Even at 92 and flat on your back in a coma with a code blue monitor hooked to you, your knockers still can't be equaled anywhere on this planet, Auntie Gin. I swear they are the size and shape of the lid on a grand piano. You've babbled non-stop for four days and four nights. It's turned into music. I'm trying to believe you're singing Edith Piaf. The humdrum lulls me into nana land and… I dream I'm in summer vacation bible school and you are the teacher. You wear a choir robe and seem quite unaware your tits are leaking. You have eyes in the back of your head. Cowboys live in your hair. I'm the only adult in class. I'm circulating a petition for conjugal visitation. You slam me on the head with my dead mother's straw wedgies. You scream, "Shut up and sit down Sammy. Sammy's a little shithead. Sammy's going to be very rich someday." The scritch scritch scritch of Nurse Daisy's nylon uniform wakens me. She's at the foot of the bed checking your ankles. They swell rapidly and turn sour blue—a sure sign the time is near. Daisy modestly administers an anal analgesic and swabs your parched lips. Neatly re-ties the bow on your gown. Brushes your pure white hair away from your magnificent though now pallid face. I have an urge to ask her to remove the goddam Virgin Mary doll that hovers above your bed. I remember how you hate the fucking Catholic Church. Used to call the pope The Poop. I have a sneaking hunch you're babbling because you're trying to hex the doll out of your presence. I've been sitting with you so long now I'm talking to myself. Can you jumpstart me, Gin? If you can hear me, bite my thumb. No? I'm a hostage in this room. If you don't mind, I'll just take the elevator down to my Lexus for a smoke break.
Impoverished hospital guests with infirm relatives sleep in their cars and hang around the parking lot. Looks like they've been pissing on my tires and somebody's smeared something like peanut butter on my windshield—jeez, I hope it's just peanut butter. These jerks gawk at me and my wheels. So I'm rich and handsome for chrissake. What am I supposed to do? Drive a Rent a Heap and cover my face with a paper bag? Can't they just leave me alone? I bury my face in my hands and weep like a teenage girl. I can't leave Gin here—I can't stay—I can't leave. Heading into the fifth day now and I'm a catastrophe. I slide over to the passenger side and droop my head between my knees. I snort a couple lines… then jolt! out of the car and strut around the hospital promenade with Gin's left arm clinging to me. She's decked out in silver sequins to match her glistening silver hair. Her bodice is cut to below her belly button. Her tits beg release. Traffic jams. TV cameras appear. People want to know who I am and how I got so fucking lucky and …then suddenly I'm nothing but stepped on rat shit. There's no Gin on my arm. I grovel and drag one stair at a time to the eleventh floor where every poor son of a bitch is either dying or waiting for someone else to die.
Nurse Daisy exits Gin's room reading a thermometer. "108 degrees, Sir". Christ! What living thing can survive at a hundred-and-eight-degrees? Daisy says, "Goll, Dr. Bruckner, you looking mighty like what the cat dragged in. You hasn't eat since I don't know. Can't I git you some nice Saltines or something?" Saltines. Shit! My gut is on the floor and trampled by a movie theater crowd. I stink—like rotten potatoes. "Mayb you like to take a lil spit shower in Miss Anderson' toilet, Dr. Bruckner," offers Daisy. I'm sure she means well. Why do I feel so offended?
Gin's knockers rise and fall at forty-five-beats per minute. I'm keeping track. Shortly they will drop to a pitiful few—and then the beats will rise again—a known medical phenomenon. Commonly occurs soon before death. Rapid. Slow. Rapid. Then nothing.
My urge to bite Gin's boobs persists. Not a carnivorous sort of thing. Not a beastie sort of thing. A special display of tremendous affection. I don't want to hurt her. I want a taste of her to remember—something to savor when she's gone. I used to bite my wives. They loved it. Shirley's toes. Madeline's nipples. Nadine's earlobes. I bite my own thumbs. It feels good. I imagine Gin's tits to be the wonderfully spongy texture of Hostess Twinkies. God knows I know the nature of tits. I'm in the business. I started young…as in: Seventh grade: Bobby Zimmerman says he'll give me two-dollars-and-fifty-cents if I can set him up to touch Auntie Gin's titty-boobs even if it's through her dress. Easy. She's always proud to have me join her for church. She puts her arm around me and pretends I'm her kid. Bobby sits next to me. I excuse myself to go potty. Bobby slips in beside Gin. Magic! He cops a feel. I get my two-fifty. Word gets out. Vern Jensen wants to peer at them while she's wearing her satin robe. A buck-fifty—his whole month's allowance. Big bucks! Easy set-up. I'm great at set-ups. Jeff Reynolds wants to get close enough to sniff her cleavage—she powders it—another buck-fifty. And so it goes. Billy Ryan. Tom Watkins. Roger Gomez. About that time a seedy senior at the ballpark sells me a lid of grass for ten bucks and my enterprise enlarges. I keep half the weed for my own smoking pleasure, roll the rest into tidy joints, sell them for two-fifty each to Stephanie and Blanche Johnson and Judy Joy (one-fifty plus a blow job), Marilyn Moore, and so on. I deal tits and weed all through high school. Auntie Gin was right. "Sammy's going to be very rich someday." I should have won a Junior Achievement Award. (I don't think there was a classification for Tits and Weed.)
I smell Arrid deodorant. Surely not. No one uses Arrid anymore, do they? Maybe Nurse Daisy. Mom used Arrid. So did Gin. Back in the forties…1942: My dad's at war. Mommy's at the store. The neighbor lady smothers my face between her huge breasts. It's very moist here. Her deodorant plugs my nose. I can barely breathe. I like it. I'm teething. I gnaw voraciously on her breastbone. I'd like to stay here. I wonder why she holds me like I'm a piece of her? As if I were her own. Why doesn't this lady have a baby of her own? I'm not complaining. I wonder why she brushes my tiny hands away from her nipples? Mommy lets me suck on hers. Aren't nipples for sucking? I hope Mommy goes to the store again. Soon.
Jesus! I'm 61 and rolling in dough. I build breasts for a living. I stopped counting when I'd done 10,000. I'm sorry to say I've never managed to build a pair as magnificent as Gin's. God knows I've tried. I chose all three of my wives because I thought they each had potential for grand piano lid knockers like Gin's. I failed.
Gin's knockers rise and fall at only seven-beats-per-minute now. Her babble has turned to mush. Her cheeks are so sunken they suck against each other and cause an odd popping noise. It's very unattractive—quite beneath the dignity of this grand lady but I know it is beyond me to make it cease. Her dentures are in a container around here somewhere. If I knew where they were, I'd shove them back into her mouth and make the popping stop. Her pupils are hidden in a clouded glaze. I doubt she can see me. I talk to her as if she can. I smile sweetly as I tell her I've always wanted to chew into her knockers. I want to see if I can get a little smile back. God I'd love to hear her Edith Piaf. Hymne A L'Amour. If the sky should fall to the sea… Gin? Can you do Edith for me? Hymne A L'Amour. Gin? Gin? Nothing. Of course I get nothing.
Is this the time to make my move? I will remove my dentures—leave no mark. Her body remains warm. A gesture of great adoration. Mon amour, mon amour. Mon deesse! This goddess who has led me through every day of my life. Grand as the Statue of Liberty but beautiful beyond the most exquisite of skies. Yet stalwart. I wish that fucking Mary doll weren't hovering overhead. What does my desire have to do with reality? I'm thinking crazy. Maybe I could pretend Gin is Shelley Winters—just for a moment. Then it will be OK. Won't it? I mean if she's not my best friend? Damn! The guy across the hall distracts me, wailing over his wife. "Stella, Stella." Now I'm bawling. The name Stella makes me cry. Mother's name. Shit. I can't do this. I've had all my adult life to pull off this gesture of adoration and I've failed!
And now only minutes remain with your warm heart beating Gin. Mon Dieu! Have I ever really just said thank you? I mean thank you, Gin! For summer vacation, Gin, when you invited me and four friends to set aside our Wednesday evenings for Culture Night. Let's go there, Gin. Just me and you. We are seated on the floor of your screened-in back porch. You tower above us wearing a white cotton blouse tied in a knot at the waist supporting those hefty beautiful breasts. We giggle because we feel so small in your presence. You bend over us from the waist—your great breasts threatening. You serve us coleslaw with little bits of pineapple in cobalt blue custard cups and lemonade with maraschino cherries. I hate maraschino cherries and hide them in your geraniums. Surely you must find them later but you never mention it. You sing to us in French. Edith Piaf stuff. And you waltz to Bal Dans Ma Rue and our mouths gawp as you fill the air with your joy of life. Your La Vie En Rose makes Roger Gomez shoot his pants and he has to excuse himself. Five dopey teenage boys who might otherwise have been playing ball at the park but instead we're enchanted with the magnificent lady who sings French. You, Gin. You! Jezebel—it was you who taught us the real meaning of sexy. It was your very presence that taught us the burning meaning of desire. You claimed you meant to teach us French and culture. But your passionate dancing with your arms in an oval above your head was far too overwhelming for us to concentrate on words. What we learned was feelings. And beneath your arms—Arrid. The same Arrid that was there when you smothered me against your breastbone as a baby. And you wrapped those great dancing arms around me when you taught me to tie a bow that would not come untied. And it was you who taught me how to have a friendship which would not end. Or does friendship end with death, Gin? All the more reason I want to consume you. Taste your flesh and hold you in my lips. Did you feel this way when you learned your Sonny Lawson would never come home from WWII. A particular taste? Did Mother feel this way when she learned Daddy would never come home from WWII? Did she wish she had a mouthful of him to savor? I'll bet the two of you had no idea I would have a memory of those days. Age three. I do. Mother and you, Gin, sitting at our kitchen table—taking turns holding me—weeping and saying, "Our little man, our little man." As if I were the only man left in your lives. Wasn't there an empty place left in your mouth that wanted to be filled with your Sonny Lawson?
I don't want blood, Gin. I just want to soft-bite you. Maybe gnaw on your breastbone. I've always had a conflict with women and blood. Remember? I hate to admit it but even at 61, one of the grossest things on earth to me still is a wetsopped bloody Kotex…About the time me and my buddies were popping our first cherrycunts and the guys were crowing in the locker rooms, I was lying awake nights trying to stop puking over what I'd done to Stephanie Johnson's pussy. I wasn't proud about it. Blood combined with pussy has never made sense to me. Thank god for your counseling, my good neighbor Gin. I was always able to talk to you. Even as a teenager. You taught me the facts of life from the basics up. Like pimples. And women and blood. Adults didn't talk about sex back then. You used to say "Any time, Sammy, just come to your Auntie Gin. I'll always be here for you." And you were. When I nearly flunked Algebra, you tutored me night and day. Helluva neighbor. And when mother was ready to throw me out on the curb for smoking pot, you saved my ass. You did your magic and got her to admit that she and Dad had smoked pot with Les Ellison when his orchestra played The Esquire for a month in nineteen-thirty-eight. Man, was that a shocker. And you, me and her, ended up getting wasted to Stairway to Heaven shortly before she died. Now there's a story that couldn't have happened without you, Gin.
Damn, I wish you hadn't insisted on calling yourself Auntie all these years. Maybe things between you and me would have turned out differently.
