CHAPTER 61: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET -- GATES OF HORMONE HELL

 CHAPTER 61 1955-1956

 Ronald Tipton and I outlined a novel idea in 1956.  We called it, Attention Teacher! It was a fictionalized account of our Junior High Years. We divided it into two parts. The first was, “Frank March’s School Daze” that I would write and the second, “Which Way is that Hill” to be written by us both. We wrote the Introduction and I began the first part, but we never finished. We were looking at those years in a humorous way. I reworked some of “Mother’s Carey’s Chickens” into the beginning, since that story was about the early days of Junior High. I did cover several of the events that happened to me in junior high, most of which were included in this series. I do not know whether Ron ever wrote anything further or what happened to it if he did. 

If I was writing light and funny stories about my school days,

which where the opposite of what I felt at the time, my reading tastes were moving in a different, darker direction. Warner Brothers released Nicholas Ray’s film “Rebel Without a Cause” in October 1955. It was the start of a literal meteoric career, that of James Dean. I wanted to see that film, but I missed it. I didn’t see “Rebel Without a Cause” until my wedding night, but that’s another story. I didn’t see the movie, but I bought a book in 1956 entitled, Children of the Dark by Irving Shulman.

 I loved the book. I could identify with the main characters so well. I read the book several times. I had no idea at the time that Irving Shurman had written the original treatment and story for Rebel Without a Cause and this was his novelization of that film.

I then bought his novel by him, The Amboy Dukes, another tale of alienated teenagers. Columbia Pictures turned this into a movie in 1974 called “The Lords of Flatbush”. “The Lords of Flatbush” launched a couple famous careers as well. It starred the unknown actors Henry Winkler and Sylvester Stallone. Winkler has said he based “The Fonz” character in “Happy Days” on Stallone’s performance in that movie. They had filmed Amboy Dukes previously under the title “City Across the River” in 1949. I wonder if anyone ever thought of doing a film and simply  calling it,  “The Amboy Dukes”?

I wanted more stories about trouble kids. (Gee, I wonder why?) The film “Blackboard Jungle” had appeared in 1955 and I saw it along with Ronald. I believe, one of his ticket prizes from “The Achieve”. The Auditorium Theater nearly burst at the seams when “Rock Around the Clock” blasted from the speakers. (By the way, The Auditorium today is a senior center.) They based the film upon the book by Evan Hunter and I begged my mother to buy me the book by him. She mistakenly got me The Jungle Kids, a collection of short stories published in 1956 to feed off the success of the film “Blackboard Jungle”. At first I was disappointed. But then it was okay; those stories greatly influenced me. The Jungle Kids was another book I read more than once. I reread it so often the cover tore loose. 

Hunter showed up  as a writer of some episodes for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents’” dramatizations in 1957. (He wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s, “The Birds”. I followed this up by reading The Blackboard Jungle and Second Ending.  Second Ending, sometimes known as Quartet in H, was a gritty story about a jazz trumpet player’s slow slide down the pit of drugs.

Even Hunter’s real name was Salvatore

Albert Lombino. He also wrote the 87th Precinct novel using the name Ed McBain. He was a man of many pseudonyms, writing as Curt Cannon, Ezra Hannon, Hunt Collins and Richard Marsten.  These “Jungle Kids” stories of alienation and juvenile crime were to influence several of  my stories over the next couple years. I was identifying with the main characters in most of these. I was feeling very alienated and was soon turning to a life of crime myself. I was shoplifting.  (Right, Evan Hunter, died of larynx cancer in 1978.)

They left the principal’s office just as fourth period was changing. They hurried, towards their classrooms. Half way down the hallway, Eric pulled Frank around a corner out of sight. Ahead in the main corridor were Mike Bossler and Greta Holland. She stood leaning against Bosssler.

“That serpent with blue eyes.” Eric looked into Frank’s bruised face. He stared with an odd expression before turning and walked down the side hall, motioning as he went for Frank to go to class alone.

Eric walked down the empty corridor. It led away from the main hall into a new wing being constructed. This section of the building was unoccupied and many of the boys went there to smoke.

He was halfway through the area when he heard them, his eyes narrowing as he recognized the members of Bossler’s clique. The next moment one of them stood in front of him. The boy looked Eric up and down, and then swung viciously. Eric fell back against a wall and shook his head. Everything went dizzy until he realized his plight.

He began screaming, “Come right up. Come right up! COME RIGHT UP!”

He pushed himself back into the center of the triangle. A skinny boy brought a foot up in an arc, his toe aimed at Eric’s crotch. Eric cross his wrists in front and caught the foot in the crossing cradle. He spun the boy around, pushing him head first across the space into the concrete wall. The boy slumped to the floor. Catching his balance, Eric Judo-chopped another attacker on his right, but the third grabbed him in a full Nelson. Eric thrust his lower body backward and stooped over to catch hold of the boy’s pants cuffs. Standing, he raised the boy into the air and then fell back with him.  Eric’s back smashed between the boy’s legs. The boy whimpered as his arms went limp.

Eric wasted no time getting to his feet. He was surprised he had managed to thwart any harm. Now only one attacker still stood; the other two lay quiet at his feet. The skinny boy laid across the hall, stunned and helpless, while the other rolled in a rocking motion back and forth, the whole while gasping. 

The last boy was deciding on a line of attack and as he waited Eric heard more movement coming. Four more boys appeared. The other boy pulled an object from his jeans. The click announced an introduction to the long blade.

Eric flinched. Things were getting a little too rough and tough. He danced past the knife wheeler and burst between the other four, surprise allowing him to elude their last-minute grasps.

Down the hall he ran, panting, “Ill kill him, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. I’ll kil...” Eric ran to the right,

left, right, running blindly. 

He bumped into Frank when he entered the main corridor. For a moment he looked blankly at Frank, then he started away, continuing to say, “I’ll kill him.”

Frank grabbed Eric by both shoulders shaking him, telling him to snap out of it. Eric, his eyes glistening, knocked off the hands, turned on his heels and stomped away down the hall.

Excerpt from “Moon Was Cloudy”,  1957 written at age 15

In my collection: Acts of the Fathers, 1962

I really didn’t want to shoplift. I know that sounds like a cop out, but I was not a kid with larceny in his heart. Gain by theft was not my desire. It was more gain of desire. The only time I had ever stole anything was some change from my mother’s purse and the guilt I felt from that was palpable. (I know, I haven’t forgotten that Coca-Cola machine either.) The reality was I had been an ultra honest boy otherwise. No, it was not the deadly sin of Greed, or even Envy, that drove me. It was Lust.

My fantasying was taking another turn.

My parents move left me living with my grandparents. I had lived with my grandparents  before, but this time it was not the same. My grandfather had stepped in and been a surrogate father when I was younger, taking me with him on trips and adventures and giving me gifts. I loved my grandfather very much, but his fall at work shattering his leg changed him.

Even when the cast came off and he returned to work the pain remained and so did the liquor. He hit the bottle as soon as he came home from work and didn’t stop until he fell into a stupor. He would lie on the sofa in the dining room and mumble. He was not a happy drunk; he was a mean one. He lay night after night, cursing out people in his head. 

 He didn’t want anything to do with old friends. They came to call

when he was laid up in the cast, but he was so short with them they eventually drifted away. He had stopped going to the Foxhunts, too. He just lay about the house and drank. I don’t know how my grandmother stood it, except she was a tough woman.

We were watching television one evening when he staggered in from the dining room and yelled something. Both my grandmother and I went, “Sh-h-h!”

“Don’t you shush me, you goddamn boy. Y’can go t’hell. Damn worthless kid.” 

He staggered back and collapsed on the sofa. I was stunned. I came to where he now lay on the day bed and told him I was sorry, but he cursed at me, then he took a clumsy swat toward me with his hand. I ducked aside and from then on I tried to stay as far from him as possible. I would go around the dining room table if passing to the kitchen just to keep away.

My parents were gone north to live and I would soon. I would have to give up the job I enjoyed doing and the money it brought. I might have to give up my friends Ronald and Stuart. On top of this, I believed I was flunking Ninth Grade. All I had felt left to me were my Pirate Ladies, but I couldn’t even fully engage in my fantasy the way I had. My grandparents never went anywhere and left me alone. I couldn’t frolic about their abode half naked.

 I lay in bed at night and created a new fantasy. This one was more voyeuristic. I was still passive in this scenario, but I wasn’t a prisoner and she wasn’t a Pirate. She was an exhibitionist. She didn’t have a name. She didn’t have a clear face, so she had no real personal identity. She was simply my concept of pretty and sexy. She may have been Betty from the Archie Comics. My imaginary self would be in some public place, even in a classroom at school. It varied. This girl would be in my line of sight and she would do something provocative. She might be bending over so I could see a lot of cleavage. She might be sitting with her skirt pulled up showing her thigh.

 She would catch me looking and smile. She would then expose

more. She might undo a button on her blouse; she might hitch her skirt higher. Eventually she would approach me. She would lean near and tell me to dare her to do something. Even in my fantasy I would get flustered. I might tell her to undo her blouse more or lift her skirt so I could see her underpants. She always complied. She would ask if I didn’t want to see more. I would nod and she might pull her bra up and show her breasts. I had never seen a woman’s breasts, except some pinup calendars of young models in revealing bikinis, but I did have a general idea what they looked like. I could picture her breasts. She would ask if I wanted her to take off her panties. I would nod and she would slip them down her legs, but her skirt would always drop too. I did not know what a woman’s lower anatomy looked like. I couldn’t even imagine it.

 My curiosity had long been growing. I wasn’t nervy enough to ask a girl “to play doctor” and no real life girl ever approached me asking for dares like my imaginary one.

 I went into Sam Charles’ Newsstand often, as I had for years. Sometimes I got a soda there or bought my bubblegum-with-baseball-cards. I would buy some candy bars on occasion or browse his comic books. Now I was going there everyday after school and on Saturday afternoon to pick up my newspapers. Any time I ventured inside I saw those magazines toward the front middle of his display racks. I had given them naught attention a few months earlier, but now my eyes  wandered to them every time.

They called them “Men’s Magazines”, but more commonly “Girlie

Magazines”. They weren’t like Esquire. These magazines had lots of photographs of scantily clad, maybe nude, women. Their titles were “Escapade”, “Cabaret”, “Nugget”, “Dude”, and “Adam”.   The board holding them on the rack hid the covers behind cross panels, except for the titles. 

There was a sign on this section of the display. “Anyone under the age of 21 cannot browse or purchase these magazines.”

I really, really, really wanted to look inside these magazines, but I wasn’t twenty-one. I couldn’t buy them.

I had to steal them.

 I was scared to death the first couple times. I looked like the thief I was, pacing back and forth past that section and constantly looking over my shoulders. Finally, not seeing anyone looking, I grabbed a couple at random and stuffed them inside my shirt. I continued to look at other magazines for a couple minutes and then walked out. I counted out my papers and pushed my bike up the street. Once beyond the newsstand I took the magazines out of my shirt and pushed then under the newspapers.

If nervous during the theft I was sweating now. I was anxious to

have a peek inside these magazines since I had them. I couldn’t just sit down on the curb there in the business district and start gawking at the pictures. I had to serve my customers along Lancaster Avenue. The anticipation was overwhelming. I hadn’t gone far until I had a very hard erection from anticipation. I pedaled on hoping my bike and bag of papers hid my condition. As I walked to a  porch to place the paper I kept fingers crossed no one would step out to greet me. 

My first opportunity to take a glance came on Uwchlan Avenue. I only had one delivery up this street and there was a bit of space between houses where I could pause and not look suspicious. If any one saw me they might think I was checking my address book. I pulled up one of the magazines and spread it atop my papers. I quickly rifled through the pages, hardly stopping at any. I could only be there a couple of minutes, I had to look quick.

NAKED ON A SWING

2009

A Triolet

When I was a lad of a certain age

I saw pictures of a forbidden thing.

She was an icon, all the rage,

The notorious body of Betty Page,

Beaming near naked on a swing.

When I was a lad of a certain age

I saw pictures of a forbidden thing.

 Betty Page 1923-2008

Poetry Vortex

   December 2009

    Dallas Kirk Gantt, editor

    Wilmington, Delaware

    Copyright by L. E. Meredith 2009

In my collection New Castle Linesman, 2010

What I saw send shivers through me but was also a bit of a let down. Most of the women wore bikinis or lingerie. They positioned any nudes behind a bush or potted plant. Leaves hid the parts I wanted to see.

 This I discovered was the standard fare of Girlie magazines. There

was still much kept hidden. Some of the magazines were more risqué than others. They would show a bare bottom or even a bare breast, but nothing below the waist up front. I don’t know if Sam Charles was stocking any of those new magazines called “Playboy”, but I never stole one if he was. Even Playboy didn’t show everything in the 1950’s. They airbrushed their notorious centerfolds so there was no public hair, no anything. I was coming to believe women actually did have nothing below the waist.

I would stop along my route in any place affording some privacy and flip through the  pages. This was hardly satisfying. I also faced another problem, disposal.

I wanted to go someplace where I could leisurely look at the magazines, but where would that be? I thought Devil’s Nest in Stuart’s woods. It wasn’t practical. I had my bicycle. Where could I put my bike while I went back there? If I was living at 417 Washington I could have taken them home. My father wouldn’t be there and I could easily sneak them pass my mother if she were home from work. I could then hide them up in my attic playroom. Mom didn’t often go up there except to sweep the floor. She never went through my things.

I wasn’t living at 417, though. My parents had moved and I was at 424 Washington. Taking them there was too risky. Where would I hide them? Everyone knew I hated the attic, so it would certainly raise questions if I began spending time up there. My bedroom was simply temporary and my grandparents had things in the bureaus that they sometimes came in to get. My grandmother was a much more thorough cleaner than my mom. She would find anything I tried to hide, even under the mattress. I did bring a couple home once thinking I could burn them when I took out the trash. The trouble was they burned slow. I had to keep poking at them with a stick to keep the flame going until everything was unreadable ash. It took too long to do.

The only thing I could do was dispose of the evidence each time before I went home. I would steal some magazines, peruse them best I could when and wherever I could, and then ditch them in some trashcan or dumpster along my route. This was getting to be a lot of work for a quick look-see at a semi-naked woman.

I decided my best bet was the weekend when I didn’t have school. Besides I didn’t want to keep snitching magazines when I picked up my papers. It would look odd if I was loitering about the magazines every day. If I went early on a Saturday I could walk to the store. I could then go to Stuart’s woods and take my time looking at the pictures, which is what I did.

 If I were alone in the woods I would pull out a magazine and look at it. If not I would keep walking and come back later hoping I could be alone. While I was down in the hole I could fantasize as well. My Pirate Ladies didn’t come chasing me. My imaginary exhibitionist girlfriend showed up. I could pretend it was she in those pictures. 

Then she began daring me. “Oh,” she would say in my head, “you
see me. I dare you to show me yours”. I was much too jittery to completely  undress anymore. I would drop my pants. “I want to see more,” she would say and I’d push my briefs down also. Sometimes I would just open my fly and expose it.

But it didn’t go further than that. I still didn’t know how to masturbate.

I still disposed of the magazines before going home.

After the first couple times stealing got easier. I didn’t spend much time pacing or looking. I would walk in, see the coast looked clear and snatch my loot and walk out. It was easy  as pie, but I had sat in the kitchen enough as a child while grandmother baked to know pies weren’t always that easy.

Mr. Charles busted me when I grabbed one too many girlie pies.

I stuffed three magazines inside my shirt and turned around. Sam Charles was standing behind the counter next to his cash register. “You, come here,” he said.

I walked over to the counter.

”What you got under your shirt?” he said.

I knew he knew. I pulled the magazines out and laid him on the counter.

He picked them up. He was staring right into my face. He banged the magazines against the palm of one hand. “I ever catch you stealin’ these things in here again,” he said loudly and gruffly, “I’m gonna stick ‘em up your ass.” 

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

He made a motion with his head that indicated I better get out of his store right then and there. I did. 

I was scared again. I was sure Mr. Charles would call my home or he would tell my grandfather when he saw him about town. Maybe Mr. Charles would call the police. I was thinking of reform school again. I went home and waited for something horrible to happen.

Nothing ever did. Nobody ever mentioned my stealing, not my parents or my grandparents, not a teacher or any of the kids I knew, friend or foe, and no police ever came. I stayed away from Sam Charles’ Newsstand the rest of the time I lived in Downingtown. Eventually I went back to that store occasionally and nothing was said. I wasn’t glared at or given any evil eye when I showed up to buy something. It was as if it never happened, except I never stole another thing in my life.

School ended on June 8. Miss Hurlock handed me my final Downingtown report card; promoted to Tenth Grade. What a great relief. I remained at my grandparents through the night.  I stopped by their homes to say goodbye to Ronald and Stuart. The next day my parents came. I loaded my few belongings sans any dirty magazines in the car. We all had Saturday dinner together and then it was time to go. I was almost 14 years old.