Brighton, Summer 1983- Houghton’s Pond

After the unstable year following the capsizing events that marked the end of the Hyde Park period, we settled in Brighton.  Mother had completed her treatment program that winter at the same time as my father did.  She spent some time in a half-way house and met a fellow recovering alcoholic, a rugged Irishman called Bobby Burns, while my dad moved in with my grandmother. I was released into M’s company once her program managers determined that she was capable of living on her own, and, after a brief stay at B’s Mission Hill apartment, we got a 4^th floor, 3 room place with a small veranda, paneled in very old, very tacky, weather-worn rippled green and orange fiberglass.  It looked directly on to Brighton’s North Beacon Street housing projects.  These were benign, thankfully, as inner-city projects go.

While D immersed himself fully in Alcoholics Anonymous, and B faithfully attended local meetings, M slowly and discreetly returned to the comforts of the bottle.  I say ‘comforts’ for lack of a better term – there was nothing comforting about her consumption.  Clearly something was tormenting her.  She had held a fleeting administrative position somewhere nearby, cut loose for what I understood to be an absence of reliability.  She fought with B almost ceaselessly, mostly I only picked up on the objects of their arguments if they related to me.  I once walked in on them having sex. Another time I was inconsolable when B hit a raccoon in his red Grenada driving through a rainstorm.  Both times he went ballistic and she defended me to her teeth until he shut the fuck up.  He never hit her.  In hindsight this dramatic departure must have caused some disarray in her mind.  Mostly he was good to us.  She must have resented his concerted efforts at sobriety, where she had neither the will nor the desire to follow this prescription that offered at least the opportunity to extract herself and me from the chaos we’d been forever entrenched in.  Or subconscious self-sabotage. I’d put my money on that.

A few interesting things happened that summer. My father met the woman who would become his second wife.  They would be married for nearly 20 years.  Once they moved in together the grilling started.  Of course in retrospect they were gearing up for a DSS intervention.

I continued to see my counselor at the New England Home for Little Wanderers, often taking taxis from Brighton to Jamaica Plain.  One cab driver had only one hand and I’m astonished to this day that I managed to keep from bolting from the vehicle at a red light.  I somehow equated missing hands with child killers and concentrated strictly on his navigation, watching for any sudden movements or suspicious glances in the rear view mirror. I was delivered safely. As it turned out there was nothing inherently evil in having lost your right hand.

Two important details remain of the day that our Lebanese neighbors invited me to Houghton’s Pond.  M was happy enough to have the day to herself.   Def Leppard’s ‘Photograph’ played on the radio while I got into my bathing suit and selected a hand-me-down towel from grandmother’s extensive collection of passed on textiles.  Somehow that strikes me as important.  Part of the soundtrack of my childhood, the song the mark of my final summer with a mother I would never really know and would meet again on my knees at her casket, the dramatic gazes of a surprising number of mourners heavy on my narrow shoulders.

There were other songs from that summer, mostly from summer camp since I didn’t spend much time in the apartment, M preferring to enjoy her alcohol and pornography in relative peace.  These included David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance,’ Elton John’s ‘I’m Still Standing,’ The Styx’s ‘Mr. Roboto.’  Even the Sugar Hill Gang and The Steve Miller Band. Still, only ‘Photograph’ evoke’s the swift and relentless fragmentation of my mother and my first ever penis sighting.

Matthew asks me, with some frequency, to repeat the quick tale of the well-muscled naked man at Houghton’s Pond.  It turns him on.  I’m not sure whether it’s some voyeuristic streak, fellow narcissism or that it was somehow legitimately erotic.  The public facilities – bathrooms, showers, lockers – were situated in the center of the beach, with the men’s quarters facing the water and the women’s on the other side, facing the wooded area by the parking lot.  It was, probably still is, a simple stone structure with large, heavy, industrial-grade doors, painted green, at either end.  On this day, the doors to the men’s section were propped open on either end, the only thing visible from the exterior being what should have been an innocuous row of bathhouse sinks.

I recall nothing else of that day. It would have been hot and loud, with a multi-racial crowd and competing boomboxes.  I was a good swimmer but there was a barrier of buoys strung on rope like confused aquatic Christmas lights which kept you from doing anything but wade to hip level in the fresh water. Nice enough for the tots but short on fun when you’re nine.

And then there he was.  I was striding across the sand and I cannot imagine it was by accident that I turned my head directly to the left, my sights upon that otherwise uninteresting row of sinks.  There stood, what in my memory was, a tall, tanned, muscular man with a thick shock of dark hair. A good-looking man.  And a naked one, his body and what appeared to be a formidable erection exposed, somehow not unnaturally.  I stopped short, destination – a Very Fine apple juice, a ham sandwich, a towel – entirely forgotten for the few seconds it took for the image to be forever engraved in my memory.

I stared and he stared back.  I wish that more contextual  detail had registered, but I was nine.  It was clear he was, by any standards, an attractive man. Tall, lean, toned.  He watched me as if this were all exclusively for my benefit.  He must have been Italian, perhaps 30.  I can see him with dark, serious eyes, but I’d have no way to decipher his purpose or objective.  Well, perhaps the objective was obvious, but as a reasonably experienced sexual adult with an exhibitionist streak myself, I imagine there must have been more to it than mere perversity and the inherent risk of arrest for indecent exposure.  Whatever it was, it had my permanent attention.  My experience with perverts since have been typical and predictable – trench coat, perhaps no pants underneath, once even with pastel color-block boat shoes, always fussing with their packages.  But never attractive.  Narcissism perhaps.  It seems as though I stared at his entire body, mostly his shoulders and sculpted, masculine legs stand out, but I suppose his cock was the focal point, large and straight as an arrow.  I don’t recall precisely what it aroused in my nine year-old self – there could have been some type of latent sexual response, but mostly I was just fascinated, entranced by the beauty and unadulterated nakedness of this man.  He was pretty clearly smitten with the vision of himself too.

It could only have lasted a few seconds, me barefoot in the hot sand in my cheap Bradlee’s bathing suit, him in all of nature’s glory.  It appeared this intimate interaction was ours exclusively for its duration.  Finally it occurred to me that I was standing on a beach staring unabashedly at a naked man.  He was the only one who knew of my deviant participation in this small and probably not all that uncommon sliver of perversion.  I ran, leaving my naked man, risking another nine year-old claiming my secret.  But it was a secret and so I had to share.  I grabbed my friend and dragged her bodily back to the bathroom, where no one else was standing and staring.  My naked man was gone.

© 2012 J. Gallagher

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