Portrait of the Dirty Old Man as a child, part one.

My childhood was not all chocolate milk and cookies. A very bright and creative little fellow, I was of course constantly misunderstood by the bourgeoisie society around me, and bullied by Philistines of my own age, as well as adults. I was a curious little bugger, though, and very happily exploring the world even when I didn't find intellectual equals with whom to share my discoveries.

When I was two, I was often allowed to sleep in my mother's arms, and already then did I have the realization that there was something special about women, for she was much softer and nicer than my dad, it was clear.

My mom was a beautiful woman, as was most of my family. She had long black hair that she used to bundle on top of her head when she worked, and spread to the winds when she played. Her breasts were high and proud, even after three children, and my father watched over her like a hawk, even though he would have been hard pressed to find a more faithful woman than she.

I had two older sisters, Emily and Patty, who were eight and eleven years older than I. They were also both magnificent specimens of the female gender at any point of their lives. Curiously, they were both blond, though both our parents were dark.

When I was five, we were all living in a big old house near the seaside, for father had a half-year contract out there. We kids were only too happy, for our schooling had been postponed for the time being, so we were free as birds.

For most of the summer, I was playing alone, as usual, but both my sisters had found lots of girlfriends amongst the local population, and brought them home often. All the girls were fond of bathing in the sea and taking steam baths in the bathhouse that the former owners of the house had built on the private beach. The bathhouse was a big rickety thing with a long narrow dressing area and big gaps between the boards. The sauna was hardly well isolated, and much of the steam got into the dressing area, making it an inferno in itself on some days.

One day I was unusually bored, as well as upset, for mother, after I had ruined a set of pants by falling off a cliff, had forbidden me to leave our own area for the rest of the week, so I could not go exploring where no five-year old had been before. So I was sitting sullenly on a narrow bench in the bathhouse while my sisters and their friends were fooling around.

I got one of those experiences you know, where I suddenly for no apparent reason got more aware of the things around me, and sat there staring at them with awe. The steam curling about the lose boards, the sand and the seaweed on the wooden floor, everything suddenly seemed important and interesting to me.

Across from me sat Mirien, a friend of Patty's. She was on a break from the steam bath, and was talking with one of the other girls. She had one leg stretched out, playing absentmindedly with a pair of knickers with her long toes. Her other leg she had pulled up on the bench, resting her chin on it. She was using her right index finger to slowly brush sand off her foot. A thin tendril of steam curved and slowly around her reddish-brown wet hair.

Suddenly I was struck with the conviction that I was not looking at something that was a human being the same way as I was, but rather a higher order of being. The beauty that was suddenly revealed to me in this slim young creature with the smooth, tense skin was of an intensity such that I for a moment almost feared that I would drop off the bench if I moved at all.

Somehow my vision zoomed in on Mirien's light freckles on her nose and cheeks, and her big brown eyes with the impossibly long eyelashes. Her whole face and head seemed to me to be more... three-dimensional, more real, than anything I had ever seen before.

Suddenly she turned her head slightly and looked at me. The friend she had been talking to had turned her back and started dressing. Mirien looked at me, and for a moment it seemed as if I was leaving my body and flicking back and forth in the space between myself and her.

She smiled. She looked down for a moment bashfully, then looked at me and smiled again. She visibly relaxed again, and somehow I was sure of her knowledge of her own beauty, and her relaxed and quiet pride in it.

Mirien had always had less tendency to tease me than the other girls, and after that day she even defended me sometimes.

 Yours, Eolake