Little Boy (21 page)

I will never forget Maria’s WEFT. Her breasts
(“Wings”), were enormous. C-cups on a girl barley five feet tall—my
goodness! Atop each sat a large mahogany nipple, each with just a
hint of peach fuzz surrounding it. As I stroked them with my
tongue, they began to toughen, turning from flesh to leather, and
then perk. Soon they were taut brown ovals surrounded by milky
marshmallow. Massaging her breasts with my hands, it was as if I
was finessing Jello-filled balloons rather than human flesh. Had
they been balloons, they wouldn’t have burst that day, because I
was gentle, tame, and patient.

I was in heaven. And from the sounds she was
making—the ‘ohs,’ the ‘ahs’—I could tell that she was relishing the
moment. Tempted to take off my pants right then and there, I drew
back for a moment, shifting my glare away from her breasts, and at
her panties. I slipped them off.

Her vagina (“Engine”) was a triangular mass
of black curls. I was so accustomed to looking at porno magazines
that I didn’t realize that, unless a girl’s legs were spread out,
her labia remained buried by hair. With my head squarely between
her thighs, I nudged my tongue between her two plum-colored lips. I
have to admit I didn’t know what to do next. As I withdrew, a
stream of saliva formed between my tongue and her pussy, and then
snapped. She was already so wet. Aching to make her come, I started
to lap at her lips and clit. I did it for so long that my tongue
hurt.

Maria’s body (“Fuselage”), a five-foot, half
inch ripple in a pond, welcomed my wanting lips. In between trips
to her engine, I peppered her arms and legs and tummy with kisses.
Her eyes remained closed; her body stayed still.

Her ass (“Tail”) was a perfect sphere, as if
it had been designed with a compass. No bone could be felt, only
soft flesh, just enough in each cheek for one hand a piece.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked. Looking as
though she’d been sedated, Maria smiled and said, “I’m
perfect.”

After she climaxed, she turned onto her side
and looked like a woman posing in a French oil painting. I kicked
off my sneakers and snuggled next to her.

We were lost in the moment.
If this is
what it’s like to be drunk
, I thought,
then I have to start
drinking
. But I knew that what we were doing was infinitely
better. It had to be, for it was not a solitary stupor but a mutual
delight.

It wasn’t “intercourse”; it wasn’t “sex”; it
was, truly, “making love.” And on that day Maria taught me more
about love than I thought possible. I loved her so much that I
wanted to give her that kind of pleasure all of the time. I thought
this kind of feeling was nonexistent in other relationships for me
and for others. Still do.

***

I don’t think that anyone ever loved a girl
as much as I loved Maria. In fact, nobody will ever love anyone as
much as I still love her. And to this day, I love Maria because she
trusted me so much. Her life was in disarray when we met. Between
her lousy father and shitty friends I can’t understand how she
survived. She was just another Italian girl from Queens, with just
another working class dysfunctional family. But when she was with
me she was the first female President, a CEO, a Nobel Prize winner.
Sadly, society judges people based on paper and not honor.

As I sit here writing, I can honestly say
that one of my greatest regrets is that I never helped Maria with
her reading. She spoke well when she wanted to, as if she was a
scholar. But she read very slowly, and stumbled over vocabulary
that came second nature to me. I once told her that she may have
dyslexia. I should’ve encouraged her to get tested. Because of me,
I guess, she never did find out why she read so poorly, or improve
much.

I think her reading problem was rooted in her
overriding lack of trust in people. One day, for instance, I
remember Maria crying on the phone, telling me that when she was
asked to recite the Emancipation Proclamation in front of her
class, she got so nervous that she ran out of the room and cried in
the hallway. She’d said, “Four score and seven months ago,” rather
than “four score and seven years ago.” It was a harmless error, but
she was horrified. A similar thing had happened to her years
before. Maria had this problem, I think, because she didn’t trust
her classmates. She always thought they would laugh at her, whether
she read well or not.

But when she read all alone in silence, she
had less trouble. She could zip through a Shakespeare play with
uncanny ease. It still took her a while to read it, but she adored
Shakespeare. In fact, she loved almost any book she put her little
hands on. Reading alone in her room, in the still of the night, was
probably an escape for her.

I wish I knew back then what I know now. I
never thought I would leave Maria, or that she would leave me. The
confidence I had in our relationship was best expressed in the
Beatles song
, The Long and Winding Road
. It goes:
The
long and winding road that leads to your door, will never
disappear
.
You left me waiting here, a long, long time ago.
Don’t keep me standing here. Lead me to your door
.

That was our song, believe it or not. We both
felt as if life were a long winding road, nothing more, nothing
less. It’s funny, because even at that young age, both Maria and I
had very mature attitudes about life. Our peers dreamt of becoming
doctors and lawyers and engineers. But Maria and I understood at a
very young age that there is nothing in the world more meaningful
than a loving relationship between two human beings. Anyone can
become a lawyer; anyone can study that hard. Few can truly share
themselves with a loved one for a lifetime. Sometimes I wonder if
anyone ever has ever come close, besides me and Maria.

Neither of us ever placed much importance in
school. We both thought,
we’re all going to die, so while we’re
here, just be good to everyone, and try to enjoy life
. But
still, everyone, especially parents, keeps telling us that grades
and material things were so important, and that if you didn’t make
a lot of money, you were a loser. But I think a loser is a person
that equates success and money with happiness. I’d rather live in a
hovel and give myself to another rather than live in a mansion and
be alone and married or alone and unmarried. That’s what I thought
back then, that’s what I think now.

Maria felt much the same way; however, I
think it was harder for her to come by considering her tough life.
For me, once I met Maria, it was an immediate and logical
discovery. For her, it took time, effort, and, most importantly,
trust. But we agreed just the same. We just wanted to be happy. We
didn’t want to bother anyone. It was pretty simple, really. But if
we’d told anyone but each other about our passions, we’d be accused
of being crazy.

Parents should tell their kids: “Listen, the
two most important things in this world are, first, be happy, and
second, avoid hurting others in the process.” That’s it. Why bother
screwing with kids’ heads about getting the best job, or the best
grades, or worshipping a phony baloney God. Think about it: Does it
really make any sense to tell a child otherwise? I think a lot of
kids grow up hurting people—sometimes physically, sometimes
emotionally—because they are concentrating so intently on their
plans for success that they forget simply to be happy. People
should stop and look around once in a while and realize that life
is very short. Even seventy or eighty years of life on Earth is a
terribly short time, when compared to rest of history. So why
bother hurting yourself, or anyone else? Why bother killing
yourself through an insane amount of work? Why bother?

Maria put it best the day we first made love.
Afterward, she turned to me and said: “I want to find someone to
grow old with.” What a wonderful concept. In that one sentence,
Maria summarized my entire philosophy, only I didn’t call it that,
because I didn’t realize how special that feeling was, how worthy
it was of being called a philosophy.

Maria and I understood that life on Earth is
short, and often sinister, so you might as well find someone to
help you along, to make you happy. I remember trying to explain
this philosophy to you, Mom. You accused me of being high on drugs,
so I kicked a table in the kitchen, hurt my foot, and stormed out
of the room. At least you never accused me of being on drugs
again.

And you never understood, either, and that’s
why you were always so depressed and angry. Like the rest of this
crazy world, you were waiting for a miracle to come, never
realizing that the world and life itself were a miracle. The only
important thing is
here and now
.

Maria and I thought that organized religion
was stupid, and it is. For some reason or another, a group of
people occasionally assumes spiritual power over others, convincing
the others—sometimes millions, other times just a few dozen—that
they know a little more about the meaning of life than the rest.
And with that, those in power get everyone to feel bad when they
make mistakes. But what is religion if not a fiat organized by just
a few people with the skill to sway the masses?

I think it’s evil for anyone to say they know
what God said or did, just because they read a bunch of old books.
If we’re all sinners like they claim, if we’re all imperfect, then
who’s to say they know for sure what a particular passage in the
Koran or Bible means?

And it’s all part of the smokescreen created
by parents and teachers and priests and ministers and rabbis—the
smokescreen that hides the truth and makes people think that
there’s more to life than simply being happy. Because once a person
thinks there’s more to life than being happy—not making tons of
money, not being a “success,” not being a good Catholic or Jew or
Muslim—then he’ll seek a path toward an imaginary ideal. And it’s
when you seek such an ideal that other people, the people who claim
to have already reached it, begin to control you. It’s a tragedy,
really. And yet it persists.

***

With those thoughts in my heart, I was
determined to never let Maria go. I remember thinking after we made
love,
I’ve found my religion. It’s Maria. And Maria’s WEFT
.
That’s how I knew I loved her. Because I’d shunned religion and my
family for my whole love, but in Maria there was something I could
believe in.

But even though I loved her dearly, I
couldn’t help but get a little jealous now and then.

It’s amazing, you know, how you can want
something so badly, and even visualize it or whatever, but still
act so differently than you need to. What I mean is, I knew that my
jealousy was against my desire to live in the here and now. After
all, what is jealousy besides obsessing over what has happened, or
what could happen, rather than what is?

It was so weird that I don’t know how to
describe it. See, I wanted Maria all to myself. The way I saw it,
her father and friends had screwed up her past, and she had no
future to speak of when I met here. So she was mine.

It started so innocently. Maria would tell me
that she was going to her grandmother’s house, for example, and I
would feel left out. Or sometimes a guy would call her
house—usually a guy that wanted to talk to her sister—and I would
ask Maria, “Did you speak to him? Did he flirt with you?” This
would make her very angry.

One night, I remember, we were talking on the
phone for three and a half hours, and finally, at midnight, she
said, “I gotta go do my math homework.” I looked at the clock. It
was 12:01, and we both had to be up by six. But I didn’t care. I
was actually jealous of her homework.

And this feeling only got worse. One day she
told me that her and her mom talked about a problem she had in
school. I went ballistic. “Why were you talking to your mom about
school?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I thought you confided in me
about that stuff.”

“A.J., I tell my mom things, too.”

“Yeah, but who’s your best friend?”

“My best friend? I don’t know. My mother is,
I guess”

“What do you mean? I think
you’re
my
best friend. Not my mother. I’d take you over my mother any day.
So, am I your best friend, or what?”

“A.J., what’s your problem?”

“I’m just saying that a girl can’t be best
friends with her mother. I mean, your mother has to be your best
friend, because she’s your mother.”

“Huh? You’re acting really weird, A.J. What’s
wrong with you?”

What’s wrong with you?
As those words
echo in my mind, it’s hard to believe that they came from Maria’s
lips, long before the shit hit the fan. She asked me that a lot,
now that I think about it. I never bothered answering. I felt bad
that I was barraging Maria with my questions. I really did. At the
same time, it was almost as though she didn’t remember what had
happened between us, and how much we’d shared. Maybe she did and I
just didn’t notice it. I don’t know. I just changed the subject,
hoping the feelings I had within me would just go away.

Chapter 11

Venial Sins

As always, for Labor Day Weekend, my parents
and I drove down to my grandmother’s timeshare in Virginia. It was
sort of my family’s house, meaning that my grandmother and my
parents and sister, as well as my father’s entire family, all
shared the place year-round. One time we went down there for
Christmas, but we couldn’t go in the water because it was too damn
cold. It was cool, though, to look out the window and see the waves
crashing ashore as we sat around the fireplace.