Grandes Aberturas # 38

Gerard Maines lived across the hall from a woman named Benna, who four minutes into any conversation always managed to say the word penis. He was not a prude, but, nonetheless, it made him wince. He worked with children all day, taught a kind of aerobics to pre-schoolers, and the most extreme language he was likely to hear seemed to him to be in code, in acronyms, or maybe even in German - boo-boo, finky, peenick - words that were difficult to figure out even in context, and words, therefore, from wich he felt quite safe. He suspected it was not unlike people he knew who hated operas in translation. "Believe me," they would explain, "you just don't want to know what they're saying."
Today they were talking about families.
"Fathers and sons," she said, "they're like governments: always having sword fights with their penises."
"Really," said Gerad, sitting at her kitchen table, gulping at near-beer for breakfast. He palmed his beard like a man trying to decide.

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