i'm reading this book LITTLE PANIC DISPATCHES FROM AN ANXIOUS LIFE, and remembering. i remember
we had a can of nudie magazines stolen from the neighbor dad's garage. we stashed them in the tall weeds between/behind our houses and met in a circle to gawp. a kid said hey look that's your mom, naked on a horse! i looked and my body went spastic in shame. shame about looking at stolen naked ladies and shame at looking at my mom naked on a horse and shame at my friends looking at my mom naked. i just realized that that set a kind of threshold i crossed many many times since, getting those naked lady magazines and feeling guilty and excited and shamed and titillated and throwing them away and searching for more. oh, i also remember once my mom said oh my god! looking at the sears catalogue and pointing out a guy's schlong hanging out of his boxers. it was true and my old self thinks it's a riot, i think mom saved that one for years because no one believed. but at the time i thought mom was quite lewd to be looking so intently at what was so obvious and no one else noticed. it was almost like she made it happen. oh i hope mom doesn't read this. nah, i don't mind, we're both old now anyways. we can laugh about such things. mom also used to send me pictures of trees with schlongs in florida saying she knew i would appreciate the humor. i often take pictures of holes in trees but i don't send them, though she could see them sometimes on the blog. there was an armenian boyfriend at one time i remember we went to his house and watched the film future shock projected in his basement. flickering lights and the smell of burning dust on the projector bulb, and in the beam. when the lights went up i saw he had an enormous schlong in tight striped polyester pants. that panicked me a long time too. it seemed like i was tossed into life expected to understand stuff and understood nothing and bad at sports and bad at girls and bad at pretending. can't say why we retain certain memories, but shame and excitement and panic seem to be key. r. says it doesn'r help remembering this stuff:you're still a mess.