434
ALAN
FRIEDMAN
back of my dress he said bewilderingly, "Silence
is
the golden
rule,
remember? Do unto others silently-in ethics and in the deep
moments." It seemed to me that I did remember something like that.
Still I screamed-at half volume- and he desisted, commenting,
"The exception proves the rule." It was all over my head.
But little by little as I realized the power I had over
him,
my ancient, poignant desire to have his sinuous mind and
thin,
freckled body for my own, and thus to triumph over him, seemed
within reach. Though I was frightened, he was offering them to me–
always tactful and considerate-"your respect, Millie, has to come
first"-until I began both to want him and to love him as the
World's Treasure. Yet so slow were we that we did not actually
consummate our feelings for three years, until I was eleven, and
even then it was a most gentle consummation, and certainly not a
real penetration, partly because Sandy could never quite figure out
how to manage, and partly because of my physical abnormality-of
which more later.
Generally we waited until we were alone at home in the evening,
which happened occasionally, and then I would shower or bathe, and
Sandy would wash me. Or sometimes, even when my parents were
home, I would go into his room and sit next to him while he studied
his Latin or mathematics. You may doubt me when I say that he
really studied, but he had great powers of concentration and won
all
sorts of school prizes in both Latin and mathematics, possibly because
I encouraged his love for them. I came, in fact, to marvel at
his
capacity for simultaneous interest, the daring heights to which
his
intellectual and sexual excitement could hurl itself at both ex·
tremes, brain and groin (Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit
audacia?). When in my later poetry or the very few essays I've had
occasion to write, I speak of "completing the man" or
The easy sweet of the banana
Split: ends of herself in heaven and hell
Bent double
I think back to the evenings with Sandy. Searching in his clothes
with love, I felt that I helped to create, at least in its more
godly
