A few years back, a really nice lesbian couple moved in next door to Henry. One was a metal sculptor, and the other was a computer engineer. He got to know them pretty well, they invited him over for dinner a few times, and they came to his birthday parties.
He couldn’t wait to tell me about his new neighbors, he said “Some women lesbians moved in next door, they’re lesbians, but they’re nice” I don’t know if he thought because they were lesbians that they were members of some he-woman man hating club or what.
Having the ladies next door prompted him to ask me:
“How do women have sex with each other?”
I explained it as simply as I knew how, and when I was all done he said
“You mean to tell me that they put their faces down there? They put their tongues in there? Well, (with the most disgusted face he knows how) that is just putrid, I can’t believe that they do that down there to each other, that is just putrid and gross.”
(It has been a long time since he has talked to him, he has decided that they're prostitutes now)
Then he asked:
“Then how do the queers do it?”
So after I explained the mechanics of “the queers” doing it, and how if the one on top cares at all for the one on bottom he’ll do what’s called a “reach around” and how that all works, he wanted to know what oral sex is, he said “I think I know what it is, but I just want you to tell me so that I’m sure” so I told him, and again with the most disgusted face he can make he said “are you trying to tell me that the queers suck each others peters?” Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. “well that is just disgusting, and no woman ever tried to do that to me, and I would never do that to a woman, that is putrid.” “A friend of mine was going to make it with a girl in the car during a dance (during the depression), and do you know, when they got to the car, she opened up her legs, and the smell almost made him vomit, he got the hell out of there, and he told me to stay away from her too” I said “wow, that’s a good friend” he said “boy I’d say last thing I want is to smell a stinky pussy”
Some other people moved in across the street the summer before last, a really nice late 50’s couple. Henry didn’t meet them for about the first 6 months they lived there. The room where he spends the majority of his time faces his back yard, he doesn’t get out front often, and he was convinced that since he had never met them and he never saw them coming or going that they must be growing pot. I still don’t know how he was able to deduce that from them never being home, and it’s a very high-end home, not the kind of place you would turn into a grow operation, and they bought it. I tried to explain that to him, but he wasn’t having it. It wasn’t until he rode his scooter across the street that he finally learned that they are good people; he invited them to his birthday too. He invites everyone he meets to his birthday party. Usually 35 or so show up, and his birthday is just around the corner in May he’ll be 96.
