Page 35 - October 2020

At 18, I snipped and clipped that dirty-blond hair until I
almost resembled Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, and
pealing bells went off in my head as I sashayed my
newly revamped pixie self through a reckless coven of
promiscuous fire. Suddenly my life was all cigarettes,
catcalls, caterwauling, and (oh, yeah) college. No corn
silk or corn stalks, for I was a purebred Brooklyn wench,

tumbling headlong into a pool of poetry and petrol.
Mood rings and mood swings in my pink opium den.
Merriment and mayhem in bedlam. Tequila Sunrise
rainbows through cut-glass mosaics. Mounted black
track lights, waft of spiced musk and pungent patchouli,
setting the scene for selected readings from the Kama
Sutra. Naughty girl, bawdy girl, haughty girl. Saturday
night slutting (Mom’s scowling word) on the steamy Bay
Road in the fervid glands of summer. The hunks, an
embarrassment of riches: miscellaneous pizza boys,
Harvard-educated Norwegian tennis coach, the
narcissist next door, and friends of a friend of a friend of
my boyfriend. Goldilocks strumpet with a penchant for
the callow boys—the cougar and her colts (and a Jewish

stallion or two). They fed me things: iced red grapes,
Godiva truffles doused with sweet liqueur, and even
recouped my beloved long-lost Oreos.

Then, as in most superficial but submerged
transformations, Ms. Vixen in Venus put away her
rubber playthings, kissed all the Georgie Porgies
goodbye, and re-crossed her now matronly legs.

Epilogue:
You will note that there is indeed a swan at the crux of
this story. But no piglets or pigeons. Why? Because,
dear friends, this is your sacred terrain, and who the hell
am I to trample on that?

Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof"
Copyediting Services and the editor-in-chief of the online
poetry journal First Literary Review-
East (www.rulrul.4mg.com). She is on the book review
staff of Pedestal Magazine and has written reviews for
many publications. Cindy resides in Brooklyn, New York
(USA), where she studies the Russian language and
agonizes over politics.