WHACKING OFF
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tub, the tile floor, the four toothbrushes-God forbid !-and just as 1
am about to unlock the door, imagining 1 have covered my tracks,
my heart lurches at the sight of what is clinging like snot to the toe
of my shoe. 1 am the Raskolnikov of jerking off-the sticky evidence
is
everywhere! Is it on my cuffs too, my hands,
is it in my hair?
AIl
this 1 wonder, even as 1 come back to the dinner table, scowling and
cranky, to snap incoherently at my father when he opens his mouth
full of red jello and says, "I don't understand what you have to lock
the door for. That to me is beyond my comprehension. What is
this,
a home or a Grand Central Station?" "... privacy ... human
being ... around here
never,"
1 grumble at him, then push aside my
dessert to scream "I don't feel
well-will everybody leave me alone?"
After dessert-which 1 eat finally because 1 happen to like jello,
even if 1 detest them-after dessert 1 am back in the bathroom once
again. 1 burrow through the week's laundry until 1 uncover one of
my flat-chested sister's soiled brassieres. 1 string it up, a scarecrow to
bring on the dreams--one shoulder strap over the knob to the bath–
room door, the other on the knob to the linen closet. "Oh beat it,
Big Boy, beat it to a red hot pulp"- so 1 am being urged by the
little cups of Hannah's bra, when a rolled-up newspaper whacks
angrily up against the door. "-Come on, give somebody else a crack
at the bowl, will you?" my father says. "I haven't moved my
bowels in a week."
1 recover myself, as is my talent, with a marvelous burst of hurt
feelings. "I have a terrible case of diarrhea! Doesn't that mean any–
thing to anyone in this house?"-in the meantime not missing a
single stroke--indeed quickening the tempo as my smarting, cancerous
organ miraculously begins again to quiver from the inside out.
Then Hannah's brassiere
begins to move.
To swing back and
forth! 1 close my eyes and see Lenore Blatt, who has the biggest
pair in my class, running for the bus after school, her great untouch–
able load shifting in her blouse, oh I urge them up from their cups,
and over,
Lenore Blatt's actual tits-and
realize in the same split sec–
ond that my mother is vigorously shaking the knob, trying the door.
Which I forgot to lock? I am caught! I am as good as dead!
"Open this door, Alex. I want you to open this door this instant."
I am not caught. And I see from what's alive in my hand that
