Because of the trouble I got into as a lad, I was sent to Boys Town, a jail in the Midwest for boys too young to go to a real jail.
I was busted by my neighbor who caught me smoking Pot in the garage with his daughter. She would steal Pot from her older brother who no longer lived at home. She’d call me up, “Meet me in our spot”.
In the back of their large 3-car garage was a makeshift tool room, it was enclosed, so it was somewhat private. Best of all there was a huge old overstuffed couch at one end.
We would light up and talk and giggle and make out.
Often we talked smack about the others in our school, how they weren’t as cool, sophisticated or worldly as us.
We’d complain about the horrible TV shows they were always talking about. We would do bad character impressions of them then laugh harder, and take another hit. We’d move on to the teachers: who was cool, who was an ass, who we thought were sleeping with each other on the sly, and who we would sleep with if we could get away with it.
Because we were so cool we only watched two TV shows. Kung Fu was our spiritual beacon. We would spend hours’ discussing the one-off exchanges between Caine and Master Po:
“But master how will I know how to be like the leaf on the river?”
“ ha, ha, ha – the way to do – is to be”
Or master Kan:
“Trust sometimes does bring with it a great reward, even greater than good”
“But master what is greater than good?”
“Love”
Often the poignancy would bring us to tears, and we were sure we were tapping into the great unknown, well at least what was unknown where we lived.
Our other favorite was the Addams Family.
The dark humor and madcap mishaps were brilliantly delightful,
but what was paramount to us, was the love between Gomez and Morticia.
So in our private times together I was Gomez. Though I couldn’t pull off the mustache, I was uniquely extravagant, even at my age. And she was Morticia, my Morticia.
And oh what an excellent job she did of it. She had a small smokey grey embroidered shawl with short sleeves and little wholes throughout, cropped at the bottom of her rib cage. She wore it over a deep black velvet Victorian camisole with round silk buttons down the front, it barely made it to the top of her tight black jeans. Often when she leaned back to laugh I could see her belly button. On her feet – a pair of worn out black cowgirls boots covered with violet and gold stitching.
She even took a semester of French to complete her role. And drive me wild.
On this particular day I had just set the joint down in the little skull shaped ashtray we always used and she said something in French I didn’t understand, but I knew what it meant. Cara Mia I murmured in a dulcet tone as I leaned into kiss her.
I brushed back her flowing silky black hair and gazed into her obsidian eyes and our lips gently locked. As our kiss ensued I slowly started releasing the small round silk buttons from the top down 9 of them then stopped, leaving the last 4 of 13 latched.
She shrugged her shoulders to let the camisole fall open to the point where it was not yet undone. I placed my hand on her chest while we continued deepening our kiss.
I reached down to unsnap her jeans in a similar fashion. I could feel her belly button against the palm of my hand, which I began to slide down beneath her violet lace panties.
And then, just then – the rickety wood door to our fragile hiding place flung open and the vacuum of air pulled a blue grey could of smoke into her fathers face. He waved it away with his hand and began screaming. “ What the hell is going on in hear”, “ Is that Pot I smell?”, “Get you god damn hands off my daughter you rapist”
We were so startled and stoned I had not noticed I still had my hand in her pants.
“No daddy it’s alright, he’s my boyfriend, I love him!”
“Boyfriend, you love him –what?, the hell you say, your to god damn young to have a boyfriend, and Pot, did he put you up to this?, I’m gonna kill him!”
“ No daddy no daddy please, don’t hurt him, I beg you”
“ Hurt, Hurt, I’ll show you Hurt”
And with that he lunged at us and grabbed me by the arm and the neck and pulled me off of my Morticia.
“ You’re mine now mister, you’re comin’ with me, you’re doped-up daughter-raping days are over – starting right now”
He dragged me into his house, threw me into a chair and said, “ you just sit there, don’t make a move and not a sound”
He was picking up the phone when Morticia burst in crying and pleading.
“That’s enough out of you missy. Go to your room. Now. I’ll deal with you later”
Hey hung up the phone and said in a angry self satisfied way, “ They’ll be here soon, very soon.”
He did not have to explain who “they” were. I knew he only dialed 3 digits.
He picked up the phone again and dialed more digits. I knew what that meant too.
“ Listen, we have a situation, you have to get over here right now.”
In 5 minutes my mother walked thru the door.
“You don’t want to know what this son of yours has done.”
She just stood there, looking at him then looking at me and just shaking her head not saying a word.
Just then a knock at the door and he let them in. Two police officers one skinny and one fat and the thought went through my head, “ Great I’m getting busted by Laurel and Hardy aint that some comedic justice for ya’.”
With blood shot eyes and sweat beading on his face he retold his version of the story attempting to make it sound as lewd and dangerous as possible, peppering in expletives to emphasize his wound-ed-ness.
“We best take this to the station”, the fat one said as he approached brandishing his cuffs at me. While the skinny one hung back, I assume to block the door in case I tried to bolt.
Morticia came flying out of her room, I could see a small waft of blue grey smoke in her hair and I knew she had not only been crying in there. She was sobbing and pleading.
She took the skinny one buy the arm,” Don’t do this, he didn’t do anything wrong, don’t listen to my father he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, please!”
“Don’t you worry miss we’ll handle it from here”, Skinny says, pulling her grip away from his forearm.
The hearing was brief. What little my mother had to say carried no weight. She wasn’t there when it happened. She didn’t see anything. She had nothing to offer except, “I can’t believe my own son would be capable of something like this.”
I’m pretty sure that’s what’s called damning by faint praise.
Her father had enough time and enough sense not to rant and rave in court. He laid out his version of the fact with cool detachment that somehow passed for; a father who’s only interested was to protect his daughter. But I knew better. I knew ever since his wife died 5 years back and his son had left home shortly there after, he had spent that entire time drinking him self red faced every night, seething and looking for a fight, looking for some one to blame, and I had become his target Du Jour.
That’s French! Oh Morticia…
The so called lenient sentence of one year in Boy’s Town was predicated on the condition I would never try to contact her or see her ever again.
I knew I would be 16 when I was released. I knew I would get a license. I knew I would get a car. And I knew I would get my Morticia.
That dream is the only thing that kept me alive during the most miserable year of my life, the only suave for the abuse I endured at the hands of the truly guilty hoodlums I was incarcerated with.
And the day did finally arrive. I was placed on the back seat of an ugly old black wreck of a car. It reeked of cigarettes and urine. I figured the younger guys they brought in must have pissed them selves right there on the back seat at the notion of facing the unknown horrors they were about to confront. The driver and I spoke not a word the whole ride home. When he pulled up into my drive way I unceremoniously stepped out and walked back into my mothers house.
She was there waiting, but no “How are you, I’ve missed you, It’s so good to have you home.” No. The first words out of her moth were, “ They’ve moved away. No one knows where. They were just up and gone, I suppose the judge was right, you’ll never see that one again.”
My heart shattered. I began to tremble. I grew weak in the knees. Suddenly I had no idea where I was. I could have thrown up. I could have passed out. But what was worse than the flood of emotions overwhelming me, the true horror consuming me was…
“What’s going to happen to my Morticia now?”