I got my first piece of fan mail yesterday, which is pretty good considering I just started this page yesterday. I reprint it in its unedited entirity, for your viewing pleasure:

(Ahem)

“Hey you asshole faggot!

Noone wants to hear about your pervy sex life! People like you should go fuck them selves or put up pictures so we can see what kind of faggoty shit your talking about. Dickbrain.”

Well! Someone’s Mother was certainly asleep on manners duty, wasn’t she? I can’t tell if the writer was insulting me further, or if “Dickbrain” is some kind of signature. I choose to believe the latter. At any rate, I think Dickbrain likes me! Hope to be hearing from you soon, Dickbrain! *Mwah*

Since my sex story was so unpopular, I am moving on…

Once, when I was eight, I was a hoodlum. I fell in with a group of kids who were somewhat older than me; the ringleader was the oldest girl, who was twelve. My parents moved us into this apartment in a slightly dicey part of town while they were building their dreamhouse out in the burbs, and our neighborhood was full of wild children who ran loose in the streets while their working-class parents earned them money for the newest cheap plaything that would break within a week. You get the picture.

My Mom decided I was too little to run unsupervised, so she retained the services of a lady with a little girl of her own in the adjoining apartment building to keep an eye on me during the day, which didn’t last very long. But while it did, I was kept safely inside the apartment courtyards.

This, however, did not keep the neighborhood’s child-marauders from getting to me. Everyday they came to play with me; perhaps they sensed I had a weak mind and could be easily won over to do their bidding; perhaps they genuinely liked me- I’ll never know. As each slow summer day passed, my allegiances transferred from the quiet domesticity of Mrs. M.— and her daughter Melissa, who was a fat, bossy, redheaded mini-tyrrant who held court over all of the children in the apartment building to the raggedy wild children who were free to come and go during the day.

Nights were a different story. Once my Mom came home from work, I was sprung from daycare and could pursue my spitting, swearing, and strutting lessons without being under the watchful eye of Mrs. M.— or any other adult. There was a construction site across the street from my apartment building; we stole their spray paints and decorated the underside of a nearby bridge. There was a convenience store across a busy street I was forbidden to cross; we crossed it and stole candy while one of us distracted the dozy clerk who always perched on a stool behind the counter. We got into fistfights, we threw rocks at cars, and we ran away when the cars stopped, all under the tutelage of our twelve-year-old fearless leader, Jenny.

She was always goading one of us smaller kids into doing something bad. She convinced me it was a good idea to get in a fight with a kid who was twice my size, just because he had called my stepfather a “Polack”. “It’s a matter of honor,” she said, shoving me forward to my doom. She also convinced me that putting cat poop in a bag and leaving it on the neighbor’s doorstep with a note that read “Have some Hershey’s Kisses” was the height of hilarity. She taught me how to “ding-dong ditch” and told me what a blowjob was. So I guess I wasn’t suprised when she decided I had to exact revenge on little redheaded Melissa, for the crime of being bossy. Jenny’s plan was that we should go antagonize her until she flipped out and said something that would justify what Jenny wanted me to do, which I wasn’t even sure of at that point.

We surrounded her; she didn’t have a chance. She was innocently playing jacks or some such innocuous game in front of her steps when we rounded up and started picking at her. I remember she was actually one of those sweet looking little girls whose mother keeps their hair in pigtails and is usually wearing an honest-to-God gingham dress. Melissa had her personality problems, but she didn’t deserve what happened next.

We taunted her and she faught back. Eventually, it was just one-on-one between her and I. She crossed that line and called me something like “fartface.” Well, that did it. Jenny got that evil, glittery look in her eyes that she usually had when she was scheming and said, calmly and quietly to me, “Go ahead Asshole, spit in her face.”

In that moment, the expression on Melissa’s face went from hate to terror. What did I do to deserve this? her eyes pleaded. But I was part of the festering organism that was the group, and was no longer capable of pity or reason. I reared back and hocked one square in the middle of her face but good.

At that moment, everyone froze. No one laughed or moved. Melissa unfroze a moment later; her lip quivered, which was followed by the collapse of her whole face as she ran into the relative safety of the apartment building. My last image of Melissa was of her crimson face turning away in shame with a big gob of my little kid spit running down it.

At the time I had no idea that that is the worst thing you can do to someone.

Two years later, after we moved away into our new glorious dreamhouse, my Mom ran into Jenny’s sister who was checking at the local Eagle. It seems she had gotten plowed by a car the summer after I left, while she was crossing the street that I wasn’t allowed to. I imagined that she was heading over to gank some candy, or otherwise ruin someone’s day.

Is this really better than hearing about sex? I guess I’ll let Dickbrain decide.