All the grown-ups are upstairs talking about
Richard Nixon, the bad president, he's just finished his speech, and
nobody can believe it, they've lost something they can't name, and so
they light another cigarette, add some more scotch into silver
tumblers, shake up the ice in percussion and pour counter-clockwise,
and we are their children and at a time like this nobody cares what
we're doing, they're not looking for us, they don't know we're sprawled
out on the fuzzy pink carpet in my bedroom, arms and legs geometric,
looking at the magazine my best friend Julie found under her parents'
bed, where the women are naked, their breasts are firm and they have
these long legs spread open on every page, and Billy is saying that he
wants to borrow the magazine, and Julie is saying how he's gross, and
Billy says that we're just prudes, and Julie's mad about that, she's
even kissed a boy she says, but all I'm thinking about is the lady in
the magazine, the one with the blond hair set apart into two braids
that hang at her shoulders, and how her eyes are
green, like mine, and how her breasts are like two balloons,
and will mine ever get that big, and who will touch them if they do,
and I want to keep looking at the magazine, want to keep turning the
pages, but Julie goes upstairs and takes the magazine with her, hiding
it under her skirt, she's worried her parents will know it's gone, so
then it's just me and Billy, and he doesn't even have to ask me to, I
just show him.