Ma must have noticed a change in me and decided that it was time to teach me about sex. She was going to teach me about something that could not be talked about. People didn’t say the word “sex.” There was something taboo about this word and probably also about its deeds. This society was pure. Had it been purified by the torments of its past? Or had this subject simply gone under cover? There were no pornographic magazines or strippers, and was this why our father had brought us new aunts? During this era, the best that we boys could do was to bore our stares through ladies’ blouses and hope to burn through to get a glimpse. When I bored, I could feel my eyeballs crowd into the cleavage of their breasts and remain there like baby birds in a nest.

In spite of our lack of privacy, Ma had always kept her body hidden from Siggi and me. Living together in one room in the Hardtstrasse, in the attic and the present no-room, three-room apartment, with three of us rotating around one privy hole, did not give us much privacy. But body-exposure privacy was easy, because there was not much reason for us to run around naked. There was no tub or shower, and we washed our few clothes only when we nearly fainted. And when we were cold we also slept in them. The sheets of our beds were gray with grime, body fat, dead skin, bed bugs and live and dead dust mites. I had an advantage over others in that my pillow was sometimes especially adorned. With goo from my ear. I studied my brain that kept oozing out, but I never learned anything from it, or about it, not even why I never ran out of brain.

It was not long after I became immersed in my powerful new emotion, when Ma casually shed her clothes and sponge-bathed in my presence. A suppressed instinct struck her to wipe off body odor, teach her pubescent son preening and educate him about the birds and the girls. If she could not talk about sex, she could maybe drop a hint, to hint that a woman had different parts than a man, and that these got tangled up with each other if one were afflicted by a lack of self-discipline to overcome the most powerful heavenly bodies attraction in the universe.

So Ma wanted to demonstrate that girls were different from boys. But I already knew that. However I learned one of Ma’s secrets. She had no belly button to collect fuzz in. In Simonswolde she had had it replaced with a nice fifteen-centimeter horizontal scar, pouched out at the ends. She did this because of the hernia that she had acquired while manually spading and fertilizing our survival garden. A doctor had opened her up and had put her innards back into their proper places. This condition had been very painful, and she already had more pain than she could handle. Siggi and I had never known this. Courageous Ma had not told us that she was in pain, that she had been cut open, and the doctor had rummaged around inside her. She just had left and come back later. That’s all we knew. Therefore dear Ma, I thank you for sparing us your agony.

***

Suddenly there was going to be lot of nakedness in Rheinfelden. Concentrated nakedness. The advertisements showed that there’d be naked boys and naked girls. I didn’t care about the boys, but I wanted to squeeze naked girls. So far they had been impossible to find and here was my chance. The theater posters advertised Dangerous Love, and there were no clothes on the actors. But the important parts, those necessary for the continuation of the species, were just out of sight.

I had to show identification that I was sixteen to get in, and I was barely old enough to join this orgy. Before the curtain rose we waited anxiously in the darkened theater. Most people in the audience were boys. I played cool. I was a connoisseur and didn’t want others to see when my eyes would bug and my tongue would hang out, therefore I had to keep myself under control.

The movie started and soon a doctor dressed in a white frock appeared on the screen. He was lecturing seriously about the growing venereal epidemic, and he was here to frighten us. He told us about the cause of the scourges of mankind. He showed us the results of sin, of lack of self-discipline during the heat of passion. He introduced us to stark naked boys and stark naked girls in sterile hospital rooms. They looked cold and sad; they were not hot. They all had VD. They had sores all over their pale bodies, faces and groins. My eyes bugged out but not for the reasons that I had anticipated, and this movie dampened my desire somewhat. I would have to be careful when I would be able to get near naked girls.