and scraped elbows from other sorts of play, and treated with various folk remedies: rubbing the inflammation with sand, which hurt so much worse that ceasing to do it helped a lot; pissing on it, if the girls weren’t around and if the stream—preferably one’s own rather than one’s buddy’s—could be aimed on target. To add one’s uric acid to the medusa’s picric, they would understand later, might be rationalized as fighting fire with fire; in any case, the fire always won. And now that we have their little weenies out . . .
— Playing a different sort of “I See Christmas” with Sister Ruth, not at the rivershore but up in the Prospers’ attic at 213 Water Street, across and two down from the Newetts’ 210. “Here we go,” Narrator already imagines his mate sighing, to whom this tidbit will not be news: “ You show me yours, I’ll show you mine , et cet. What else isn’t new? And who cares?” She and Sammy, she’ll remind him [her two-year-older brother, killed in a Vietnamese helicopter crash back in the high 1960s]
played Doctor a few times before they sprouted pubic hair, but does she write poems about it?
Why not, love? A Petrarchan sonnet, say, its Octave describing in memorable tropes the bold lad’s “Jimmy” (or whatever you-all called it; that’s what Gee’s mom called his timid tool, when she needed to name it) and the sort-of-scared but notuninterested lass’s “Susie” (ditto, changes changed, and those blue-crab nicknames stuck); its Sestet the delicate—one hopes it was delicate!—hands-on inspection of each’s by the other? In the case in hand, so to speak, all quite innocent, actually, as one hopes it was with the young Todd sibs: first the three D’s (a Dare, a Display, a bit of Demonstration), then the four or five T’s (Touch, Tweak, Titillating Tickle or Two). No harm done, and a thing or two learned, by Gee anyhow, up in that wintry attic among rolled-up summer rugs and stacked cartons in some appropriately literal Christmas season, 1939 or thereabouts: he and Neddy in maybe fourth grade, Ruthie in seventh, the three of them parentally dispatched to find a certain box of colored light-strings with which the Prospers (unlike the Newetts) traditionally decorated their screened front porch and entrance doorway. “Long as I can remember,” saucy Ruth surprised them by announcing, “you guys’ve been saying I see Christmas , right? Well, take a good look, and then it’s my turn.” To the boys’ considerable dismay then, she yanked down and stepped out of her step-ins (robin’s-egg blue, as Narrator recalls, though he may be supplying their color from other, later initiatory experiences), hiked up her skirt, and thrust virtually into their faces
the first female pudendum ever seen by George Irving Newett, almost though not quite too embarrassed to look. But “Look!” the bold girl demanded, and look they did: not merely at its ever-so-interesting frontal aspect (which didn’t after all seem totally unfamiliar; Gee guessed he’d maybe seen photographs of nude female statues, but he didn’t recall their having had that fascinating little crease up the middle), but at the betweenand-under part as well, which she insisted they squat down and inspect close up—no poking, though, or she’d kill them both! They duly did, Gee at her orders not only looking at the curious pink puckers between her thighs, but (she gripping his wrist to guide and if necessary restrain him) lightly Touching, Tweaking, and Tickling them, as her brother was not allowed to do.
“Okay, now tit for tat: Let’s see what you ’ve got to offer.” Her own undies snugly back in place, she knelt before them on the dusty boards, hands on her hips, and became the Inspector instead of the Inspected. The boys, having more than once ministered to their sea-nettle stings as aforenoted and enjoyed backyard pissing contests when no one was about, were not unfamiliar with the sight of each other’s
— Playing a different sort of “I See Christmas” with Sister Ruth, not at the rivershore but up in the Prospers’ attic at 213 Water Street, across and two down from the Newetts’ 210. “Here we go,” Narrator already imagines his mate sighing, to whom this tidbit will not be news: “ You show me yours, I’ll show you mine , et cet. What else isn’t new? And who cares?” She and Sammy, she’ll remind him [her two-year-older brother, killed in a Vietnamese helicopter crash back in the high 1960s]
played Doctor a few times before they sprouted pubic hair, but does she write poems about it?
Why not, love? A Petrarchan sonnet, say, its Octave describing in memorable tropes the bold lad’s “Jimmy” (or whatever you-all called it; that’s what Gee’s mom called his timid tool, when she needed to name it) and the sort-of-scared but notuninterested lass’s “Susie” (ditto, changes changed, and those blue-crab nicknames stuck); its Sestet the delicate—one hopes it was delicate!—hands-on inspection of each’s by the other? In the case in hand, so to speak, all quite innocent, actually, as one hopes it was with the young Todd sibs: first the three D’s (a Dare, a Display, a bit of Demonstration), then the four or five T’s (Touch, Tweak, Titillating Tickle or Two). No harm done, and a thing or two learned, by Gee anyhow, up in that wintry attic among rolled-up summer rugs and stacked cartons in some appropriately literal Christmas season, 1939 or thereabouts: he and Neddy in maybe fourth grade, Ruthie in seventh, the three of them parentally dispatched to find a certain box of colored light-strings with which the Prospers (unlike the Newetts) traditionally decorated their screened front porch and entrance doorway. “Long as I can remember,” saucy Ruth surprised them by announcing, “you guys’ve been saying I see Christmas , right? Well, take a good look, and then it’s my turn.” To the boys’ considerable dismay then, she yanked down and stepped out of her step-ins (robin’s-egg blue, as Narrator recalls, though he may be supplying their color from other, later initiatory experiences), hiked up her skirt, and thrust virtually into their faces
the first female pudendum ever seen by George Irving Newett, almost though not quite too embarrassed to look. But “Look!” the bold girl demanded, and look they did: not merely at its ever-so-interesting frontal aspect (which didn’t after all seem totally unfamiliar; Gee guessed he’d maybe seen photographs of nude female statues, but he didn’t recall their having had that fascinating little crease up the middle), but at the betweenand-under part as well, which she insisted they squat down and inspect close up—no poking, though, or she’d kill them both! They duly did, Gee at her orders not only looking at the curious pink puckers between her thighs, but (she gripping his wrist to guide and if necessary restrain him) lightly Touching, Tweaking, and Tickling them, as her brother was not allowed to do.
“Okay, now tit for tat: Let’s see what you ’ve got to offer.” Her own undies snugly back in place, she knelt before them on the dusty boards, hands on her hips, and became the Inspector instead of the Inspected. The boys, having more than once ministered to their sea-nettle stings as aforenoted and enjoyed backyard pissing contests when no one was about, were not unfamiliar with the sight of each other’s
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