughing, which evidently was my brother’s cue to start laughing.  “You’re going to be a clown,” he said, very smugly.  And one look at my mother confirmed he was right.  I tried to protest but mother would not be swayed.  “I’ve been working on that clown suit for weeks,” she said, “and you’re going to look so cute in it.”

Oh god…Cute!  The c-word.  I wanted to die.

Four hours of pulling, adjusting, squishing, and poofing later, I was a little red polka-dotted clown.  This included a tall, conical-shaped red hat topped by a white cotton ball and red slippers that elongated from the toe and curled to a point about a foot up in the air.  As if that were not enough, there were little bells hanging from the slippers’ pointy tips.  My face was painted white with red circles on my cheeks and on my nose was attached a large red ball.  When mother was finally satisfied with how ridiculous I looked, I waddled to the mirror.  The suit was made to look like it was inflated, which resulted in me looking like a giant ball with a head and two curly feet sticking out.  My hands protruded at 45-degree angles and rested on my round little body.  It was humiliating.  My brother stuck his head through the door and shot me three times.  Then he blew the smoke from the tip of the barrel, winked, and disappeared again.  I hated him.  But when I looked back at the mirror, I found myself wishing his toy gun had indeed been lethal and capable of putting me out of this misery.  Jeez.  I looked like a giant testicle with chickenpox.

I went over to sit on the end of my mother’s bed to contemplate my situation.  My mother shrieked again.  She hadn’t decided if sitting was permissible in this costume and she mulled it over.  I had to wonder why she was so proud of herself.  She had constructed a costume that was not only next to impossible to walk in, it was evidently also impossible to sit down in.  Finally, she let me sit but told me to be very careful.  I promised her I would, and then secretly wished it would rip.  Unfortunately, it didn’t.  What it did do, however, was prove, as if it wasn’t abundantly clear already, that my mother had not thought the mechanics of this costume through.  As I eased down on the bed, the suit squished upwards and consumed my head so that all that remained was a fat body with a pointy hat sticking out.  The squishing effect also raised my arms from the 45-degree angle out to 90-degrees.  Though I couldn’t see anything from this new vantage point, I sensed that I had far surpassed looking ridiculous.  I must have looked like a huge zit, the little white cotton ball on the tip of my hat being the whitehead.  There was, however, one good aspect to this, I thought.  While sitting down, no one would ever be able to recognize me short of taking my fingerprints, my stubby little fingers being the only visible evidence that this red ball of polka dots contained a person.

My mother took all this in and started to laugh.  Oh, she thought it was so hilarious.  She thought it was so funny she called my brother in so he could laugh at me, too.  He was most obliging.  Then she decided it was so adorable that she had to have a picture.  I heard a click here and a click there in between her and my brother’s laughs and an occasional mention of the c-word.  My humiliation was complete.  I hated them both.  I consoled myself with thoughts of fratricide and matricide.  Okay, I probably wouldn’t kill my mother—she was useful when it came to putting food on the table—but I decided then and there that any Oedipal complex was out of the question.

And, I suddenly remembered, my humiliation wasn’t near complete.  We would next go out in public to trick-or-treat and then to a Halloween party.  This meant there would be witnesses.  People and, worse, friends would see me portray a pox-ridden testicle, and I wouldn’t have any choice but to allow them to live to tell about it.  First, we went to the neighbors’ houses by foot.  My brother danced around me, shooting everything in sight, as I waddled slowly along.  The little bells on the tips of my curly slippers went kaching-ching kaching-ching, alerting everyone to turn around and stare, but the giant red ball wobbling its way along the sidewalk was so hard not to notice that most people were staring already.  I could sense that every car coming down the street slowed so that they, too, could stare, and I was convinced the cars contained each and every friend I had from school.  At each house, I would stand and accept the smiles, laughs, and the inevitable barrage of words like “cute” and “adorable” with concealed disdain.  My mother, holding my candy bag because it was impossible for me to do so and walk at the same time, beamed with pride.  The worst houses we visited were the ones with steps up to the front door, which, in our neighborhood, seemed to be every house.  There was no way for me to negotiate the steps with six-inch legs, so I had to submit to the extra humiliation of having my mother lift me by my armpits and carry me up and down each set of steps.  Meanwhile, my brother, ever the cowboy, took to herding me.  I had to listen to “git along little doggie” and “Yeehaw!” as we progressed from house to house.  I kept wishing he would “giddy up” between me and the street…surely no one would suspect foul play if I had stumbled and gave him a slight nudge into oncoming traffic, would they?  But before I got my chance, we were finished with our trick-or-treating and back at our house.  By this time, dad was home and we immediately loaded into the car to go to the party.  I say immediately but it took them five whole minutes to get me into the car.  I sat there with my head disappeared into the heart of the beast and felt happy that nobody would be able to identify me as the big bulbous zit in the back seat.  Of course, that security lasted only a bit and after another five minutes of easing me out of the car, we were at the party.

The party was hell.  Not only was I subjected to endless repetitions of the c-word and “Oh, how adorable,” I was also made to endure cheek pinches from every adult female at the party.  My mother couldn’t have been happier.  Go ahead, woman, I thought, enjoy yourself…but just how long do you think it will take me to make your sewing machine disappear?  I turned to escape from my mom and her friends and the first thing I saw was Cindy Harris, the prettiest and most popular girl at school, coming in the door with her parents.  She was dressed, most appropriately, as a princess, and she was walking in my direction.  I panicked.  Remembering the effect that sitting had on the suit, I grabbed a handful of fabric on both sides and lifted.  From Cindy’s vantage point, the red ball’s legs elongated by six inches and its head disappeared, leaving nothing but the conical hat extruding above.  I was like a turtle disappearing into my shell.  If I had just stood still everything would have been fine, but I didn’t stand still.  I suddenly realized that, while I had succeeded in concealing my identity, I had also morphed my clown suit into what appeared to be a huge zit.  I had to escape.  I turned in what I approximated to be 180 degrees and started to run, or the closest I could come to running with what was now 12-inch legs.  I didn’t get far.  What I hadn’t realized was that 180 degrees pointed me directly at a wall, which brought my progress to an abrupt halt.  I bounced back in the direction I had come and ended up flat on my back.  I lay there looking up at the ceiling and wondered how lucky one would have to be for no one to have noticed what just happened.  Then I saw Cindy Harris appear, upside down in my vision, standing over me.  She looked down and I will never forget what she said…she said, “Oh, it’s you.” And then she turned and calmly walked away.  I reached down and pulled on the fabric until my head slipped back into its hiding place.  Now I could say it…it was official…my humiliation was complete.

***

[I dedicate this Halloween story to Susan Orlean.  I am dedicating it to her because, being the cheap person I am, it doubles as a birthday present.  Yes, Halloween is Susan’s birthday.  (It sure answers a lot of questions, doesn’t it?)  I think the whole world is following Susan on Twitter, but in case you are new to this world, you can find her at http://twitter.com/susanorlean .  She is a very special lady.  She is a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and the author of many books.  She also has the distinction of being played by Meryl Streep in a Hollywood movie.  How many people can say that?  Not even Joe Wallace can say that, even though he has offered to shave his beard to make it possible.]