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Sixty Nining in the Alley

Every day, on the walk home up the steep alley from St. Anthony’s school,  I spy a message written in code. The numbers, scrawled on garbage cans, painted on the concrete retaining wall that separates the yards from the alley, sprayed on the broad hinged doors of garages, chalked on the asphalt patches of the alley itself are always the same: sixty-nine.  The curving figures must mean something powerful, mysterious, and dark or why else would the numbers be found everywhere in the alley, but only in the alley.  Why among the trash, and the backs of garages, and why always the same number, sixty-nine? 

Like all things mysterious, magic fades under scrutiny. Six, on its own, appears innocent as a first grader. Six is a pale orange freckle faced kid, as passive as she is sweet. No magic or mystery there.  While nine, more experienced, is a jaded old woman wearing a purple babushka over her osteoporotic hump.  But if you place a six just to the left of the nine, and step back, magic happens. Spiraling curves face off. Hunched backs enclose bellies.  It’s as if a motion begins, bodies whispering secrets, as if wrestling, as if hugging, as if struggling to become one, like baby guppies swimming into each other’s bellies.  Who is eating whom? It’s hard to say.  Maybe they feed on each other.  Whatever it is they’re doing to each other, one thing’s certain.  They like it, and I do too.  Sixty-nine has become my favorite number.

            Nobody else ever seems to notice the sixty nines, and if they do, they never mention them. Other signs of vandalism, the litter, overturned trash cans, the broken pop bottles, draw remarks.

“Those bad kids, always breaking glass, make this neighborhood bad for the rest of us.” Mom would say, warning me to keep clear of the glass.  “What makes someone do such a thing?”

That’s what I wanted to know about sixty nine.

Mom didn’t even seem to notice the numbers so I didn’t ask her. Besides, something in my gut told me it was better to ask somebody besides Mom. 

             Cindy’s in college. She’s cool and she’s supposed  to know everything.

“Cindy, what does sixty-nine mean?”

“Who’s been talking to you?”  she asks in a rush.  I knew it.  It means something.

“Nobody.  It’s just all over the alley.”

“Oh. That’s just some teenagers, bragging about when they’re going to graduate.” 

I know better than that.  There aren’t any sixty-eights or seventies on the backs of garages. Besides, sixty nine has got to mean something nasty.

So I ask Ruthy Mae, the Protestant girl next door, who knows about the kinds of things that Cindy doesn’t know anything about.

“What’s sixty nine mean?”

“It means a boy and a girl, or even two guys doing it to each other.”

“Doing what?”

“You stupid, you know what.”

I guess I should know.  I figure sixty-nine must mean f-u-c-k. The tingling  thrill I get thinking about the hoods spraying magic numbers on a garage validates this conclusion.  These are probably the same bad boys who break pop bottles in the alley for fun.  I wonder if they ever really f-u-c-k or if they just like to write about it. Maybe they f-u-c-k first and then write sixty-nine.  Maybe sixty-nine is a code for a f-u-c-k meet in the alley under the moon at midnight.

Alone in the bathroom, I study my face in the mirror. But for the shadows under my eyes, for the moles on my cheek, my face is plain and unmarked, expressionless, ordinary.  I am just a little girl, no better than any of the dull little girls I know. But I wonder, how would a person who writes codes about fucking in alleyways  look?  Would committing such an act help to season that bland face? Am I brave enough?  Am I bad enough?

I don’t think I could ever be really bad, or write sixty-nine anywhere, or even think about f-u-c-k-I-n-g, not yet, anyway.  

The mirror tells me nothing, so I look to the floor.  Again, I see what looks like ordinary little girl feet standing on thick leathery callous, my only badge of experience.  Nothing can hurt these feet.  A lifetime of summer shoelessness has toughened me.  I can walk all the way to Highland park without a cut, make it all the way to Cool Pool with out a bee sting, and all the way across St. Anthony’s asphalt parking lot in the full heat of August sunshine with out shoes, without wincing, without even thinking about the glass in the alleyway. This part of me, is tough enough. If I can take the glass broken and left by the bad kids, I know I can be tough enough in other ways too.  

                I wonder how much fun it must be to smash something as sharp and heavy and valuable as a returnable pop bottle, and make a mess all over the alley for other kids to cut their tender bare feet and bust their bike tires on.  There’s the thrill of the risk of cutting your own hand on the glass, of glass flying and hitting you in the eye, of getting caught. But there must be more to it than that, some pleasure unknown to all who never broke pop bottles, or why else would the bad boys do it?

                So I try it. When I know no one is looking,  I fling a twelve-ounce Seven up bottle, worth five cents, into the air and let  the alley behind Ruthy Mae’s house smash it to pieces.  The crash is loud, and the shower of glass impressive,  but the thrill lasts no longer than the crash itself.  Glass disappears anonymously amid  the broken chunks left by countless the other bad kids.    I learn that breaking pop bottles is overrated, and I figure that whoever is breaking glass all over the neighborhood isn’t cool at all, but probably a fat, and retarded Protestant Briar, not the dark hooded adolescent gangsters I so admire.

                Still, I long to live on the edge of adventure, to explore the deep shadows of forbidden pleasures known only to greasy teenagers, the type who make Highland park dangerous at night,  whose acne pitted faces hide in the shadows of their hooded sweatshirts.  I could do better than to just waste a pop bottle. I knew I could.

Brandishing a pencil, I take to the deserted alley. I must choose carefully. I want to write my sixty nine where it will be seen, but where I won’t be seen doing it.  These things take time and careful planning.  I sit on the steps behind the alley and wait.  I check to make sure that Betty Engle’s face is far from her watch above the kitchen sink.   I wait until none of the boys are around playing kickball.  I wait to make sure no cars, no bicycles cross my path.  I wait until I am alone.  I choose the next door neighbor’s garage door, not the Wilson’s.  Mr. Wilson keeps his garage too clean, too busy for my mark.  I don’t want my numbers to stand alone on the blank page of the Wilson’s sterile back door. Better to write on Ruthy Mae’s garage door.  There my numbers can enjoy the company of other bad words and other sixty-nines.  It is there where I scratch my own tiny round numbers, numbers whose curving bodies face and mirror each other, swim amoebae like paisleys in the primordial soup on the back of Ruthy Mae’s garage door.

             Now I have done it. They are small, but they can be seen.  I have made my mark.

With this simple act, at once I belong to cult of sixty-niners, a member of the anonymous association of hoodlums who write dirty things in public places . Armed with experience, I will walk in pride to St Anthony school in my school girl uniform, and when I catch glimpse of our code, I will feel the power of subversive community. No longer am I just a little girl in the third grade.  I am a bad little girl in the third grade.