Slow to Grow
Page 4
Chapter 4
At 10 pm sharp on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, Channel 44 changed formats. By day, it showed the greatest in odd Japanese style cartoons from the 1960's, like Speed Racer, Johnny Sokko, and Clutch Cargo. By night, their audience was a more mature one. In fact, it was for mature audiences only. Very mature.
And you unless you were a subscriber it was forbidden fruit, unless you tried really hard, no pun intended. Which Lloyd did. He tried REALLY hard. It was called ON-TV and oh, it was ON. Soft core style porn. Perfect for a 13 year old boy. God Bless UHF television in 1982.
While his parents were downstairs, Lloyd would situate himself on his parents bed, and as Freudian as that sounds...well it was. But it was the only tv that had the twisty dial that could make all the squiggly lines less squiggly. You needed hands like a surgeon to get the perfect picture and at this point Lloyd could have graduated from Med School Cum laude. Sometimes he could make the picture hold for at least 10 seconds. Which was fine, because he only needed 7. Like marijuana, it was his gateway drug. Soon he would move on to Hustler magazine, to rented porn, and then the next thing he knew he would find himself sprawled out in the alley asking hookers if he could jack off on them. It was destructive man, destructive.
One night he settled in with one hand on the dial and the other hand elsewhere, he was a maestro at this point, and was conducting his orchestra, if you catch the drift, and did not notice his mother scaling the stairs. The concert came to a screeching halt as she stopped cold in the doorway and noticed the solo Lloyd was performing. She hastily retreated back downstairs as he stopped the performance mid song and cancelled the rest of the evening=s show. It was like she was John Wilkes Booth and Lloyd was Lincoln. Except Lloyd had the pistol.
The incident was never discussed and is only mentioned as a seminal event in his life, as it would be the first of many solo performances interrupted and discovered by an unsuspecting audience.
He shouldn=t have been surprised at being caught, considering the frequency at which he partook in these particular proclivities. Nobody bats a thousand. Literally, a thousand.
His parents had recently installed plush dark carpeting in his bedroom and little could they comprehend what that change of scenery would do to young Lloyd. And neither did the poor carpet. It was made to be walked on, not violated in disgusting fashion by a young boy in the throes of puberty. Though it was non-consensual, the carpet just laid there and took it, just like Lloyd=s first wife.
His sister would come into the room and ask why certain parts of the carpet were stuck together and so prickly and sharp. Lloyd would first giggle at the word prickly, and then shrug and say he must have spilled something. In retrospect, Lloyd=s fascination with hirsute women can be traced to these dramatic events.
He relied mostly on Penthouse and Playboy to get him though such trying times. Five were accorded a prime spot under his mattress, which he referred to as his starting rotation. The ones less used were referred to as the bullpen, or the relievers, and kept under his bed. When one of the starters got tired and beat up and became worthless and worn from use, Lloyd would signal to the bullpen for a fresh one, it was just like the Cub pitching staff. It was a close call on which was beaten more.
His mother never moved them or mentioned them when she would come across them. Everyone knew it was there, but no one talked about it. Sort of like the Carter Presidency.
Once in awhile he would babysit for the 7 year old girl in the neighborhood, Amy Hartigan. They Hartigans lived in the fanciest house on the block, which was like saying the coolest guy in the high school band, but nonetheless it was a large house.
The mother, Linda Hartigan, was quite the looker, and young Lloyd always found himself staring gawkily at her luscious rack as she gave him the day=s directions. One day out of boredom, while young Amy took her daytime nap, Lloyd sauntered into the bedroom, and inconspicuously rifled through her underwear drawer. The mom=s, not the kids, Lloyd was no pedophile, just a young creep. And would turn into a juvenile creep and an adult one, but that is a digression.
As he was rummaging through the undies and the teddies and the stockings and things he had no clue about, he found a cassette tape labeled Linda. A few thoughts raced through his head about doing the right thing and respecting the privacy of others and blah blah blah. But once he rationalized the irony of debating about doing the right thing moments after he rummaging through her underwear drawer, the mental debate was rendered moot as he raced downstairs and shoved the tape into the VCR. It was a rather phallic move.
At first the tape was all grainy and he went to turn it off, but then, there in all her glory, was Linda Hartigan, on all fours with a ball in her mouth and her husband Leonard behind her in a diaper and scuba mask. Lloyd learned a hard lesson that day about respecting people=s privacy. A hard lesson.
He never babysat for them again, which Lloyd chalked up to a coincidence, but in truth Linda and Leonard Hartigan played that tape every Tuesday night and knew exactly what spot they had stopped it previously. In retrospect Lloyd realized he never spoke another word to her again.
Even though he never saw that particular video again, the memories were ingrained in his brain like the batting averages of the 1977 Cubs starting lineup. His carpet cringed every time he came into the room. No pun intended again. Yuck.
Lloyd=s parents were very open sexually, much to the chagrin of Lloyd and his sister, Ellen. It was commonplace for their Dad to tell them to leave the house for awhile, to give him and their mother some privacy. The same thing on vacations. Leave the hotel room, we need privacy. We need privacy was the all encompassing slang for, AI am going to defile your mother.@ Sometimes they wouldn=t ask the kids to leave the house at all, just shut the door and go at it. Ellen and Lloyd would cower in fear and disgust at the noise emanating from behind closed doors. To this day, they have never been able to figure out what the horrific popping sound was. It sounded like a champagne cork bursting out of the bottle. POP. But sort of with a M at the beginning. MPOP. MPOP. Just thinking about it brought Lloyd to the brink of tears.
Many years later Lloyd also realized that the spongy round toy he used to grab out of the cabinet and play with in the bathtub was his mother=s diaphragm. It took six years of counseling before that nugget rose to the surface.