How I learned about girls

By the time I was eight or nine I had had a few girl friends, with whom I played, the way I played with the guys.  I just got along with them better.   But I would get invited over, especially to the home of the sisters, Eva and Lily, where I would be the only boy present.
    
Sometimes, the two sisters and I slid down the rough slopes of Rosedale Ravine just behind their backyard on Bloor Street .  Sore from the ride down the hill, we followed the dirt road around to Riverdale Zoo.

At the end of our hour long hike, we got to spend time at the zoo, looking at decrepit lions, dirty mountain goats and chimpanzees who seemed to pass their days shrieking and playing chase or sitting in the corner chewing their toes and rubbing themselves in ways I did not understand at the time. 
 

On this day, one chimp in particular was playing up to the crowd and would swing and make faces for peanuts.  She took a paper candy floss cone and stuck it on her head.   Everyone laughed.  She licked it and stuck it in her nose.  More laughter.  She stuck it in her ear amid even more hilarity.  Then she bent over as people were still laughing and stuck the cone ‘where the sun don’t shine.”  Sudden shocked silence.  Mothers hustled their children away and we were left with an abruptly silent chimp cage and a chimp sitting in a corner, a discarded cone still near the bars.  I had turned red and averted my eyes. 

When we got back to their house, Eva and Lily seemed to remember my discomfort and whispered together and giggled.  I started to feel a sense of dread as we entered their room.  Their younger girl cousin was also there as she had come over to play.  Like them, she was lithe, with blonde hair and blue eyes.   Something about their giggling together made me nervous.  I could feel myself breaking into a cold and clammy sweat.

Lily, the younger girl, came up close and asked, “Don’t you know that boys and girls are different?”
 

“They’re the same,” I said, “that’s what my mom told me.”  This elicited gales of laughter all around.
 

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, “Lily said .   “Here, look.”  She stood up and pulled down her pants and panties.  “See, we’re different.”
 

I felt a dense fog fall over my eyes.  I could not see clearly.  I was gasping for breath as if in deep water and stumbled back against the wall.  Lily pursued me relentlessly.  “Look,” she said, coming toward me with her pants and panties around her ankles.  I was seized with the great fear that I would be struck dead and turned to face the wall, covering my eyes.  I would have done the same thing if I were a vampire turning from the cross, held in the outstretched hands of the priest.
 

Lily and her cousin were now on either side of me.   Both of them had their pants and panties down around their ankles.  “Look at us, look at us, look at us.”

They danced around me in a frenzy, while I buried my face in my hands.  My knees were buckling and my heart was racing.   “OK, OK, you’re different.  OK.”  I blurted out.  “Just leave me alone.”

Eva, the eldest, came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder.  “It’s all right,” she said, “it’s all right.  You don’t have to look. “ 

The other two girls pulled up their pants, still giggling.  Eva walked me to the door.  “Still friends?” she asked and put out her hand, that cool serene smile still playing on her lips.  Her arm was sinuous as a snake, as solid as a lifeline to a drowning man. 

My head still whirling I reached out and shook her hand in gratitude and uncertainty.  From a distance I heard myself ask, “What do girls want?”  

“The same as anybody,” she smiled, and closed the door.