Free American Prince by Tony Curtis Page B

with this sophisticated crowd.
    The next time I took Alicia out she invited me back to her tiny little apartment, and we necked in the living room. Things were hot and heavy for a while, and then she said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went into the bathroom. When she came back out, she was wearing only her panties and her bra. I was stunned. She had an amazingly voluptuous body. I started to unbutton my shirt, and she sweetly took my hand and walked me over to her bed. This is what I had always imagined sex would be like, just like it was in the movies.
    We began to touch each other, and after all these years I can still remember the smoothness of her skin and how great it smelled. I was worried about how I would perform the first time, but I made up for my inexperience with sheer enthusiasm. And Alicia made it easy for me. She was just so sweet and loving. I can’t imagine how I could have had a better first experience. I found myself thinking.
I’ve got to grow up in a hurry, so I can have more of this.
Even then I knew I wasn’t ready for a real relation ship.
    Unfortunately, I was right. Alicia and I continued to go out, but the time between dates got longer and longer. Alicia was kind to me, which is to say that she didn’t dump me. But we both knew that what we had together wasn’t going to go any distance. We never made love again, but that one time was truly unforgettable.

    T hat same year , two years after Julie’s death, my parents decided to have another child. I couldn’t understand what they thought they were doing. Maybe they were looking for evidence that God wasn’t punishing them. But as far as I was concerned, my parents had no business having another child. They had cared so little for the ones they had already had! But the next thing I knew, I had a baby brother, Robert.
    My parents bought a carriage for Bobby, and I would push it up and down the street. One reason I enjoyed it was that the good-looking girls who sat across the street rocking their own baby carriages would look at me as I walked by. They were eighteen and nineteen, mothers already, and I kept hoping one of them would invite me into her apartment and have sex with me. It never happened.
    If I felt remote from my family before Bobby was born, afterward I felt even more so. What little enthusiasm my parents had for child rearing went into Bobby, although I can’t say they treated him any better than they had Julie and me. My parents had mellowed a bit, and money wasn’t quite so tight, but I just don’t think they were cut out for raising children.
    I tried to feel close to my new baby brother, but I didn’t have much success. I couldn’t help but compare him with Julie. Julie and I would fight and laugh and scream and hug each other. Without him, I was flying solo. Bobby just couldn’t begin to fill the hole that Julie’s death left behind. I was going to school, but I didn’t give a shit one way or the other. Fuck school. Fuck that whole system. I wasn’t going to get involved with it, not one bit.
    I couldn’t wait until I could get out of the Bronx, even though I had no idea what my future would hold. What future? When I look back on those days, I wonder what might have happened if my parents had said to me, “We see that you’re interested in art and acting, so we’re going to send you to a special school that will help you develop your talents and interests.” My parents had no idea what my interests were. I try not to fault them for that, since they raised their kids much the way everyone else did in those days. But the bottom line was that I was lost, and the education I was getting was “fuck ’em and feed ’em fish,” although that wasn’t a line I’d understand until I was stationed in Guam during World War II.
    When we were stationed there, the chief quartermaster was responsible for feeding all the sailors on the island. He oversaw the menus, and made sure they were followed and the meals were cooked