My girlfriend's daughter Alicia is the child I never had, so we're perhaps even closer than she is to her mother. She came to me with quivery lips when she had her first period. She agreed to make her Mom take her shopping when I insisted a 12-year-old girl needed a training bra.
So I wasn't surprised when she asked if I'd had any boyfriends, probably thinking that a single lady ready for the rest home at age 39 was beyond dreams. "Who was your first guy, Aunt Gloria?" she asked me. "The first one who β you know β who you really got it on with?"
"My first lover, or one of the most memorable?" I was teasing just to see her flustered as we sat on the patio enjoying a spring thaw.
She shrugged a young adult's shrug that meant
Tell me anything about boys, why they act like such boys, and what do you do with a boy who comes on to you like a slobbery puppy dog.
"Well, the most memorable was when I was living in New York, in what they called the East Village, with the artists and would-be writers and, you know, the
bohemians
. There was a fellow we called the Panther."
"Like he was a real tiger, huh?"
"No, actually, he was very shy. About 18 or 19. I asked him about his nickname and he said his real name was Theophilous Washington.
"'That's a heck of a name,'" I told him, "and he explained his first name mean Love of God."
"'And your last name?' I inquired. 'For George Washington, the father of our country?' And he said, 'No, there were two Washingtons. George and Booker T. But you can call me Panther.'
Back then there was a rough bunch called the Black Panthers making headlines, and since he was a light-skinned black fellow I asked if he was a rebel."
"'No,'" he told me, 'I'm nicknamed for that German division in World War II."
"That's
Panzer
," I corrected him.
"Not if your German teacher has a lisp."
"I knew from his smile that he was putting me on. This kind of word teasing added years to his character, except when he had to talk to a girl. He was always hanging around the neighborhood looking for girls that summer. All frantic and unfocused. He'd come up to a girl like me, cool as anything, and blurt out 'What's a chick like you doing in a nice place like this?'"
"I know," Alicia said. "Guy in my class. We say he gets all stammery when he sees a mammary, and that's when we sort of hoist our breasts and laugh."