He was a friend of my father's from Brooklyn. As kids, they both ran around with the same group of guys, palling around the same candy store, bragging of banging the same Brooklyn goils. Open up my father's tattered scrapbook and you'll find my favorite photo of an adolescent Uncle Lou. In it, he stands on the beach at Coney Island -- a skinny, scrawny, bony kid with long baggy swim trunks and a big happy grin. Sure, he was no Charles Atlas. But to me, as a boy, Uncle Lou was big and mighty: a god among men.
My father tells this story:
Back in '51, Lou decided to join the Marines. A lifelong diabetic, he knew the Marines would never accept him. But Lou was determined. Lou had a plan: After passing his mandatory medical exam, he'd report to boot camp as ordered; once there, he'd skip a dose of insulin, stuff himself silly with Hershey bars, then faint as his blood sugar soared; he'd be rushed to the camp infirmary where doctors would run a series of tests; eventually, discovering his acute diabetes, the Marines would be forced to discharge Uncle Lou -- honorably -- with full veteran's benefits!
To perfect his plan, however, Lou required an accomplice: specifically, someone to pee in his cup. Though he asked around the neighborhood, no one volunteered; so he offered an incentive of fifty bucks: That's when Fat Sol stepped forward. The following day, Lou and Fat Sol enlisted in the Marines. They reported to the induction center and underwent their physicals; but when it came time to swap urine samples, they ran into a land mine. A uniformed corporal stood guard in the lavatory, watching them carefully, keeping them apart. As a result, Lou never got any VA benefits, and Fat Sol did a two-year-tour of Korea.
My mother tells a story of her own:
Up in the Catskills one summer, Lou stopped by the Lakeside Lounge, the afternoon hangout of the over-forty-miserably-married-heavy-blue-eyeshadow crowd. One by one, he slithered up to each of the dames, asking them all the same blunt question: "Do I appeal to you?" As always, Lou didn't care how many said no: Someone would always say yes. On this particular afternoon, he left with a woman twice his age a woman whose husband was out on the lake, fishing for bass with his boss.
Back at her cabin, Lou and the woman jumped in the sack and wham-bam-thank-ya-ma'am did the hoity-toity. Afterward, as Lou got up and went for a beer, the front door swung suddenly open. There in the threshold, his hands full of fishing gear, stood the woman's husband. "Whoops!" said Lou. "Gotta go." Bare-ass-naked, he streaked past the husband and bolted out the door. Up on the highway a few minutes later, he hitched for a ride with one hand while hiding his schmuck with the other. Luckily, a smiling State Trooper picked him up and gave him a lift into town; but that same State Trooper slapped on the cuffs and booked his butt for indecent exposure.
I first met Lou when I was five.
Visiting from Florida, where the IRS had seized his home and used car lot, he showed no signs of strain. Instead, he slapped his knees and laughed like a lunatic, rattling off a million jokes. As my parents cracked up laughing, he'd hoist me up above his head and whirl me around the living room, round and round like a small tornado, his big happy grin laughing up at me. One night, one dark clear January night, he led me outside, waved a hand across the heavens, and introduced me to the stars. He pointed out Orion, the Gemini Twins, the Big and Little Dippers. All at once, the night came alive with drama, with mythical beasts, brave handsome heroes, maidens in distress. "Always remember the stars," Lou winked and poked me in the ribs. "Girls go crazy for a guy who knows the stars."
The guy was a real Don Juan.
Over the years, whenever he'd visit, he'd privately advise me on the gentle art of seduction. "Ah, women," he'd always begin, draping an arm around my shoulder, filling my mind with madcap tales of his wild romantic adventures. There were tall exotic island women, young college coeds, greasy spoon counter girls. By the time I turned eleven, though, his stories started bugging me. Girls! Girls! Girls! They were all he ever talked about. By then, I was sick of girls, hated girls, swore I'd never marry one. "I'd rather be a bachelor!" I declared one night at dinner. "Just like Uncle Lou!" Later that evening, my Uncle Lou whisked me aside and slipped me a copy of Playboy magazine.
I didn't sleep for a week.
The week I turned thirteen, he whisked me aside once again, this time slipping me a foil-wrapped package: small, square, light as a dime. I stared at the thing and asked him what it was. "Trust me," he winked and poked me in the ribs. "When the time is right, you'll figure it out." Five years later, when the time was finally right, I had long since lost that condom, but I still kept a piece of Lou's empyreal advice: As it happened, I lost my boyhood on a warm summer night, in a field of ankle-high grass, beneath a canopy of twinkling white stars; and on that night, while nestled in the arms of the Antoine Twins, I realized at last what Lou had been teaching me all those years -- that women and romance were the precious gifts of God.
Then came the day when I got the news.
I was stepping into the shower when the telephone rang in the hallway, my father's Brooklyn- ese on the answer machine. The way it happened, Lou had been at home, alone, watching a ball game on the tube when he slipped into a diabetic coma. The cleaning girl found him three days later -- still on the couch, the TV going, a bowl of popcorn in his lap.
Half an hour later, my doorbell rang.
It was Janna.
I saw her through the big front window, her profile turned to the street, her fingers gently tugging on the small silver earring I'd given her that morning for our one-week anniversary. When I opened the door, she turned to me. Her smile sunk to a frown.
"My God," she said. "What happened?"
I told her to come inside.
We sat in the kitchen at the small folding table, smoked a pack of Camels, and I told her all about my Uncle Lou. I told her about the condom and his big happy grin and the night he waved his hand across the heavens. I talked until my throat went dry, till I couldn't spit another word. Then Janna reached over and grabbed my hand.
"Let's go," she said. "I know a place."
She drove us out to Sunset Cliff, out by the Navy base. In the trunk of her car were a blanket and a candle. Grabbing them both, she led me down a pebbled path to a small secluded ledge. There, spreading out the blanket, she struck a match and lit the candle, then brushed aside her windswept hair. Behind her, twilight blazed in pink and purple light. The ocean crashed below us. Stars began to sparkle in the sky.
"Lay back," she told me.
I did as she directed as her hands undid the buttons of my jeans, as her fingers slowly slipped them past my knees. She raised her skirt, straddled my waist, and slid her warmth around me. I shut my eyes, filled my lungs with the moist salt air, and heard the cry of two young sailors:
"Do her, man!"
"Do her hard!"
As they cackled from the bluff above us, I tried sitting up, to shout something back, but Janna pushed me down again, down against the blanket, then very gently, very calmly, kissed the lip of my ear.
"Ignore them," she whispered. "Listen to the sea."
Slowly then, like ocean waves, we rolled and swelled and tumbled like the tide. Afterward, as we lay on the ledge, I waved my hand across the heavens, pointing out Orion, the Gemini Twins, the Big and Little Dippers. Then, almost mythically, a breeze swirled up from the sloshing sea, whirled around us like a small tornado and blew out our flickering candle.
Actually, Uncle Lou wasn't really an uncle. 