Parts of a Memoir

The Round Things

On a hot Brooklyn street,
     I, 8-year-old Marty,
Found small milky-white rubber disks, some dried out, some still 	
     damp, lying in the sun.
There were new ones each day.
Friends told me they were thrown from the roofs every night,
     but wouldn't tell me what they were.
I never picked one up -- they looked sticky.
But when I asked these friends 
     what the used-up-looking round things were
     dotting the pavement,
I was laughed back into my house.


Friction

I believed, before I knew any better,
     that babies were made by the friction of mother and father
     rubbing their pubic hair patches together,
Like Boy Scouts rubbing sticks together to make a fire.
It was logical.


The Tropic

At 16,
Someone loaned me Tropic of Cancer.
     It was still banned.
I rode the subway back, 
The book hidden behind another book
     (it was probably science fiction)
Lest a cop arrest me on the spot for possessing
     the most dangerous of contraband.
In between Miller's cosmological rants and yeas
A hard-on was rising in my corduroys
     as I read of Henry's Paris fucks.
I pulled the two books, one covering the other, down
     to cover the fresh bulge of an easily perked 16-year-old.
 

The Device

Nobody ever told me,
     So I believed,
     until I knew better.
That a condom was wrapped around the balls,
     enclosing them, 
     constricting them,
     and not letting the sperm get by.
16-year-old Marty got to know better,
But didn't get to use his knowledge till 19.


The Room with a Hair

Age 19, I rented a room on Macdougal Street,
     five dollars a week,
For the strategic purpose of losing my childhood.
I never stayed here overnight because 
     the first time I turned back the covers,
     I found one curly pubic hair right in the center of the sheet.
I returned once,
     with Marge,
     thin, flat, with black pixie haircut,
     to make my first thrust into another.
It was a simple ceremony.


5/19/96

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