BOUNCING BOOB HEAVEN

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I was in bouncing boob heaven . . .

My uncle Don’s twenty-four year old wife, Bernadine, was a staggeringly beautiful young woman whose ancestral bloodlines were half French and half Spanish; and I often heard him say how Birdie had inherited the best of both worlds. I thought she had great boobs.

My uncle loved water skiing and frequently invited me to tag along. One of his favorite spots was a place called Pine Flat Lake—a beautiful eighteen-mile-long-lake in central California. Once you were in the cool water, it felt like you could ski forever. My first time up, Don taught me how to be a conscientious observer. The observer’s job was to sit in the boat and watch the skier in case something went wrong. On the day something did go wrong, however, I was watching something else.

Birdie was driving the boat, I was the observer and uncle Don was skiing. He was a world-class ham who loved to flaunt his expert water skiing skill, so he was busy jumping as high as he could over the v-shaped wake that swiftly fanned out behind the speeding boat. The wake was high and violently rolled up on each side of the fan like two turbulently churning water berms. It was dangerous stuff, and I should have been watching him more closely, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Birdie’s bouncing boobs. You see, the boat was shaking and jerking as it carved through the choppy waves and, with each jerky bounce, Birdie’s swimsuit top slipped lower and lower until it was just barely hanging on. I was seconds away from bouncing boob heaven. My heart pounded with lusty anticipation and my fifteen-year old eyeballs were pressured up and cocked to spring from their orbital sockets. Birdie, on the other hand, seemed to be totally oblivious to the situation as she gripped the wheel and concentrated on holding the boat steady. I flicked a shifty glance at my uncle and, seeing that he was skiing backwards, diverted my attention back to Birdie. Then it happened.

Birdie’s swimsuit dropped, she grabbed it, the boat swerved sharply throwing both of us from side to side, I grabbed the wheel, Birdie pulled her top up and awkwardly jiggled herself securely back into place. Then she took the wheel and brought the boat back under control. It was all over in fifteen seconds. Whew! We both sucked in a nervous breath and burst into laughter like we’d just finished a wild carnival ride. Then I looked back towards my uncle. Oh god no! The empty towrope was skipping up and down on the surface of the water—uncle Don was nowhere in sight.

Don was down all right. We found him about a mile back desperately treading water like he was about ready to go down for the third the and, to make mater even worse, his own swimsuit had gotten ripped clean off when he fell. Needless to say, he was spitting mad and, to make matters worse, I managed to tangle the safety rope into an ungainly wad of knots when I threw it to him. The heavy nylon rope landed right on his head and quickly curled around him like a giant slithering octopus. I was terrified he’d drown.

Back at camp, my uncle chewed me out unmercifully in front of everyone. “Always keep your eyes on the skier,” he barked. He was really angry. It was embarrassing for me, especially right there in front of Birdie, but I managed to tough it out without confessing the true nature of my licentious little crime. And if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget the time I went water skiing in beautiful Pine Flat Lake, and those fifteen seconds when I was in . . . bouncing boob heaven.

MY UNUSUAL NICKNAME

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I was barely tall enough to climb up onto the bed, but I was never too small to drink a cold bottle of beer. It earned me an unusual nickname.

During the early nineteen forties I lived part time with my aunt Mary and uncle Bob in Antelope Valley, California, and part time with my mother about a hundred and fifty-miles south in skid row Los Angeles. Dirty, smelly, Fifth and Main, it didn’t get more skid row than that: nickle peep shows, strip joints, adult bookstores, bars, pawnbrokers, the midnight mission and, of course, our rundown hotel⎯my home away from home.

Mom was never alone. In fact, our room was the hangout for her colorful gaggle of girlfriends. “Working girls,” I heard her say⎯painted ladies of the evening with their pasty-white faces, narrow curving eyebrows, rouged pink cheeks and bright red lipstick⎯shiny, like candied apples⎯and, of course, the ever-present smell of stale face powder and cheap cologne. They'd sit around in their underwear, talking and laughing, polishing each other’s nails, sprucing up their fancy pageboy hairdos and ironing their flashy polka dot dresses. And when they could catch me, they liked to tickle me, and kiss me and get red lipstick all over my face. I had never seen people like that in Antelope Valley, and I imagine my aunt Mary would have fainted at such a sight. Then there was the alcohol.

Mom was an alcoholic. Even at my tender age, I knew she drank too much. Staggering around, clumsy, watery eyed, slurred speech. How could I miss it? She always kept a tall fifth of whiskey and a shot glass on the nightstand. She drank it straight⎯neat, no ice. She taught me how to say that⎯neat, no ice. That was her style. She'd fill the shot glass with the clear, brownish liquid, shoot it down in one gulp, grimace like she’d just swallowed a mouthful of gasoline—and say, “Damn—that was goooood!” stretching her words like they were thin rubber bands. She'd smile and hand me a bottle of beer. “Only one now,” she'd say. Of course, I was so small that the long-necked bottles were almost too heavy for me to lift. I’d use both hands to hoist it up to my mouth, swig down a sudsy gulp and let out let out a loud motor-boating burp. The painted ladies laughed and called me mommy’s little beer boy. And that became my unusual nickname.

When it came time for mom and her girlfriends to go out, “Skid row honky-tonkin',” she called it, mom would clear everybody out of our room, and then she’d tuck me into bed and kiss me on the forehead. “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she’d say, with the sickening stink of alcohol and cigarettes on her breath. Then, after she left, I’d lay there alone in the dark room watching the colorful blinking neon sign just outside our window. The sign buzzed like a giant bumblebee, and it wasn't long before I fell fast asleep.

After I returned to Antelope Valley, my friends and I would run through the desert playing our games as though I had never been away. Of course, I never said anything to my aunt Mary and uncle Bob or to my friends about drinking beer with the painted ladies. I didn’t think they’d understand that sort of thing. Anyway, that was my other life, where I was known as . . . Mommy’s Little Beer Boy.