Old man with curly hair, thick glasses, Mercedes. We play with the hood ornament on the Mercedes: it bends back, then stands up again. He watches us from the window.

Wiffle ball in the courtyard, summer. He calls down to us, says he’s got the Yankees game on: we could come up and watch, play pinball. Mom and dad warned me about him, said never go to his apartment if he asks, no matter what.

David and Daniel are brothers, they live down the way. We beat on Daniel: he’s awkward, doesn’t fit in. He goes up to the old guy’s place, isn’t right by the time we get to high school. Shouldn’t have gone up there.

There’s an old shed where they keep the tractor for mowing the lawns at the apartment. The apartments have fake metal shutters nailed to the brick cladding, they bleed white down the brick where the spray paint runs.

The shed has an old recliner with dirty magazines hidden beneath the pillow. I sneak in there with a stick to undo the latch and pry it out, but sense someone watching me from a window, above: a ghostly figure, a woman. Was it there, not there? The pictures are bubbly with mold spots and rain: Entertainment For Men. I make off with them.

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Tags: childhood, Memoir, paranoia, pedaphilia, pornography