When I was eight years old, she taught me this song…

There was a goat from Darby Town whose legs were far apart  / And every time he took a step he blew a little-- / Hoke-ly-poke-ly-deedle-ee-oke-ly makes me think a lot.  /  There was a goat from Darby Town whose horns were made a’ brass  /  One stuck out of his shoulder, the other stuck out of his--  /  Hoke-ly-poke-ly-deedle-ee-oke-ly makes me think a lot.

My mother loved to talk about things most people shied away from. She had a real penchant to speak her mind, and she was opinionated on all subjects, including sex. She could be an incredible pain in the ass. She saw no reason to keep her views to herself. Consequently, people tended to adore her or stay away from her. Anne Sexton wrote:“A woman is her mother. That’s the main thing.” I think this applies to homosexual men as well, though over the years I’ve also found it a bit alarming how much I resemble my father, both physically, as well as in matters of the heart.

Here’s a typical Elvira story. My godparents, Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank, had a pretty rocky marriage, and apparently sex was at the root of the problem. For her day, Flo was quite a looker. Hank was the opposite. He made Ernest Borgnine look like George Clooney.

Well, Hank got good and fed up with the fact that Flo had no interest in fucking him. As I understood it from my mom, he was completely devoted to her, but after trying everything from Catholic guilt to scented candles, he gave up, moved out, “took a bitch” to handle his sexual needs, and set the woman up in an apartment. (I guess this chick’s willingness to fuck the poor bastard made her “a bitch” according to them, go figure.) Well, Aunt Flo was not happy about the turn of events, and called my mother to commiserate, but Elvira was having none of it.

I only heard my mother’s side of the conversation, on the telephone. “Flo, what do you expect from the man? You won’t sleep with him, so what, you expect him to do without? He’s a man Flo, and he’s your husband. You’ve either got to sleep with him, or let him go, those are your choices. He loves you. You married the man. Go to bed with him. Go to bed with him, or stop complaining. If you don’t want him, why can’t she have him?” Well, Flo took him back, and presumably anyway, started fucking him.

Even at 10 or so, it sounded like pretty good advice to me. My mom had a strong belief that sex was an important part of marriage and that it was not a woman’s duty to make sure her husband was satisfied, it should be her pleasure.

When I asked my mom why she married my dad, she answered that he was the only suitor she had that turned her on. She said she didn’t know why exactly, but that she thought of all the others as just friends. My dad was very clear on what he wanted, had apparently been hit by what the Sicilians call “the thunderbolt” the first time he saw her, and pursued her with fervor. He had taken her out in a rowboat one afternoon, she said, and had kissed her. I can’t remember how she described it exactly, but she had literally swooned, fainted, at least momentarily, and she took that to be a sign that this was the right guy. She trusted her instincts.

They went dancing a lot during their engagement, and my mother’s nickname for my dad was “Pup-tent Vic”.

I wanted to know what a virgin was.

Mom: It’s a woman who has never had sex, and waits until her wedding night.

Me: Were you a virgin on your wedding night?

Mom: Of course.

Me: Was dad?

Mom. Your father? Oh for heaven’s sake no!

 Me: Didn’t you want him to be? Since you were?

Mom: Oh god no. He had lots of women. I didn’t want some guy who didn’t know what he was doing poking around down there!

They went to their local parish priest to arrange the wedding, and took some “Catholic instruction”. One of the questions they were asked was “Do you intend to practice birth control? Dad looked at the floor and Mom said “Absolutely”. The priest said that he could not marry them in that case. My mom got up, got her purse and said, “OK, we’ll go across the street to the Protestant church then.” Suddenly the rule was not as firm as it had been a moment earlier. Apparently being married by Heathens was worse than pulling out at the last minute.

We had a priest who ran off with a woman (yes, a woman) in our parish when I was a kid. Father Charles. What a cutie. He looked like Jake Gyllenhall with black hair. My mother’s response to the news contained no hint of scandal: “Good for him, I guess he realized he has blood in his veins.”

But the big story happened the summer before I went to kindergarten. My parents sold their home, and much to their surprise, it sold in one day. The house they bought wasn’t going to be ready until September, they had unwittingly signed a contract to be out in two weeks, and so we had no place to live over the summer.

My mom had two sisters, Lou and Louise (I couldn’t make that up, or that she also had a step-sister named Loulabelle) and my two Aunts offered to take us in. My two sisters were teens, so one aunt would take the girls, and the other would take my mom, dad, and me. Then, halfway through the summer, we would switch.

Well, the Aunts were like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, one kind, one evil. Long story short, the bad sister, Lou, had a nightmare sex life with her husband, my Uncle Mike. The disastrous pattern had begun on their wedding night. Apparently he had a big problem with spilling his seed in a matter of moments after lift-off, and as my mother explained years later, according to Aunt Lou, this took place before he was even (ever) able to enter her, his wife. They never fixed the problem, (god only knows why, at that age you can do it three more times in one night) and eventually took to separate bedrooms, where they remained for the rest of their long, macabre marriage. Both their behavior profiles were perfect reflections of their awful sexual secret. It turns out Aunt Lou wasn’t evil at all, she was the classic unfucked wife.

Before we switched Aunts halfway through the summer, and moved in with them, Lou told my mother not to have sex in their house while we were staying with them. My mom was flabbergasted, but knew if she told my dad he would hit the fucking roof, (he had never been a big fan of his sister-in-law) so Mom lied and told him she felt embarrassed doing it under their roof. They had no money for a hotel, and the arrangements were in full swing as the Aunt switch was immanent. My lucky sisters were off to Carl and Louise’s, where my parents and I had been happily staying for the first half.

As an adult, again, years later, when I discussed the whole thing with my mom (we always talked and joked openly about sexual stuff) the conversation went like this:

Me: So, did you and dad not have sex for the rest of the summer?

Mom: Oh, NO, of course we did. Your father is a man.

Me: Well, where did you do it?

Mom: (pause) Oh, we went on…picnics…and things…

Me: Picnics??? Where?

Mom: In the park, you know, we’d park the car, and then kind of spread a blanket on the other side…

Me: You fucked dad in a public park??? Why didn’t you do it in the car?

Mom: We did that too. But it was a little confining…

Me: Where else?

Mom: Oh Victor, do you have to know everything?

Me: I don’t have to, but yeah, where else?

Mom: Well, we had to be creative. Sometimes when Lou and Mike would go out, we’d do it in the house anyway. Dad got a kick out of that.

Me: But where was I?

Mom: Oh, you were watching TV, or asleep…

These discussions about sex didn’t usually involve my dad, he would laugh and leave the room, but if he was in a certain kind of playful mood, he could be drawn in too. When they were in their seventies, I was home on a visit, and one night I caught them both just in the right frame of mind after teasing my dad about his cock size and praising his genes. I had a memory from showering as a kid with him that his thing was pretty big, and wanted to find out, once and for all, if I was a chip off the old block, or if I had been randomly touched by the Divine.

They were sitting on the couch together in the living room, trying jointly to remember it’s exact size when fully hard, both looking like little old fisherman, measuring the imaginary one that got away with their fingers, laughing, enjoying the absurdity of the whole thing, and from what I could ascertain from their joint pantomime, I did owe it all to dear old dad.

I remember him coming home from work when I was a young teenager, they were in their early fifties. Dinner was on the table, always, when he walked in, and there was sometimes teasing and some grab-assing of my mom when he chased her around the table a bit. Apparently Elvira walked her talk.

When I told my mom I was gay, the first concern she expressed was for my sexual happiness. Because she couldn’t imagine two men making love, she was saddened that I’d have to settle for what she imagined would be a second-class sex life. The reason I had come out was because I’d fallen in love with Kevin, and the sex, after years of self-delusion and performance anxiety with women, was dizzying. I explained, with limited detail, that her fears were unfounded. She looked hopeful, brightened visibly, and then asked me a series of incredibly direct and specific questions about what we do, as men in love, in the sack. I answered each one and she seemed satisfied and happy. When she met Kevin, (Dad too), they loved him. It wasn’t long before my mom stopped going to Mass. She never stopped believing in Christ, but she wouldn’t accept my love for Kevin as wrong, and wouldn’t be preached to any longer by people who felt it was.

The last sex-talk I can remember with my mom was when my dad was almost eighty, and they had gone to his doctor for a check-up. He’d had a dozen surgeries, too many ailments, and took way too much medication for all of it, but as told by my mom afterward, the doctor asked him if he was still ejaculating. They both laughed and said, No, not much anymore.” The doctor’s reply was, “Well, Vic, if you can, every once in awhile, you should, because it’s good to keep things moving down there, reduces the risk of prostate cancer and other stuff.” Elvira was clear.

Mom: Well, Victor, I heard that, I took him right home and jerked him off.

I burst out laughing.

Me: No blowjob?

MOM: (laughs) Oh, that’s filthy! You urinate from there!

Me: Well, you can wash it in between if you want to mom, but, did he enjoy it?

Mom: (sly smile) Well, he didn’t complain.

Pause.

Mom: Oh my god, and Victor, you would not believe what came out of that man!

If you’re quite sure now that my relationship with my mother was completely inappropriate, that’s ok, because it was really fun.