I was now a kid who’d do anything, do crazy things. He was right and wrong, of course—once I’d touched the first penguin I had no choice. Somehow this led to a series of confidences. I was crazy but also malleable, easily intimidated, which made me Gilbert’s idea of a safe repository for what he regarded as his crazy feelings. Gilbert was a precocious masturbator, and looking for some triangulation between his own experiments and generic schoolyard lore. Did I do it? How often? One hand or two, held this way, or this? Close my eyes? Ever want to rub up against the mattress? I took his
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