One of Those Girls
I was fifteen years old, and I’d already jerked off a twenty-one-year-old English sailor. So, I knew about sex, kind of. Not from my mother Maud Ellen though, although I’d asked her and she’d said, “The whole thing is overrated.” So, I queried my grandmother, Mamoo, a loquacious woman who had a way with language. She had a limerick she repeated about two lovers from Aberystwyth who united the things they pissed with. A natural sexologist, she explained the operation and the parts involved; she’d described how delightful giving a blow job could be to the man you loved, but she never mentioned how giving a blow job to man you didn’t love went.
I lost my virginity because of a bet. My new best friend in the neighborhood, Betsy Boss, made a bet with me which one of us would get her cherry popped first. Betsy lived next door in a Greek Revival mansion with medallions on the ceilings. It was a bigger and more elaborate version of our squatter rental. I was always on the lookout for a girlfriend because the girls I invited over never returned. The neighbors knew about us—we were all a little off.
Betsy was the youngest of three children, and the only girl. We’d allied the moment her family moved into the neighborhood. Her older brothers were out of the house. Each of us had something the other wanted. My house, with the three females and the revolving stable of Greek sailors and no parameters, held intrigue. Betty’s house, with two parents, one of each sex, had stability and rules something mine lacked.
Among other businesses, Betsy’s father, Joop, owned a cattle ranch in Tylertown, Mississippi. Of Dutch descent, he was six feet six, wore cowboy boots, and had a big personality and bigger temper. Betsy’s mother, Dibby, was a petite Texan chatterbox. Whenever Joop lost his temper, which was a lot, she transformed into a silent, bundle of power gliding around their 3800-square-foot-house, Joop in tow. He couldn’t stand “the doghouse” and followed her around trying to reengage his mute little mate. They reminded me of a reverse Henry VIII with Dibby as the King and Joop as her jester – Mamoo and I were devotees of Masterpiece Theater. The Six Wives of Henry VIII and I, Claudius were our favorite shows.
I adored watching their performance. I rarely saw husbands and wives close up; my mother didn’t hang around couples. Come to think of it, I never saw my parents in the same room ever; my father Godfrey lived around the corner with his unemployed mother. Godfrey arrived impromptu at the front gate, calling Mama’s name: “Maud Ellen! Maaauuuuud Elllllln!” She’d shoo him into the side yard and usher me outside, leaving me alone with this handsome stranger. He reminded me of my mother’s dark-haired Greek lovers more than he reminded me of a dad.
I wanted to see more of Betsy’s parents in action, to check out what a less crazy home life looked like, but Betsy couldn’t stand the scenes. She sequestered me in her room, plying me with questions about sex—our main topic. Betsy was thirteen, two years younger than I, but already sexually curious. The bet concluded our endless talk about what a cock would feel like inside.
“Not like a tampon!”
“Too small,” I said.
“Not like a banana!”
“No,” I said. “It would break!”
Wide-eyed, we erupted into laughter.
“Like a cucumber?”
“Too prickly. Wait, you have brothers. You must have seen one?”
Betsy’s eyes sparked. “Have you?”
“You know the story.”
“Tell me again,” she begged.
Natural storyteller, I began.
“I am twelve, John Adams ten. He looks like Christopher Robin. We sneak into the storage room at the back of Warwick Manor. Neither of us knows exactly what to do. I take my panties off, get down on my hands and feet as if I am doing a backwards crawl. John takes off everything except his galoshes. His cock never gets up and then his sister, Lisa, comes in and catches us! I run home, terrified Lisa will tell our friends in the neighborhood, but she never does.”
“So . . .?” Betsy nodded her forehead.
She had a perfectly proportioned body but a bulbous forehead, which gave me secret schadenfreude because I was chubby with horrible big breasts and a Madame Gautreau nose. “Who’s going to get it first?”
“You have Ben Katzl.”
She grinned. “Kempe! Do tell!”
“His name is Joe Stahl.
Betsy had a crush. I didn’t have crushes. “Besotted” is a better word. Joe Stahl, a thirty-six-year-old confirmed bachelor in his late-thirties, around my father’s age, was a cunning attorney, who’d argued three cases in maritime law before the Louisiana Supreme Court—and won. Maud Ellen described him as, “Drowning in a Sahara of self-esteem.” But for me, he was electric: short but athletic with a tennis-court tan (he attended Wimbledon every year), dark hair with a splash of gray, bright-white straightened teeth, and a sexy Nixonean ski jump nose.
Maud Ellen met Joe downtown in the Acropolis, one of the Decatur Street Greek bars that catered to sailors and prostitutes, or “business women” as they preferred to be called. Uptown snobs called them “nightclubs” to soften their appeal, but they were downtown whore-sailor bars. She and Joe were part of an intellectual bohemian French Quarter crowd that hung around the Greek bars, a crowd which had once included my father. Joe became a regular visitor to Chestnut Street. He also painted watercolors, and he liked a smart audience for his story telling ventures. Chestnut Street was like an antiquarian bookstore with enough books to fill two secondhand bookstores. We were all voracious readers and storytellers ourselves. Maud Ellen quoted Arnold Toynbee and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom from memory. Mamoo wrote essays and short stories for her women’s writing clubs. I grew up reading D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths, and every James Bond Ian ever wrote. My new favorite book was Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker, and I had started my own tome—a diary in 1973.
Joe’s stats as a prominent attorney gave him clout with both Mama and Mamoo. We’d lost both our social prominence and the source of funds with my grandfather’s death. Neither Mamoo or Maud Ellen worked (we lived rent free in the downstairs apartment of my great grandmother’s Garden District rental and subsisted on my grandfather’s Social Security, pension, and payouts by a great uncle as well as monthly checks sent by my beleaguered Uncle Isaac who lived in San Francisco). Joe’s presence was social re-entrée. He positioned himself on the little ladies’ sofa with the missing veneer in the front parlor and told tales about his legal battles, and stories from the Old Testament, which he loved. He also touched my breasts the moment my mother exited the room.
More than social entrée, there was curious me, in sexual bloom, curling red hair, blue eyes like my father, and whoo-boy bouncing double Ds bursting from my tops. Honestly, my breasts embarrassed me, but Joe said they were great. He chauffeured us in his pale green Cadillac Eldorado to the Greek bars, where he’d sing “Opa Nina Nai” in Turkish, one of his many tongues. The Greek bar owners tolerated this because of what he’d done for their clientèle – Joe stood up for the downtrodden sailors. Often, he took me and Maud Ellen to dinner or the movies, where he’d sit between us and discreetly finger our breasts. I don’t believe Maud Ellen really liked it because she’d howl, “Joe, you horny Jew bastard! Cut it!”
“You love it!” he’d retort.
“You make overtures to everybody,” she’d say.
“I do not. You do!”
Now that hurt her feelings for sure.
“No, I don’t. You just did!”
“I admit nothing: that’s your conjecture!” he’d say, and so on . . ..
I adored Joe for calling her bluff, and I never protested during his explorations. I dreamed about his fingers as if they were the wandering Hebrews of his Biblical stories, who, stopping for a night’s rest at the oasis, pillage me instead of the town. I’d also imagine his cock’s response as he touched me.
Joe made me feel the way I did when, at eight years old, I’d interrupted my mother and a sailor making love on the same little sofa in the parlor. The sounds, like carnival floats, had ridden down the hall into my bedroom and filled me with desire. I knew if I just appeared—as I’d done at other times—Maud Ellen would shoo me back to bed. So, I changed my plan. I took off all my clothes and presented myself naked to the lovers. Maud Ellen exploded, but the man stared at me as if I was candy. She sent me back to bed, but I’d struck gold!
Anyway, Betsy and I had our bet. And I had my target.
The sun shines and the blue sky of late May anticipates summer to come and the end of tedious school. Late afternoon, the air is fresh, and I pump my racing bicycle up Chestnut Street, past Washington Avenue, and for another ten blocks to Louisiana Avenue. The bumps on the potholed road reverberate through the hard racing seat into my pelvis. I pedal in standing position for relief. Two blocks past Louisiana is Aline Street; a sharp right and there, mid-block, I brake and swing my leg over the bar and pause at an apartment building. I have never been to his apartment, but I immediately recognize the Eldorado! Parked in its space as if it were waiting for me. I steer my bike closer. On a curb marker in script is his name:
J O E S T A H L
I peer in at the passenger seat where I always sit. I love being chauffeured in this dreamy car. All the kids in the neighborhood—the Lemann’s, the Percy’s, the Bells – have multiple cars; neither of my parents even had a driver’s license. All we have are bicycles. My mother had her Raleigh, and lore had it Godfrey arrived to his wedding reception on a bike. Being in the Cadillac, with Joe singing Turkish songs by Kazantzidis, full voiced in the enclosed space, the soft cream-colored leather seats cuddling my ass, is its own narcotic world.
I glance down my t-shirt to my nylon bike shorts, conscious of the padded crotch.
Do I really want to do this? I could go home and tell Maud Ellen; hope she’ll talk to me about feelings. Yeah, right! Or phone Uncle Ike and tell him what’s going on – all the rows with my mother, and the screaming and yelling about money, but he knows this. He always said: “Twenty-four hours back at Chestnut Street and I want to kill your mother.” Every time he visits, he goes off the wagon and explodes. Retreating from the thought, I look over the apartment complex. What’s going to happen after I have sex with Joe? Maybe he’ll ask me to move in or whisk me to London to see Wimbledon? Wait! No backing off now. I conjure another hot crush, my invisible yet ever-present minister-of-missions, Adam West, the actor who plays Batman.
“Onward, girl!” he says, “Love waits!”
I obey. I spy the brass mailboxes with name plates on the ground floor and find his apartment number, 2F. A tug to the rear of my tacky pants and I go up the steps. I push the bell. Nothing happens. I push the bell again. As I turn to go, the door flies open.
“Why, Kempe! What a surprise!” says Joe, who always manages to look imposing despite his short stature. His tennis-court tan sets off his gray-flecked hair.
“Joe, hi,” I say, smiling so hard I feel my dimples pop.
“Come in. I was mooning over a brief. I’d prefer to be mooning over you.” He grins, showing polished teeth.
“Yes. I will,” I say. My smile matches his. Oh boy, here I go. Drawings hang on the walls of the sparsely furnished apartment. A watercolor of a nude with dark areolas catches my eye. It’s Margie, his New York girlfriend, the one he talks about.
“Wow! Pretty!” I say.
“Yes, she is, but impossible.”
“Impossible?”
“In the way women are,” he says, as if telling me a secret. He looks at my legs. “You bike a lot!”
“I do.”
“Wanna drink?”
“Hmm. . . no thanks.” I almost tell him about the time I got as drunk as a Catahoula hound and punched Mama in the nose, but I don’t.
“I meant soda.”
“Sure. Soda’d be good.” He disappears into the kitchenette. I glance at his paper-strewn desk. A yellow legal pad is open, every line and margin covered in script. Lifting a page, I find more of the same indecipherable lettering.
“How’s your grandmother?” He offers me a highball glass of cola.
“What do you care?” I release the yellow page, drop myself into in the chair near the desk and sip.
“She is a wise, refined woman,” he says sincerely.
“And Mama?”
“A sharp-tongued, harpooning harpy, with supreme tits, would be the beginning of a description, I’d say.”
“You’re funny. I know what she’d say in reply.” Joe and Mama had this insulting repartee. They competed who could out-insult whom. I look around for somewhere to place the glass, get up and deposit it in the sink, feeling Joe’s eyes following my every step.
“She’d call me a dirty Jew,” he says, meeting me at the kitchen door, blocking the exit.
“Yeah, Mama’s a bitch. I don’t know why you like her.”
“Because she’s a smart gadfly, and gadflies keep things moving in the right direction. What are you really here for, Miss Kempe?”
I duck around him and give him a little kiss on the back of his neck.
“Love.”
“What?” He spins around.
“You heard me!”
“Right on, darling girl!” Gung-ho, he’s on me. With a kiss to my cheek and a pat on my ass, he leads me to his bedroom. “You sure?”
“Yep,” I answer. Toeing off my sneakers, I leave the socks, and then I peel down the biking shorts sticking to my butt. My rose-patterned panties disengage with the action, exposing my bright-white rump to the air. Embarrassed, I sit on the edge of the bed, my drawers dangling around my ankles; I rip them off, then toss them to the carpeted floor, leaving on my top. I scoot backwards, conscious of the covers grazing my genitals, arrive at the pillows and fall back, trying not to make a noise. Joe strips quickly, and, aroused, crawls onto the bed. His mouth moves up my neck as his hands fiddle under my top; I feel his cock probing between my opening thighs and begin entry. His tongue in my mouth is pushing like his organ. I turn my face sideways, blurting out.
“I never did this before!”
“What? Wait, no. You don’t mean you’re a virgin?” Joe withdraws, kneels, his circumcised cock jaunty and erect. “Really? No way.”
“Are you nuts? Do you think I go around doing this all the time?” I stare at his absurd expression then down to his penis, which is tiny and drooping.
“Christ! I . . . gotta get a condom.” He bounds off the bed and dashes into the next room.
“Ugh,” I say, imagining his Bilbo Baggins cock with a hat on its head, its one eye winking at me. I grab my shorts, scrutinize them for a second, then pull them on inside-out, stuffing the panties under the elastic band at the back. Forcing my feet into my still-tied sneakers, I use my forefinger as a lever to insert my heels. I barrel past Joe. Running down the balconied walk, I tune out the noise of Joe gurgling out to me. It doesn’t matter. It’s done – well kind of. Fumbling the bike lock key from the back shorts pocket, this time I conjure Batgirl, and disentangle the lock in magic time. Then, pedaling for my life, I’m gone. The image propelling me home is of Joe’s itty-bitty white penis dangling between his tanned legs and the purple plastic square I saw him ripping open with his teeth as I fled.
June 9th. A Sunday, I sat at my desk writing in my diary when I heard the liquid sound of my mother’s voice speaking on the hall phone. The voice with its enviable precision. I used to eavesdrop on her conversations just to hear her speak, but this time her tone froze me cold.
“When? Good God! Of course, she’ll be there.”
I got up from my desk and went and stood under the three-pane transom window at the threshold.
“Be where?”
“You father has . . . shot himself.”
You mean the handsome stranger, the stranger you call Godfrey; the stranger who sent me a Christmas present once, a sterling Hershey’s kiss on a silver chain, delivered by someone else?
Maud Ellen and Mamoo sent me to the funeral by myself where I met his mother Marjory for the first time. After the service, someone drove us to St. Roch’s Campo Santo Cemetery on the outskirts of the French Quarter. We stood before a wall of vaults—above-group tombs stacked one on top of the other. Marjory placed my father’s urn in vault No. 67. Someone else slide the marble slab over what looked like a lidless eye, sealing him up forever. His name was not inscribed.
Some things are too terrible to inscribe in stone.
Who drove me home? I remembered nothing else about that day, but I recorded the funeral event in my diary, gave my handsome stranger father an obligatory paragraph and, as in A.A. Milne’s poem “Happiness”, “That (said John) was that.”
I discovered my mother’s lie years later. My father had hanged himself with his belt.
Maybe a week later, and I say maybe because I really can’t remember when Joe resurfaced—before the funeral or after the funeral—no matter where I place the event it always seems wrong. Anyway, the doorbell rang at Chestnut Street. Lying on my bed with Great Aunt Tita’s tulip-embroidered bedcover, I heard my grandmother’s voice echoing down the hall,
“Kempe! Joe Stahl is here. He has brought you daisies.”
Had my rescuer arrived? Closing my eyes, I willed the noises I’d heard as a kid, the sounds of Mama’s lovemaking on the little sofa in the parlor, to float down the hallway and fill me with the cravings I’d felt then. But nothing came. I’d spent hours reliving what happened in Joe’s apartment. I’d been waiting, waiting for him to call, or come by, and say something, anything to me, and I’d told Betsy I won the bet. Her reaction had taken me by surprise – she’d stopped talking to me.
No, I wouldn’t see him. Not now, not yet, maybe never. Mamoo arrived uninvited, came in and placed his bouquet on the foot of my bed. I glanced at the flowers and then at her. Tentative as usual when confronting something important, she stared at the over-the-mantle oil painting of our matriarch, Mummy.
Forty-two inches high by thirty-four inches wide, and painted by Theodore Sidney Moïse in 1875, the portrait dominated the room the way Mummy dominated her family. In it, a four-year-old girl sits on the top step of an antebellum house costumed in pantaloons and an Empire damask dress, one short sleeve pushed seductively off her shoulder. She is blue-eyed and barefoot—her little lace-up boots sit on the steps, socks discarded, one arranged on top of its shoe—an imperious WASP princess. Her red lips pressed together, a furrowed brow and pissed-off expression at the interruption of her play.
“I suppose the inevitable has happened,” Mamoo said, dragging her eyes away from the portrait of her mother.
“Should I confess?”
“No.” She pauses. “Did he use protection?”
“Yes,” I say, sparing her the details.
“Well then, what’s done is done. You’ll have to see Warren Rosen.”
Dr. Rosen? He’s not a gynecologist!
She rose quickly and stepped towards the threshold, where she hesitated.
“I couldn’t have picked a better man myself,” she said.
Then, like a gray ghost, she disappeared down the hall she will be disappearing down for years.
What would Maud Ellen say? I never told her. My mother never told me anything private anyway. She was a locked box that didn’t have a key. I kicked the flowers off the bed and listened as they hit the floor. Later, in my diary, I got revenge by never mentioning the episode. It was almost as if it had never happened. But it had happened and coupled with my father’s suicide, the two events fused in my fifteen-year-old mind.
And I’d had my first bite of reality – love was better in fiction. 1
**
1Decades later, I was working on my memoir, and I called Joe to ask him if he remembered that summer.
“I’ll never forget your grandmother’s marvelous reaction.”
Naturally, I’d told him what she’d said. I asked if he had any recollection of my father’s death around the same time. He didn’t. I never spoke to him again. He thought I wanted editing advice.
Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Salvage (China Miéville editor), the McNeese Review, SoFloPoJo, Unbroken Journal, Bull, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. An excerpt of her memoir was short listed for the Fish Memoir Prize in April 2021. She lives on Long Island where she exorcises with words. You can find her here: https://lucindakempe.substack.com