ONE OF OUR FAVORITE PASTIMES was to roam the neighborhood alleys, looking in trash cans and dumpsters for hidden treasures. Discarded Christmas trees, water-damaged books, three-legged chairs, love letters from mistresses, and stained clothing: These were all our personal booty. Because I was the tallest and had the most recent tetanus shots, I felt it was my duty to dig farthest into the trash, certain that if I applied myself, one day I would find a large wad of cash, a bag of misplaced heroin, or possibly a human hand.
I knew my hard work had not been in vain the day I pulled out the stained Playboy magazine, its pages stuck together with (what I now hope was) dried orange juice. At age nine, this was my first real look at full nudity that didn’t involve a National Geographic exposé. We brought the magazine back to our grandparents’ lawn, and my cousin and I settled out in the yard to examine these women, who I was surprised to discover did not have breasts that sagged down to their navels, and who all seemed to have names that ended with two e’s. We turned to the centerfold, a well-endowed blonde called “Candee.” Grandlibby tried to distract us away from the magazine with the tempting combination of a ladder and an umbrella, but we were way too sucked into the Playboy to listen to her suggestions that the magazine was “rubbish.” My grandfather peered at us from the door and muttered loudly to himself about how little respect kids had for lawns nowadays. I have no idea whether he even noticed the torrid magazine we were engrossed in, but he continued to grumble as he stalked into the house, possibly looking for some small nails.
“Hey, Grandlibby?” I asked. “What’s a ‘turn-on’?”
She paled visibly, looking mildly ill. “Well,” she said . . . struggling for words, “it’s . . . um . . . the things that make you happy, I suppose?”
I turned to my cousin. “My turn-ons are Rainbow Brite and unicorns.”
Michelle smiled back, her two front teeth missing. “My turn-ons are Monchhichis. And Tubble Gum.”
Grandlibby issued a terse, strangled laugh. “Yeah. I could be wrong about that. I don’t speak real great English, you know. Why don’t you just never use that phrase again, okay?” She excused herself to go into the house. We could hear something that sounded like a prayer coming from within, but we were too fascinated with these women and their flimsy-looking (and ill-fitting) support garments to investigate any further.
Suddenly the bright, sunny day erupted into a violent hailstorm. We ran toward the porch, covering our heads with the magazine. Grandlibby stepped outside authoritatively, with one eyebrow cocked. “So. You see what happens when you look at dirty pictures?” she intoned knowingly. “It hails. And do you know where hail comes from?” she asked sweetly.
“Cumulous clouds?” I volunteered. I had recently made a B-plus in science, and I felt moderately sure this was the right answer.
“No,” Grandlibby replied. “Hail comes from hell. The devil sent it because he’s happy that you’re reading evil garbage.”
Michelle and I looked at each other. It had seemed suspicious for a hailstorm to erupt on a perfectly clear day, but we sensed that Grandlibby’s logic was flawed. If the devil was happy, then why would he send hail to distract us from our newfound love of pornography? “Certainly,” we thought, “she must be confused.” But what did worry us was the fact that the hailstorm had occurred only seconds after we’d heard Grandlibby praying in the house. It was disconcerting. Did my grandmother have some kind of direct line to God? Had all those years of funneling money to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker finally paid off? We weren’t sure, but felt it was better not to chance it. I placed the Playboy back on top of the neighbor’s trash can, feeling that if we could no longer partake in its wonder, surely the next dumpster divers would appreciate my generosity and charity, qualities I felt sure God would admire.
Years later I realized that my grandmother had been right all along about the magazine being rubbish, and I happily bypassed the glossy but shallow Playboys for her old, battered copies of Housewife Confessions and True Hollywood Scandals, which allowed for almost no nudity but a much stronger story line than Playboy could ever deliver. “Don’t tell your parents,” Grandlibby said with a sweet grin.
I smiled back. She had nothing to worry about.
Jenkins, You Motherfucker
When I was little my mother used to say that I had “a nervous stomach.” That was what we called “severe untreated anxiety disorder” back in the seventies, when everything was cured with Flintstone vitamins and threats to send me to live with my grandmother if I didn’t stop hiding from people in my toy box.