To Be Longing to Belong [fiction]

Prefatory Remarks

Everything in close-up. Totality is eclipsed? We imagine such a view. We think we know that this is the place, the location of . . . pornography is a grotesque metonymy. Metonymy is simply put, a part for the whole of the thing or the person, do you remember suit for business executive, sail for ship? Vagina for woman–nipple for woman, no? Extreme close-up. What was it that I had learned, had heard, was told, by whom? Something about in focus and out of focus. The nipple and aureole in focus is pornography; out of focus, it becomes art–is art–there’s that distinction between is and becomes. To become is also not to be.

This is not what is done? It is what is often done, woman reduced to her parts, to their functions, another gross utilitarianism, human respected and honored for what she can do, not simply because she is? To do or not to do would be the question for anyone so concerned for the pornographic–or so we assume, as would the consumer of the pornogrpahic, right? Yes, no, otherwise maybe? Vive le voyeur et son regard.

Part for whole; herein, hole for whole. What is it that happens in pornography? Do you wish you knew . . . what is it about he or she who consumes pornography? Is that even a question to ask? Are any of these questions we need to ask to know what it is that desire is? Is pornography concerned for desire at all–why do Americans so often separate love from desire, or what they love to call lust, the alliteration again, how poetic in their dichotomies on sex and love, desire and . . . why is it always something other or less than when they talk about fucking, the wanting to fuck for Americans is usually separate from love, how incredibly adolescent they are about love, about sex, so impossibly binary about everything concerned with Love–capital ‘L’ love, loving, having loved, making love used for fucking because we cannot handle the wanting to fuck leading to having a fuck leading to n o longer giving a fuck about having fucked still being about love without marriage . . . the Puritans we are.

How do you go about it, this entertaining yourself with pornography, entertaining yourself with sex, the love of fuck, the smell of fuck–“I love the smell of fuck in the morning.” Yet, the desire to fuck is love. That is all. Even the fucking and leaving and never coming back is about love, and that’s what scares the shit out of most Americans, is that we can love one another, really, truly seriously in fun and joy love one another.

I might think you could say to yourself–what is it about how metonymy functions in language, what it is we say when we do where we do to whom we do gain how and why, every wherefore art thou . . . what everyone misses about Romeo and Juliet is their intense desire to fuck each other, the hormones have been set in a particle collider, the patterns of chaos recored in each bombardment. 

Language is poetry first and last, no? Of course it is. Yes. All of it metaphor–you missed this? Wow! I don’t get it. You have to understand that we were poets before we were Priests or Rabbis or Imams, before we became philosophers and grammarians, before schools and teachers–or worse, Public School teachers (the latter always and forever of the State, by the State, for the State so help them their new God, Bureaucracy).

Herein please find something about devotion–devotion to God, devotion to woman, devotion to Self, devotion to humanity only human when humane–we have two words for what we need to be; the French have one–yes, never human without the humane, of course, we used to be able to add. Today, no. We cannot make such gross assumptions because too many for too many decades in our academia have been misreading second-handedly, third hand interpretations of American critics misreading their second-handed readings of French Post-Existentialist thinkers (?) . . . or so I assume . . . asses, yours and mine, you and me–could it be simply a devotion to her tits? Was I pronogrpahic about my love of this woman, this girls, how old was she, how many years older than I when I was preoccupied when I was fourteen?

Now what might be a question I could ask to give answer that would help me to explain to you what it was that I was feeling? What to do or not to do with her tits was something I was preoccupied with, obsessed by? Again, of course, how could it be otherwise? I do not see anything like this in films? Is that true. I do not recognize myself too often in movies, so I know when there are people who say that films from Hollywood do not represent them, except when they use ethnicity or race to mean, I do not recognize the costumes worn by the actors because sometimes race and ethnicity in America amounts to the costume you wear over the role of pledged allegiant to Totalitarian American Bourgeois Capitalism.

Doing was what one did when he did do what we could imagine if we allowed ourselves . . . to die, to sleep–you get it, no?

And then everything I did for how long I cannot measure was for her tits. Glorious tits. magnificent tits. Beautifully formed tits. large tits. Never jocularly made bets with other teenaged boys about the cup size off her tits, as we had been known to do in the halls at school, in the auditorium, in the cafeteria, at the bus stop on our way home.

To be by her tits or not to be by her tits, near her tits, approximate in distance to look at her tits without being scary, gazing at her tits obliquely. This–what is this that was a preoccupation for this young man, myself, as I was, as I think I remember myself being, to be or not to be, again, this was to do or not to do her, all of it drawn by my desire for her tits–is it in the nature of man to be drawn to tits? How many marriages ensued from a first glance at two most glorious of any human mammary glands . . . the homo sapiens female is a glorious counterpart of the species, this male homo sapiens says.

 

ONE

I do not recall the last time I said the “Hail Mary” with any devotion; when was the last time I prayed in earnest I cannot say, could not with any accuracy, guess. I do not recall the last time I recited the Ave Maria aloud in Latin, or even under my breath, barely audibly, but not silently. And yes, as I had been taught to do by Dad, a Puccini-loving cop from Brooklyn who used to walk the Fulton Street beat and was the 80th precinct mid-wife. I recall the times–what? What acts, events, persons, wants, desires, needs do I recall? To call again to mind; to recollect, collecting again memories like sea shells at the sea shore in Montauk, I can see me doing with another . . . she will remain other herein. Other, another, one to this or that never the same, concentric? Are they mutual or reciprocal yet exclusive, this state of being other and this state of being another? All of them or some of them at least in fragments now, what I call to mind?

Remember! I think I can hear someone or something saying.

What of or what about my Dad do I recall, or could I recollect? Together sitting around recollecting times he delivered babies in cabs, on buses, in coffee shops or other stores; or on the sidewalk on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Too many people did not call an ambulance, instead my Dad, or the Precinct, which then meant my Dad, if he were on duty. Do we do so today, call an ambulance; or do some, when possible, call car service? He sued to tell me stories all the time.What do I mean, all the time, many of the times we were sitting together. I listened. I learned the difference between listening and only hearing by sitting with my dad.

I also recall–yes, I recall, and I remind you that recalling and remembering and recollecting are all of them not the same things, right? You understand this, don’t you? All recollecting is remembering, but not all remembering is recollecting—brandy and cognac, no?  How was it that I had adapted the Latin of the “Hail Mary” to my own purpose–devotion in prayer; devotion in sex–they were all of piece, no? Why so many questions I think you might ask. I did do so with her, fall in love, at least–her tits were glorious, yes GLORIA IN EXCELSIS. I did imagine I had a crush on her for reasons other than her tits. Did I? Or am I just imagining now that I should say this, deferring to whom, to what? Attraction is for many reasons; it is simple and complex. We are the ones who complicate it after the fact of having arisen. Love does arise.

What time was that when  . . . when what? Having fallen in love, as I imagined then, everything about love was in the realm of imagination. Of course it was. The pathway to eternity was through a woman–and when we were . . . what were we then when I was young, how young, never mind the age. Having fallen in love . . . what was it that we knew of love–why we? Me. I. I was in love because I was impossibly attracted to a woman, the  local corner grocery store owner’s daughter—God she had glorious tits. Her tits in a sweater were enough . . . enough of what? Enough for what? Enough to what? but do any of you imagine that something we like to call love at first site happens?

When I first saw her, I imagine I recollect, what? I did stare at her tits–the gaze of the boy struck by the arrow? I must have stared at them before my dad had the opportunity to tell me not to stare a woman in the tits, yes, he said that looking her in the eye was preferable to staring her in the tits . . . look a girl in the eyes, there will be plenty of time for her tits later if she wants. Yes, my dad added, if she wants. Let the woman choose, he also said to me one time exactly I cannot remember.

But in-love, yes, of course I was in-love as we think we understand falling in love, to fall or not to fall could be a question every youth must answer or ask. I was with her in mind and in mind with her tits; or, her breasts. No, I preferred to say tits, Ave Mammales Plena Gratia. I hated it when people used euphemisms for tits. Breast meat was what you had on roast chicken. What you paid extra for in pieces at KFC. A woman had tits, mammaries if you wanted to be funny or pretentious. All fourteen year old boys are pornographers, of a sort. I hate when people say breast or worse breasts instead of tits, look at those tits, she has big tits, she has beautiful tits in that sweater, gorgeous tits, look at how amazing her tits are . . . but her tits were truly wondrous, stupendous, glorious.

Desire in itself desire is love. Yes, as I have already said herein, the wanting to fuck, whether vaginally, anally, orally or just cleaving the pen–I did imagine cleaving my pen between her most glorious . . . each of these is in itself love, the desire to is love. What you do with it afterwards is of your own consequence. You have to live with yourself. How could I not have imagined cleaving my pent with her, with those, glorious as I have already repeated too many times some might say, perhaps you as well might. I could, I think; perhaps thinking I should. Yes, tits, to have fucked her between her tits would have been . . . I had no notion that a fixation on a woman’s tits might be less than how I should have considered her–I was fourteen and a nearly pornographic perception  of women fit my preoccupation with sexuality when not singularly fixated on sex, sex and sex, erect dick in hand–taking your life in your hands was something I understood. Emerson made this a point in his essay Self-Reliance.

You certainly should not stare a woman in the cunt, unless naked, as she has chosen to be with you, then an upfront appraisal of her cunt is in order, and mostly, as you will find out, because there are still too many women who have never looked at their cunts, or others who have not looked at them and said beautiful when they did happen to examine their vaginas.  I cannot tell you how many times I thought about fucking when I was fourteen, how many dreams I had had about sex, although none of them were wet. I suppose there are guys who stare a woman in the cunt, make her uncomfortable by staring at her crotch, of course.

I was a boy, a male Homo-Sapiens, and as I have said, one of fourteen–what was it like then I think I remember although it is difficult to recollect; what is it now that I can say, need to say, about what, though? Her blonde curly hair?  Her glorious . . . yes, Gloria Mammalibus in Excelsis? It was not that I could not consider her as a human being, fully autonomous and with  complete sovereignty over body and mind–I was fourteen and overwhelmed by desire, and this girl’s tits were part of the ero-geneity. Whenever a girls tits were full enough, cleaving the pen was a sport I latter learned I loved to play.

I’m tired of bourgeois morality–is that what I am tired of . . . or is it only so I say, think I am, as I have said before that I was, as I know I have been time and again–you have no idea how many women and some men who profess to be so liberal who are really fucking prudes or prudes about fucking. Residually Puritanical when it comes to sex. You cannot imagine that we are anything less than puritanical, we Americans, do you? Recall all the ways we call sex dirty or nasty or some other really disturbing metaphor or grotesque image attached. I say a woman tits can teach you everything you ever wanted to know about praying and I’m gross . . . see what I mean? No, really, I mean we are prudes, though and through thoroughly so.

Puritans and prudes everywhere–just look at pop culture. And please do not think that it is licentious because that would just be another flip of puritanical. Our pop culture should tell you how uptight we are about sex and sexuality; if we weren’t, we’d handle it differently. I know you think otherwise.perhaps another time I will be able to convince you, or at least present my points more completely.

At least we have established that I want to fuck you means I love you. Not knowing this is a problem. A big one.

 

TWO

Nonetheless, nevertheless, moreover, however, yet . . . he was short, the grocery store owner, her father–and this has nothing to do with his daughter’s tits in early-seventies tight sweaters . . . beautiful, marvelous, gorgeous, fully formed, the arc in those sweaters, I wished even then that I could sculpt. God they must have been beautiful. Parabolas in space, parabolas in her sweater, the curvature of her tits reminding me what the curvature of space must have been, parabolic arc would extend infinitely, if so pursued. her tits could extend infinitely?

He had thick glasses; his daughter did not. He had black hair still at his age–how old was he then, when I was fourteen. His twenty year old daughter did not–she was blonde. She must have taken after her mother who you only saw a few intermittent times in a month? Was that true? Her mother was blonde. The girl’s hair was curly, long flowing locks to her shoulders. I forget her name. Absolutely glorious tits, or so I said later when describing her, or trying to describe her–I do remember when I was sixteen, my father saying never stare a woman in the tits, always look her in the eye. If she wants you, there will be plenty of time for looking at her tits later. My Dad also said, let the woman choose–he later told me that that’s because the sex will be better if she has chosen rather than having relented.

Tits were either glorious or not glorious. If not glorious, they could still beautiful, but maybe only pretty, which is not to say that pretty cannot be more attractive than beautiful, if you understand what I mean. They might equally be sweet, the tits in question, or luscious, yes, tits can be luscious, delicious even (and of course, either in the mouth or in the eye, and sometimes literally in the eye without piercing the closed eyelid, although pushed by an erect nipple). Beauty, deliciousness, sweetness, is in the eye as well as in the mouth–the paths to God are varied. And I wanted to see God and I wanted to see her tits and I was sure that if I would see her tits I would also see God. How could I not say how glorious her tits were?  Exclaiming, proclaiming throughout all the land to to all the inhabitants thereof, Liberty, Beauty, Mammaries! I was 14 when I declared to myself under my breath leaving the store, Gloria Mammalibus in Excelsis as I have already said here. I had the capacity to express women’s tits in religious terms: Hail Mammaries full of grace, the spirit of the Lord is with you, and blessed are you on every woman, and blessed is the fruit of the desire you inspire. 

I had many more prayers, desire inspired prayers–I went through the entire Catholic missal revising hymns and prayers to women’s tits, a woman’s ass in jeans, how she looked in cut-off shorts, a bathing suit, my God, the times we’d be at parties in our underwear . . . (once or twice catching a glimpse of panties or pussy in the more loosely laid cut off of shorts in how some girls sat with their knees bent up); or in some instances, just in praise of Sex in itself sex for sex of sex by sex what was it that everyone was afraid of. America has been in a closet so long, and I’m talking about heterosexuality–how could we ever imagine that homosexuals coming out of the closet was ever going to be easy? You think otherwise, other than we being prudes, puritanical, uptight–nothing really in praise of love. I want tits and nipples and cunt and lips and earlobes and necks and collar bones and armpits and tongues and fingers and palms and belly buttons and protruding hipbones . . . and the clitoris, don’t forget the clitoris . . . I remember an episode of a very popular television sit-com that hinged on the latter’s rhyming with Dolores. Don’t you?

I don’t want to say how I imagined even tongue fucking her ass, around the world in eighty minutes? A strange metonymy takes place in pornography, part for whole, or part equals whole, which equals woman in some form of extreme close-up, eclipsing the woman in her entirety. Yes, whole becomes part; part in this extremis becomes her hole? The hole of a woman is the whole of the woman in pornography, but this is not what this is here–the focus is on inspiration, how desire becomes act. The fantasy life was completing itself, and I was gaining knowledge that wanting and fantasizing were not the same thing, or that one is not contingent with the other, in no way mutual or reciprocal, no grotesque logic to complete. My fantasies were not premises. I realized this with another girl I had fantasized about and then was with, together, she and I, with each other, one to the other for the other completing our petty paces over each other, another and another and another time, place or groping.

 

THREE

Jimmy and I used to eat sandwiches in class for lunch, not the cafeteria, I think I can see, one of us would buy two heroes to bring to school, the other another day would buy two or bring something for lunch, we were in Junior High. I used to go to this grocery store owner for the ham sandwiches, Boar’s Head with tomato and mayo on Italian bread. I recalled something of my Catechism. It had no bearing in my desire for her tits that she was Jewish; I did not imagine praising her tits in Latin phrases some old women in my neighborhood still used for God was an affront to anything or anyone. I am sure there were Jews who knew Latin. He had two slicers. One was kosher the other not. Human tits were human tits and needed to be praised. Her tits really were glorious, magnificent, how many times am I going to say the same thing, repetition becomes motif. Ninth grade. Ninth graders.

I  closed my eyes and roamed over her tits in devotion, a kind of chivalric romance of the tits–how many times I imagined my lips around the aureole . . . now we’re geting into soft porn? Interesting how this is also used for halos, no? Saintly tits–I prayed with renewed vigor when before the statues of saints as I knew, though, would pale in comparison if ever I could kneel before her tits.  Kneeling, praying, praising God, the Queen of Heaven and large firm tits. I would like to say that I lit candles in church in prayer to her tits, but I am not so sure this happened that way, how I used to light votives in church before asking for intercession. I could not very well ask Jesus or Mary t help me in my quest fro her tits–but why not, if my desire were sincere–see? What is this about sincere desire and insincere desire?

But a kind of quester hero I imagined myself, yes, I was Yvain, I was Perceval, her tits were my Holy Grail. Devotion to her tits was also devotion her her, I imagined? I remember learning how sucking cunt has been a devotional act, one that has always brought me closer to God, who is a woman, by the way. Yes, I believe in one God, God the Mother, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Hagia Sophia became my intellectual mistress when I was an undergraduate. When could it have been?

God, I can still see her tits today–yes, I thanked God for her tits. God was the author of all beauty in the world and at that moment, her tits were two of the most beautiful things in the world. Now, in front of me almost–no, I cannot see her face, nor can I see her in tight jeans–but those sweaters and those tits . . . he was Jewish, the man who owned the store, as I have already said. I knew an Irish-American girl I had an infatuation with at the same time–her tits were–I’m looking for another word to describe her tits. I do not want to use the same word, glorious–no, her tits were not glorious, but they were big; but I do not want to use the same words for her tits as I have used for the grocery store owner’s daughter’s tits.

I don’t wonder what her tits are like today or how much they have sagged, or if they have. Whose were the first tits I ever had in hand, I cannot recollect, recollecting tits, and nipples and aureoles . . . recall singing pornographic Christmas Carols when I was even younger?

Yes, he had two slicers in his store, Joe did; one was kosher, the other was non. Occasionally he’d roll up the sleeves of the button down white shirt he always wore, with a tie, black, also always. Yes, always a white shirt covered by an apron; always a tie. I had been in his store I don’t recollect how many times before I saw the numbers tattooed on his arm–he did have numbers tatooed on his arm. I don’t remember the first time I saw them; really I do not. I do not remember if it were his right arm or his left. I do not recall what I said or what I thought. I only recall that I did see them, and I do not know if he saw me when I saw them. I do not have any idea what my face must have looked like–I am not going to venture a guess. I was still more curious what his daughters tits looked like under her sweater and bra than why this man had numbers tattooed on his arm. She had to always wear a bra–her tits were big, must have been heavy–I cannot count how many times I fantasized about them, holding them in hands like scales weighing fruit, of course melons, we would say, did say, often said in aside among other boys objectifying women because we could easily then, and still do in what we like to think are appropriate places to be inappropriate with those we allow ourselves to be our worst selves, or so we say in an attempt to acknowledge that we know we are doing what we are not supposed to be doing, or so I imagine because I think most people would rather be bad than stupid or ignorant, the latter with or without the connotations we have given it that stand apart from what it speaks in etymology.

I do not know if I had ever thought of them, hers as I had imagined them when I finally made it to a pair of smooth skin ones . . .my hands, lips . . . the underwire in most bras makes them contraptions of minor torture I concluded the last time I helped my wife shop for a bra. I would never put on my balls anything made for them the way most bras are made for women’s tits. It’s awful; it’s a very subtle misogyny?

I do not recall what I said, or if I said anything, or if I asked anyone anything about the numbers tattooed on his arm,Joe’s arm, with white long sleeve shirt sleeves rolled up to just below his elbow, the forearm . . .was it the right arm or the left arm, I forget, the numbers, black, a tattoo, I remember my Uncle Sallie, who had spent I forget how many years in the U.S. Navy during and after World War Two–he was in the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, in the 16-inch gun turrets (the shells were sixteen inches), the Battleship Iowa–yes, Uncle Sallie had tattoos, but not numbers, simple numerals on Joe’s arms, black, in a line, I tried to write about this once, a short story I tried to write, it was trite, I did nothing so then, but must think so now,I am saying so now, what was it about it that was trite, trying to show concern, trying to show–what was it that I was trying to show, how I felt, what we thought, what we felt, what it was about the Holocaust we did not know, refused to see, could not bring ourselves to say, even Jews not feeling as if they could, not even among other Jews? Was this some of it, what was it? It, they, them what when where with whom for whom, what did we say when I was fourteen; what did we know? We did not know anything–nothing amounting what we should have known, could have known, would want to know . . . the grocery store owner’s tattoo, I had no idea when I was ten what they meant . . . how old was I when I first saw them?

I understood the anchor on Uncle Sallie’s arm, as I understood the anchor through the globe on my father’s ensigna from the United States Marine Corps. He was in the battles of Guam, Saipan, Okinawa, as well as the occupation of Shandong, China. What does this have to do with this girl’s tits? Nothing, really; but  . . . human tits are human tits, having seen how many tits in my lifetime, how many of how many kinds of tits did I see, and not just small tits, tiny tits, big tits, enormous tits, playful bouncy tits, but varying kinds of tits on various kinds of women, diversity in tits, the principal reason I do not oppose diversity today.

I never asked Joe what they meant or why they were there or why anyone would tattoo numerals on the forearm. I am not even sure if I remember that a friend later told me what those numbers meant. I think I recall a friend who has since died telling me; I don’t think he knew because he was concerned for history or for Jews. Jews were still curiosities for many in my old neighborhood, still mysterious, not helped by the fact that history has caused Jews under even the least hostile environments to wear masks on top of the masks each of us wears by nature or familial conditioning. Hiding in plain site.

The word for person and the root of the word personality comes from the Latin word for mask, persona. This fact of tattooing was just another piece of trivia; the Germans tattooed them in the camps. I remembered the U.S. Army film footage of liberating camps in Eastern Europe and the horror show it was for us at fourteen . . . I think I recall the skeletal frames of the victims, I hesitate to say alive, surviving and living are not the same things . . . surviving is always beyond living, what it means in its etymology, sur vivir in French . . . and let me tritely say that what is beyond living is not always good. No horror film for years after that had a similar effect; nothing could be as grotesque; how could this full-framed living, let me say vibrant, man have been one of those I saw in those films someone thought we needed to see in our school auditorium when we were fourteen? But at fourteen the desire to consummate my passion, the passion with which I would have wanted to pursue my desire, yes, once more again, consummate it, was furious, I remember, frenzied, I said, thought about, imagined drawing in images to show, what words could I use, could I have any character say that would show you and not just tell you?

I don’t know what happened to Joe, the grocery store owner on the corner of a street in Brooklyn named for a city upstate and an Avenue named by a letter of the alphabet; that is, after we moved away sometime nearing the mid seventies. I’m not sure if he is still alive; his daughter was four or six years older than I was, maybe she was only eighteen the last time I saw her, a thick voluptuous mass of curly blonde hair tumbling to a green blouse that could not hide . . . Ave Mammales Plena Gratia . . . Mammales Dei qui tollis–yes–the sins of the world, miserere nobis . . . repetition, repetition, repetition. How my love gif her tits for her tits to her tits on her tits I imagined fantasized . . . what was it they could do for the world, my act of devotion to her tits, yes, what could they do to take away the sins of the world?

I really cannot see what I saw then–who can? Who can see as he had seen? maybe we can in ways, sometimes, in some manner, what manner, what is the matter with me, the matter of her tits, theater of my love, theater of desire, again, repeating myself about desire?

I can imagine what I saw, now understanding that I did think as I have said I thought, now seeing snippets and fragments of persons,  parts, place . . . memory is like trying to collect confetti and put it back into the sheets that the confetti came from, no?

Do I hear old voices that have faded in volume, old voices played again, no recordings in the mind, are there? All memory is in part fiction? I have asked this many times remembering. Not only what we choose to insert, but what the mind that houses our many selves chooses to insert from among the many echoes bouncing off the walls within from the cacophony of voices voicing sound and words and fury . . . no amount of praying to her tits, for her tits, could accentuate appropriately just how worthy of admiration and fame her tits were, and I know this even if I cannot see as definitely now as I know I did then.

To repeat what I have already said in these and other words said, yes,  illustrious tits, her tits–what words could I use to say at something  am no longer sure was as true as I feel it is think it is imagine that could have been . . . her tits as I imagine them now are now, absent presence . . . what about this? This is yet another story and another story to tell, say show, how do words draw pictures for you?

Yes, magnificent tits, her tits, those tits, my tits, really marvelous tits . . . splendid, spectacular, impressive, striking, glorious, superb, majestic, awesome, awe-inspiring, breathtaking . . . what was it that I said, have said, do say, will say again and again the gain we hope I hope we repeat to aggrandize, don’t we . . . superb, spectacular, sublime–yes, her tits were sublime–God was sublime? The thought of God was sublime? The meditation on God was sublime?

Lovely, delightful, very, very fine, too much is less a girl I knew in college used to love saying. Perhaps this is enhanced by distance rather than obfuscated–or perhaps it has been obfuscated in a way that allows for a more greatly perceived fondness?

I did pay tribute to her magnificent tits in a notebook I began to keep as a journal? I do see what I have said I saw; but it is other than video tape and other than complete fabrication. If there is fictional Truth, there is also memorial Truth, if you get what I am doing here. If only I had that book now.

I don’t remember whose were the first tits I ever had out of a bra. I’ve said this already. I don’t know why I should remember or why I should have forgotten. I often thought about how many tits I have seen, how many I have handled, fondled, played with, caressed, kissed, cuddled, sucked . . . where was I for my first tits I cannot say–I think I might have an idea who, but discretion, discretion, discretion . . . (the man who used to answer his front door naked or semi-naked is worried now about being discrete–this is rich, I think I can imagine hearing you say).

I really do not remember the first pair of tits I had in hand. I mean naked tits, bald tits, out of blouse and without bra tits. The first tits in my mouth?

There were tits inside of these tits? Matroiyshka  tits–now that would be something.

Either of them–I knew a girl who had tatooed a small heart on one of her tits, I think it was the left tit, or was it the right tit–no, it was the left tit, it was my right hand, then upper and lower lips, one at a time then both. There must be a great difference for some to have their tits out of a blouse in a bra and out of the bra–I mean, I can see how there are those who see a great difference–I’m not sure a girl’s father would imagine the difference if she were under eighteen–I’m not sure he would if she were over eighteen.

We are still horribly prudish. I have said this before, and I am saying it again now, and I will say it yet again in the near and the distant future . . . I cannot see us revising how we are about sex.

I’m not. I know this. I have said this. I do not understand others who are. I always managed to get at the underneath of tits, the bottom of tits . . . don’t forget to caress the bottom of tits, rub the bottom of tits, hold tits from the bottom, gently lift the tits, always down, or held torturously by bras from underneath. Free those tits. Let them loose. Yes, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, my tits are free at last!

 

FOUR

Upon first writing this, Joe might have been alive; the chances of Joe still being alive are slim, yet men living into their late nineties is not unusual. The daughter with the fabulously great and glorious tits most likely is alive. I used to imagine many years ago telling a woman in some future that I had had a crush on her when I was a boy. Nonetheless, I don’t know if his wife was older or younger. I never saw anything on her arms; I don’t know if I ever saw her arms. He was closed on Saturdays, opened regular hours on Sunday. I don’t know what I could tell him, or even if I should tell him anything, if I were to see him again, if he is alive, probably not; I thought the other day about his grocery store. I thought about the girl whose tits I had fallen in love with when I was fourteen, a girl who lived near the  grocery with the girl with curly blonde hair and a pair of wondrous tits, fantastic in as much as they were the subject of many fantasies.

I know I will forget this soon enough and perhaps remember it just as easily only to forget it again just as quickly once more. What could it have meant to me even if I were Jewish in Brooklyn, what I saw? How many Jews here were touched by the Holocaust; but I knew later that we were all supposed to be touched by it, but then we believed in a pan-humanity, or at least we imagined we did. We don’t today, in spite of what you think, I think, we think–is it we? What we say, not as sub-divisive as our diversity has been allowed to become; multiculturalism has been allowed to degenerate into justification for tribal politics. This is not the place for diatribes on politics and culture. To see or not to see as when we do through yet another lens darkly, we do when we remember, how does recollection differs in matter of light? A theater of light and dark, how we see when we imagine looking back.

Lip service, easy enough; lying to one’s self easier–everyone lies to himself, some more than others–dosome people lie to themselves more often out of social necessity? Do peoples suffer the same in their mental;lity as peoples that persons do ion their psychology?

If Jews believe that when a person saves another person he saves the world, how many worlds did the Nazis destroy? I could ask, but I do not, no, and why I do not I do not consider. Why would I now here?. Do any of us through omission help destroy worlds within worlds? I know the truth of the Mea Culpa, no, you do not?

We don’t say enough of what we should say because all of us spend so much of our time chattering away, twittering away our time inanely on social media, hoping that there can be a cumulative effect on our lives, our collective future, as if linearly progressing toward an infinite future will bring us closer to a solution, an absolution, a resolve, a conclusion of enormous magnitude, enormous satisfaction for good. Infinity though is never reachable, never attainable, never ever to come and all efforts at reaching these infinite possibilities that we have become enamored with are destined to fail. One billion to the one billionth power no closer to infinity than three. Our hopes our rocks up the mountainside? Sisyphus, as I have said before in another piece of writing essaying what thesis, at least had his rock; we have only our illusions and delusions . . . this is as true interpersonally as it has become or has always been collectively.

Preaching is easy, though. I like to preach. This I know from experience. Yes, again, I love to preach. Practice, though, is always hard enough when done to make things perfect. Her tits were perfection for me when I was fourteen. Maybe if men remained devotional about women’s bodies they would not need to repress or oppress them–fear of sex, of woman’s sexuality, of woman as person has become master over our humanity. I should not let this become what I had not intended it to become; to be or not be is what we have come to be or not come to be by our choices made, our choices confirming our fates? Mine. We do pay for them, our lives, that is, and quite readily by our choices . . . and not choosing has always been a choice.

To choose or not to choose is not really a question; to have made an active choice or a passive one is about all you get in the question of choosing. For some reason I think I could be sure that you might wonder if I would want to see her if she were alive, if I were to find out if I were alive, and I cannot say yes or no, and yet I have a nagging thought that you are sure I must want to, that you think you are certain that I would have to want this and that you have even spent some time imagining what that would be like, thinking you still know me as you used to know me although I am sure you never did, not as you imagined you did.

Belonging is the opposite of to be longing for someone, after someone, no? Of course it is. Interesting, don’t you think?