just plain Jerry

I remember one afternoon when Terry and I did it in broad daylight in a nearby park in Lombard, or Glen Ellen. This was after we had broken up already and I was seeing Jolene, I think, before leaving to go out to my writing program at U.C. Irvine. It was midday, and she had me come to the house in Lombard where she was a nanny so we could go out to this park. She wanted to get fucked right there, out in the open. In front of God and everyone, she said. She spread out a blanket, stripped off all her clothes, and didn't care whether I took off everything or not. She was as skinny as a rail then, I remember, almost breastless when she lay on her back. She brought along her contraceptive cream and inserted it while she lay on her back in the bright sunlight, then pulled me down on top of her. She didn't even wait for me to get one leg out of my pants. She just pulled me inside and immediately started moaning and crying, “Fuck me, fuck me! For God's sake, just fuck me, Gerald.”

            I don't know why, but she always called me Gerald, which was not my name.

            My Dad had gone running down the hospital hallway in the middle of the night, when I was born, to make sure it was changed to just plain Jerry.