Will Mayo Collection

We Were So Young

by

Will Mayo

Then it was that we were children at the madhouse and we wondered whether Michael, one of our newer number, would ever learn the facts of life.

“God help him if he gets alone with a girl,” I said. “He won't know what to do.”

“What he needs,” said Tom. Tom with his toilet tips. “Is a plumber. It all comes down to plumbing.”

“Oh, you,” we said and threw all our pillows at him before tumbling down into sleep before another day.

But, of course, Mike did find himself with a girl. Her name was Tina. They were alone there in the room of her choice.

And so Michael asked, “What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you want,” Tina replied. “Anything in your wildest dreams.”

Well, poor Michael fumbled here and there for an answer before finally saying, “Oh, I know! We'll do the snail walk. We'll just walk naked, one by one, down the corridor. It's the latest thing. The opposite of streaking. I just read about it in TIME Magazine last week.”

Tina just smiled and said, “Right after you. I'll be behind you all the way.”

Michael got himself carefully undressed and walked into the hallway buck naked while Tina watched with a smile and a blush to her face.

When we saw Michael walking naked toward us there in the dayroom we couldn't help ourselves. Laughter and wolf whistles resounded through the rest of the month.

Mike did eventually learn the basics of this existence as these things go. So much so that upon his discharge he dropped out of school and joined a swinger's club. Those were not the days. No, definitely not.

Carolee

By

Will Mayo

The phone rang just once. I picked it up, the voice echoing in my head like the wind in a long gone canyon.

“Will…”

“Carolee? Is that you, darling?”

“Darling, is it now?”

Then the sound of her became like a shell after the storm has passed. Just a rush of waves onto a barren shore. Distant but audible, then gone.

Tears ran down my cheeks. “Carolee…Carolee….Where are you now?”

Then I wakened from a heaving sleep as I realized that Carolee, my love, was dead, moldering in the grave as she had been for the past two years. The tide pulled away. I followed in its wake.