Perhaps this bathroom became so popular because its unoiled entry-way door squeaked—because the foyer entrance is obscured from the urinals and booths—because this gives its friskier patrons two seconds’ warning. (That’s of no use, naturally, if a secret photographer is lurking behind the only closed door of stall number five.)

I know all this because, at eleven, I insisted we go see a movie at this very Raleigh mall. Soon as my parents left me alone to watch Fred Mac-Murray and some irrelevant flying sheepdog, I slipped out, rushing straight to Penney’s.

I found the sign still saying CUSTOMER SERVICES, HANDY LAYAWAY. I felt sad on discovering the crime scene abandoned. I paced off everyone’s deeds. My already adult dick out, I was crying some, feeling now nauseous, now aroused, titillated at acting it all out, at letting my part take all the parts.

Dad is about to leap and photograph. At home he has two years’ of complete incriminating snapshots, stuck into a store-bought album that came stamped with the gilded words “Our Best Memories …” When he’s feeling discouraged about his other work on the force, some nights late, he’ll get them out and peruse the terrified faces depicted and feel … achievement? a quickening? The father knows that, when lurching forth, he must look only at the culprit. This’ll give Junior time to hide whatever just made the malefactor (on first seeing it) jump so, made him grow so immediately culpable when, invited to reach out, he does so, flashbulb.

Booth’s metal door is kicked wide open. First bulb fires off, blinding in a mirror four sinks long, and another one is caught … red-handed, red-whatevered. The yelled legalities, barked sounds so loud on tile, and silver handcuffs flashing out. They’re soon cinched onto a fellow whose dick is yet quite free. The culprit’s dick is yet left sticking out, it’s unable to change gears that fast, belonging to a human beast, if a decent Rotarian one. Hairy wrists are bound in metal bands, but the sturdy papa hard-on is yet poking forth so far that even the cop, a fellow male after all, lets the pederast try and wedge it all back in, before the officer pulls his perp through the bustle of our leading Penney’s store, past MEETING YOUR KITCHEN AND BATHROOM NEEDS, UP TO 40% OFF, EVERYTHING MUST GO, where shoppers will be perplexed enough to see a handsome young man—head nodding shamefaced forward—bound in cuffs, and really shouldn’t have to deal with such a boner on him, too.

It’s tough forcing yourself back into your britches while wearing the cuffs that’ve already cut reddened slices into downy wrists. Best to either deal with your zipper or your handcuffs, but both at once is pretty much a killer.

XI. The Fellow Ship Docked Below Fourteenth Street