in all ways. When I figured out something was doing, a year or two along, I was more or less immobilized. I was no longer drinking, so I'd sit at home with painful fantasies, thinking about the guys relocating from Kansas City who got something special off Nora's own Welcome Wagon. She was pointing out the features of her inner sanctum and I, the former sot who'd done more wandering than a minstrel, was at home conducting a perverse and private romance with Mary Fivefingers. Isn't that the worst part of sex, that we think about it? Guys especially. You know how that goes, we don't have babies so we only have one way to prove the point. "You gettin any?" It's like asking a fat person if they've had a chance to eat. I swear, I was depressed for days after my last physical, when the doctor asked, in the modern way, if I was sexually active and I had to answer no. But then, I digress.
In her roaming, Nora was joined by her manager, a gal named Jill Horwich with whom she was always having a drink or sneaking off to a convention. Jill was like a good number of the Real Estate Ladies, divorced, the main support of a passel of kids, and I figured she liked screwing around because it was low-stress, some tomcat in a bar better than a fellow making himself a fixture in the kitchen, one more mouth to feed. Nora somehow seemed impressed by Jill's way of life.
But it was hardly news that Nora was adventurous. Soon after I met her, on date number two, it was Nora Goggins who gave me my first blow job. I still count the moment when she peeled back my zipper and greeted John Peter eye to eye, taking hold with the confidence of some nightclub vocalist grabbing the mike, as among the most exciting instants of my life. It was not a boy's thrill I'm talking about either. I knew I'd found a rare one, somebody braver than I was, a trait that I found irresistible, especially in a Catholic girl. I figured this was someone to follow through the jungle, who'd show no fear of the wild creatures and had the inner strength to clear a path of her own. Instead, it meant that she was a person of strong opinions who would feel thwarted by our life. She picked on me, told me regularly how I filled her emotionally, and apparently conceived of secret yearnings that I could never satisfy.
The noise I made coming in tonight brought the Loathsome Child in person bouncing off the staircase, rubbing his eyes, shirtless but wearing his jeans, looking as if he had been foraged on by some roaming beast. He is a scrofulous creature, frankly, my size but still not well developed, with a few errant hairs that crop up along his breastbone amid the acne. His peculiar haircut, which looks like a golf green cut onto an overgrown hillside, was disheveled. We ended up together at the kitchen table, both of us making a meal on Cheerios.
"Tough night?"
He made a vaguely affirmative sound. His hand was across his face and he rested his arm on the cereal box as if it was the only thing keeping him from collapse. He had put a shirt on by now, some chic rayon chemise I'm sure I paid for. The red stripe on it, I decided, was not design but ketchup.
"What time did you get home?"
"One."
He meant afternoon, not morning. I checked the clock: 7:48 p . M . Lyle was just rising. He pretty much lives backward. He and his pals consider it uncool to get started anytime this sid e o f midnight. Nora, of course, attributes Lyle's libertine existence to the poor example his drunken father set when he was growing up.
"You should try reading St. Augustine. He has much cautionary advice about a life of excess."
"Oh, shut up, Dad."
Maybe if there were just a trace of humor in this I wouldn't have been so hot to smack him. As it was, I had to contain myself with the thought that if I hit him he would tell his mother, who'd tell her lawyer, who'd tell the judge. If I believed they'd take the kid away I'd have knocked him cold, but it would only end in more restraining orders and restrictions
In her roaming, Nora was joined by her manager, a gal named Jill Horwich with whom she was always having a drink or sneaking off to a convention. Jill was like a good number of the Real Estate Ladies, divorced, the main support of a passel of kids, and I figured she liked screwing around because it was low-stress, some tomcat in a bar better than a fellow making himself a fixture in the kitchen, one more mouth to feed. Nora somehow seemed impressed by Jill's way of life.
But it was hardly news that Nora was adventurous. Soon after I met her, on date number two, it was Nora Goggins who gave me my first blow job. I still count the moment when she peeled back my zipper and greeted John Peter eye to eye, taking hold with the confidence of some nightclub vocalist grabbing the mike, as among the most exciting instants of my life. It was not a boy's thrill I'm talking about either. I knew I'd found a rare one, somebody braver than I was, a trait that I found irresistible, especially in a Catholic girl. I figured this was someone to follow through the jungle, who'd show no fear of the wild creatures and had the inner strength to clear a path of her own. Instead, it meant that she was a person of strong opinions who would feel thwarted by our life. She picked on me, told me regularly how I filled her emotionally, and apparently conceived of secret yearnings that I could never satisfy.
The noise I made coming in tonight brought the Loathsome Child in person bouncing off the staircase, rubbing his eyes, shirtless but wearing his jeans, looking as if he had been foraged on by some roaming beast. He is a scrofulous creature, frankly, my size but still not well developed, with a few errant hairs that crop up along his breastbone amid the acne. His peculiar haircut, which looks like a golf green cut onto an overgrown hillside, was disheveled. We ended up together at the kitchen table, both of us making a meal on Cheerios.
"Tough night?"
He made a vaguely affirmative sound. His hand was across his face and he rested his arm on the cereal box as if it was the only thing keeping him from collapse. He had put a shirt on by now, some chic rayon chemise I'm sure I paid for. The red stripe on it, I decided, was not design but ketchup.
"What time did you get home?"
"One."
He meant afternoon, not morning. I checked the clock: 7:48 p . M . Lyle was just rising. He pretty much lives backward. He and his pals consider it uncool to get started anytime this sid e o f midnight. Nora, of course, attributes Lyle's libertine existence to the poor example his drunken father set when he was growing up.
"You should try reading St. Augustine. He has much cautionary advice about a life of excess."
"Oh, shut up, Dad."
Maybe if there were just a trace of humor in this I wouldn't have been so hot to smack him. As it was, I had to contain myself with the thought that if I hit him he would tell his mother, who'd tell her lawyer, who'd tell the judge. If I believed they'd take the kid away I'd have knocked him cold, but it would only end in more restraining orders and restrictions
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