9
...smile relieves a heart that grieves, remember what I said, I'm not waiting on a lady, I'm just waiting on a friend... Waiting On A Friend    (The Rolling Stones)

	Summer ended, and so I lost my time with Rose during the weekdays while she was in class.  For Rose, school was school.  Nothing special, just boring classes and crappy lunches.  She was naturally good at English and hated math, same as me.  I tried to tutor her on math the best I could, and we struggled through the homework together.  Many nights Marjorie had to work late, but Rose didn't mind, because it gave her the opportunity to tap my brain.  We sat there together on the couch, sometimes side by side, our legs almost touching as I breathed in the heady atmosphere of her presence, sometimes curled up on opposite ends of the couch with our feet together, engaging in the occasional foot fight and trying to tickle each other with our toes.  In school she had made a few acquaintances, girls with names like Brittany and Callista and Jalisha, but they were all a year or two older than Rose, and she confided to me that she couldn't really consider any of them to be friends, especially since she knew that next year, they'd all make the move up to junior high, leaving Rose to flounder by herself for a year.  Still, they provided fodder for her stories and quips.  I've wondered countless times since then, if she hadn't had me as her first close friend, whether it would have turned out differently, whether she would have made better friends with kids at school.  
	Rose came bouncing in one brisk September evening with even more sparkle than usual, to tell me that her mom had just bought a desktop computer and signed up with the complex's Internet provider.  It was an older computer that Marjorie had found at Goodwill, cheap but servicable.  Rose was so happy at the thought of what that represented, to her anyway; a commitment by her mom to stay in one place, not move out in another couple of months.  She said she'd love to have me come over sometime to surf the web with her, and I made a noncommittal noise.  I was somehow uneasy with the thought of visiting her in her apartment, and it just felt right to keep my distance, from that place anyway.  I was afraid of the dynamics of the situation, of being in close quarters with both Rose and her mom.  Rose kept after me, until I finally relented and came over one October night, maybe a couple of weeks before Hallowe'en.  Marjorie greeted me at the door, putting a glass of wine in my hand and gripping my elbow, gesturing to the corner of the living room where Rose was perched at the card table where the computer had been set up.  I pulled up a chair to sit beside her, watching as she showed me a couple of cutesy little girly games (her words), Hallowe'en screensavers, dancing animals, and a LOT of video on Youtube.  Every once in a while, she'd hit a site that was blocked.  Marjorie had apparently been given some free software as a bonus for signing up, and not knowing what any of it was for, just installed all of it.  One of those items was a site blocker, protection that was supposed to allow parents let their children have free reign on the web without having to worry about inappropriate content.  The first few times we hit that block, Rose just shrugged it off and went on.  But before the night was over, she was getting more and more annoyed with the censorship.  At one point, she looked around to make sure Marjorie was out of earshot, then pulled me close to whisper urgently, her lips almost brushing the surface of my ear, "Do you think you can figure out how to get this block thing turned off?"  I shared her sideways glance at Marjorie, then slowly shook my head.  'I don't know', I mouthed, 'but I'll see what I can do.'  Mentally, I took note of a few of the blocked site names (prettyposy.com, pots-n-shox.com, stuffermaker.com, letsdoanotherone.com, 3 or 4 others) making a silent promise to somehow research their content before giving in to such a request.  I scribbled down and stashed the name of the site blocking product, figuring I could use a machine at the library to try to do the research, logging onto their network using the serial number on my library card to gain access.  Surprise.  Even though the library didn't use that site blocker, they used some different product that did the same thing, so I couldn't check any of the sites Rose had been blocked from; except one, slideitin.com.  I was mildly surprised to see that the library's blocker allowed through a site that had been blocked on Rose's machine, and this was how I first realized what big differences there can be in software products.  The one other thing I was interested in, wasn't blocked; it was the online owner's manual for the site blocker on Rose's computer.  The vendors had been nice enough to include profuse illustrations showing exactly how to manipulate their product, including selectively allowing certain sites through at will.  The only stitch in the deal was that the whole process was guarded by a password; but knowing something about Marjorie and her state of mind most of the time, I knew it was a pretty safe bet she'd never changed the password from the default that was staring at me from the pages of the onscreen user's manual.  Just for giggles, I tried to access the online manual for the product that was in use on the library computer.  Surprise again; the site was blocked.  When I logged off, the site blocker included a little slap in the face for good measure; a popup window thanked me, addressing me by name (Brent) and library card serial number, and displayed how many restricted websites I'd tried to visit (27) in a 15.3 minute session.  Actually made me shiver a little, to think how much information had been collected on me just then.

10
...put your tiny hand in mine, I will be your preacher, teacher... Father Figure  (George Michael)

 	Rose kept me young.  She was always cracking jokes and she really knew how to make me laugh until my sides hurt.  She listened to a lot of music I'd never heard before.  I bought her a Y-connector for her MP3 player so we could both listen to her tunes, artists with names like Pink, Evanescence, Staind, Creed, Hoobastank, and I played my cassettes and CDs for her, exposing her to classics like the Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin, Springsteen and so on.  Even though she had a Pink Floyd shirt, she'd never heard their music before, and turning her on to "Dark Side of the Moon" was especially gratifying.  Because it was all new to her, it became like new to me also.  I was hearing it through her ears, and it was sweet to rediscover newness in music I had listened to for so long.  Rose dropped by my room every day, often just popping in unannounced, flopping down on the floor and hooking her legs up over my cot, and launching into an account of her day at school or whatever else came into her head.  In my turn, I discovered I always had a little bit more of my life to share, my insights and disappointments, whatever seemed germane to the conversation, and she drank it all in, never so much as batting an eye.  She was my precious.  She was my ray of sunshine.  She was My Rose.
	From time to time, Rose asked if I had ever found a way around the website blocker.  This was the first and only deliberate lie I spoke to her; I told her no, I hadn't solved it yet, and that I would keep trying.  'Only a little longer,' I told myself, 'just hold her off until she's 13, you can do that, can't you old man, help her hold onto her innocence for as long as you can?'
	Life went on.  Rose was growing up before my eyes, and it was the day before her 11th birthday when I first realized what a struggle it was becoming, not to think about her "like that".  I'd been having trouble coming up with a birthday gift for her, and when I caught myself looking seriously at bikinis, I got scared, really scared, to realize how much pleasure it gave me to picture Rose in one.  Pervert, I bitterly denounced myself, filthy monster.  Reality kicked in, I took a step back and forced myself to remember she was still just a little girl; I bought her a huge teddy bear instead.  As it turned out, Marjorie gave her a bikini anyway, a flimsy white thing with red roses on the crotch and bra, with a cut identical to Marjorie's own flag bikini (a blue bra with a white star in the center of each cup and tied together with spaghetti strings, and a red and white vertically striped panty that rode up so high on the hip that top to bottom, you could clearly see some part of her entire body).  Ye gods.
	I could see more clearly all the time the woman Rose was becoming.  The growth of her breasts was gradual; I'd sometimes look back at the Rose in my memory and realize the Rose in front of me was subtly bigger.  Her butt was swelling magnificently as her hips expanded.  'Nuff said.  I was still too nervous to approach any of the women I saw around the complex, and they all seemed to be married or dating anyway.  Marjorie and I talked a few times, but nothing ever came of it.  Several times when she came down to watch Rose swim, or occasionally get in the pool herself, she’d sit and chat with me, drink in hand.  I caught on quickly and started keeping a bottle of Bacardi close by, just in case.  I was getting distinct impressions that she was flirting with me.  After these chats, I'd realized I'd probably been flirting back.  It was probably only the second or third time we'd chatted before she started punctuating her remarks with a hand on my arm or shoulder, lingering just a little bit longer each time.  It took me a little longer, although I did finally get the nerve to start touching her the same way.  I realized as I leaned over to touch her for the first time that I could see through the open spaces in her clothes, the gaps where her shirt parted, to see her chest, her ample round breasts, and even inside her bra, I could just pick out the darker red of her areola resting against the white of the cup.  Yeah, I was ashamed of myself for looking, but that didn't stop me.  It got to where I was finally comfortable enough around her that I thought I could ask her out, but the only vehicle I had access to was the complex's rickety old pickup, and I would have felt an utter fool borrowing her car to take her out; so we just slid by each other like two ships that pass from a safe distance.  
	I still hadn't given up my habit of using stroke books; I always kept one magazine around at any given time, but the sense of shame was as strong as ever, and I knew that I had to take even more care to keep it secret.  Simply stashing it in my underwear drawer wasn't safe enough anymore, so I made a false bottom for that drawer from a scrap piece of plywood.  Honestly, it was pretty effective; the plywood was a close enough match to the inside of the drawer that even I wouldn't have suspected anything if I hadn't known.  This was a secret that I absolutely HAD to keep hidden; there was no way I wanted Rose to know I looked at porn, and I sure as hell didn't want anybody who knew about our friendship to know, either.
	My relationship with Rose and my porn habit were the two ways I kept my loneliness at bay, and I tried to keep those two sides of my life carefully segregated.  Any time I found myself straying, accidentally thinking about Rose the wrong way, I managed to pull myself back on course, and was proud of my effort at correcting the slow drift.  Thankfully, the sight of Marjorie in a bikini was a blessedly weclome distraction to keep my thoughts away from Rose.
	In December, I was caught completely off-guard when Rose told me she'd gotten her first period.  She was very shy about it, but also bursting to tell me; "You'll never ever ever guess what I got today as a late birthday present..." spoken with her head down to the floor but her eyes rolled up to see me.  I was pouring a cup of coffee at the time.  When I professed ignorance, she told me, almost too quietly to hear,"...my period," and the pot slipped in my hand and I scalded myself, although I kept Rose from seeing it.  She told me she'd discussed it with Marjorie, who had sat down with her for a belated discussion of the facts of life that proved frustrating and unsatisfying for Rose.  She could tell her mother was not very engaged in the conversation, and she still had more questions than answers.  All she'd really gotten from the talk was how important it was to keep herself clean, and how to use tampons and pads.  My hands were actively shaking by this point, and it was as I tried to cover my nerves by taking a drink of coffee, that I learned Marjorie had demonstrated, and then watched as Rose tried it herself to make sure she got it right, how to insert a tampon.  Yeah, I know.  No man in his right mind could have avoided feeling the way I did on hearing that, none of them would have been able to get that image out of his head either.  I was gratified that Rose chose to ask me to help her fill in the gaps, but I was achingly nervous as to how to word it.  We talked about getting pregnant, and as delicately as I could, I described the mechanics by which sperm is introduced to egg, and the fact that there are only a few days each month when that could happen, before the egg gets washed away by blood.  I left out the part about the man's penis getting stiff and the woman's vagina getting wet.  I was too scared to discuss the concept of sexual desire, although I did use the word 'cum' and then immediately blanched inwardly at the explicitly sexual images it conjured for me.  It didn't seem to occur to Rose to wonder how a limp penis could be inserted into a vagina, but then again, I don't think she knew to think in terms of limp or stiff.  I don't know, maybe I'm fooling myself.  But I do feel sure that she wouldn't have thought to get that information from the Internet; to her, the primary purpose of the web was entertainment.  And her period was such an intensely personal and specific experience for her that I don't think it occurred to her she could find that information in such a general place as the web.  At any rate, I thought I had dodged a bullet insofar as that Rose didn't ask me for more information on the male anatomy.  I don't know how I would have answered her if she had; or at least, I didn't know at the time.
	Love.  God-damned love.  I knew, I KNEW, God damn it, I KNEW, yet somehow prevented myself from knowing that I knew, that I was in full-fledged, card-carrying, romantic, spiritual, ecstatic, physical, mental, sexual, rapturous Love with her.  What piecework is the possesor of one X and one Y, how fractured in reason, how separated in faculties, in form and moving how depressingly deluded, in action how like an idiot, in apprehension how like a moron.
	How long had I been skirting the realization?  How many mornings had I woken, remembering that I had dreamed of her the night before, yet been writing off my erections as normal morning occurrences that had nothing to do with her?  But a feeling like this, a life-defining emotion like this, could only be hidden, even from myself, for so long,  It was only a matter of time, really, before I was forced to confront it, to realize it existed.  It only needed a catalyst, I suppose.

11
...once the words are spoken, something may be broken... What Can You Lose  (by Stephen Sondheim)

	The common room of the clubhouse had a console TV that had seen better years.  The manager kept putting off replacing it, although he did finally spring for a DVD player to supplement the VHS job.  The cabinet in the corner was stuffed with VHS tapes; the complex had started with a modest library, and with every tenant who moved out and left tapes behind, the collection grew.  Many was the afternoon or evening when Rose and I would pull up the overstuffed couch and watch movies from that collection, or DVDs that I had checked out from the library, or rented (or traded for tapes that we had duplicates of), or that she'd borrowed from schoolmates.  We both liked our popcorn plain and our soda cold and stolen.  We went through phases where we'd zero in on a particular category; '70's comedies, Jamie Lee Curtis films, Hammer horror, Tim Burton movies, and so on.  She was royally bemused by my confession that there were two movie scenes that made me cry every time; the very end of "The Wizard of Oz" and the airport scene in "Casablanca".  Rose wanted to put it to the test, and I obliged her, both by watching the films and by shedding a few tears, as I knew I would, when the aforementioned scenes came on.
	So it hit me as a fiercely unnerving epiphany one Saturday night in January when we watched "Dick Tracy" (as a segue from a Warren Beatty retrospective to films that had been made from comics); midway through the picture, there's this scene where Mandy Patinkin is singing a duet with Madonna, "What Can You Lose?"  Now, I challenge you to come up with a more perfect anthem for unrequited love than that song.  Anyway, Rose and I were sitting fairly close together like we always did, our legs almost but not quite touching, her hand carelessly draped in the space between our legs, actually touching my leg through my sweats, and as the lyrics to this song played out, I felt like I'd been slugged in the face with a shovel.  The song was reaching into my chest and ripping out the ribcage.  There it was, right in front of me, breathing in my face, my dilemma all wrapped up in a perfect package, telling me that I loved her.  Not only that I loved her, but also that I needed to tell her of my love, and in the same breath forbidding me to do it, partly because I might scare her or confuse her into retreating, but mostly because she was just a baby and I was well into middle age, and it was WRONG, just dead WRONG.  In those few seconds, the weight of the years, the agony and emptiness and sheer need, overwhelmed me, because the answer to it all was sitting right beside me, yet we might as well have been on different planets.  Before I knew what was happening, I was bawling like a baby and struggling mightily to prevent Rose from seeing my tears.  Of course, that failed utterly.  Rose was startled to see me weeping so profusely, and she wanted to stop the film.  I told her no, I was fine, I just wanted to finish watching, but she kept a close eye on me for the rest of the night.  When we parted, Rose gave me the first hug she'd ever trusted herself to give; shy and fiercely protective at the same time, she squeezed me tight around the middle and laid her head on my chest, telling me that she could hear my heart beating, and what a wonderful sound it was.  Up close like that, I was able to take her in as a whole; filling up my arms, my eyes, my nose.  The aroma, the simple sheer redolence of her skin, a smell uniquely human and uniquely her.  Her breasts, little mounds of firm flesh, smashed up against me, boring into me, drilling through me, demanding recognition, and I was sure I could feel the firmness of her nipples against my stomach as she gripped me.  As I looked down, she turned her face up to gaze earnestly into mine, and as we stood there, swaying imperceptibly in a nonexistent breeze, her lips were close, so close, too close, and I really have no idea how I kept myself from smothering her mouth with kisses right there and then.  If I learned every language on earth, I still wouldn't be able to describe my feelings at that moment.  Sweet, sweet, unbearably sweet, Hellishly sweet torture, to go so far and no further.  But at least for now, I had part of her.  There were more hugs to come; just a few, here and there; enough to look forward to with hungry anticipation.  But it was that night, when we watched "Dick Tracy", that I finally admitted to myself just how deeply in I'd gotten.  I no longer had the crutch of self-imposed ignorance.  Bare before the all-seeing eye of desire and regret, pinned in place like a creature being vivisected by it's own need to give and receive love, and it HURT, worse than any pain I'd ever felt before, physical or otherwise.

12
...This is the end, my only friend, the end... I'll never look into your eyes again... can you picture what will be, so limitless and free, desperately in need of some stranger's hand... The End  (James Douglas Morrison)

	There came a sullen, gray day in February when the world seemed to be standing still; the sky was a leaden blanket of ice clouds that shut out any hint of light or warmth, indifferently dropping ice pellets on both the just and the unjust, on the lonely and unloved.  It was on this day that Rose learned her father was dead.  At around 5:30 in the afternoon I started to worry about her, since I usually saw her before that time of day.  She didn't show up at the clubhouse until later, almost 8 o'clock in the evening, and when she did show up, I learned immediately what had happened.  Her eyes were streaming before she even got the words out, and she threw herself into my arms and hugged me tight to her with a fierceness that told me she was afraid of losing me too, as she choked out the details.  Her mother had picked her up after school; an unusual occurrence in itself, that tipped Rose right away to the fact that something was wrong.  (Marjorie's shift had her working until 5:30 or 6 most evenings, so Monday through Thursday Rose walked the mile and a half home; I made sure that my once-a-week errands using the complex's pickup coincided with school letting out on Friday afternoon, so I could give Rose a ride home.)  This afternoon, though, Marjorie had been waiting for her.  As they sat there, parked across the street from the school, she informed Rose that her father had been killed in an accident, a stupid hit and run as he was trying to cross a street.  Marjorie had only found out that day, even though the accident had happened a couple of months before.  I knew Marjorie must have been deeply affected by the news, maybe even devastated.  Although she seemed to be getting by just fine without Stan in her life, in the little bit I'd heard her talk about him, I'd caught glimpses of a much deeper story I knew I'd get to the bottom of someday.  For now, though, I was getting a picture of mother and daughter sitting there in the car, Marjorie holding Rose tenderly and Rose in mortal agony.
	Rose was doubly inconsolable in that she had not only lost her father, but hadn't even found out in time to be able to go to his funeral or say goodbye.  Not that she would have been able to travel to where the funeral was anyway, but the thought of not even having the chance, of having the illusion of choice snatched from her, made it so much worse.  Between great heaving convulsions and trembling spasms, she said it was like having all the air sucked out of the room before she'd even had a chance to take a deep breath.  She sobbed and shuddered for the rest of the evening, and her grief was so great that it became  my grief too, my pain, and I joined her in crying and aching.  We just sat there on the floor of my room, with her in my lap like a frightened, lonely child, her soft girl arms around me, choking the breath from me, a heavenly pressure.  We held each other while I stroked her hair and tried to soothe her the best I could, hoping the feeling of being held close eased her as much as it satisfied me.  I was heartbroken for her, and furious with fate for having delivered such a careless backhand to such a precious one, but the majority of my emotion was reserved for a nauseous shame at the erection that had erupted in my lap, and the twists and writhings I had to carefully manage, so as to prevent Rose from learning firsthand of my wretched desire.  If she felt my hardness as she straddled me, she gave no indication of it, just kept squeezing me tight, as if she meant to absorb me into her, to have our chests melt together so that our hearts could touch.  "Oh God, oh G-God," she wailed, "don't you l-l-leave me t-too, Jack," she sobbed, "don't you d-d-dare ever leave me, promise me you won't go, Jack, p-promise!  S-s-swear it, Jack, swear you'll never go away!"  And I had to swear, even though I knew we had no control over the gutwrenchings Fate likes to deliver.  I certainly had no plans to go, but then neither had Stan...  The one thing I had over him, I reflected, was that I had Rose.  That was more than enough inducement for me to fight for every last second here.