Mrs. Strubb's Dills and Gary's Cock

I'm on a sex sabbatical after deciding Dr. Stein and Dy were right. Coyle is not good for me. And anyhow I've fallen in lust with my bathroom floor. It’s late spring and Gary Brown is playing guitar on his sister Linda’s balcony overlooking our garden. He’s practising “Cocaine” because he’s learned how to pick like Reverend Gary Davis. I’m lying on the reclining lawn chair and following the sun around. At eleven in the morning, my body is shining with Johnston’s and Johnston’s Baby Oil and I’m lying near the hedges separating our houses. At five in the afternoon, I’m reclining below our raised patio and facing Gary who parks his chair so he can watch my journey and strum on his guitar. I’m wearing a favorite blue and green floral bikini with a push-up bra although my breasts really stand up by themselves. The bikini comes with a dress to match that has to be hand-washed.Gary stops playing his guitar, gets up, and disappears into his sister’s room. My face is lathered with a combination of Noxema, Oxenol, and Calamine Lotion. I have a handy basin of water, washcloth, and clean towels, so as Gary comes round the hedge, I’m completely presentable.

“Hey Janice. You’re growing up, you know. I can’t believe it’s the same Janice that Shelly peed on. Remember you were standing under our front balcony and Shelley peed on you and you started yelling.”
“Yeah, well, I just washed my hair and I was wearing my new white blouse and your creepy fart of a brother comes along, unzips and pisses on my head.”

Gary looks like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront.” He starts playing “Freight Train” and I’m watching because he’s teaching me how to pick and anyhow he’s really nice to watch. “Hey,” he says, “You want to come over and get something to eat?”

I can’t open our fridge without my mother sneaking up to check whether I’m eating the family’s supper or slurping all the juice from the cherry container, or devouring a week’s supply of raspberries. She could be in her bathroom douching up, and there she is behind me. Gary likes to eat. First, he prepares a platter of food in his kitchen.
“You want some dills?”
“Strubbs?”
“Na, Mrs. White’s.”
“Sure,” I say.
“How about rye? You want rye or challah?”
“Listen, I’m putting a few raw eggs on that plate.” His father used to be a pro-boxer.
“Hey, Janice, you want coke or milk?”
"Hey, careful with that platter," he says and follows me downstairs. I trip and drop the eggs. “Lick it up,” he says, and I tell him to go to hell. He soothes me by playing ragtime on the old upright piano. I walk over to the pool table and shoot a few back-hand plays.

We’re lying on his mother’s old couch that she can’t part with because it’s from her honeymoon set and maybe she’ll get it reupholstered one day. But meanwhile the patent-leatherette sticks to my skin and pulls my flesh when I try to shift around. Gary kneads my left breast which really hurts, only I don’t want to say anything to break the mood, and he’s kissing me—sort of an elaborate dog lick that tickles at first, but then just gets on my nerves. I start writhing and moaning and digging my fingernails into his back and shaking my head from side as I’m listing my past boyfriends and eleven fucks like counting sheep. Sometimes I forget one or mess up the order and I have to begin all over again. And all the while Gary’s going on and on— “Damn damn damn,” he’s saying.

“Listen Janice, I have to know the woman well before . . . I have to feel relaxed you know. It has to be meaningful.”
“But you’ve known me all your life.”
“Yeah well, maybe I’ve known you too long. Maybe that’s it. Christ, it’s almost incest.”
“Look Gary, it’s OK, maybe some other time. Hey, all you have to do,” I say, kissing him on the nose—the Brown’s have small round noses—“is stand beneath my window and throw a stone at it.” I’m a romantic at heart.
“No Janice, I want to do it now. I mean it. Maybe if you suck me off a bit, I want to make it with you, I really do.”

I’m eyeing the Mrs. White’s pickle jar on the floor while I’m sliding around on top of him. All that writhing and arching is making me sore.
“Hey what the fuck are you doing? You’re crazy, I swear,” he shrieks as I pour pickle juice on his prick.
“You didn’t have champagne,” I say, slurping him up. I take him in my mouth, roll my tongue around and up and down. Meanwhile he’s groaning, “Oh you’re so good, who taught you all this shit, I’m going to come.” No fucking way am I going to let him come in my mouth. So I slide up and slip him into me so fast that he almost starts his “oh damn” litany again. But I ride well. When I was a kid I took riding lessons at Sunset Lodge outside Ste. Agathe. I loved riding those palominos and it shows. I wiggle my ass side to side and up and down and I figure I’ll lose three inches off my twenty-three inch waist. One thing about fucking, when it’s done right, it’s great exercise. Anyhow Gary shudders, comes, and sighs. I get my clothes.

His grandmother, Mrs. Garfield, is sitting in the kitchen sipping tea. “Say hello to your parents for me. You’ve grown up to be a beautiful young woman, hasn’t she Gary?”
Gary smiles. “That’s what I told her.”
“Well, well. Don’t be a stranger, dear.”
“Oh I won’t, Mrs. Garfield.”

Mrs. Garfield wears dresses with floral prints. She has a preference for short sleeves that press out the fat on the back of her upper arms like sausage escaping from its casing. Whenever Gary’s father Eli is in the middle of another bankruptcy, Mrs. Garfield wears her best dresses. For two weeks, as she sips tea at the kitchen table, she turns her head ever so slightly, “Don’t be a stranger, dear.”


In her top floor bedroom that covers the full length of the house, my mother is busy organizing. She’s wearing her brown lace-up oxfords with sturdy high heels. I’m not sure what she’s sorting out. A pale green sheet covers her bed on which she’s placed a worn black daily calendar, copies of the Gazette, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, Time Magazine, and a large pair of scissors with black plastic handles.
“What are you doing, Mum?
“Oh, Janice, I didn’t hear you come upstairs.”
“Are you busy?”
“Well, yes, no—I was just sorting.”
“I’m seeing a lot of Gary and I was thinking I might talk to you. I like him.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
“I mean really. I really like him.”
“I see.”
Her shoulders lift up and down; I know she’s sighing so I spill it out, fast.
“I’m thinking he’s the one, and I want, I’m wondering, but I need your permission, if I could get some birth control. The pill I mean, I want to go on the Pill.”
“I see.”
“I mean I’m coming to you the way I’m supposed to, you know, and— are you keeping these IF Stone Weeklies?”
“I have to sort through them first. I’ll have to talk to your father.” My mother’s eyes dart
from side to side. They do that, get big, with veins snaking through the whites, her pupils dashing about on frenzied patrol.
“But I’m asking you.” I look around her room—at her night table with assorted creams in coloured glass vials, a framed photo with the caption “Florence and Phil, Balmoral, Naussau, 1954” and a neat pile of books with her black reading glasses on top. Her cupboard door is open.
“I have to ask Daddy.”
“You always have to ask Daddy.”
“That’s not fair, Janice. This is a big issue and your father . . .” She brushes the back of her hand across her eyes.
“I know, I know,” I say and walk out.