Fiction

Excuse me a second: I've written plenty of fiction in my time. I can invent. I can lie. I can flesh a lie with imagination. But whether you believe me or not, I'm telling the exact literal truth in these stories. I portray myself as passive, the "Bonnie" as the initiator? That's how it was. That's how it's generally always been. My story above about talking the little girl into taking her clothes off by telling her that my friend and I were medical students, that's a "male" act: kleptocratic, social, manipulative. But 99% of the time this male has been a responder, not an initiator. Now of course life is complex. If I wanted to get laid, or at least get my hands on some heinie, I've always known that all I had to do was sit some place. Some female would come along. I sit with her, and next thing you know: Cops and Robbers.

Apropos: with passive fishing, you see what bites. I can throw my lure and see what I can entice, making my lure do tricks. Or I can leave my lure just sit. Currents in the water alone will move my lure, make it wiggle: maybe far more alluringly than any artificial wiggles I could add on. When it comes to females, what bites often turns out to be far better than you'd have guessed from appearances. For one thing, if she comes to you, you know she's interested. Chase after Pamela Sue Anderson, and all you're likely to find are a lot of other jockeying males: nobody getting his finger wet regardless of what Pamela Sue might actually want. If one males kills all the other males, then he can try for her complete attention. If a male merely stands aside, Pamela Sue may get bored with all the jousting and hubbub and see that the lone male does have time to get his finger wet. These days, when it comes to fish, I'm an impatient angler. I get big catches--fifty or eighty good bluegills, a couple of dozen bass--being very aggressive with my lure. But my best catches ever have come from leaving the lure just sit: nine to seventeen pound bass, thirty pound carp ... Passive fishing works very well: if you're patient.

In the present story I wasn't conscious of using myself as a lure. That does not mean that I wasn't one. I went hard after the girl with the baby carriage in another story above. That was typical "male." But she's the one who'd knocked me down with her looks. It doesn't matter what she "meant." She did it. Causality is complex. Only a human being would be stupid enough to believe that what they "intend" is the complete story.

OK. Bonnie and I are on the roof top. She wants to do what she wants. Fine with me. We climb down the tree and go into the garage. Bonnie takes her clothes off. I too strip. She wants to see my little peanut, fine, I'll ... But what's there in its place is standing like a pole! It seems to be attached to me, but I don't recognize it. I knew my staff stood far above those of the other kids, but this thing seemed to double those previous manifestations. Huge! Alien! Where's my familiar little peanut? Er, it doesn't usually look like this, I tell her.

Bonnie didn't seem to mind a bit how it looked. I think she thought it looked just grand. But she played along with my words: What does it usually look like? she asks. Um, I'd show you if I could.

These decades latter I have to reflect. Why did I want her to see me small? Just because that's how the other girls had always seen me? I'd wanted to show the new difference to my original friend. She'd fled. Maybe she fled because she was suddenly too interested: the way I fled from Dorla at her most inviting. (Actually, that may be a bit ahead in this narrative.) Maybe I thought this extra tall erection was some kind of disease. Maybe it was.

Fast aside: age thirty-seven or so, I'm selling art to a gallery in McLean VA. The owner was elderly Virginia elegant. She had a dynamite, buxom nineteen year old working in framing. On my tenth or twelfth visit she invites me and a client who'd bought one of my pieces back to her house. The patron was a big bosomed fag hag: hung around with the queers. Not: let her husband fuck her; just "fuck her husband." After an awful lot of gin, the owner says to me, "Becky" (the framer) "says you have a big banana. Is that true?" "I know one way you can find out." Such heterosexual goings on were too much for the fag hag (I'd already had my face in her crotch: zero response). She left. I stayed. For a couple of days.

---

I squeeze in one other reflection. Three cub scouts are camped out in a pup tent. One kid says, I've got a boner. Two other chimes start ringing. One kid shines a flashlight under the blanket. A little soldier is standing at attention. On the other side is a bigger soldier, standing tall. Towering between them is Mt. Baldy: a carnival float, Cleopatra's Tower, the George Washington Monument ... I felt like Alex in Wonderland who had just encountered a bunch of Drink Me bottles. I knew that the kid with the little soldier could pee three times further than either of his companions. The sergeant to my left could out pee me too. The little aperture jets the most energetic stream. I was content to come in last place in that respect.

An hour or so later Bonnie and I are back on the roof. Quick! Come back down! It's normal!

Not by the time we got into the garage it wasn't. And so it went, all summer. Bonnie wants to see it both ways; I can only show it to her standing on end and stretched ridiculously. One time I say, Wait a minute. No one can see us up here anyway. Why go to the garage? I'll just open my pants right here. Too late.

This Bonnie was forever harping on one theme that made me uncomfortable. Her older sister sometimes wore Kotex. She didn't know why, but if that was part of being female and growing up, she wanted to try it. She wanted me to go into the house and take one of my mother Kotex. Now we're back to the stealing part of Cops and Robbers. Show is fine; but not the stealing. I never answered her. I just put her off.

School started again. It would be years and years before I ever spoke to Bonnie again. That sequel may too come to be told. But first, back to Dorla.

Note: Patience in Fishing:

Actually patience isn't enough: not even Shakespeare's "Patience in the monument." One also has to remain alert. If the fish so much as breathes on the lure one has to know it. No, don't set the hook: just know that the fish is there: considering. Wait till the fish has picked up the lure: and still wait. Tune yourself to the line as though it were your vas diferens. You moment you feel decision in the fish--the fish will swim a bit differently, with a touch of purpose--then set the hook. It's exactly the same with dames.

And, I'll bet, it's exactly the same with guys: if it's the gal who's doing the fishing.

Gotcha! thinks Moby Dick to Ahab, as the harpoon sticks his flank.