Straight Life - Art Pepper [20]
My folks used to go out with Mary and Mike and get drunk and leave me with Francie. They'd make a bed on the floor, and we'd go to bed, and she'd want me to kiss her, to kiss her cunt. She'd make me get down there and lick her, and she would do the same thing to me. It was very exciting, and I always imagined, when we got older, that we would really make love like grownups do. Years and years later, when I was divorced from my first wife I ran into Francie, and I wanted to ball her, but she was in love and she wouldn't do it.
In addition to Richard and my father my grandmother had a stepson named Shorty, and Shorty's wife, Thelma, later married my father, but when I was a child she was my aunt and I thought of her children as my cousins. She had two boys a little older than me, John and Bud, and a daughter Edna. One time I remember we were sleeping together, me and John and Bud at my grandmother's house, and my grandmother happened to come in; she might have heard us giggling. She turned on the light, and we had the blankets off and were playing with each other's little peepees. She wigged out at us. She said she was going to tell Thelma that we were evil, she was going to tell my dad, and I said, "Oh, please don't tell dad!" She told us that our peepees were going to grow real long; they were going to grow out of our pants legs and trail after us down the street; and everybody was going to laugh at us and say, "For shame!"
Thelma and Shorty lived near my grandmother so I used to see Thelma a lot. She was sweet and pleasant, and I always wished that she had been my mother because she was very understanding and I could talk to her. Where my mother was harsh Thelma was gentle. I felt I could get her to sympathize with me and baby me.
Thelma had that typically American look, a sweet, clean look about her. She had mousey brown hair and light skin. She had a very trim body, and she was soft, like a little dove or a little doe. She wore cotton housedresses that she made herself. They folded over in front; she'd put a pin there, and you could always see part of her breast. I'd go around and watch her doing the dishes or the laundry and I'd look down her dress. And when I hugged her I would always want to put my head between her breasts.
As I said, my grandmother locked the door when she went to the bathroom and she'd leave the key in the door so you couldn't see through the keyhole. It made the idea of going to the bathroom something that was nasty, that you had to hide. But also, because of the locked door, it seemed to me that it was exciting, really evil, and I became attracted to bathrooms to see what went on in there. I started looking out our windows at night, when the lights went on, and sometimes the woman next door would be in the bathroom. I couldn't see anything, but the idea that she was there excited me. I started walking around at night and looking, when I was walking, if there were lights on in the windows.
At Thelma's house the bathroom had two doors and there were keyholes but no keys in these doors, so I used to peek at Thelma or at Edna when they were in there and get an erection and play with myself. I would go in the bathroom after they left and play with myself.
By the time I was eleven I was totally preoccupied with sex. Every time a woman bent over or crossed her legs my