GILBfORT SORRENTINO
545
whipped with his belt.
He
was all heart and a little bit of a disappoint–
ment.
I told Tom about it and he bought
me
a pair of boots. To such
passes had our union
become! Yes,
he paid and paid and paid again–
now, I comprehend, it was to surfeit
me
with the hot flagons of
freedom ...
My tears burned my cheeks, if such they were. How, I reasoned,
could the man
be
such a brute? To buy this slip of a girl, this waif, a
pair of boats! What
else
was he saying but' 'sail away, leave, begone!"
Who could blame her peccadilloes? My spine cringed and tongues of
flame burned my very throat.
. . . whirled
me
through and through his meaningless social life ,
his sterile and impotent and utterly blague social life as such it often
purports to
be .
.. purports? Ha! Is the paradigm of such! How I raced
back in my mind through the fields of the past!
Yet
I often wonder was
it I who raced? I mused on a sweet boy, sweet Ralph, who, under the
stands at the high school football field, got uckh allover my skirt.
It
was,
after all perhaps, I who raced! These bittersweet memories helped
to ease the strains of this abhorring life that I had coming to
me
after all
was said and done.
It
was my shoe and if it didn't fit, then wear it! I
knew the Truth but would not face it! Once I thought of myself, as
someone
else,
in the dim twilight of an Ohio town, sobbing on an
Indian mount, my skirt up to my waist, lusts exposed to the stars. How
do you likethat? Sic semper ad astra. How curious that now rings in my
ears-but then it meant ... everything! There is a red Chevvy pickup
lost somewhere in the mists of time back then too, but who knows what
it means? It might as well
be
the park across the bay, the children's
carrousel and the likes. How these soft images would torture
me
amid
the endless forced gaiety of my life with Tom ...
She sank slowly behind a broken bench into the sparse grass, and I
followed, sinking too. Chilly, I placed my coat over her
legs,
her poor
legs,
and her strange little hands . I mean she was chilly, although after
removing my coat, I too felt the strange chill across my back. Or was it
only
my back that was chilled? I dared not think of it. In any
event,
we
were
close,
I could smell the faint odor of
some
exquisite perfume
rising from her warm body and thought how good it was that she was
no longer chilly. Your hands are so warm ... and strong, she mur–
mured from beneath the coat, and then she grasped them tightly, so
tight that I thought I would cry out with the pain that coursed through
