The summer you turned thirteen, Patrick found a Penthouse in the woods. This was before internet pornography. The magazine was muddied slightly, and wrinkled, but it still showed images of naked women and was therefore a sacred object. You’d meet him behind the dugout of the ball diamond to study its pages: women in lewd poses, faces pinched tight in mock-ecstasy. You were virgins, of course. You knew nothing of sex. But you held those women in your mind, and in the lonely midnight hours they would star in sweaty elaborate fantasies, flashing cherry lips and silicone breasts, so that the morning would find a sticky gush upon the sheets, that irrepressible step into adolescence.
This was the same summer Patrick got clipped by a cargo van coming out of Westwood General. You attended the funeral in an itchy suit and clunky shoes and stared down at the friend who one week earlier had pitched the winning strike in Little League. His face looked waxy and strange in death. His arms lay folded over his chest and you half-expected him to leap out at you, to reveal this was an elaborate prank you’d fallen for. After the funeral, you walked to the park where he kept the Penthouse. You retrieved it from under the dugout boards, and after one last perusal, lit a small fire and lay the magazine on top, watching the cover starlet wither to cinders in the shade. It seemed the right thing to do. A benediction, of sorts. You stood to the side with newly grave eyes and said a last goodbye.
Years later, you catch your son viewing pornography on the desktop computer. You’re stern with him, lecturing about objectification and the harmful effects of such images, while thinking back to that Penthouse summer, remembering the afternoons behind the dugout, the holy visions of flesh, the sweet agony of blooming into manhood.
Remember Patrick – mischievous, chipped-tooth Patrick – and feel every parent’s despair of being unable to protect children from the damages of this world and the unavoidability of injury and death. Forgive yourself, as there is no other option but to forgive yourself. Afterwards, sneak out to the back porch and light a furtive Marlboro, watching the inevitable sun sink behind that very same ball diamond, smiling a strange smile and longing for the days when happiness was as simple as a magazine found in the woods.
