humorous sketch

 When I was a teenager, I was so inspired by the summer Olympics and the marathon, Montreal, I think, where Frank Shorter, who won in Munich, came in with a silver medal.  I became a pretty serious runner, and I had the roads to run on, up and down, all sorts of terrain.  

But anyway, it was a rural road, and it had its attractions to people who were having fun at night, a sort of unknown road back then that inspired you, as it did for me, a 14 year old kid out on a run through the fresh air.  One day I'm jogging up the last crest of the hill that brought you past Chuck Root's property and out onto to the flats where there were corn fields on both sides of the road, to the right, the land climbing up to the lower reaches of the Champion farm, and to the left a field and a drop off and a perfect view of the farmland over on the other side of the valley.  Magnificent, really.

Well, it's a warm summer afternoon, something like that, and I'm out for my afternoon run.  It actually could have been a bike ride, yes, maybe it was, as I got into the cycling a bit later, after Osgood Schlatter Syndrome, and anyway, across the road, open like the Bible, was a Hustler.  And I could immediately see the glorious pictures...

So I smuggle the magazine home, and share it with my brother, because that's what you did, of course.  

Well, anyway, it's late in the evening, bedtime, and I have my headphones on listening to a cassette tape little white box player, and I have the Hustler out by the Sports Illustrated, and I'm ready for a little self-pleasuring ritual involving a rabbit fur faux coonskin cap, a la Danial Boone and Davey Crockett, and I don't really hear my mother coming in.  And the only thing is, she notices the magazine cover, and we'd figured out to send off for a few more in the mail, as it was us boys who went to the mailbox to retrieve the mail anyway, and we thought we could get away with it and did.  If I'd been on my toes, a little quicker, I could have shoved the Hustler magazines under the Sports Illustrated ones, to cover them up, but I was too slow, and...

And so, here I am, I feel like so much of that sort of pleasure has been deprived of me, because of the severe scolding, a whole scene that was, to this day I don't want to think about it, because then everybody got involved, and. I just felt like the worst person in the whole world for enjoying what was immensely physically enjoyable a communion, even just for the eyes, beautiful women, naked, relaxing for photographs.  

And to find myself at 56 with that same fear, mom imposing herself upon me, going crazy on me, like just when I'm starting to get in the groove writing, or putting together a little recording of music on the guitar, here she comes, glomming onto me, her favorite son, of course.   Here she comes, first down the stairs, creepy, then going "hello, hello?" in some disoriented state.  And of course it's all fine for her, yeah, she doesn't care.

I cook these days.  Drink wine.  Trying out vodka soda reruns tonight maybe so the buzz to hangover ratio can be adjusted.