If the stars came out only once a year, everyone would stay up all night to behold them.

.............................................................Ralph Waldo Emerson

The year was 1947, although it was many years ago at times it seems like yesterday.

My parents moved into a two story asbestos siding covered house on the corner of Park and Powell.* It had large Magnolia trees in the front yard. The first four years of my life were spent in the town of Midland City, Alabama, ten miles north of this new home. My maternal Grand-parents lived on a small hill in this same little town and raised ten children there. Grand-pa was a farmer and managed to feed all ten of those children on what he grew in the fields and orchards surrounding their home. He had two huge mules and plowed the vast expanse of cultivated fields with them. There was a perfectly maintained black Model T Ford in one of the barns that he drove to town once or twice a week with Grand-ma proudly sitting next to him. Mother met and fell in love with my father on this small farm. After a brief stint of living in Kentucky where he sold Singer sewing machines, they moved back to Midland City and set up housekeeping to be closer to her family. After a number of years I was born, the final son of four. Next door to us lived a girl three years older than me. She had blond hair and a beautiful smile, Diane. Although she was older we spent a lot of time together during those formative years. The two of us played in the hay loft of the old barn in their back yard that smelled of grass, old straw and cows. Barn Swallows swept in and out of the structure as though they owned the place and we were the interlopers. I was in love with Diane, as only a child of two, three and four can be. Ultimately we moved away, left her, the small town and the Barn Swallows behind. We moved to a new town, larger and better, where my father had a real chance of making a living in the lumber business. All this to explain why I was primed to fall for another little girl, living next door with blond hair and a beautiful smile. Her name was Starr.

My first memory of Starr was one afternoon in the early summer. Playing with little multicolored toy cars that I pushed into the crevices and holes in the rocks surrounding the small fish pond in our back yard; I was startled by someone silently standing next to me. It was the little girl from next door. At first I did not like her because she was not Diane. She did have beautiful long blond hair that the sun illuminated in the most amazing way. She did not however, seem to smile very much. This was soon to change as Starr and I became fast friends and pretty much inseparable in the summer months. She was a year younger that me and talented in ways that I found unfathomable. She could read a book or story and no matter what you said or did, could not break her concentration. For me if a squirrel farted a mile away I was totally distracted and could almost not regain the train of thought I was formerly involved in. I haven’t changed a bit. Starr's little pinky fingers had a strange twist to them. The last joint pointed at almost right angles to other fingers. She was quite the accomplished piano player later in life. If I had been born with seven fingers on each hand I still could not have played. Piano playing was something that I wanted to do but found that being tone deaf was somewhat of a stumbling block.

Starr and I shared an old discarded tire that we used as a toilet that happened to be under a bush beneath the window of my parent’s bedroom. I will not get into specifics on that issue and only hope that Starr’s memory is as poor as mine. This illustrates how close we were. Really, how many people can you think of that you would be willing to sit on a spare tire with and use the potty? Soon after this, for some reason Starr out grew the fresh air bathroom thing. I never quite did.

loving horses beyond all reason Star doted on them. She had an extensive ceramic horse collection and many books about horses. The ceramic horse collection that I had, rivaled her collection for quality and beauty. The only thing was that since I could not resist playing with them, all the legs, tails and ears were broken off. Actually I had a great collection of horse torsos. Eventually she owned a number of real horses, their foals and all the other amazing things that went along with horse ownership. I would not know of course because I never had a real horse. There were a few stuffed horses and a broom thing that I was given that was decorated like a horse but these all proved to be less than satisfactory. Each and every Christmas I asked for a pony, hoping against hope that mother and daddy would not find out that Santa was being asked for such an outlandish gift and that he might be bringing me a pony. The pony, needless to say, never came. Every time I saw a Santa Clause at Christmas in department stores and ringing bells on the street I would desperately want to ask him, “Where’s the freaking pony, Santa?” Starr never had this problem. I know what you’re thinking, she was after all, an only child practically, (there were two step brothers that really didn't count). That explains that! I on the other hand being the last son in a family of four sons, oh but I repeat myself. That’s probably enough said.


Many of our exploits went unnoticed but one tragically stands out. On a Saturday morning when Mother was gone off with a friend, Starr and I discovered that the Winter Jasmine growing eight or ten feet tall and which separated our two houses would actually support our weight. Neither Starr nor I intended any harm to the plant. It was in a perfect place serving both houses, offering itself as a wind break and a privacy screen. It was little more than thousands of tiny weeping branches supported by thousands more beneath, covered in soft leaves. The shrub was beautiful in spring when it sported bright yellow flowers. We used it as a trampoline! The experience in the shrub was even more fun if you threw yourself through the air and landed in the middle of it with a soft whoosh! Wow, What fun! We jumped, leaped and swan dove into that gigantic bush all afternoon. Amazing! The only thing was, while we were so busy having fun neither of us realized that the bush was now compressed to maybe fourteen inches tall. It was practically gone! There was an enormous empty hole between her house and mine, hummm. Eventually mother came home and was totally aghast at the missing shrubbery. With her purse clutched firmly against her bosom she kept looking at the empty space, as though she could not believe her eyes! When Daddy got home he gave me a thorough thrashing at mother’s insistence.

It was not unusual for me to get a “whipping”, I got many and most were probably well deserved. Daddy would quickly whip off his long belt, faster that one would think a chubby man could, grab you by one wrist and begin to lash you with the belt with lightening speed. Luckily, he would quit soon because, running as fast as I could, to escape the many blows resulted in me running in a circular motion taking him with me. As he spun round and round he became dizzy. This lessened my torture but it seemed to further piss him off. For the rest of the day I became very scarce. The next day I asked Starr if she had gotten into trouble and she said, “Not yet.” We were in her bedroom and her mother came in and seemed quite upset. She rushed over to Starr and grabbed her left hand and lightly slapped the back of it three times. Then she said, “Next time you destroy someone’s property you’ll get even more of that.” After she left the room, I said, “crap Starr that was it?” She said with a bit if a whimper, obviously upset, “yes.” I thought to myself, I hate her!

Of course, I did not hate her at all. She was my closest companion. Having three older brothers, a stand up fight with any one of them was totally out of the question. I consequently wouldn't and couldn't stand up to anyone. Starr was very smart and strong willed and figured this out quickly. Her favorite game was, “horses”, in which we would make weird whinnying noises and chase each other around the back yard. Ultimately a fight would break out between us (the horses) and more often that not I would be the one injured and go home crying. The other game was one in which we stripped all the leaves off a long tendril of English Ivy and proceeded to whip each other, until someone cried and ran home. Again, usually it was me. Mother saw Starr get the better of me in one of our typical horse fights and was embarrassed by me, letting “a girl” practically beat me up. She said, “The next time you let Starr win a fight and you come running home crying I am going to wear you out and have your Daddy whip you too, when he gets home!” Later the same day Starr still sweating with her long hair sticking to the sides of her head, thrilled with her recent victory over me in the horse fight didn’t anticipate what was finally coming her way. Initiating another ivy fight I absolutely (for the first time) got the better of her(whipped her ass). She went home crying for the first time. When I returned home mother was mad as Hell and said that Starr’s mother had called and said that I had beaten her with an Ivy vine. I got yet another spanking because I had beaten up a girl. Mother said that she was ashamed disappointed and embarrassed at my doing such a thing, “What were you thinking? Just wait till your father gets home”, she said! Fuck!

One weekday afternoon Starr and a friend,(Sherry I think) came over to get me. We were in Junior High School at the time. They had decided to organize a dance club. Of course I was thrilled to be included, never thinking that I would actually have to learn to dance. Very patiently the two of them did their best to show me the moves for the "Bop". This took the better part of the afternoon. I learned! Not that I was any good at it but that didn't stop me. I twisted my little ass, spun around and did all the things that they showed me with some improvisations of my own. Most people who saw me practicing my newly accomplished skill thought I was had been caught up in an epileptic seizure, or possessed by some ancient demon. This was not far from the truth! At first my parents and relatives laughed when I demonstrated my technique but when I was through they had very worried looks on their faces and furtively looked at each other as though they had caught me masturbating. A look that was equal parts, disbelief, astonishment and disgust. This craze lasted a lot longer than it should have. My dance career never got off the ground, since there are not a lot of opportunities for a thirteen year old male dancer in a small town in south Alabama. Things settled back down to where most of my time was spent watching the very snowy television set trying to decipher what was going on through the static and figuring out ways I could get out of doing my homework.

In Starr's back yard was the tallest TV antennae I had ever seen. It had dozens of guy wires that held the fragile contraption straight in the air. Her dad and mom had one of the first television sets in the town and reception was a real problem. The nearest television station was in Montgomery, easily a hundred miles away.
One afternoon I decided to climb to the top of that antennae edifice. It was amazing! I could see all across the town we lived in. The sway from the wind at the top of that antennae was one of the more frightening feelings I have ever experienced. Most of the boys in the neighborhood claimed that they had climbed it but I actually did. It scared the Hell out of me and that was the only time I ever tried it. Only recently have I admitted this to Starr. The only other time I had been so high and so scared was the night two friends and I climbed to the top of the water tower down the street near the elementary school. We waited till late and sneaked through the area and climbed all the was to the top. It was way higher that the TV antennae and much more frightening. It was more frightening still when we saw the police cruiser drive up and park just below the tower. When we finally came down they asked if we had painted anything up there on the tower, we swore not, even though our hands and T-shirts were covered with red paint. I never understood why they let us get by with it.

The years passed and we grew ever so slowly up. At fifteen years old I went away to a military school in St. Petersburg, Florida. This was not my idea! Not being the ideal child, my parents and my brothers all agreed that Military school would be the very thing to straighten me out. There had been a couple of scrapes with the local police involving fire crackers, wanton destruction of public property, sneaking the parents cars out without their permission and driving without a license, the underage drinking with the boy across the street and some hint of involvement in some Halloween pranks and that sort of thing. Not even to mention the water tower thing. I got away with much more that I was ever caught for. Nothing terribly serious was ever suggested or discovered, thank God!

When my parents took me to St. Petersburg for the first day of military school, Starr and her Mom came along for the ride. It was five hundred miles to the school from our home in South Alabama. They wanted to be sure I could not escape and find my way back home, I guess. The school itself was OK, although I was, of course too busy figuring how to have a little fun than to study and do anything responsible. I did miss Starr not being around but I slowly adjusted to the military school lifestyle. St.Petersburg was actually fun. A large town filled with strangers that did not know my parents. It was great! On the rare occasion when I came home Starr was always one of the first people I went to see. She was happy to see me and we always managed to have a bit of fun when we got together.  If Star was not at home her mother ,Virginia was always willing to visit with me. Virginia was always so sweet and patient with me and always seemed glad to see me. I loved her very much.

The years that passed from the time Starr got married and the time I did the same, were many. We actually lost touch through all that period but I never quit caring about her. Only at weddings and funerals did we see each other. At her daddy's funeral, I was one of the pallbearers. I think she still cared about me she was just somewhere else, living her life as I was somewhere else living mine. Recently we got together and believe it or not, it was as though we had never been apart. We ate good food, drank some really good wine and visited several of the local wineries and had a blast catching up on every thing and all we had been up to in the years passed.

There are many other stories that I could tell about Starr which involved alcohol, speeding tickets, Marijuana, reckless driving, men, women, beach parties, her trying to run over some guy at the city dump and many other things. However she is now a well respected real-estate agent in a large town in Alabama I will not divulge any further details concerning our time together. That is not until the novel comes out!

Just kidding Starr! He he he he he he he!

* The addresses in Dothan, Alabama changed after I moved away and what once was 400 North Park Avenue became 418 North Park Avenue. why the numbers changed, I have no Idea???

tbd

There are ancient banshees from long past, circling around my head, screaming in a language that I do not understand. There is a whisper in all their noise that, although just beyond my range of hearing I recognize, as the truth.


Starr, if you read this you must understand that every thing in this so called memoir below is filtered through a small child's thoughts and then recollected through a precariously balanced 66 year old brain. Consequently it's kind of like making chicken soup out of chicken shit. Difficult to say the least, if not impossible! Being the kind of person I am, fabrication, exaggeration, entitlement and manipulation is always OK with me. Damn the truth, full speed ahead!

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act, without benefit of experience.

______________________________Henry Miller

Transition is one of the many costs of growing up. No matter how much you might prefer to stay where and how you are, change demands your full attention.

The Elementary school I attended was just a block from my home and a familiar place for me. I was totally comfortable going there and playing on the swings and old rickety rusted merry go round, even on weekends. It was across the street from the Mrs. Mount’s Kindergarten which I went to before the first grade. Every day at eleven o'clock I walked the one block home for lunch where Vera, our maid was always in the kitchen preparing the noon meal. After lunch at home I returned to school and would sit on the dilapidated old merry go round that sat out in the play yard rusting away. When the sixth period bell rang I would reluctantly return to the building. The merry go round served as the first place I ever experimented with a girl. Her name was Rose, she was cute and more importantly she was available. We only kissed and rolled around groping each other beneath the Merry go Round on the ground late one evening but it was fun and exciting. She was far more experienced in those matters that I but that wouldn't have taken much. Puberty had not yet called my name, so there was a lot I just didn’t get. Certainly that night it was the case. I got nothing but dirty. Upon arriving home my mother asked me, “What have you been doing, rolling around in the dirt? I responded, “Uhhh, nooooooo!”

Going to the Junior Hi School didn’t appeal to me at all, partly because it was across town and in an unfamiliar area. Ultimately I went anyway because it was the only one.

The Junior high school was, even then an ancient structure that I assumed had been there since the beginning of time. It was a yellowish tan building with white elaborate concrete trim, identical to many others constructed during that same time period. An interior walkway went around three sides of the inner part of the building open to a courtyard and served as a passageway connecting the classrooms. In the winter it was a frigid trip between classes and perilous as there was no guard rail to prevent someone from falling five or more feet into the bushes and the dirt. This junior high building was a strange, unfamiliar and threatening place. The teachers were abrupt and frightening as well. Many of them were men which was a concept that I had never even considered, having never had or seen a male teacher before. It was not a pleasant experience having to abandon the comfort of the old elementary situation and go to this strange new school where there were, what could only be described as thugs. The thugs, whose names I never learned had “duck Tails”! They hung around together and smoked cigarettes behind the gym when no teachers were in sight. They came from the far side of our town. The girls too, were like nothing I had ever seen before. They had large hair and walked with a swagger. Many of them smoked too. There was only one Junior high school in our town at that point and all the other schools fed into this single middle school. It was a mix of classes and backgrounds. The children from the wealthiest and the poorest families all converged on this one place in the seventh grade, no matter how unprepared they were.

Lush vegetation grew out in the play yard of the Junior High near the baseball diamond. There at P.E. you could find four, five and occasionally even eight leafed Clovers. Sue, who was a contemporary of mine in the seventh grade, would follow me out to the Clover area and we would hunt through the plants for the exotic multiple leafed clovers during the little free time we had. Junior High School was a time of radical change. Most of them were unexpected by the children experiencing them and came as shocking revelations. At least for me they did. Hair began to grow in unexpected places and things grew, that I had assumed would stay the same size. It was like being run over by an eighteen wheeled Semi. There was no clue what was happening to me. Although I had three older brothers and two fairly intelligent parents, no one had given me even a hint as to what to expect. It was as though I had been possessed by some nether world devil. Being a good boy was something I just gave up. Not that I was ever that good at it but at this precarious age I quit pretending.

Entering Junior High School I had lived a fairly protected and privileged life. I had never heard either one of my parents or anyone else in the family use a dirty word. Not that I had experienced only simple, innocent things. When I was ten or perhaps younger there was a boy, the son of my Mother’s best friend, some years older than me who came to spend the night with us on occasion, at our beach cabin with his parents. One night I woke up from a sound sleep and realized he was in the bed with me and had his hand down the front of my underwear. I said, “What are you doing?” He replied, “Be quiet you are going to really like this!”He was manipulating my small immature hairless penis. I tried to make him quit but he only quickened his actions. At first I was shocked, embarrassed, and ashamed. This feeling soon disappeared as he continued to massage my small member. After some minutes the sensation became so intense I felt as though I would die if he quit moving the skin on my stiff cock. Then suddenly this amazing eruption of heat and almost electrical pleasure swept over me as I pushed against his hand. My hips pumped involuntarily and a couple of audible auggrugs escaped my lips. He whispered, “Sushhhh, not so loud, you’ll wake everybody up!” When the feeling suddenly subsided I felt a great sense of loss that I couldn't explain even to myself. He said, “You liked it didn’t you?” I said, “Yes!” He got up from my bed and went to the bathroom. Laying there in the darkness I felt sure the end of my penis had just exploded and I couldn't even get into the bathroom to see. Everyone else in the house was asleep and all the lights were out. It was the first time I had ever experienced such intense pleasure. Although I really liked it I didn't understand any part of it. Who knew what this thing meant? The experience emboldened me to take matters into my own hands, (so to speak) and try to recreate this amazing feeling for myself, again and again, and again! The boy had told me that I would really like this “thing” he was doing to me and I did! One Sunday morning I was upstairs in the process of trying to attain “that feeling”. Shortly after reaching that point my little penis began to swell at an alarming rate. The sudden change frightened me so badly that I ran downstairs and showed it to my Mother. She said, “Have you been playing with it?” I of course replied emphatically “Nooooooo!” All this, long before time, maturity and word of mouth made me realize what all of this was about.

You might think that what happened to me was traumatic but you would be only partly right. I was perhaps a victim in the beginning but later a willing victim. The pleasure to me was so immense that nothing about it, no matter how it came about could have been bad. Once started there was no way not to continue doing that “thing” that I had no words for. It ruled me and do it, I did! This cousin and I continued this somewhat one sided relationship for some time, until years, puberty and other more interesting things came along. I knew nothing about sex, except for the “feeling thing” and in no way knew that it had anything to do with reproduction or even what sex was, or its consequences. Since I was far too young for ejaculation, the intense pleasure was all it was about as far as I was concerned. I knew nothing else. There was a great amount of guilt involved in the pursuit and accomplishment of this immense mystery but I managed to deal with it in a number of different ways. At the age of thirteen I experienced my first ejaculation and my first thought was, oh my God, I broke it! Everything changed in Junior High School.

Dreams for me have always been very realistic and were at times more compelling than reality. In those dreams I experienced many things that were far beyond the possibilities of my daily existence. Many of them were horrific and scary. Still today I have these Technicolor stereophonic sound dream experiences while asleep. One particular dream at that time expressed the anxiety and guilt over the masturbation thing, (not that I knew what it was called at the time.) In my dream, I woke up to a heavy feeling and could not really move in my bed. Turning over was impossible and as hard as I struggled I could not even sit up. I thought someone had gotten into the bed with me and was lying very close. That wasn't it! Flinging the covers away I looked down in horror to discover that my penis had grown so large that it filled up the entire bed and weighed so much that I could not even move it when I tried. It was huge, purple, swollen and leaden. The dream scared the Hell out of me. How was I going to explain this to Mother? I could just hear her saying, “You've been playing with it again, haven’t you!” I would respond with, ”Uhhh nooooooo!”

There were young people far worldlier than me at the Junior High School. I had never heard a dirty joke. The first one I ever heard was in the study hall in the library. Two boys I did not know sat next to each other and one said to the other, “Did you hear that Liberace’s mother died? “ The other boy said, “No, what happened?” The response was, “His mother told him to go back where he came from and he took his piano with him!” At first I didn't get it. When it finally dawned on me I snorted so loud that the teacher in the study hall stood up to see what the disturbance was. He said, “Is there some problem, Mr. Daughtry?” I replied, “No sir “, but I had snorted a stream of clear viscous liquid that ran from my nose to the pocket on my shirt. The older girl in front of me turned around in her desk, looked at me, then at my pocket and said," Oh my gosh, how gross." During this same time the First Methodist Church had organized trips on large Greyhound Busses for the youth that took us to Pensacola and nearby cities for plays and other points of interest. Planned most likely, to give the parents a little breathing space and some small moments when we were someplace else. The most interesting thing that ever happened to me on one of those trips was a girl named Meredith. She was beautiful and willing to "make out" with me the entire way from Dothan, Alabama to Pensacola, Florida and back again. When we got back home I was in such a state I couldn't even walk. She didn't think I was all that gross I suppose. I had an immense crush on her for years after but we never even spoke to each other again that I remember.

During the junior high years there was a group of the students that met each other at the Saturday morning cinema every weekend. It was a time to pair off with a member of the opposite sex and engage in some moderate to heavy petting. My usual partner was a Jewish girl, tall with deliciously soft lips, her name was Beth. She and I kissed and tenderly touched, neither very sure what was expected. Our tongues eagerly explored each other in the flickering lights of the movie, while Buster Crabbe chased bad guys across the screen. Not much could have been better that those mornings in the Martin Theater. There was a balcony in the top back of the theater and it was divided into white and colored sections. There was no entrance to the other side from either direction. There was a friend, James who lived on the other side of town that became one of my better friends, at least on Saturday mornings. Some times on those mornings when neither of us could find a partner of the opposite sex we would steal up into the balcony and sit on the front row. There we would unzip our pants and masturbate till one or both of us ejaculated. The point was to see if the fluid could be made to fly up into the air and sail over the short wall, beyond which was thin air all the way down to the lower seating area. He was as baffled as I was as to what all this was about but we were very sure it had to be kept a secret.There was almost never anybody up in the balcony so it was pretty easy to get away with something so crazy. I do not remember whether it was his idea or mine. The place always smelled of popcorn and grime.

The poorest people in our town were the black ones, although many white families were close to the poverty level too. Since the schools were all segregated in Alabama and all of the rest of the south there was little chance of meeting a Negro in a social situation, like school. The maids who were ever present in our home were more like family than servants and some of them I loved very much. There were several swimming pools in our small town. Some like the Country Club were frequented by those whose parents were affluent enough to be members. The folk from the other side of town did not come to the Club. They went to Kelly Springs or Porters Fairyland or did not go at all. The colored people had their own swimming pool. There were times, much later after we had a driver’s license, when we would drive past that Negro recreational pool and find ourselves fascinated by their dark skinned bodies bobbing around in the Aquamarine water. I cannot for the world think now why we thought it was so interesting.

Something about Porter’s Fairyland was foreign, dangerous and forbidding. There was a great swimming pool, large slides to go down and two lakes out back where Bream and Bass swam in large numbers. These were just a few of the attractions. Fishing was not allowed but you could feed the fish bread if you supplied it yourself. The students from Junior High that wore duck tails and smoked cigarettes were there in the shadows of the trees. Cigarettes were rolled up in the sleeves of their t-Shirts. They talked and looked at you in a menacing way. I frequently heard rumors about fights and strange happenings at the fairyland. Once someone even got killed there, or so they said. Almost none of my acquaintances went there even though it was an exciting place. A deafening jukebox blared away nonstop the entire time you were on or near the premises. The Country Club was far more civilized and had no such thing.

Porter’s was the place where the Junior High’s annual swimming party was held. Among the boys of that age a certain amount of status came with wearing a jock strap under your bathing suit. The bathing suits that required jock straps were reversible, thus the reason for the jock straps. It was indicative that you were packing some serious weaponry underneath that had to be firmly controlled. There was no mesh lining in the reversible suits to support and control the genitalia. All of my older brothers wore a jock strap even though it was euphemistically called, a “nose guard” in our house. I never knew why! In junior high I naturally assumed it was time for me to wear one too since many changes had begun to happen in that department. On the eve of the swimming party I asked mother to buy me a reversible bathing suit and bring it with her when she picked my friends and me up at the end of the school day to transport us to Porter’s. I knew she would also have to buy a jockstrap to go with it because that was the way they were worn. Thinking things out ever so carefully was my stock and trade even though it rarely went as intended. This effort was no exception.

Mother showed up on time to pick us up at school with a bag from Blumberg’s, a department store where she had gone to buy my new bathing suit. Opening it I realized it was one of the old type suits with the mesh lining, no jock strap. I was so crushed. “Mother”, I yelled, “This is not the bathing suit I wanted”! She calmly looked over her shoulder in the back seat where I sat with my friends and said,” I didn't buy you one of those reversible bathing suits because you have to have a nose guard to wear under them and you certainly don't need one of those ”. One of my friends said, “What the heck is a nose guard?” My mother turned ever so slowly around and said, “I think you might call it an athletic supporter.” The friend replied, “No, he really doesn't need one of those!” By that point he was laughing hysterically. I was destroyed! My friends laughed as I melted into the floorboard of the car. The day was a total disaster after suffering such a direct hit on the ego, which was not doing so hot in the first place.

One of the girls I found interesting at school was sitting on the edge of the pool. She had one long leg in the water and the other one sexily crossed over it. When I approached, she smiled but quickly got up and dove into the water. When her legs uncrossed I caught a glimpse up the gap of her bathing suit and saw hair. Oh my god! I never knew girls had pubic hair! Our house was filled with art books that showed lots of naked women but not even one had hair, down there. Believe me; I knew because I poured over those books until mother began to think I was very interested in art, for god’s sake. She even offered to give me drawing lessons, which I took rather than admit to looking at the books with prurient interest, not artistic. The sparse beginnings of pubic hair I already had but this girl was truly endowed! I was impressed and repulsed at the same time. Following the girl all over the pool that afternoon I really did not know what to think. Trying so hard to get a better look I went home with a severe case of eye strain. It could have actually been the chlorine. She must have thought I had a terrible crush on her and was more than a little crazy. She was, of course right!

The following Monday brought a torrential downpour, everything was flooded. School went about as it always did and nothing much was happening until break time, some talk about the swim party. Nothing was said about me not really needing a nose guard, thank God! Since the rain was so heavy all the kids were standing on the covered walk way that faced the open court yard, no access to the play ground was available during rain. Down in the sunken area there was water beginning to pool at an alarming rate and mud welling up in orange swirls. A small group of students gathered around Sue my friend from the clover hunts, talking. Standing behind several people I saw an arm reach from my rear and hit Sue in the center of her chest with the palm of a flat hand. She careened backwards; her arms began to simultaneously spin in the opposite direction of the drop behind her. In a desperate effort to regain balance her hands grappled for something to hold onto, wide questioning eyes, and a mouth forming a perfectly round zero. No support was there. She was going to fall backwards the five or more feet into the ankle deep water and mud there in the court yard. I reached for her but my fingers grasped only air and never touched her. She fell in slow motion from what was a considerable height and landed with a huge splat on the upper part of her back, hair completely drenched and mud everywhere. Again, I never touched her. Poor Sue was fished out of the muddy water with wet pine straw, dried boxwood leaves and orange mud all in her hair and face. She  was sent home for a change of clothes and the investigation began. All of us standing around her were called to the principal’s office and interrogated as to what happened. Almost all of the students said that the last person that touched her was me. Even Sue thought I had done it! One teacher said that since she was on hall duty and happened to be looking in that direction and had seen me intentionally push poor Sue backwards off the elevated walkway into the bushes, mud and rain.She said I stiff armed her in the chest and was responsible for her fall. The more I declared my innocence the tighter the noose of guilt, circumstantial as it might have been ensnared me. I declared I had not touched her and was totally innocent. The principal didn't buy it. He said,” Come on Mister Daughtry, you did it, everybody saw you and if you go ahead and admit it you will feel better and I will not be so hard on you. You did it didn’t you?” I said, “Nooooooo!” Since I was obviously guilty he would give me the option of staying in after school in his office for a week or getting five licks with his notorious paddle. I opted for the staying in part, not being into physical pain. All of us had heard about the ferocious licks he gave with his paddle and I wanted no part of it. The licks from principals were usually exaggerated in schools during those days when corporal punishment was still legal but let me tell you, his were not! After staying in for two days I could not think up anymore lies to my parents about why I was staying late at school. I took the three licks from the principal in trade for the next three days I would miss. The blows from his paddle were memorable. He said, “Mr. Daughtry, bend over and grab your ankles.” I did. and offered my small skinny ass up for destruction. After the first lick I would have declined the next two but could not catch my breath. The second and third came fast and diminished none whatsoever in ferocity and rapidity of delivery. He said to me when it was over, "I hope you have learned your lesson here today, Mr. Daughtry.” I said to him, “I didn’t do anything to her!” The principal’s name was Mr. Turk. I carried around bruises for a week or more after his assault on my posterior. Even though totally innocent I learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Even though a person may look guilty and everyone agrees on his culpability he may actually be innocent. A lick once delivered cannot be taken back. This goes for capital punishment also.

The only other licks I got in the Junior High School were not long after the first and delivered by the P.E. coach, Mr. Gilstrap. His was an appropriate name to say the least. I was talking to an acquaintance in the bathroom and said, “I hate Mr. Turk he is a real bastard for paddling me, because I didn't push that bitch Sue off the walkway. I never did it!” The door to one of the stalls opened and coach Gilstrap walked out. He said, “Mr. Daughtry, I will need to see you in my office at your P.E. period for a little attitude adjustment concerning your trashy mouth and lack of respect for the principal. Be in my office as soon as the next bell rings.” Two more licks, one for each curse word, more bruises on my buttocks. At least there was no staying in after school time. That was too hard to explain to the parents. He said, “Make sure your privates are out of the way, bend over and grab your ankles, Mister Daughtry.

Fuck!

The Biting Dog

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

........August Strindberg

Jesse bit me on the left foot a few nights ago. I can’t say it was totally unexpected because he had done it once before. The previous time I had my shoe on and the bite was ineffectual but a warning none the less. With this most recent bite my shoe was off and only my sock was between my skin and his teeth. He broke the skin on the top of my foot with one of his incisors. If you have never seen Jesse you cannot possibly understand how strong his bite is. His jaw muscles (Fascia Parotideo Masseterica) are formidable. People have asked me occasionally what is wrong with his jaws because the muscles are so huge and exaggerated he looks slightly deformed. He is like a scary cartoon dog. Over the following days my foot turned a dozen different shades of blue, purple and yellow. The bruise discolored my foot from the top of my instep all the way down to a point between my large toe and the one next to it, around to the bottom of my foot. It was a constantly changing rainbow of colors.

On that particular night I was watching television and Jesse came to lie down at my feet. He is rarely allowed into the house and I cannot for the life of me remember why he was in that night. In front of the fireplace I was relaxed in my recliner. Moose was nearby and I have since wondered if Jesse thought my foot belonged to Moose. He does bite Moose fairly often even though it rarely breaks the skin. Frequently when Moose is at my feet I stroke his side and rump with my socked foot. Attempting the same thing with Jesse, he bit me. In my long history of having dogs, not one has ever bitten me. His bite infuriated me and I quickly looked around the room for something heavy and blunt to club him with. He was still growling and slinking looking at me a threatening way. Jesse has a history of doing unpredictable things at times. Linda intervened on his part and I regained some of my composure. He is a very good yard dog considering that we live out on a dirt road in deep mountainous country with few neighbors and easily within sight of the road. He always barks and growls at strangers(and friends)who come into the yard unannounced and gives the impression that he should not be trifled with. Most people give him a wide berth and watch him intently while he is in the vicinity. So do I.

The first time I saw Jesse he was a tiny five week old pup in a house off in the Covington Highway area. Most people would think he was a ghetto dog and they would be right. The person that owned the pack of Dalmatians was a black man whose face I cannot remember at all, much less his name. The house was just like the other houses on the street with one big difference. No people lived there, only dogs! All the doors and windows were hanging open and the dogs came and went as they pleased. In the living room of this house was an overturned sofa that served as a sort of bed for many puppies and grown dogs. There was little other furniture. Feces littered the entire first floor of the house and the urine smell was overwhelming. I never saw the second floor. Dalmatians ran free in the back fenced yard and many of them had gotten out and wandered in the front yard, the street and the neighborhood in general. The place was appalling by anyone’s standards. I started for the door realizing it was a puppy mill. Being highly opposed to people who run that kind of operation I only wanted out of there. At the very moment I was turning to go one of the many tiny puppies came up to me and sat on the top of my foot. He looked up at me with small black eyes and it gave me pause. I had to consider him regardless of his background. Remember that I really wanted a dog and had been waiting for an add in the Atlanta Journel paper for a long time. Picking him up I knew he was the only puppy I wanted from that place. After some finagling I paid the man for the puppy, (he would not take a check and snatched the puppy from my arms when I offered one) and said, "This is a cash only operation, mister, no checks!" When he seemed unwilling to negotiate I offered to let him ride with me to a local teller machine to withdraw cash to pay him, he agreed. After driving the man back to the nasty house I promptly left and did not look back. A month later I had to call him about the AKC registration because he had not sent the forms in. Why was I so desperate for a Dalmatian and especially at that price? Hard as it may be to believe, there are some reasons.

My older dog was a liver and white Dalmatian, Checkers and was absolutely the best dog I have ever had. He did not chew things up, never threatened a human and adored me at the cost of everything else. Although he did not like other dogs much, he was my best friend. He was always gentle, affectionate and with me every minute he could be. If I was outside, he followed me where ever I went. We took naps together in the day bed on the front screened in porch, I read and he snoozed. He would lie at my feet when I watched television and never seemed bored with my lack of activities. He was however an older dog and I knew his time was getting close to being over. He had such trouble with his hips, dysplasia and his sight was not all that good, hearing either. I could not bear the thought of doing without him and thought another Dalmatian would fill the bill and ease the pain when the time came to put Checkers down. Boy was I wrong! I actually wonder if even Caesar Milan (the dog Whisperer) could manage this particular dog. Personally I think Jesse is a little psychotic.

To say that Jesse did not live up to expectations would be the understatement of the year. At night he would run through the house leap onto the bed and had no clue what being house broken was all about. He was so wild and rambunctious I had to buy a cage to keep him in. No matter which room I put him into we could hear his mournful howling and hysterical barking all night. We got no sleep for days until I discovered one night around 2:30 in the morning that if I drug his cage (with him in it) out to my jeep and closed him up in the area behind the rear seat we could not hear him carrying on from our bedroom. It worked for a while. One night we had plans to go to the Alliance Theater for a play. It was very cold that particular night and we left Checkers, and Jesse in the bed room with the door closed. Linda had been doing research for a class she was planning and had left four or five library art books on her side of the bed. The books were the coffee table type, oversize, full color very expensive books that she was making slides from. When we returned home after the play the bedroom was a shambles and the art books had been turned into confetti. The book covers ripped off with whole sections of the book just missing. Much money had to be paid to the Clayton County Library to replace the books.

We have had destructive dogs before but this one rivaled the worst of them. Sarvis our Siberian Husky was one of the worst. One afternoon when the boys were small we drove down the road to take a swim in the creek. There was a hole in that one area of the creek that the boys could dive in and actually be over their heads. The swimming area was across the street from an acquaintance we had become friendly with (Truman Neal) who had been born and lived his entire life here at Big Creek. He had free range chickens all around his house. Knowing Sarvis would eat and or kill everyone of the man’s chickens, we left her in the car with the windows partly down in the shade of a huge tree. After our swim we returned to Linda’s new two week old car. As we approached the car I noticed a line of what appeared to be red fluid running from the small vent side window by the passenger seat down to the bottom of the car. It was blood. Sarvis had eaten up the passenger seat, the door panel, the window knob, the rear view mirror and much of the floor mat. It was a very expensive afternoon swim we had that day.

Thank goodness I never had Jesse neutered, although I probably should have. From Jesse came Moose whom I like almost as much as I liked Checkers. He tends to wander away and I spend much of my time looking for him even though he is invariably down at Hobard's farm just up the road from us. He is always happy to see me when I go up there to retrieve him and he races me all the way back home, he runs I ride. Thank goodness for Jesse and his interest in reproduction or I would now have just the one dog that I do not like very much. Never to have gotten to know Moose would have been tragic. Also I would be hunting something heavy and blunt every day of my life.

Having said all this I still cannot see myself having Jesse put down just because I can’t manage him. He is a beautiful animal and healthy as can be, AKC registered too. All his shots are up to date. I have twenty bucks and a month’s supply of dog food if anybody is interested. Are there any takers?


Just kidding but am willing to talk!

I have noticed that Jesse's hearing is getting quite bad. All white or mostly white dogs frequently have hearing problems and Jesse will probably be no different. When he is asleep on the front deck you can walk up on him through the gravel and it doesn't even wake him up. Don't ever do this because when he does wake up and you are too close to him he reacts rather badly. So far his hips don't seem to be giving him any trouble but I know that it is just a matter of time.

His ageing is obvious to me and I feel for him. I too am getting to the point that my hearing is not so good anymore and getting around is not as easy as it once was. I have lost all interest in climbing trees and that is a sure sign that a person is getting old. Once climbing trees was a favorite pass time for me, any tree, and any time. Those days to, I am afraid have passed. Every time I climb a tree now I invariably fall out. I do however still maintain a healthy appetite.

The End

Twice Drowning

Water, water, everywhere........ and nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Drowning is a dangerous business.

The first time

My first experience with drowning was when I was just a little boy maybe seven or eight. It happened in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico at our cabin on Panama City Beach, Laguna Beach to be exact in the panhandle of Florida. It was a quiet afternoon and my older brother David and I were playing on the sugar sand beach in the edge of the surf just below the cabin. Up at the cabin our parents and a number of adult relatives were busily playing Canasta or Rook or some other card game and probably having a cocktail or two. Mother and daddy were not big drinkers but if the guests were drinking so did my parents, especially my dad. Card games usually entertained us because at that time there was no television there. Actually television was not really available anywhere because it was still in its infancy in 1949 and 1950. Few places in south Alabama much less in that area of the Florida gulf coast had much in the way of entertainment outside of the sandy beach, a few carnivals and miniature golf courses. Mostly we played in the water, skied, snorkeled or participated in water activities of some sort. We also went fishing in the gulf and in two fresh water ponds across the street from our cabin.

 My parents let me spend time on the beach with my brother but there were rules imposed that you were suppose to adhere to.  We rarely did. Smiling David asked, “Tommy do you want to swim out to the second sand bar with me?” I said, “No it’s too far, too deep and besides there are sharks out there.” He replied, “Don’t be a sissy, come on, I’ll show you where to step. “ Reluctantly I followed. He knew how to tread water; I had not as yet learned. When we got over our heads he began treading the salty water raising his entire chest out of the liquid surrounding him. He said, “Come on out here, there is a sandbar just under my feet; you can reach it if you try.” Swimming even further out frantically jabbing my feet towards his, I found no bottom. He back pedaled deeper into the gulf. “Come on little baby. Surely you can make it if I can, “he called, laughing. Again I moved through the cool briny water into even deeper regions. My arms and legs began to weaken. I inhaled a mouthful of water. With considerable spluttering and coughing from the intake, I paddled after him. He glided further away, effortlessly treading his way into deeper areas still. He laughed and said, “Come on, come on, I am going to leave you out here where a shark will get you, if you don't come on.” Finally exhausted, I slipped beneath the small waves moving across the surface of the water, breathing in more of the gulf. David watched, smiling. Hysterical at this point, I pushed myself back up and broke the surface with a panicked cry and sucked in a mouthful of air and more water just before I went down again. My arms and legs were burning from the exertion. Below the waves I realized I was crying, sucking salt water into my lungs, more coughing and spluttering. Once more I weakly surfaced; within arm’s reach he was still looking at me curiously. Then I went down again! Running through my head was the thought that this was it; you go down three times before you finally drown. Everybody knows that! Just as I went down for the last time sucking more salty water into my body strange floating things crossed my vision. I felt David grab me by the arm. He pulled me back to the surface. Paddling through the water he dragged me towards shore. I was gagging and sobbing hysterically. On my hands and knees in the sand, I cried uncontrollably, coughed, gagged and puked the salty gulf out through my nose and mouth. It spewed into the sand along with some small remains of my yet undigested lunch. Walking away David arrogantly said, “I’m going to tell everyone in the house that I saved your life today." I replied sobbing, “If you do I'll tell them you tried to kill me! And by the way I hate your guts!”

He had saved me from drowning as surely as he had almost intentionally drowned me. I was left sobbing, coughing up salt water through my nose and mouth. He walked back towards the cabin. I noticed that he was not laughing anymore. I was never sure whether David saved me from drowning because he cared about me, whether he was afraid of what might happen when he got back to the cabin or whether he was afraid someone on the beach might have been watching us and seen him intentionally drown his little brother. Probably it was a little bit of all those things. Perhaps he intended to drown me but changed his mind at the last moment. Maybe instead he was just the cat and I was just the mouse. He toyed with me thinking it over; should I let him die or should I pull him out. Being the third child he rarely had any power over anyone and this maybe was one of those illusive moments for him. Strange, neither of us ever mentioned that afternoon again.

The second time

In late September of 1958, I went to live in St. Petersburg, Florida for a year, at a military school at my parent’s insistence.

Driving down the two lane road that left southern Alabama and pushed itself into the northernmost panhandle of Florida; the landscape changed. Familiar pines and flora were gradually replaced by broadleaved evergreens and Palms. The soil became sandy and everything about the landscape was unfamiliar. We drove for hours until we finally came to the city of St. Petersburg. Meandering our way through the suburbs, we eventually found the school. It was a very busy place with young boys of High School and Junior High age being dropped off by their parents from very nice cars. Cadillac cars, Lincolns and other upscale vehicles were cluttering the entrance to the campus. Royal Palms waved their finger like leaves at us seductively as a soft breeze filtered through them. Boys with their parents and younger siblings milled about registering and moving large trunks into the ancient looking tan building. Looking at all this, made my stomach turn cold. It was true! They were going to leave me in this strange and unfamiliar place. Months ago I started stealing myself up so that I would not care what they did but underneath I was anxious and scared. Being fifteen, the youngest of four sons I had been far from an ideal child. Certainly no scholar and lacking any self control I established a reputation in the neighborhood and in the family as an unpredictable hellion who would do anything at all. As a wits end effort they final decided to send me to this military school in south Florida. They thought it would, “Make a man of him”, so Daddy said. At fifteen I had no intention of doing anything he wanted me to do. Amazingly I managed to do that for a very long time.

After moving into a very small room with no air-conditioned in the dorm I realized that there were three other boys my age that were all going to share this less that roomy space, with one bathroom. All three of these boys were from South America, fluent in Spanish and very worldly. They seemed nice enough and were old hands at being away from their home and parents. I decided I would be the same. I would never be homesick! The school was full of boys from the north and from families that had moved to Florida for one reason or another. They had a fascination with the way I pronounced my words, my accent. Many of them would invite me home for the weekend with them just so their parents could hear me speak. I was a celebrity, of sorts, for a while. Who knew I had an accent? South Alabama had plenty of people who spoke the same way I did. In fact, all of them did.

There were many Hispanic boys from South America and Spanish was spoken much of the time. After a shocking week or two, I became acclimated to the military routine, marching, saluting, spit shining shoes and all the other routines that take place in the manly military environment. Inspections were a big deal and it took hours to get ready for them. Spit shining your shoes, polishing your belt buckle, cleaning your school issued rifle and so many other things that to me were of no importance. At one major inspection I was standing in rank in the boiling south Florida sun, anxious and worried that I might not pass the serious inspection. The company captain stepped in front of me doing the preliminary inspection before the “Big Dog” that was following him did his. The captain looked down at me and whispered, “Your fly is undone!” At first I did not understand what he said. I whispered back, “What?” He whispered again, “Your fly is down.” Again I offered, “What, I don't know what you mean.” In desperation he again whispered, “Your pants are unzipped, stupid!” That was the first time in my life I had heard that expression. Calling your zipper a “fly” was totally unknown to me. Frantically I reached to the front of my pants just as the Commander stepped in front of me. Being in such a panic I had inadvertently released my hold on the rifle in order to grip and zip up my pants. It takes two hands to zip up pants. The rifle careened forward and struck the Commander directly in the crotch of his pants. He instantly bent over and grunted, "Aruggg," and simultaneously stumbled backwards! All I could think was,” SHIT, I'm dead! “I had failed the inspection and assaulted the Company Commander all in the same instant. The guys behind me snickered uncontrollably.

Weekly inspections of the rooms we lived in were held most Saturday mornings. Everything had to be perfect. The shoes shined, the floors spotless, the garments on the clothes hangers in the small closets had to be exact, two finger widths apart on the rail. All towels had to be folded and neatly stacked in the foot lockers. The walls washed, the windows spotless, everything had to be extraordinarily clean and shiny. There was even a small wash cloth that had to be perfectly folded and displayed on the head board of every boy's bed. This I never understood until

one night in a dream that took me underwater in a crystal clear pool. A beautiful girl was there swimming in a one piece bathing suit, doing large lazy backwards circles, submerged in the blue liquid. Her long blond hair flowed down her back and shimmered beneath the water. I swam over to her, arched my back, mimicking her in those very erotic circular maneuvers. Following her closely she and I became equal parts of one circle, going slowly around and around underneath the water, like hands of a clock, her head at my feet, my head at her feet. I moved up her legs, while ever so slowly my face turned and slid up to her knees. She did not seem to notice or care. There was a distinct smell of Coppertone even though we were under the water. My face slid ever so slowly, further up her thighs. Finally I got to a point where my nose perfectly fit into the perfect little triangular juncture of her two legs and her torso. It was like a puzzle piece that had been waiting to fit only into this exact space. I convulsed, in my sleep, with my head between her legs, under the blue water, in my little military school bed. It then became clear to me what the wash cloth was doing hanging within a few inches of my head. This was the first time I had ever had a wet dream and for a long time afterwards I tried to recreate the same experience. It rarely happened again much to my frustration.

Actually I adapted quite well to military school, all things considered. It took me a while to realize that becoming invisible was the best option for me, another average face in a long line of ordinary faces. My mantra was, make no waves. The fewer people who know your name, the better off you are. Do not walk funny, do not look funny and most of all, do not talk funny. Well, two out of three was not bad. Many of the boys, especially the younger ones were sent to the president's office by the upper-class men to ask his secretary for a masturbation license. They were told that it was required by the end of that same day, most went. Some days the poor lady would have twelve or fifteen young boys come in requesting this particular document. There were others that were sent a half a mile to the boat docks to get forty feet of shore line, or the keys to the oar locks. Usually they were sent by an officer or an older more experienced student. These green boys had no idea what any of these things meant. It was sort of like me and the "fly" fiasco. Luckily I had heard about hazing and those kinds of things shortly after I got to the school.

In the back area of the campus there was a swimming pool surrounded by a chain link fence bordered by beautifully colored Crotons and twining Mandevilla vines covered with huge lemon colored flowers. Surprisingly it was accessible any time, by students when they felt like going in for a swim. I found this ironic for a place that had so many rules that applied to every aspect of your life. There were no life guards to control the boys who swam and played as they liked. Frequently the upper class men were in the pool having raucous water fights that were border line violent. Their large bodies thrashed and pushed each other under water with strength and ferocity that was surprising. My body, at fifteen was not quite up to competing with these boys who had two to three years on me. They were sixteen, seventeen and eighteen and large for their age. What I lacked in stature I made up for in a bad temper and attitude, or so everyone said. The particular afternoon my second near drowning occurred, was sunny and beautiful. A swim, I thought was just what I needed. There was no place to change into bathing suits at the pool so I had already put mine on in the dorm room. I approached the pool with my towel loosely hanging around my neck and barefooted. As usual the bigger boys were attacking each other in the water. Sitting on the edge of the pool I watched closely the struggle between these big guys. I was not small for my age but my growth spurt had only just begun and I had not yet adjusted to my new found strength and coordination. At five foot ten and weighing one hundred and thirty pounds I was not small, but not large, tallish and skinny.

One of the giants called me from the middle of the pool, “Hey you, come on in, we need you to be on our team, we’re one short”. I was not sure what to do so I got into the water and swam out to where the confrontation was taking place. At first the wrestling overwhelmed me but I discovered that I could compete with them if I really put forth the effort. The water fight escalated into a frenzied struggle between the two so called teams. A point came when I was pushed deep into the water and several large, immovable bodies were on top of me. I was pushed deeper and deeper still, to the bottom of the pool. I needed air and I needed it desperately. Still they kept me trapped in the many hairy legs and torsos thrashing above me. I panicked but the panic only made me struggle harder to reach the surface and air. Again my efforts were thwarted. I thought they were keeping me down so that they could actually drown me. Maybe they had planned this and it was not just an accident. They were actually trying to kill me! My panic became critical. I hit the bottom of the pool again and felt my burning lungs suck in a stream of water. It filled them and shocked my body and mind. I was going to drown, just like the time David lured me out into the deep water eight or ten years ago at the beach. The floating things reappeared in my vision just like the first time I almost drowned. As one final effort I swung my arm upward and tried to extricate myself from the tangle of legs and arms holding me beneath the water. Apparently my fingers were so positioned that the fingernails were extended like a cat. I made contact with someone above me and my fingernails tore across the skin on the chest of one of the boys. Again I struck upwards with frantic effort hitting someone or something else! My lungs constricted and expelled the water they had taken in. Again I inhaled a second rush of water. I was feeling intoxicated by the inhalation of the chlorinated water.

Suddenly the body traffic above me diminished and after a couple of weak pushes I reached the surface, almost drowned. My lungs were vomiting water. It spewed out of my mouth and nose like a garden hose, a cloudy slimy chlorine gush. The pool was still when I surfaced, coughing and spluttering. The largest boy in the water stood looking down at his chest, water draining from his hair and ears. There were four long vermilion stripes that stretched across his chest from his clavicle across one nipple down to the bottom of his rib cage. There were bloody tributaries running down to the hair around his navel. The other boys in the circle stared at him. One Hispanic boy had the same stripes from his left eye to the bottom of his chin. Blood leaked at an alarming rate from the lines on his face. Both boys were bleeding profusely and it tinted the water in the pool around them a pinkish color. He screamed, “You fucking ass hole, what’s wrong with you?” The second boy erupted, “Culo cago!” I responded with yet another stream of projectile chlorine water vomit erupting from my mouth and nose with an involuntary “uggruhh?” The pool cleared as they quickly moved away from the liquid my body had rejected. Standing on the wet concrete surrounding the pool they watched me. “Stupid red neck fuck”, they all agreed and turned and walked through the gate in the chain link fence. The dark Hispanic boy with the scratches on his face, looked at me over his shoulder as he left the pool and said,”Maricon, cabron, ay mio tu eres un pendeho!” I did not say anything back to him but I was pretty sure it was not a complement. As he passed through the gate the boy snatched a handful of the Mandvilla's leaves and threw them aside in disgust.

After a few minutes I climbed out of the pool and walked back towards the dorm. On the concrete walkway I noticed an irregular trail of small bloody spots the two boys had left behind.

Of course, I didn't actually drown at the times I have written about but the experiences truly could have gone either way.

 tbd

Drunkenness is simply voluntary insanity.
_______Seneca

Better sleep with a sober cannibal that a drunken Christian.
_______Herman Melville

The liquid in the glass is ice cold, moving on its own around the frozen cubes, threatening, promising, seducing. It is amber or clear and when you swallow, it takes your breath away. It is Vodka, Gin, Rum, Scotch, Irish whiskey, Tequila, Brandy and, Bourbon. It makes brothers of strangers and strangers of brothers.

I was initiated early.

My first experience with alcohol was when I was three of four years old. Standing in the small kitchen in my parent’s home I watched intently as my mother made one of her delicious fruit cakes. If the idea of fruit cakes turns you off it is because you have never had one like my mother made. Baked early in the holidays it was filled with the freshest candied fruits including red and green cherries, currants and Pineapple. It contained Brazil nuts, Pecans, Walnuts and all this packed in and surrounded by the most delicious amber colored sweet cake, moist and aromatic. The cake, if a word like “cake” can describe what the incredible concoction really is, was put away wrapped in foil after baking and daily splashed with Bourbon, succulent and melting. It was a treasure, coveted, thinly sliced and parceled out only to special guests with steamy hot coffee and heavy cream. It was not a simple thing to be shared with children and those who could not appreciate the exotic flavors. It was for the connoisseur’s pallet and was not wasted on the uninitiated. The white porcelain topped table in the middle of the small kitchen was covered with sacks of flour, bowls of nuts, beautiful candied fruit, assorted bottles of amber colored liquid, half filled bowls and vials of exotic herbs and spices. It was December and the room was steamy and warm, smelling of oranges, apples, cloves, Anise, cinnamon, vanilla and other aromatic cooking things. It swept over you like a tsunami. Mother was a wonderful cook, having learned most of her skills at the hip of my grandmother who was phenomenal in the kitchen. She must have been pretty Phenomenal in the bed room as well, since she and grandpa had ten children. Of course, to be fair there was no television at the time. The wonderful odors thickening the kitchen air made my mouth fill with saliva and run over. It all seemed so incredibly enticing I could not resist helping myself to the food scraps, raisins and sugar leavings around the edges of the table that I could reach. It all fell prey to my sticky grasping fingers especially the dusting of granulated sugar. I got it by first sticking my finger into the saliva adhesive in my mouth and pressing it into the sugar, then back on to my tongue. It was delicious! Standing on my tip toes I then reached up onto the small table and grabbed one bottle by the neck and turned it up to my lips, much as a seasoned alcoholic might do. The warm fluid streamed down my throat and hit my stomach with a small explosion. The stomach did not cooperate and promptly sent the explosive liquid back up to the point it had entered into my small body. There in its rush to evacuate, it shot out of my mouth and split between my nostrils and spewed out with unexpected force. Ninety proof Bourbon racing through the nasal passage way was less than pleasant. There was no mirror in the kitchen but had there been I am sure I would have seen a small mushroom shaped cloud forming directly above and attached to the top of my head. The screams that came out of my mouth were scary in pitch and volume and although I was a child who screamed frequently, it alerted the entire house that something was terribly wrong. Having expelled the alcohol with such force I had surely dirtied my pants in the process. My screams were punctuated with coughing, gagging, spluttering and more screams. The family members that were home, mainly my older brothers raced into the kitchen to see what had happened. After the crisis passed they all bent double laughing and slapping their knees. They thought the whole scenario was very funny and talked about it for many days. My first experience with this volatile liquid left me determined to avoid it at all costs, forever.

Forever however, is a long time.

As a child I experimented with alcohol extensively whenever I got the chance. Fortunately the fascinating liquid was usually unavailable; otherwise I might have become a serious drinker early on. Years later when we had visitors come to our beach cabin there would always be a fair amount of drinking by some of the adults. Frequently a pint bottle of Bourbon or Vodka would be left out on the chest near the card table, accidentally. When the adults had finished all their talking, drinking and card games and had gone to their respective bed rooms I would turn their bottles up and drink what I could stand from them. It was always painful at first but eventually the pleasure would outweigh the pain. That feeling of well being would set in and everything would seem better. Usually I remembered to fill the bottle back up with water to the level it had been before I drank from it. The parents and guests never suspected anything.

They couldn't imagine such a thing.

Across the street from our home lived a boy with whom I was very close. He was a year or two younger than me but we were still great friends. His mother was a serious alcoholic and one of the sweetest women I have ever met. The father drank as well but never developed the addictive problems that the mother had. Bob and I always did what we could get away with and that was plenty. Since there was always liquor in their house that no one kept track of, we had a constant supply of alcohol. Behind their large two story Dutch Colonial house was a garage apartment where we had a sort of club house. More things went on there than anyone could imagine or want to know about. The drinking was formidable and Bob was always way ahead of anyone else participating. I never thought there was anything much wrong with what we were doing until one night Bob went over the edge, even for me. It involved a speeding ticket he had gotten from a local police officer. Early one afternoon Bob and I started drinking and he became obsessed with the policeman that had given him a speeding ticket. He wanted revenge. Since we, in no way could do anything to the actual policeman we kidnapped one of those metal figures that was painted to resemble a traffic guard used at intersections and school crossings. The standing faux policeman (about five or six feet tall) had a white painted sash across his chest and held an hexagonal sign that said, slow. He had an obnoxious smile with very white painted teeth. There was something about the teeth Bob could not tolerate. He had decided that when he got drunk enough, later that night he was going to knock the crossing guard’s teeth out. It seemed to make sense to me at the time. At one point during the evening Bob had drunk so much he threw up into a large brandy snifter he was drinking from. Very nonchalantly he took his finger and pushed the vomit to one side in the glass and proceeded to drink more from the liquid beneath. I said, "Bob, you are so sick, that's the grossest thing I have ever seen!" Bob replied, "Fuck you!" In fact it was the grossest thing I had ever seen. I got up and stumbled out of the garage apartment. Bob was too far gone to know or care. This was when I realized he was a world class drinker. I was an amateur. I did not see Bob for a few days and when I did his right hand was in a cast from the elbow down to his finger tips. He had indeed knocked the teeth out of the policeman's face but in doing so had fractured almost all the bones in his right hand and wrist.


Bob was not the kind of person who would lie to or betray a friend, even an unworthy one.

Much later Bob was married and had two children but like his mother, was plagued by a serious drinking problem all his life. After his divorce his life spiraled downwards with many pointless jobs and relationships. He even spent time in the local jail for writing bad checks. While he was incarcerated he volunteered to work on the sides of the road, as a way to get out of jail for a few hours each day. On one of his outings he caught a large corn stake on the side of the road, secreted it into a paper bag and smuggled it back to his jail cell. That evening as one of the guards brought him his dinner he threw the snake into the man's face. The guard beat him with a night stick until he had to be hospitalized. The details of what actually happened were sketchy and never fully explained. If all this were even true or not, I never discovered. Bob and I had lost touch and everything about the incident was passed around through many mouths and ears. Years later I learned that Bob had been killed while riding a motorcycle out on the four lane when he pulled out in front of an oncoming truck. There is no doubt I was partially responsible for Bob's death. Why did any of it have to happen in that way? Why did we head down that destructive path at such an early age? What were we trying to prove? Why did I turn away to save myself and abandon him for the rest of his life, to alcoholism and eventual destruction?

Could anyone have saved him and did he want to be saved?

During my stint at military school access to alcohol was impossible until my final year. I had become an officer in the cadet corps and consequently had more freedom that most of the other students. My room was located in the junior barracks and was a block or so from the actual campus. Out in the woods behind the barracks where I stayed was a ravine of sorts and deep woods. There I secreted alcohol, smuggled back from rare trips away from campus. One of my roommates would go out back at the break following the three hours long study period. We would swill down enough of the forbidden liquid to get a good buzz going and then return to our room, extremely jubilant. Having alcohol in any form was an honor council offence and expulsion was the penalty. No one ever suspected anything and we continued our dangerous exploits for the rest of the academic year. I now attribute our foolish ways to total boredom. Frequently on the Saturday nights we were allowed to go to town we obtained beer from an elderly black man who worked at the local service station and was more than willing to buy us alcohol for a small tip. We drank the beer as fast as we could to promote a quick high and then went to the movie theater and watched whatever movie was playing. We laughed hysterically at the movie no matter what it was, a brief respite from the military routine that bored most of us to tears.

My first year at the University of Alabama, alcohol was surprisingly available and since I rarely went to class (being totally lost and unprepared for the pre-Med classes I was enrolled in) much of my time was spent in the search for fun. Living away from campus in a rented room in with other guys, there was little to focus on except unhealthy pursuits. I sought them out as though it were a virtue. The second year at the University I started taking art classes and loved it. The students in these classes were very interesting as were the professors. It was in the first art class I met the girl I would eventually marry. Getting to know these truly interesting people was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. I attended class with great anticipation, worked hard, made excellent grades and became close to many of the students and faculty in that department.

Frequently there were parties.

The first I heard about one particular party was on Thursday. It was the middle of August and an acquaintance from art class announced a Halloween party at his apartment for the upcoming Saturday night. At first I thought it was a pretty stupid idea to have a Halloween party in the middle of August, but the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. It kind of went along with the “Dadaist” art movement that I had recently learned about in art history class. Found objects, weird performances and nonsensical kinds of artistic efforts, typified the Dada movement. Doing something that did not really make any sense appealed to me on several different levels, so why not a Halloween party in the middle of August? The problem was that it was going to be a costume party. Having spent all my high school years in a military school, that sort of frivolity had escaped me almost all together. The only party that ever happened at the Military school was a formal dance which was little to no fun. A lot of beautiful girls came with their cadet dates but all were totally untouchable. They wore large pastel colored ball gowns with hair piled high and frozen with hair spray. They moved about the dance floor like upturned camellia blossoms floating in water. These girls were breath taking and exotic beyond description to all of us cadets in the military school. Like wonderful soft, delicious aliens that could be gazed upon, smelled and desired after but only at a distance. There was a girl that frequented our lunch hall on Sundays and other rare occasions, daughter of a faculty member. She was incredibly beautiful, blond, olive skin, poised and when she walked into that basement lunch hall the whole place became as silent as a tomb. It was as though she had stolen our breath. The cadets couldn't talk until she was seated and even then they craned their necks just to get a brief glimpse of her. We looked intently as if memorizing what we could of her in those brief moments she was in site. When she moved I could imagine her body parts moving against her silent, silken under garments, what she smelled like and above all what she must have felt like, the goose bumps on her thighs, the indentation where her bra strap cut into her shoulder and back. Every Sunday night at lights out the entire cadet corps was registering a seven on the Richter scale, vibrating under the covers of our beds from the masturbating, most I am sure thinking about the tan, sensuous, voluptuous, beautiful Gail. It took forever to get used to having girls sitting next to me in class when I finally went to a coed school. Sitting next to a one was a whole different experience. Like being seated next to something radioactive!

And many of them certainly were!

Having decided to go to the costume party there was one big problem, the costume. Absolutely nothing came to mind. I had always been fascinated by the old horror movies I watched as a little boy in the flickering darkness at the Ritz Theater in Dothan Alabama. Boris Karloff made up as Frankenstein staring malevolently into the camera saying, “Arugggg!” and scaring the living crap out of me. James Arness as “The Thing” was one of the all time scary movies, or so it seemed at that age. In the arctic a group of scientists inadvertently thaw a creature from outer space and all hell breaks loose. When the creature broke through the greenhouse door my friend Charles and I actually leaped from our seats, raced up the aisles and exited the theater at a full run. The movie was released in 1951 and I was seven or eight years old. To this day I cannot imagine what my parents were thinking by letting me go to a horror movie that was so intense when I was in the second grade, if they even knew. It was, by the way the first movie that had featured a space monster on film and was directed by Howard Hawks. I totally bought it! The old monster magazines fascinated me when I was a small child and I had quite a collection of them. David, my brother always said that it was because I had so much in common with them. There was a coat hanger that I had with the face and head of the mummy on it. The shoulders of the creature were where the article of clothing hung, the head loomed menacingly above. It stayed in my closet with a robe hanging on it. Every time I opened the closet door there was the mummy standing there staring out. It always gave me a terrible start upon seeing this apparition no matter how often I opened the door. One of our maids claimed that particular coat hanger caused her to have an attack of delirium tremens. This was the same maid, cook and house keeper that drank up all of mother's vanilla extract. She fell out in the kitchen one Saturday morning screaming about spiders and hurled herself under the table kicking chairs away, frantically trying to escape the hairy nasty black things she claimed were all over the ceiling.

Now, being in college, most of my ideas seemed a little too farfetched and immature to actually implement, however….

The Saturday afternoon of the party I still had not figured out what my costume would be. John, a friend from class dropped by and brought two cold six packs of beer. We sat, watched my little black and white television set (that the volume didn't even work on anymore), drank the cold beer and discussed whether or not we would go and what we would wear to the party if we did go. This went on for much of the afternoon. John never decided on anything definite and consequently wore only jeans and a t-shirt with paint on it. After a number of his beers I had what seemed like a fantastic idea. I would walk across the street and buy gauze at the drug store and wrap myself up as the mummy. Having long ago seen Boris Karloff in “The Mummy” and knowing that it had scared the bejesus out of me, I thought, “This would be a perfect costume for a Halloween party in the middle of July.” I walked over and bought the rolls of gauze. Returning to my apartment I removed all my clothes except my underwear, tighty whities they were. John watched through an alcohol haze as I proceeded to wrap myself in the flimsy gauze. Occasionally he would observe, “You’re crazy as Hell, Tommy! I hope you know that.” To insure that I would not lose my costume during the party I used small safety pins every few inches to pin the gauze to itself and to my underwear. This was pretty ingenious considering by this time I had had more than a few beers. The wrapping was extensive and included my entire body and head, with enough of a peep hole left that I could see to drive. When I went into the bathroom to see what my efforts looked like I was amazed at how authentic I looked. As a final touch I rubbed an assortment of green and brown acrylic paint stains into the gauze covering me. Before the party John and I drove to the house of a friend in my little 65 Mustang, where we continued to drink. Everyone there agreed that my costume was awesome.

What a fool I was, especially on alcohol.

The three of us arrived at the party just as it was beginning to get cranked up. There was loud music, available liquor; many snacks and several of the people were actually in costumes. None were quite as unusual as mine. The night wore on with a lot of drinking and dancing, as best I remember. At some point during the party as I was dancing and noticed that the bulk of my gauzy costume was down around my wrists and ankles. Luckily my tighty whities had remained in place so that I was not totally exposed to the crowd there. That was about the time that one of the art professors from the college came up to me and said “We’re seeing a whole lot more of you than we are used to tonight, Tommy!” I took that as a complement. After imbibing way too much alcohol for one evening I went to the bathroom, threw up into the host’s toilet and staggered out to my car. Several friends tried to drive me home insisting that I was way too drunk to drive myself. Like I would let a bunch of alcoholics drive my car! They had no idea how often I drove myself around totally inebriated and that night would be no different. I headed for my apartment. When I was almost half way home I noticed in the rear view mirror that there were red lights flashing from the top of a police car. Lucky for me, it was the campus police. They made me get out of the car and after a couple of minutes determined that although I was totally blasted I was only a block or two from my apartment. They said, “Go straight home and not get back out tonight. If you do we will be watching and take you directly to jail.” I promised that I would do exactly as they said. When they turned to get back into their police car I heard one of them say, “Goddamn if I have ever saw anything like that before!” Returning home I began the ritualistic post party, over drinking, throwing up thing in earnest. I was as sick as I have ever been. My swearing off of alcohol in any form actually lasted for almost two weeks. The night consisted of more puking, some fitful sleep, noises, confusion and the damnable bed spinning around like a runaway carousel. Being so intoxicated I fell directly in to bed, which was only a foot or two from the front door and never even locked the door to my apartment or pulled the strips of tangled gauze from around my body. This turned out to be a lucky thing, depending on how you looked at it. The usual trick of putting one foot on the floor did not work to slow the insane spinning bed down. The night was punctuated with my staggering from the bed to the toilet, where I held on for dear life evacuating the contents of my stomach, over and over even when there was nothing left inside.

What an exceptionally miserable night it was.

Later, I know not how much time passed; I was roused to semi conscientiousness by someone pulling at my wrists and feet. There were two people, both tugging the now rope like gauze and cutting it away from my neck, wrists and ankles. At first it scared me and I did not understand what was happening although I still could not and did not resist. After a couple of minutes I recognized the voice of one of the girls cutting away the detritus that was entangling me. It was someone from school I had dated earlier in the semester. She and a friend who were at the party were cutting the circuitous gauze strips from my alcohol sodden body. They finally left and I never asked them later in the semester why they had come or if indeed it was actually them. Being so out of it, the only way I knew this had actually happened was that the next morning when I awoke, completely naked with a tumor size, pounding headache, still dry heaving I saw the shredded pieces of gauze and my cut up underwear (safety pins still attached) on the floor around my bed.
Did this bother me? Modesty was never one of my virtues after military school, where you bathed daily in a communal shower. It was open, no walls, no privacy, with from twenty to thirty naked boys all at the same time.
Someone woke me up again later that same night and was gently sucking my penis. I could not figure how anybody could do that, considering the state I was in. The smell of regurgitation must have been awful not to mention all the dancing, and sweating. Feeling so miserable and sick it seemed totally unreasonable and ironic that my penis would even respond to stimuli at all. Although I could not even move to see who it was in the darkness and was not sure I even wanted to know, or if indeed this was actually happening or if it was it just a bizarre, particularly realistic dream. And, why in the Hell didn't this happen when I was sober! At that point however, I really did not give a shit one way or another. All I could do was lay there passing in and out of consciousness, swearing off alcohol forever and desperately try not to puke anymore.

I never learned who it was that assaulted me that night and it matters even less now even that it did then.

When I woke up around four o'clock the next day I took two of three hundred aspirin and then walked out to my car. Someone had thrown up all across the dashboard and in the front seat. What sort of idiot would do something like that?


The End