Boy Wonders Read online

  I was lying in bed. I pulled the comic in closer to my body until I was lying on top of it, in case someone walked in. Everything about this was wrong and, worse than that, shameful. When I thought of women as a group—and this would not include members of my family, who were functionally genderless to me—my only reference point was my teachers. I could not conceive of them acting in this way (with or without giant snakes). I would have found it easier to believe that Ms. Sullivan or Ms. Florio were undercover astronauts than people who had ever had sex.

  I did know about sex. It was one of many things I’d pestered my mother about until she got me a book on the topic. Whenever I wondered long or loudly enough about anything, a book would appear. If someone had put together a compendium called Life: Here’s How It Works, my mother would’ve set it a place at dinner and told me to make my enquiries in that direction.

  The sex book was Where Did I Come From?, a treacly classic about the boundless beauty of making love. It reads now like Hustler run through a Vatican editorial board. My mother brought it home one day in a brown paper bag, handed it to me and then pivoted quickly away. Nothing was said. The book was briefly thrilling but, despite the inoffensive nudity, ultimately unsatisfying. I’d figured out most of what was in there for myself. The only mystery that remained was the orgasm, therein described as “a tickly feeling” leading to a “really big sneeze.”

  I spent a few bad minutes in the kitchen aggressively shoving pepper up my nose to induce sneezing. The experiment resulted in zero sneezing and a great deal of mess that was difficult to explain. In my mind, “tickling” was synonymous with feathers. Feathers were devices specifically designed for tickling. But it is nearly impossible to lay your hands on a good, big feather when you are seven. What I needed was an eagle feather. The only birds I had good access to were pigeons. I tried tickling my own stomach—not entirely unpleasant—but that felt weird. And the book was pretty clear that it had to be someone else holding the feather. I didn’t think my friends in grade two would be quite that open-minded.

  Suffice to say that I understood sexual mechanics, but not the impulse or the attraction. Where Did I Come From? portrayed sex as serious business undertaken by serious people for serious reasons resulting in extremely serious consequences. I put sex aside for the time being to concentrate on my studies. Of dinosaurs.

  But now here was Heavy Metal prompting a reconsideration. Clearly, something bad was happening here. Good bad. I kept Heavy Metal under my mattress. This wasn’t exactly CIA-level tradecraft. The concept of “hidden in plain sight” did not occur to me.

  At night, after my brother had fallen asleep, I’d sneak the magazine into bed and pore over the naughtiest bits. It got old fast. Very quickly, I required new stimulation.

  In a time before the ubiquity of the supermarket, we bought our comestibles down the corner at Mike’s Milk & Smokes (even back then, an odd marketing combo).

  Mike’s was run by someone I assumed was Mike, though I never bothered to ask. He was a taciturn Korean gentleman who insisted that I could not purchase cigarettes for my parents without a note. He might’ve been 30 or 50 or 110. I was no judge of ages. Though I was in there at least once every day and Mike was the only person I can recall ever being behind the counter, he never gave any indication that he recognized me. Ours was a purely transactional relationship.

  Mike’s was a claustrophobic place—windows blacked out with du Maurier posters, low ceilinged, overcrowded with shelving. Even as a kid, I had to turn sideways to inch my way toward the fridge at the back.

  The magazine rack was directly to your left inside the door. Mike stood guard behind the counter about six feet away, but his view was partially blocked by a gum rack.

  I was in there constantly sifting through his meagre selection of comics. Essentially, if Mike stocked it, I’d buy it. Though we weren’t close, Mike and I had some fun times together. We particularly enjoyed playing a game called “Are you buying that? No? Then put it down.” I’d put the comic down and wait for someone to distract Mike with a purchase. Then I’d pick up another comic and we’d start again.

  There were three shelves to the magazine rack. The top one contained the nudie mags. They were out in plain sight and there were a lot of them. The titles meant nothing to me. I knew I could go up there without setting off alarms because that’s how I’d got hold of Heavy Metal in the first place. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to acquire something more substantive. From a research perspective.

  I first considered buying a magazine, but it didn’t seem wise to sashay up to the counter with a copy of Juggs and a packet of Big League Chew. I could stuff it into a pile of G-rated comics and hope Mike wasn’t paying close attention. Except that Mike was always paying close attention.

  So it would be theft.

  I’d never stolen anything before and I don’t have a criminal bent of mind. When crossing over the line to the dark side, it’s important to know your skill set.

  Even then I knew I was not particularly cunning or good under duress.

  I realized that the most important thing I’d need was a distraction. I enlisted my friend Kevin in the scheme. Kevin wasn’t very enthusiastic (“Sure”), but he seemed like a cool-under-pressure type.

  I would go into Mike’s. If Mike wasn’t behind the counter (and Mike was always behind the counter), it’d be a snatch-and-grab. If he was there, I would mosey casually to the magazines. Kevin would come in shortly thereafter and buy something (with money I’d provided—a key sweetener to the deal). While Kevin was making his purchase, I would pull the heist.

  I obsessed over this operation for days. There were many abortive attempts. A store that was always empty seemed suddenly to be pulling in all sorts of street traffic. It was a regular milk/smokes convention at Mike’s.

  Kevin started to lose what little enthusiasm he’d had. My window was closing.

  Then one day after school, the magic hour arrived. Mike was behind the counter, but no one else was there. I slid into place. Kevin came in behind me, talking very loudly in a preposterously suspicious manner.

  “DO YOU HAVE GUM?” he screamed at Mike, while standing directly beside the gum.

  “OH. THERE IT IS.”

  Pause.

  “MAYBE I NEED SOMETHING ELSE.”

  Pause.

  “WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE?”

  This was some shit distraction work. But I was committed now. I reached up blindly and snatched a magazine from the porno rack. Then I dropped it on the ground. Then I picked it up. Then, with some difficulty, I wedged it down the front of my jeans (as a general rule, thieves should wear track pants). That took ages. Then I bolted for the door in such panic that I pulled it into my own face. Once outside, I stood there on the sidewalk, waiting for Kevin to emerge so that we could flee on our getaway vehicles (i.e., bikes).

  Five seconds. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes. Forever.

  When Kevin finally emerged, he was in no hurry. He was pulling the top off a freezie with his teeth.

  “We should go,” I said, gulping air.

  “He knows you took it,” Kevin said.

  “What?”

  “He saw you steal the magazine. He said so.”

  “WHAT?”

  “He said that you should bring it back.”

  “WHAT?!”

  Kevin was quite calm about the whole thing. (Where had that guy been when I needed him?) I was in a state of emotional collapse. Oh God, what now? What if Mike came out? What would he do? Collar me? Call the cops? I could not even bring myself to contemplate the idea that he might tell my mother. Did he know who she was? DID HE KNOW WHERE I LIVED?

  “Are you going to?”

  “What?”

  “Give back the magazine. Here, let me see it first.”

  Well, how would that go? Then Mike would have me dead to rights. And I would still require porno. It was a lose/lose.

  “Nononono. Let’s just go.”
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  So we went.

  The bike I generally dumped on the walk up to my house I now took to the garage and camouflaged with junk that was lying around. What if Mike was trawling the neighbourhood for clues? He wasn’t going to get me that easily.

  I fled to the bedroom I shared with my brother and closed the door. Since it had no lock, I leaned back against it, and pulled the Penthouse out of my pants.

  It was heavy. Glossy and luxurious. The cover showed a woman from behind. She was wearing what I thought was a bathing suit and was actually a thong. She had a tattoo on her bum. A butterfly.

  A whole lot of new things were happening all at once. I’d never seen an actual, real-life woman in anything close to this sort of pose. I had never seen a thong. I did not know what a tattoo was. I’d never really seen a bum that I could remember (as a household, we weren’t exactly a hippie commune).

  I will spare you the sad details of what I put that magazine through. I was yet too young to have discovered, ahem, self-care, but let us just say that no single issue of any publication has ever suffered such rough treatment at the hands of its reader. There was a lot of rolling around on top of it.

  All bound, printed material expands with use. If a book is two inches thick when you pull it off the shelf new, it’s three inches by the time you’ve thumbed all the way through it.

  Years later, I’d work at a bookstore through university. People would routinely return books weeks after they’d bought them and say things like, “It was a gift and she already had it.” Then they’d hand me the book. Each and every time, it would have expanded to twice the size it had been new. In one case, I’m pretty sure the woman had dropped it in a tub. The book was fanned out like an accordion.

  I’d take hold of the book, turn it around in my hands doubtfully and say, “She already had it?”

  “Yes. It was a gift.”

  “For your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  They knew I was going to give them their money back and I knew I was going to give them their money back, but I didn’t think it was right that it should be easy. If you want to read a book for free, our social democracy has taken care of that problem for you—it’s called a library.

  However terribly those cheats treated their literature, it was gentle compared to what I’d done. That Penthouse started out a regular-sized magazine. It ended up the thickness of a phone book. I went through that thing front-to-goddamn-back every day for months. I flattened each page out so that I could control the glare on the page, and so see everything clearly all at once.

  I would sit in class counting the minutes until I could get back to the magazine and enjoy some quiet reading time. I considered bringing it to school for a lunchtime peek, but that was very risky. I didn’t mind the idea that someone else might see it. It was the thought that someone might take it from me.

  Most of what was in there made absolutely no sense to me—there was a bunch of swinging lifestyle stuff and a guide to buying a stereo system. But I read it anyway. It wasn’t just the pictures—in particular, Butterfly Lady—that obsessed. It all seemed of a piece. In order to be a viable conduit to sexual desire, it required completeness. I assumed there were ideas in there that would only become clear to me later. I needed to be prepared.

  A great many books have given me pleasure—in fact, aside from people, nothing has given me so much cumulative joy as books—but the Penthouse was the high-water mark. If the amount of time and effort you devote to a piece of literature is the truest expression of its value, that issue of Penthouse was my Gutenberg Bible.

  Fittingly, this bargain was Faustian.

  Since I’d stolen the Penthouse from Mike’s and been seen doing so, I could no longer go there. The store was on a busy corner. I would time my walk up to the corner so that I could shuffle by quickly on the green light.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been expected to go to Mike’s at least daily. Every time my mother needed milk, or cigarettes, or anything else really. The sentence I now dreaded most was “Go to Mike’s and get _______.”

  Mike’s was two blocks from our house. The next closest convenience store was eight. My mother would hand me money. I’d nod disconsolately and say, “Yes. I’ll be right back with _______.”

  Like most children, I believed my mother was always onto me (unlike most mothers, she was). Of course she would know exactly how long it should take me to get to Mike’s and back. And I was convinced she was sitting there at the kitchen table, timing the journey out. Eventually, she was going to say the sentence I dreaded even more: “Why did that take you so long?” Followed by, “What have you done?” Followed by, “Let’s ask Mike.”

  So I’d try to leave the house nonchalantly. Once on the sidewalk, I’d break into a sprint. I could get to the other store pretty quickly. But then there was always a lineup, or some old codger who wanted to have a conversation with the clerk. Seconds counted. I became the world’s brusquest seven-year-old: “Excuse me, I’m in a hurry. Can I just get in there? Yes, thank you. Sorry. Thank you.”

  Occasionally loaded down with groceries, I’d try to haul ass back.

  Nothing disturbs people more than seeing someone running who is quite obviously not out for a jog. It begs the question, “What are they running from?” It is doubly disturbing when the person running is a child schlepping bags and panting like an animal. Adults would occasionally get right in my way and stop me.

  “Are you all right?”

  The first few times this happened, I tried to explain. I was out getting groceries for my mother and in a bit of a rush. But I suppose I did not present a convincing figure—red-faced, bug-eyed, hair all over the place. I probably looked like I’d just crawled out of a sex dungeon.

  These little interruptions had a way of stretching on as the grown-up tried to convince him/herself that this was all on the up-and-up and they weren’t going to see my picture in the paper the next day.

  Eventually, I learned to recognize the signs of concern. The way a person up ahead would stop and begin registering the oddness of what was approaching. The subtle shift of the hips as they began to angle themselves to intercept me.

  So in time, I began treating them like tackling dummies. I’d begin to feint one way. As they moved in that direction, I’d juke the other way. Then I’d blow past them. Invariably, they were left, fingers raised in the universal “Excuse me” gesture.

  When I got home, I’d be in a bit of a state. The smart thing would have been to take a minute to gather myself on the porch. But time was my only worry. I’d burst through the door, sucking air, and throw the bags down, resisting the powerful desire to lie down on the floor.

  My mother was one of those people who always seemed to be coming around a corner, like she’d been waiting for you to arrive the whole time.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I ran.”

  “Why’d you run?”

  “No reason.”

  “Are you sweating?”

  “A little maybe.”

  “Running that far shouldn’t be so hard for someone your age.”

  “Maybe.”

  Over the years, my mother and I shared many conversations that hinged entirely on the word “Maybe.” A good word that, crucially, is neither a confirmation nor a denial.

  This track-and-field farce went on for months. Mike loomed large in my imagination. What if I saw him on the street? What if he saw me coming out of my house? Every time the doorbell rang, my first thought was, “He’s here.” I knew that the best way to protect myself was to get rid of the Penthouse. Destroy the evidence. But I could not be parted from it. Flipping through it each night had become a profound ritual.

  Then one Sunday, on the way home from church, my mother announced that my brother and I would be getting treats. At Mike’s.

  There was no scene at the door. I didn’t hesitate on the street. She didn’t have to drag me into the store. I just gave in. My sufferin
g was near its end. I’d just take whatever I had coming.

  I tried to shamble in sideways, hiding my face from view. I moved around the store in a sort of crouch. My brother was making a lot of goddamned noise and attracting a lot of attention. I shushed him and he punched me. More attention.

  As we got to the counter, I tried to retract my head into my shirt. There was no one behind the counter. We waited a bit. It was excruciating.

  Then Mike appeared from the back.

  Except it wasn’t Mike. It was some other guy. A white guy.

  Relief. It isn’t a good feeling. It’s the sudden, delightful absence of bad feeling, which is far better. Your vision of the world brightens in that moment. The greater the relief, the longer its effect. I would coast on this hit of relief for weeks.

  Mike’s, I would later learn, had been sold. This was the new owner. The key burden of my life had just burned off like mist. I had got away with my crime.

  I think I learned a lesson that day. I’m fairly sure it was the wrong one.

  MY BEDROOM

  THE FIRST THING I REMEMBER READING out loud was The Cat in the Hat. This was in a kindergarten run by nuns. I often carried a book around as a prop and must’ve picked it up osmotically. The nuns were delighted. I was delighted. My mother was delighted. Everyone was delighted.

  One of the Felician Sisters propped me up on her knee and invited me to read to the rest of them at dinner. They clapped when I finished a page. It’s just about my earliest memory.

  That was also my first experience of positive feedback from the people at work, and I liked it.

  But reading was not high on my list for a long time. Not unless it was comic books or my single dirty magazine. I was only interested in literature that did not have the stink of school.

  Once people see you with a book, that’s what you’ll be getting for every birthday and Christmas for the rest of your life. Books are cheap, simple and good for you. Like steel-cut oats or calisthenics. The effect works both ways. Gifting a book leaves a residue of virtue on the giver. I was awash in books that I had no intention of reading. The shelves in the room I shared with my brother were full of them.