The Prince of Brooklyn

MASTURBATION KING

I closed the back door behind me and my lecherous eyes instantly honed in on the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. It was, for me at least, an erotic step above the smudgy Macy’s panty layouts in the newspapers and a step beneath actual porn. I spotted the two-dimensional brunette with the black knee highs resting on top of a pile of old magazines. I would come back to her in a second. The three-dimensional women—my mother and sisters—were asleep, but my father was awake. He was always the last one to go to bed. I walked into the television room where he was watching a show on ancient Greek wonders on The Learning Channel. If my father was at home, which was not often considering he worked seven days a week, you could always find him watching television. As far back as I could remember, dad was always at work—serving the so-called elite of society at business clubs or overpriced steak-houses—or watching television. He would come home at about one in the morning and fall before his box of refuge. He would usually turn it off at around three in the morning before marching upstairs to lie beside a wife he had ceased to find attractive decades ago.

He was a tired, sixty-year-old man, working since the age of fourteen as the sole provider for his family. His father was an asshole who liked to drink, gamble, beat on his wife and kids, and fuck any woman that would let him. My father took his mother, brother, and sister and came to the United States in 1956, leaving his asshole father in Greece. Oh yeah, there was another sister who ran off to a convent to escape the abuse. I saw my grandfather once in my life, back in the summer of 1983. I remember visiting him in Athens with my father. I remember he was sitting in a wooden chair, hunched over, in a semi-oblivious state. His apartment, a single, cell-like room in a poor section of Athens, was barren. I remember the one thing he had said. He had looked up at my father after we had already been there several minutes and asked, Who are you again?

My asshole grandfather died four years after our first and only meeting at the age of seventy-four.

My father was seated on the faded-brown velour couch, his head plopped against the wall. The restaurant kitchen grease soaked in his hair had stained the white wall behind his head a light purple from the daily contact. I walked in, and seeing me, he ran his wrinkled hands across his forehead and through his graying hair and exhaled in a show of surrender. It was a plea for empathy.

Hey Dad, I said. What’s up?

Hey Junior. How’s everything?

Good.

That’s good. He turned back to the television in a show of bravado, secretly hoping I would stay to chat.

I walked out.

My father led a lackluster life. His only purpose in life since the age of fourteen was to provide for others. The others eventually included my mother, my two sisters, and me. He no longer loved his wife. He would probably die a few years after my younger sister would leave the house. Like his asshole father, he would probably die at seventy-four.

I picked up my brunette and made my way to the bathroom. It was not the most comfortable place for the job, but it was a convenient spot for destroying the evidence.

You should be ashamed of yourself, said the lesser me.

Take this one, Cassanova.

Shut up!

Thanks.

I locked the door, dropped my jeans and sat on the bowl. I placed the magazine on my lap and began perusing it with my one free hand.

Phtth, phtth, phtth …

Fuck yeah.

Shit, that was loud

I stopped to listen at the door. I could barely make out the voice of the English host talking about the Oracle of Delphi.

Can you foresee what will happen when I reach my destination, Mr. English man?

I listened carefully at the door. I was in the clear. I looked down at my right hand.

(Limp Dick)

Phtth, phtth, phtth …

I thought of the first time I ever masturbated.

Shit! I can’t even enjoy jerking off. Always thinking, I am always fucking thinking.

I was fourteen years old—a late bloomer by even thirteenth century standards—the first time I tried to beat one out. I had just finished showering when I realized my little soldier was standing at attention. I was not even thinking of anything sexual. It must have been the tepid summer breeze coming through the window in my room. I sat down on the beige carpet, stray furry strands tickling my balls, and, well, you know. That first time I mistook an impending climax for the onset of urination. I ran to the bathroom, but nothing came out. You cannot piss with a hard-on I found out later. The semen must have rotted on its short-lived journey somewhere between my testicles and urethra. I did not even know how to pleasure myself. I was sexually inept. I looked down.

(Limp Dick)

I listened at the door again.

. it was the mecca of prophecy for Greeks and non-Greeks alike … said the host in his pompous-sounding British accent.

I realized this was going to take a little extra time.

Phtth, phtth, phtth .

Ooh, you’re my sweet baby, aren’t you? The big-breasted cutie on page 24 looked back at me. No response.

You are. You know you are.

Still no response.

Tell her she’s got a nice ass.

You’ve got a sweet ass, baby.

For those few minutes, she was mine and she did not even know it. For those few, precious minutes I had forgotten that my life was miserable. Even when performed solo, sex is therapeutic.

I thought of this one time …

Aaaaaaaaaaaggghh

The pain literally grabbed me by the balls. I pushed aside my dwindling erection and inspected my testicles. Sure enough, the Victoria’s Secret catalogue had left a half-inch paper cut on my right nut.

I hope nobody heard me.

Georgie? Her voice pierced the silence like the squawk of a dying quail. Are you here, honey?

I’m in the bathroom, ma.

What are you doing?

I’ll be out in a second, I shouted. Hold on.

(Needless to say—Limp Dick)

I realized it wasn’t going to happen with mother beckoning at the door.

At ease soldier! Oh yeah, you’re already at ease.

I pulled up my jeans and stuffed the catalogue behind a four-roll package of toilet paper under the sink.

Are you alright? she asked.

«T> C. »

I m fine.

Do you have diarrhea, sweetie? You can’t be sick on your flight.

I was off to Greece with friends in two days.

No, I just had to go to the bathroom. I was becoming slightly agitated. What are you bothering me for?

I’m just worried about you.

«T> C. »

I m fine.

I felt the sting of the paper cut, but acted as if nothing was wrong. I did not want mother to see me wince, because she would ask to inspect her baby’s booboo and then call the paramedics.

Do you want me to make you something to eat, sweetie?

Ma, it’s one thirty in the morning. Go to sleep. Please. I’m not hungry.

Okay, baby. Goodnight.

She walked back up to her bedroom. I watched until her chubby body, wrapped in a white, cotton nightgown that looked like a discarded potato sack and was undoubtedly the source of my father’s impotence, vanished into the upstairs hallway.

My mother would live forever!

How could I masturbate after that? The guilt, the embarrassment would be too great. I would be jerking off and fearing that mother would come back down to ask if I needed help wiping my ass. The struggle between self-pleasure and the thoughts of mother would result in a losing battle for the

former. The name Oedipus sprung to mind, and the last trace of horniness escaped my loins.

Why is sex such an embarrassment to them? It’s no wonder I hadn’t gotten laid yet. I had been taught to think of sex and masturbation as a disgrace. It’s not like they told me fucking was wrong, but clearly they considered it to be laden with guilt. Fuck their Greek Orthodox ideals. What’s the big fucken deal? It’s not a sin. It’s a sin to consider it a sin.

I was on a new mission. I was going to masturbate as a protest against the true perversions—those of church concerning sex and pleasure. Those mother fuckers dishing out their sermons on abstinence and self-deprivation were full of shit. They were the biggest hypocrites out there.

I am going to masturbate. Amen!

It would be ideal to masturbate for a profound cause … any cause really, but who was I kidding? I just needed to get off.

Back into my love closet I went. I retrieved my ladies from their hiding spot beneath the sink and resumed the position on my throne.

Phtth, phtth, phtth …

«I’m the man,» I whispered to my buxom goddess. «I’m the man and you know it.»

She looked at me with her mischievous eyes, but she did not speak.

Phtth, phtth, phtth .

What hideous décor! Martha Stewart couldn’t save this bathroom. Green butterflies of lace and wire clung to the walls via miniature suction cups. The color was a rare shade of brown that could only be bought at this one discount paint store in Bay Ridge.

Shut up, man. Shut up and concentrate on your mission.

With weapon in hand, I ferociously proceeded with my rebellion. My women looked so good. I would not let up this time. I would follow through to the finish. And sure enough the end came. Or to be more accurate, I came. Right into the bowl.

A single flush and the evidence was gone.

I looked down again …

(Dick in the process of going limp)

Was it Plato who said either masturbators must become kings, or kings must adequately learn how to masturbate? Something like that? Probably not, but an unbound mind is necessary for effective decision making.

I was the masturbation king.

I was the supreme autosexual.

Amen.

I felt a bit better. The pain had subsided. Temporarily at least.

I still needed to write, though.

When I was in a depressed state, writing usually purged the pent up angst I felt, just the way masturbation did, but at the time even writing was making me feel anxious. I was having trouble sticking to a single «voice,» and when I finished a piece, I felt worse, not better. It was all part of the same problem—not knowing who or what I was, not knowing whether to fully believe in a deity, not knowing what IT was all about! The dichotomy I experienced manifested in my writing. I

would jump from pompous prose to simple words within a paragraph, sometimes within a sentence. I was trying to convince myself that that’s who I was, that I was both the slang-talking Brooklynite who was struggling to find the enthusiasm to finish up his Bachelor’s degree at Brooklyn College and who parked cars on weekends, and the aspiring writer who wanted to become the next James Joyce, deluded by unwarranted promises of future, yet inevitable, grandeur.

If I could only stop worrying about finding my voice.

I just have to write dammit!

I needed to vent.

I need too, said my superior voice.

Me too, said the other, sheepishly.

Shut up, the two of ya!

I looked down one last time.

(Shriveled, frightened, waste of a limp dick)

A PERSONA THAT ONLY GROWS IN BROOKLYN

I stared out upon the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a luminescent, steel monster holding Staten Island into place, keeping it from washing away into the Atlantic. Let it wash away. It’s nothing but a garbage dump. The pungent aroma, which arose from Staten Island—home of the Fresh Kills landfill—or from the bubbling broth called the New York Bay, or from both, suffused the humid air.

Summers in New York City suck.

The wooden bench, one of hundreds lining the bicycle path beneath Shore Road, felt hard under my body. As I lay supinely, palms atop each other under my head, I could feel the decaying green two-by-fours leaving faint imprints on my exposed back. The occasional car whizzed by on the Belt Parkway pushing a warm, damp breeze in my direction, engulfing me in