A is for Adam
By Jenn Zipp
Adam.
It all started with a boy named Adam. He was the son of a family friend, a woman I was forced to call Aunty Patsy even though we had no blood connection. Which would make Adam my un-biological cousin… which makes this story more like a forbidden tale of incestuous love… or something.
Adam was my downfall. He’s the curiosity that killed the cat and has led me down this weird shame spiral I know as my fascination with men… but in particular; the male genitalia.
On weekends, Momma would watch Adam while his parents went to the doctors, which I later found out was grown-up talk for couple’s therapy. Adam would come over and sulk at the breakfast nook, convinced that his parents were off getting ice cream together without him. By mid day, he’d break out of whatever funk he was in, eat the slices of apple that Momma would cut for us, and take out his aggressions on me by making my life horrible.
In the afternoons, his parents would come pick him up, Aunt Patsy red and puffy faced and Uncle Gary puffing cigarettes like a chimney.
Adam was different from me. He had short hair that cupped his ears. He didn’t like dressing my dolls and braiding the manes of My Little Ponies. Instead, he’d like to see how far he could throw the aquarium rocks off the balcony or see how many grapes he could shove in his mouth before they’d come spewing out in a masticated mess. When we’d go swimming at the pool, he’d go topless.
He was the weirdest girl I’ve ever met.
I was a dense child. I knew very little of boys, didn’t make much of a distinction between the sexes, only because I hardly ever saw men or boys for that matter.
That is until the day Adam showed me his penis. No, no. no… it was all kept in innocence that only youth and curiousity can know.
Let me explain:
It was snack time. Momma was slicing apples.
“Go get Adam.”
“Adam bit me.”
“Well give this to him and maybe he’ll bite that instead of your arm.”
She handed me a slice of apple.
It felt like I was searching for the kid for an eternity, calling his name. Under the bed, on the balcony, over the ledge, under the dinner table, in the freezer, behind Momma’s fake leg. It didn’t hit me that perhaps he was in the bathroom the whole time. I remember feeling furious at the thought that of all the places he could be in, it was the most obvious hiding spot in the house.
I swung the door open with such ferocity.
And what I saw… scared the shit out of me.
Not only was Adam standing AND urinating… but the thing he was holding… that little fleshy thumb-like protrusion was actually connected to his body. I dropped the slice of apple on the floor where my jaw was.
“What happened to you?”
“I’m peeing, go away.”
“Did you sneeze?”
He looked at me and I could see the puzzlement eclipse the embarrassment on his face.
“Huh?”
“Did you sneeze?” I repeated.
It made sense in my head. It looked as though Adam had sneezed really hard and his vagina, perhaps, fell out of his body. I wondered if I should call my mother and have him taken to the doctors. But Adam just zipped his fly, didn’t flush the toilet, and ate the slice of apple from the bathroom floor.
“You’re stupid,” he said with his mouth full and pushed me out of the doorway.
Even now, twenty some odd years after that incident, the memory of Adam’s penis still leaves me with a feeling of curiosity, dread, fascination and disgust, all rolled into one. The same feeling is conjured when I hear that the cirucs is in town and I’m wondering what freaks must be in the sideshow this time. All thanks to a boy named Adam and his penis.