We’re at Joan’s birthday party. She’s 15, a sweet, athletic type Sicilian girl, with olive skin, long black hair, straight white teeth, and dark brown eyes. She’s a real knockout, what you’d call a bomb.
Just us three boys, that’s all that got invited. We think that’s kind of odd, as Joan has some girl friends. Her mom’s there, and smells a little liquored up, but she’s not in bad shape. Joan’s old man’s bulldog’s lying in the corner. We know not to bother the dog. Everyone knows not to bother that dog. After cake, candles, and such things, her mom says Joan has a surprise for us. Joan’s been taking gymnastics lessons and she wants to show us what she’s learned.
Joan steps out in just a tutu and a bra, bows her head, and drops to her knees. She starts writhing around on the floor showing off some of her tricky moves. Joan doesn’t look too happy about what she’s doing, but then, she never was one to go around with a silly smile pasted all over her face.
We’re sitting in chairs in a circle watching her routine. All of a sudden, I become keenly aware that I’m not wearing my jockey under pants. Yeah, Joan looks good down there. I know now what it feels like to fall in love.
I’m in trouble, and don’t really want to move around. I sure would like to get down on the floor with our birthday girl, and demonstrate some of my own moves.
She gives a little stumble, and I move to help her get up. This gains the attention of the dog, who gives a snarl, showing off his beautiful canine dentures. Well, that wasn’t a very good idea, was it? Sometimes knights in shining armor make big mistakes.
Joan’s mom just sits there watching us and smiling. She’s making sure everything’s under control. Us guys cross our legs, fold our hands, and stay that way. We’re all leaning kind of forward watching Joan. Joan just keeps moving around the floor panting, sweating, and getting all dirty. She moves her body faster and faster, this way, and that. You can tell the girl’s working hard.
Joan’s mom lets it go on for a while. Then she claps her hands together hard, and tells Joan she can go get dressed now. She turns to us and tells us thanks for coming and do come up and see Joan sometime.
We just sit there, and I tell Joan’s mom that we’d like to wait for just a few minutes. We’d like to sit here so we can say goodbye to Joan.
Joan comes out, her head sunk in her breastbone. I tell her how much we enjoyed ourselves, and we’ll see her around in school tomorrow. This gives us a little time to collect ourselves before we head for home. I decide right then and there, that I’m going to marry Joan, and get her away from that dog, and all the other shit she has to put up with around her place.
After leaving Joan’s party we’re presented with a problem, first it’s late, almost ten o’clock on a Friday night. Everyone at my place is going to be asleep, and the door locked. It’s not the best neighborhood in the worlds you know. In no way am I going home and bang on the door until someone comes down and lets me in. That would make the mother excessively cross, and none of us wants to face that after our experience of the evening, an experience that has left the three of us horny as hell.
We don’t want to go home with Bill, because it’s Friday night, and his old man is going to be drunk, all out of sorts and mean--ready to fight. No one, and I mean no one, is ready to get the shit kicked out of him on a Friday night. Not after our nice time at Joan’s place. It kind of left us in a state of being totally destroyed and helpless with Joan’s acrobatic moves.
That leaves Don’s place as the only and favorite choice. Don has fifteen brothers and sisters, so of course they don’t lock the door. I mean, what kind of right-minded burglar is going to try to sneak into a house with fifteen kids. For one thing, there wouldn’t be any money in it with so many mouths to feed, and, of course, the family would attack him, they’d tear him to pieces.
This leaves us with no alternative. We decide to go over to Don’s place to spend the night. You never saw such a place. Kids of all ages sprawled out everywhere. All of them sleeping sound in various stages of undress. They’re lying on the couch, they’re lying on all the chairs, they’re lying all over the floor, they’re just lying everywhere—a seemingly endless sea of sleeping humanity.
Don says we can sleep anywhere on the floor, and we are supposed to keep our hands off any of his sisters or he’ll kill us. We know he means that.
Finding a comfortable spot on the floor, I’m laying there sleeping as best I can. Around three in the morning, I suddenly hear a little noise up near my head and my eyes pop open. There towering above me are a pair of the prettiest legs I have ever seen. They remind me of some of the legs in pictures in some of the cock books down at Union News Stand. Visions of Joan doing her acrobatic routine immediately flash into my head. I can’t resist. I reach out and grab hold of a slim, beautiful ankle. The owner of said ankle lets out a scream, and I jerk back my hand as quick as I can, and pretend to be dead asleep.
Don wakes up and wants to know what’s going on? He notices his sister Sally standing there looking kind of shocked and funny. Don hugs her and tells her to go back to sleep. He tells her that she’s been sleep walking again, and that she shouldn’t be making such a disturbance.
Next morning we get up and have breakfast. The whole crowd’s sitting around a big table in the kitchen. Don’s mother is passing around the table plopping down a small slice of cornmeal mush for each of us, with no syrup on the plates. She wants to know who Bill and I are, where did we turn up from. Don tells her we’re friends of his, and can she please give us something to eat. I eat the mush and of course, it leaves what’s left of my teeth all gritty and funny feeling.
Robert says, "I’m a 68-year-old retired engineer, living in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia (one of the river wards). I only write about the urban environment, as that’s what I know about."