18th
Tainted Love
I was five and he was six. He was a tow-headed wonder boy who lived in my building and would skulk about the courtyard like Pip in search of Stella’s fairy dust.
The cherry colored balloon enticed with “POP ME.” Inside I had written a note: “Eye”— with badly mascaraed, pounding lashes — “Heart” – in crimson crayon, the harlot’s leer – “U” – the illegal turn of the pen.
And: “PS: You look like Ricky Schroeder.”
The episode was soon enough drowned out by Saturday morning cartoons until he tried to regain my attention — first in dazzling blue roller-skates; now in a brightly patterned Hawaiian tee-shirt, sporting not one, but five GI Joe’s; and for our encore, bare-breasted and gleaming iridescently under a broken fire hydrant.
“She was five and I was six. We rode on horses made of sticks. She wore black and I wore white…”
I still wonder why the Lady of Shallot ever bothered coming down from that tower…
