Chapter 3

As part of my “growing up” process, I started to bang juicy Cousin Nancy fairly regular after passing eighteen. She was twenty now and had that air of sophistication that girls get when they are getting laid by a variety of guys with different techniques. I wasn’t jealous of her dalliances because she generally made her body available to me on short notice and with an enthusiasm I felt certain was not feigned.

She had kept Marsha, her BFF, close to her side most of the time except for the time Marsha got involved with a prick of a cop from all the way out in Staten Island. The only time I would venture out to Staten Island was to visit one of the shitty beaches. The beaches there were desperately small and lacking good spots to get decent snacks like in Coney Island or Rockaway, but they were populated by hordes of nubile teenaged girls with almost virginal attitudes about life and love and lust in the sand. That summer of my eighteenth year I formed the opinion that the Staten Island females were secretly all virgins and they generally didn’t get their cherry busted until they hooked up with some guy from the real city or even from Brooklyn.

Marsha was eighteen now and she was all grown up with respect to the “getting laid” department. She was a snickering graduate of that interesting course of instruction and didn’t need any pointers from me about the facts of life. I didn’t know if she had a full time boyfriend, because she was a secretive bitch, all things considered. Still, she packed her tight boy jeans with her special brand of teenaged nubile female goodies and seemed to attract feverish attention from usually passive old married men. The one thing I remember about her that impressed me the most was the fact she was hooked on cleanliness and was always taking a shower or a bath.

I first became aware of her impending motherhood problems, when I walked in on my Cousin Nancy holding her in her arms and consoling her like she was a little baby bird and needed immediate TLC. After some incomprehensible sobbing about it “not being my fault”, I finally got the message that some prick of an Irish cop had seeded our poor Marsha real good and proper.

Eventually, I got the information that the guy was married and had four children and was a supposed “pillar of the community”. That really made me laugh because everyone knew most of those guys were on the take, in one form or another. I couldn’t help but think this “Patrick Something” was cut from the same cloth, only maybe he was more into the free-pussy variety, rather than cold, hard cash. My thoughts were confirmed when Marsha blurted out that she had met this Patrick when he let her go after her trying to sneak on the subway through the exit door. That was enough to make me laugh. It was something we all did on a daily basis just to save money. I guess, we all figured, we needed the money a lot more than the city did.

This uniformed Sergeant was devious enough to get her down on her knees behind the closed change booth to give her an introduction to his method of “payment” for special treatment.

“After that, my Patrick started screwing me real regular and, I guess, I didn’t mind too much, what with him being in uniform and all and him with that great thing of a gun just hanging there banging into my backside like it was my own father spanking me for being a naughty bad girl.”

I already knew how much Marsha enjoyed a good spanking and did my best to hide my smile of amusement from both of them. The first thing we did was to confirm her suspicions with a doctor I knew down on Canal Street. The guy had to be ninety years old if he was a day. He walked around with a stethoscope on his neck and was obsessed with sticking all his patients with a shot of penicillin whenever he couldn’t diagnose their problem.

That seemed to be most of the time.

His “office” was an old building built sometime in the previous century and still had the remains of an ancient Apothecary store with vials and potions strewn in every corner along with copies of the New York Times that were crumbling with the yellowness of age. I was afraid to actually pick one up because I was afraid it would disintegrate at the touch of my fingers. The doctor was beginning to get forgetful now but still was sharp as a tack when it came to recognizing most afflictions. I swear he could tell poor Marsha was pregnant just by touching her little pot-belly.

“Tell me, my boy, was it you that put this little angel in the family way?”

Marsha looked at me and giggled.

I wanted to explain that we had only had oral and anal sex and that it wasn’t the “real” variety of coupling that would lead to an instant family. Of course, I just shook my head in the negative. My big help of a cousin just sat there and twiddled her thumbs like she was waiting for some store to open to try on new duds.

It was easy for me to bring up the subject of taking “care of” the problem after the two girls exited to the waiting room. I knew the doctor was a bit embarrassed to talk about such matters in a mixed crowd. He told me that if it was absolutely necessary, his father would attend to the problem. I was shocked because I thought he was the senior member of the family of physicians and it seemed unlikely that there was a generation older than him.

I knew his son was working at a fancy hospital up in mid-town and only did community work downtown when the spirit filled him with guilt at making all that loot.

Strangely, we all snuck on the train, laughing at our impudence, and I explained over the rattle of the moving parts that, if push came to shove, we could solve the problem right there down on Canal Street. I think that was a big relief to Marsha but I also saw the trace of a tear in her eye and I knew she was not altogether sold on the idea.

It was nine months later that “Little Rickie” was born and I was certain that the silly Marsha had named him after her favorite television star. Now that she was sort of out of the picture on the “happy ending” kink scene, Marsha visibly settled down into a modest homebody role and even put some weight on her way too skinny frame making her look downright voluptuous.

Cousin Nancy and I continued to find places far away from the neighborhood to have fun and enjoy ourselves. It would not look good to our relatives and friends if our clandestine relationship was discovered at that period of time. These days, such things have far less importance with the changing attitudes in both society and in church matters. I have to admit that from time to time, I get a little up-tight with the knowledge that Nancy was fooling around with guys that she met at work and even randomly in the course of everyday life. Strangely, I didn’t care if she got hot and heavy with some good-looking chick with assets of her own. One of those little doves was a Puerto Rican girl called Maria.