"Don't Go Smelling Like a Rabbit" - J David Moeller
My Mission Statement:
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Chapter One.
If I'd been a girl my name would have been "Lettuce".
The woman who adopted me (hereinafter: the a.m.) spent endless hours deciding upon that name for the new baby girl she was trying to find to adopt.
As it turned out, I was named after my adoptive grandmother: Justine.
Fortunately the "e" went with the foreskin.
I dropped the "ustin" after the a.m.'s death when I was 20, although I'd already been writing under “J David Moeller” for about a year.
In the sixth grade I decided to change my name, at least during school, to Matt, after a character in “Wells Fargo”, my favorite TV cowboy show of 1957. The new appellation lasted for a few days before I tired of it and changed it back.
Only I neglected to tell Mrs. Bond, my 6th grade math teacher; and, for one hour a day, for the rest of that school year I was "Matt".
I think my real last name would have been Blakeney, after SMU Instructor Elizabeth Blakeney, my Godmother, who was in and out of my life until her suicide sometime before my teens.
There was a custom common in those days that unwed mothers who wanted to stay close to their children could be named the godmother; the era’s equivalent of today’s open adoption.
I don't know if Elizabeth really was my biological mother; but over the years I've come to believe the possibility, thanks to memory, some 20/20 hindsight and a creative imagination.
If, in fact, she's not there's no harm done. I mean it as a tribute to her and as a way of saying I understand.
I have many memories of my childhood dating as far back as the womb: its taste/smell, texture and colors.
It was cramped, I can tell you that much, too. And often reddish orangey.
One summer evening when I was about 5 I was visiting Elizabeth for a few days and she, her mother and I went to see the film “Stranger in Paradise” the first night.
I was very curious about what paradise was and what it looked like. In my mind, paradise was all colors...and a feeling of serenity. The film didn't reinforce my opinion...nor did it answer the question.
Afterwards, on the way back, I took one of those newly marketed ball point pens and began scribbling circles and lines on a sheet of paper in the back seat of their car. I thought I was drawing Paradise, was proud of my work and couldn't understand the lack of excitement over my masterpiece.
When I showed it to her, Elizabeth's mother made a point to convince me I had scribbled "absolutely nothing at all" on the paper...just lines and circles that didn't mean anything.
Lesson: The suppression of artistic expression begins early.
I didn't like Elizabeth's mother. She was mean spirited and cold hearted, not to mention crabby looking.
The Wicked Witch of the West studied with this woman.
She always had to be in charge and, in retrospect, I got the feeling Elizabeth was just being dragged along through her life like a weight she couldn't get rid of.
During my stay I slept on a chaise longue on the screened-in porch.
When the a.m. first told me I was going to visit them for "a few days" I had this strange image in my mind and I asked if there was a tunnel-like place I would be sleeping in when I got there. I could “see” myself in an elongated, ribbed-like passageway.
The a.m. didn't understand what I was talking about and told me there was a window between the bedroom and the porch. I asked if I could sleep in that.
She laughed at me.
I held the image in my mind, not knowing what it was but fully aware it was somehow directly related to Elizabeth: the birth canal?
I was very disappointed to find a normal window sill which I obviously couldn't sleep in.
I have another vivid memory of Elizabeth from earlier, when I was about three.
The a.m. was having a Christmas party. We lived in a two story house in University Park, Texas and from my room I could hear the party going on downstairs. Somehow I'd managed to wriggle out of my nightshirt... and I was horny.
I remember having good "feelings" between my legs...and I liked to squeeze a pillow between them. I was naked and I wanted attention from the a.m.
I began whispering, "Mother. Motherrrrrr" over and over with increasing volume and intensity until, finally, Elizabeth appeared.
I remember being very disappointed it wasn't the a.m. because she didn't know what the a.m. did for me; and, as a result, nothing was done about the "feeling" I had between my legs.
She helped me back into my nightshirt and went back to the party, even though she spoke kindly and sweetly to me. I felt very frustrated.
Lesson: Sexual tension starts early.
The last time I remember being around her was when she and her mother took me to the Texas State Fair. I was around 8 at the time and there was another little boy along with us; named Steven, maybe. My brother? Half brother? A cousin? I'm not sure and I was never told what relationship he had to our group, nor why he was with us.
Before we went to the fair we stopped for lunch at a hamburger stand across the street from Fair Park in Dallas.
I remember sucking up a straw-full of milkshake and blowing it into the little boy's face. I thought it was a hilarious stunt. No one else did.
Lesson: Slapstick is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Elizabeth had to stop for rests quite a few times throughout the day and she seemed moody and distant from we children. It was hard for her I remember thinking, not having any idea what it was that was hard for her.
Life, I now suppose.
After the fair the other kid and I took a nap on the living room floor at her apartment while she went into the other room to rest.
When I woke up the kid was gone. It was the only time I saw him. No word was ever mentioned of him again.
My adoption papers state "both the mother and grandmother" relinquished all claim to me. There's no mention of a father or grandfather. I was told by the a.m. my real mother had died in childbirth and my father died in the war (World War II was coming to an end).
Chapter Two.
I was born August 9,1945. Earlier that day America had obliterated Nagasaki, Japan with an atom bomb.
At 4:30pm Central Time I popped out in Denton, Texas.
The woman who would become my a.m. had been searching for a little girl to adopt since the death of her sister two years before.
The sister had been 20 years her senior and had served as her mentor and surrogate parent since their parent’s death in her teens, which coincided with the teens of this century.
The a.m. was born in 1895.
She had made the rounds of every reputable adoption agency in the state and a few others as well, I was told, and had had no success in finding a girl to name "Lettuce" and to train to take care of her the way her departed sister had done.
She had an attorney, Jack Johannes, who would go on to be the chief corporate lawyer for Frito Lay, conducting the search for her. One day he made a phone call that changed both our lives.
"I have some good news and some bad news", he might have said to her. "The good news is I've found a baby to adopt. The bad news is it's a boy!"
"A boy? I don't know anything about boys!" she would quote to me whenever she told me the story. "What am I going to do with a boy?"
Indeed.
After Johannes explained her hunting-for-a-baby days were limited by her being a single woman in her 50s in America in the ‘40s she agreed and the adoption process began.
Seems there had never been an adoption by an unwed female before and the presiding judge mentioned this to Johannes.
No slouch himself, he fired back an amazing bit of legal insight, "There's no precedent saying an unwed female of good reputation and sufficient means shall not be allowed to adopt."
Crumbling under such an astute argument, the judge allowed me to be the first child ever adopted by a single parent in the United States.
Lesson: In the United States, you don’t even have to grow up to become Precedent!
The papers were signed and the adoption was official some time around October or November of 1945.
But there was something about this new mother who celebrated her 50th birthday about the time the papers were signed: she was a product of the bygone Victorian Era.
She'd been catered to her entire life by a sister, twenty years her senior, who doubled as a mother; and she, flat out, missed the attention.
She told me on numerous occasions she just wanted somebody to grow up and love her and take care of her in her old age. She'd have a perfect trainee in a little girl and that's why she'd been so reluctant to accept me, a boy, into her life.
I’m still grateful she didn’t name me Jeeves.
But accept me she did...and then some.
I have vivid memories of being held to her breast to suckle. She had no milk of her own and she bragged about how she'd put Eagle Brand condensed milk on her nipples so I'd have something sweet to nurse on.
I have memories of her dangling her ample breasts around me, literally encircling my tiny head and body with them and dancing naked throughout the house.
She'd sing and coo at me as we went whirling around from room to room.
She lived alone! Who'd know?
The a.m. loved to wash my penis.
Every now and then, when I was between 5 and 10 or so, she'd come into the bathroom while I was taking a bath and inform me she wanted to make sure I was keeping clean. She'd sit outside the tub and have me stand near the edge while she got me good and erect and then she would wash me thoroughly...for quite awhile.
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness!" she'd always remind me.
Lesson: Religious training begins at home.
She'd explain how we should always take care of ourselves "down there" and that "it" must be kept clean at all times.
One of her favorite jokes was:
A young woman went to the doctor with a complaint. He examined her and told her she wasn't practicing good hygiene. She countered by telling him, "Every morning I start with my face and wash down as far as possible and every night I start at my feet and wash up as far as possible".
“Ah Ha”, the doctor exclaimed, "There's your problem. You're not washing 'possible'!"
She always wore a blue denim housedress that buttoned up the front for those ablutions. The lower buttons were always undone when she was through washing me. And I would still have an erection when I peed afterwards, forcing me to bend over slightly to hit the bowl with my stream.
Sometimes I'd complain about the slight stinging sensation and she'd assure me it was just the “soap in the little hole” and there was nothing to worry about. It just meant I was extra clean.
She'd also invite me to shower with her. She'd wash me and then she'd let me wash her vagina with my forearm, instructing me to draw it back and forth slowly between her legs.
I liked her long dangly labia minora. I liked to watch as they moved back and forth with my arm movements.
I was a kid. What did I know? This was the a.m. and she washed me, why shouldn't I wash her? I was making her feel good...and clean.
And I guess, close to God.
To this day I still like long women's lips.
Ah, but she had an evil side, too.
She used to beat me with the dogs' leashes. We had a cocker spaniel named Susan and a fox terrier mutt named Skipper. Skipper was my dog; the best dog a kid could have, too.
I don't remember when the beatings started but I remember that when she went for the leash I knew I was in for it. The beatings hurt but I don't think they ever did any real physical damage.
I don't think they made be behave any better, either.
When she'd get ready to beat me for some infraction, real or imagined, she'd run for the leash and I'd start to run the other direction.
"When I get that leash I'm going to beat you to within an inch of your life!” she'd shout.
At the sound of the leashes the dog's thought they were going for a walk and would get all excited.
I'd run from her while she, and the dogs, chased me. They thought it was a wonderfully fun game, yipping and barking and carrying on. But they never tried to catch me and were always sympathetic to my plight afterwards, comforting me, along with Gramma, as I stopped crying.
Our house on Walnut Hill Lane in Dallas was laid out so I could run through the kitchen and breakfast room into the front entry hall then make a u-turn through the living and dining rooms and back into the kitchen through the swinging service door: a circuitous route not unlike in the old cartoons where a chase takes place in a circle round a tree.
We had a big fireplace we never used in the living room and I'd duck into it and watch her storm past, ranting and raving: "You'd better come here! When I catch you it'll be worse. The more you make me chase you the more you'll regret it when I catch you!"
I was always amazed that it worked!
Lesson: Life imitates art.
I was no dummy. She was fifty years older than me. The more I ran her around the house the more tired she was when she caught me and, thus, the weaker the beating.
After she'd get out of sight I'd come out and make as if I'd been in another room: I knew I'd have to face the whipping sooner or later, anyway.
Once, after coming home from the circus with a toy souvenir whip (a stick with a string "popper" on the end like the horse trainers used), she got angry with me for breaking a beloved old abacus of hers I’d been playing with earlier in the day.
Instead of going for the leather leash, she grabbed that whip and beat me viciously with it while I dove into my bed and shielded myself with the blankets.
She kept beating me over and over with the wooden shaft and I remember getting stung in the eye by the popper on one blow.
She beat me so long and so hard that she broke it. It took me forever to stop crying and gasping for air that night. I had never cried that hard before and it terrified me.
I think it firmly planted in my mind what a hateful woman this was who would do that to me.
On the other hand, Gramma was always there trying to calm her down and getting her to temper her blows. And it was always Gramma, and Skipper, who were there with me afterwards.
I never told the a.m. how I felt and I never forgave her.
But I had time on my side.
I was growing.
One afternoon, when I was 11, I was playing in the mud of a garden we'd just dug. It was soft and muddy from the tilling and it felt good to sink up to mid calf in the muck, squeezing the goo between my toes.
For some reason, when she saw me she got furious. She grabbed me and hosed me off and sent me to my room where she came at me with the leash.
This time I just stood there and took the beating quietly, fending off the blows near my face with my arms; and when she was finished I calmly asked, "Are you through?".
It withered her and she never beat me again.
Lesson: Sometimes you just have to stand and take your lumps.
I have a lot of memories going all the way back.
As I’ve said, I can actually remember being in the womb, which might be the "tunnel" I associated with Elizabeth. I can remember the smell and taste that was in my nose and mouth, and the feel of its tightness: secure and warm. And the changing colors tinted red and orange and textures of light and dark. I don’t, however, recall sounds.
These memories are my own, unaided by outside influences, new age beliefs or emergent technologies.
Another is of me lying on the floor of the house we lived in on Woodlawn, in Dallas, the night "Gramma" came to stay with us permanently. I was under two.
Gramma was Emma Brown, a holocaust refugee whose son, Roger, a friend of the a.m.’s, was already living in America. He was a successful businessman and had a wife, Anita, and a son, Stuart, a year older than me.
The circumstances of how Gramma came to live with us rather than him and his family was never made clear to me.
She stayed on as our cook and the a.m.'s companion until I was 12.
At that time she went back to Germany for a few weeks’ vacation. During her absence the a.m. convinced me she was the root of all our disagreements and didn't I think she should be asked to move out of our house when she returned?
I didn't know what to say and, with more prodding from the a.m., I said it might be different.
In my mind I wasn't so sure.
I didn't always call her Gramma, though. Stuart naturally called her that and one day I started to and it stuck. Nobody minded, least of all she. Stuart protested she wasn't my real grandmother and I successfully argued that "Gramma" was her name...not her relationship to me. He was "Stuart". She was "Gramma".
He bought it.
Lesson: Learning to rationalize is essential.
About a year after her arrival we had a backyard talent show. The neighborhood kids came and sang and danced on a picnic table shoved up against the garage/servant's quarters behind the house. We even had a “servant” living there in those days: the current maid and her occasional boyfriends.
An outdoor light attached to the eave of the garage roof was our spotlight.
Naturally, I wanted to perform, too. Never mind I didn't know any songs and couldn't dance a lick but I got up on that stage anyway and winged-it.
I haven’t any idea what I did but I kept thinking the lighting was all wrong. I could feel its "heat" on my left ear; but, somehow, I instinctively knew it should be shining on my face from the front. I could "feel" its absence.
That night I knew I was going to be an entertainer when I grew up!
Lesson: If you want to be seen, you have to find your light!
Chapter Three.
The first girl I ever had a crush on and kissed was Nancy Smith. We did the deed in the Jones' house across the street from our house on Walnut Hill Lane. It wasn't the Jones' house yet, though, because it was still being built.
Nancy and I were in the same class and I knew she liked me because she always chose me for her dodge ball team during recess.
It was my best, and only, sport in 2nd grade.
We were playing in the soon-to-be Jones' house. The walls weren't up but the framing was and we were running from room to room through the walls acting like ghosts. Out of the blue I kissed her on the cheek. She thanked me and put her hand on her cheek where my lips had touched and just looked at me.
The a.m. must have seen what was going on and called me home seconds later. I said g’bye with all kinds of tingly feelings going on in my body.
I felt like I needed a bath.
Lesson: They don’t call it the “dirty deed” for nothing.
I also had a crush on my next door neighbor, Laura Brodsky. She was the first girl I ever saw naked and she was the first to ever see me so. I’ll explain.
We'd get up early during the summer months and play till the a.m. called me in for breakfast.
One day she had to pee. I took her to my favorite “pee” patch amid the sunflowers that grew 8 - 10 feet tall in the field behind my house. I didn't know girls were different from boys but she knew of the difference because she had a brother, Alan. I’d seen the a.m. naked but that didn't count: adults were an entirely different species altogether.
When lovely dark haired Laura pulled her panties down I was surprised she'd been "tucked in". She explained that's the way girls were made.
I was pleased, but felt sorry for her: she couldn't make the toilet water swirl by aiming her pee stream at the edge of the bowl and forcing the bubbles to "swim" around.
Soon to be an Olympic sport, I was sure.
It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that she couldn’t accomplish this.
After she finished she said she needed some paper to wipe with.
I was getting an education this day, for certain.
Being the frontiersman that I was and having the sunflower patch experience that I had, I told her to do what I did when I wiped after taking a dump: use a sunflower leaf.
She did, but used the scratchy side and it irritated her girl-ness.
It also irritated her mother who forbade us to play with one another for the rest of the summer.
Lesson: Know your Flora.
Years later, Joan Goren was my first "sexual" love.
She was a gently plump, pretty Jewish girl in my 6th grade math class, where you’ll remember, I was called Matt; but only by the teacher.
Joan had a cute little habit of vigorously scratching her crotch on the edge of her desk seat. She'd move over to the edge of the seat and slide back and forth on it. She always seemed to do it when I was looking at her.
I guess math class brought out the kinky in me, too. I couldn't help it, but I used to get an erection while standing in line for help at Mrs. Bond's desk. I'd press my engorged penis against the edge of the desk while she showed me how to do whatever math problem I needed help with.
She ignored the help I needed with the swelling in my pants. But I believe Joan noticed. She sat in a direct line with the desk edge.
She and I would always dance together at sock hops. She was my regular date for these soirees.
We would dance very close. I would get an erection and press it against her and she would press her budding breasts...yes she had lovely little nubbins beneath her dress ...against me in return.
I never noticed any itchiness at the dances, however.
The first time I got an erection dancing with her I tried to move back, but she felt it too and wouldn't let me pull away. She just held me tighter around the neck and moved even closer, pressing her chest against mine.
She never said a word about it and neither did I but we danced a lot of slow dances during the sixth grade.
I used to hate when the song was over because my erection was rather obvious.
Young ladies dresses in those days were quite flouncy and full. I made a point of walking closely behind her half a step to allow for the coverage her garment provided.
Lesson: A lady always precedes the gentleman.
Joan was the only woman, besides the a.m., that was ever allowed to feel my erection. Laura'd seen my penis but I never got an erection when I danced with her.
Janet Greenstone’s were the first breasts on a girl I ever saw.
I liked breasts. I loved to watch the a.m. "catch" her long pendulous “National Geographics” in her bra in the days she still wore one. She'd bend forward and her breasts, each a good 7-8 inches long, would swing forward and she'd catch them with a flipping kind of motion in the cups of her brassiere. It used to tickle me silly to watch and she'd do it over and over again for me saying she didn't mind and that there was nothing wrong with nudity among family members.
Janet's breasts were "mosquito bites" but they were pronounced on her chest. She was all of about 10 and was going with my best friend, Randy Pritchett, who lived across the street from me, next to the Jones' new house.
She'd let Randy feel them all he wanted but wouldn't let me, because they were going steady. I was good buddies with her big brother, Jimmy; and I felt like I was part of the family since her dad, Carl, would include me when he and Jimmy went to father/son nights at his Masonic Lodge: Hella Temple.
I'd tell Janet I was almost like family and that there was nothing wrong with family members seeing each other naked. She bought the "seeing" part and allowed Randy to hold up her shirt as we both looked as hard as we could (pun intended).
Randy, of course, would assert his territorial rights and fondle them while Janet proudly watched my eyes pop out of my head.
But they weren't the "danglers" the a.m. had.
Lesson: Sometimes the grass isn’t as green on the other side.
Chapter Four.
I used to steal in the fourth grade. I wasn't allowed to go outside to play during recess: I was sickly. I had several problems from birth including asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and, most severely, an a.m. with, at the time unknown/undescribed,(Von) Munchausen’s by Proxy Syndrome!
During the cooler months of the year, and while all the other kids in my class were outside playing, I was left alone in the gym with no supervision whatsoever, not an adult in sight, for the full 30 minute period.
So, to pass the time, I’d inspect the contents of the girl’s little purses they’d left there, and I’d pilfer a quarter from one of them.
Later, during lunch, my victims often came to me and said they'd lost their milk money.
Generous soul that I was, I'd loan them a quarter and then magnanimously tell them to forget about paying me back. It gave me an immense feeling of being: as if I were saying "you see...they won’t let me play with you but I'm a person of good nature and look how I give to you freely ...please like me".
Lesson: People love the reformed sinner.
One day I found a miniature pen and pencil set in a purse belonging to Ida Mertens. I kyped them. I gave the pencil (pens are cooler, so I kept that for myself) to my best friend: Clel Van Beavers and he turned around and busted me. He ratted. Finked. Squealed. Tattled. He turned me in to our teacher Mrs. Fuller, the most beautiful woman in the whole world, who then called me outside into the hall.
Her interrogation concerning the circumstances leading up to my possession of the set and my denials and protestations and repeated declarations of innocence were to no avail and naturally led to the principal's office.
Mr. Benthul’s questioning was intensely more stern. My claim of no wrongdoing was as vehement.
As a dodge, I said they were given to me by Jimmy Greenstone, a year older and in the 5th grade. Mr Benthul, Mrs. Fuller and I then went to his classroom where he was called into the hall and shown the items. He truthfully denied ever having seen them before.
Believe it or not I was thoroughly surprised he didn't back me up!
I lasted a good two more hours in that office that afternoon. In the end I admitted my guilt and was told to bend over for punishment with a wooden paddle kept for such purposes in plain sight on the office wall.
I received several swats all the while crying "That's enough" between my sobbing gasps.
Well, it used to work with the a.m.
The spanking eventually stopped and Mr. Benthul informed me I had better not ever be caught doing anything like this again or the consequences would be entirely more severe.
But I did pilfer three more times that I can remember. But away from school.
I stole money out of the neighbor Jones girl's purse.
At the YMCA I found a little plastic wallet with nothing at all in it and refused to give it up or admit that I even had it to a nosy little girl.
And, I, amazingly, wangled open a sliding door of a playmates's house while he and his family were out of town and stole a toy detective's badge and holder/wallet from his room. Nothing else. I’d spied it there one afternoon when we were playing and knew it would be the best thing I’d ever had to play with.
I could be a real detective with that badge! Why, I could even detect burglaries and robberies and stuff.
I did this deed in broad daylight without breaking anything. I just wiggled the door and it slid open! I went in, went to his room, got the badge and left. Simple.
I was never caught.
I remember feeling quite guilty at the time; but when I made up stories in my mind (should I be asked how I'd acquired the loot) I always absolved myself of any real wrongdoing because I firmly believed there was no Commandment in the Ten that said "Thou shalt not lie". I didn't know what false witness meant, yet.
I wasn't a big church goer.
That pretty much summed up my career as a 10 year old burglar.
I did gave it up. I didn't like the guilt feelings, no matter how much I tried to justify my actions.
LESSON: Everyone seeks attention in their own way.
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