Moonshine, Masturbation, and Eclipses

Children are cruel by nature. Both boys and girls instinctively bully the weak and ridicule the infirm. There was nothing funnier than a cheap trick at the cost of a poor unfortunate in keeping with the ageless adage, "Comedy is when a beggar falls down the stairs. Tragedy is when a duchess does."

In the early 60s our teachers and parents offered the blind/deaf/mute idol Helen Keller as an icon of individual triumph. Anne Bancroft won the Academy Award for her portrayal in THE MIRACLE WORKER of the teacher who brings light to a suffering young Alabaman girl. It didn't take long for Helen Keller jokes to hit the grade school circuit.

How did Helen Keller's parents punish her?

They moved the furniture.

Her triple affliction gave healthy children comfort that they were normal, however our parents and teachers had learned how to instill new fear in callous youth unafraid of the Devil. At age ten my sins were small; mostly disobeying my parents and telling lies. The priest in the confessional announced my penance in a hushed voice.

"Ten Hail Marys and two Our Fathers."

These prayers cleansed the black spots from my soul. Lying and disobedience occurred in the natural order of childhood. My innocence was challenged by a deadly scourge signaled firstly by waking in the middle of the night with pajamas soaked by a sticky substance. This oddity was a terrible embarrassment for a 12 year-old. Bed-wetting was for babies. I hid my shameful affliction by washing my PJs whenever the phenomena stuck unannounced. My father thought I was crazy and my older brother kidded me about a regression to infantilism. I threatened him with a beating. I was taller by two inches. My best friend Chuckie Manzi solved the mystery by opening the Boy Scout Handbook to a small section entitled NOTURNAL EMISSION.

"If the Boy Scouts write about it, then it's normal."

Normalcy excluded a visit to the confessional, but no one told the priest about touching themselves after dark. not if they knew what was good for them. Masturbation was a mortal sin threatening the immortal soul. Sex was strictly for procreation. Pleasure in the act disrupted the natural order of life. Jerking off was a sin and even worse the priest warned their young male parishioners that wasting the holy seed of life endangered the sense of sight.

"You could go blind or worse suffer from effeminacy."

The man across the street from my parents' house was queer. He flew jets for Eastern. His boyfriend, Joe, coached football. Chuckie and I suspected them of masturbating each other.

"It's what queers do, isn't it?"

The mystery was solved by finding stroke books in the woods of the Blue Hills. Queers did everything married couples did in bed and more according to the moldy paperbacks titled 'JOCKS ON FIRE' or 'COCK-MAD COACHES' and other homo tomes of lust. I whacked off to pages 75-78 of THE MALE ITCH about seven hundred times without losing my eyesight, although I did need to wear glasses. My mother said it was hereditary.

My sight worsened throughout my grammar school years. My seat moved to the front of the class. I got good grades. Bullies didn't like smart kids with glasses. The beatings and myopia were painful, but better than how Tyrone Power had his eyes pluck from his head by a Borgia traitor in PRINCE OF FOXES. Orson Welles played Cesare Borgia.

Evil incarnate.

I didn't know any blind teenagers. They were sent to a special school for the blind, deaf, and dumb. The nuns taught them how to live in the normal world.

A high school mate lost an eye in a freak ski accident at Stratton Mountain. The brothers were hip to drugs. The vice-principal held an assembly to inform us of the danger of looking into the sun. The guest speaker was an acid head who had stared into the sun during a total eclipse.

"All I can see is the sun now. Nothing but the sun."

I used my savings to buy prescribed sunglasses. Eclipses were rarely announced on teenage TV. Being an ex-Boy Scout I had been trained to 'be prepared'.

Ray-bans.

The height of style in the 1960s.

Girls thought that they were cool. The bullies stopped hurting me. They liked the girls who liked my glasses.

The bullies stopped their torment. They liked the same girls. I wore my sunglasses all the time. The nuns tried to stop me from wearing them in classes. My optometrist said I had sensitive eyes. He wasn't scared of the nuns. Doctor Shaw was Jewish.

The last threat to my eyes was moonshine. I bought a gallon from a Mississippian this weekend. I tried a few sips on Sunday night. The corn mash burned a light in my stomach. A match to a spoon filled with the illegal alcohol ignited a blue blaze. A good sign, for a yellow fire is a cause for caution.

Rotgut moonshine can blind or kill the unsuspecting, mostly if the manufacturer isn't too tidy with his contraptions. A car radiator is a good source of lead and anti-freeze. A dangerous combination, but a high-minded distiller will 86 the 'foreshot' of the batch ie the first offering from the still. After that it's white-line fever and I see the light.