fact, fiction and the sleep they both steal

One of the following stories is true; the other is not.  
The true story has, at times, diminished my hunger and kept me up, in bed, in the dark, far later than I should have been.  The false story makes me chuckle…simply because I’m a horse’s ass.
***
The following story, if anything other than a childhood “love” tragedy, is sort of an ironic take on the advice parents give their children.  If there’s a potentially dangerous situation, being small and weak, you’re told to run to the nearest adult, if your parents aren’t available, for help.
***
I couldn’t have been more than 12.  I’m pretty sure, maybe no older than 11.  All I remember is that I liked her.  I really, really liked her.  As much as I liked her, they call it puppy love, I cannot remember her name.  I can remember her youngest, she being the oldest, sister’s name: Kate, or Katie as she was more commonly called.  I remember the middle aged one was a cunt.  Except back then I didn’t know what a “cunt” was, so back then she was just a bitch.
I remember her parents, vaguely.  Her dad was white, with grey, like GREY grey hair.  If it’s a rainy day today go and take a look outside and find the clouds. If they’re that certain shade of grey, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  I remember the dad more than the mom.  Since all three girls looked more Oriental, maybe Thai, maybe Cantonese, I’m pretty sure the mom was foreign.
I can’t recall what any of their voices sounded like, no laughs echoing through my mind, or the subsequent tears with which this story, the facts, not the sounds, were stapled to my memory with.  
They lived in a duplex across the street and about 3 houses up the block.  

***
I had known, some years prior to that, two brothers who lived at that very same house.  I can’t remember the older brother’s name, but I remember the younger one.  Wyatt.  Maybe I remember his name so clearly because he was slow, maybe even retarded.  I didn’t know what retarded was back then, so I couldn’t tell you.
But what I can tell you is that one day the three of us were just hanging around, and out comes Wyatt’s penis, and he played it like a guitar.  Prior to the whipping out he announced to us, and maybe to the world, “I play my wiener like a guitar!”  His brother and I watched, laughing, and life went on from there.  The boy said he was going to do something, and he did, integrity in such a small thing (not his penis), what a true American.
My communications with them were cut off at an age I don’t remember, but I do recall that it was around the middle of spring time.  I had been blamed for something either the penis maestro or his older brother had done in their garage, I pleaded for my innocence to their parents, but I received none.  My parents, however, believed me, and time flew by.
***
Back to “the girls” as we (we being my best friend between the ages of 7 and 12, Shaun) called them.
They lived in the same duplex, this time on the top, as the John McLaughlin of sexual organs.  In their backyard they had a play set which consisted of swings, a teeter totter, and I think maybe even a slide.  The most important aspect of the set, to any young boy, is the swings.  Why, pray tell?  Because it is the greatest feeling in the world, at the age of 11, to swing as high up as you can and then upon reaching maximum height, jumping forth and tumbling onto the ground.
And it is on this exact play set, the swings to be more precise, that the following pre-pubescent, eternally haunting story takes place.
***
The date?  Forgotten.  
The time?  I don’t know, some time after supper and before dark.
 
The weather?  Well, it was sunny out, the cool breezes flying past us, from one to the other (I am thoroughly convinced had we been older, 14, maybe 15, and had she been wearing perfume, I would not be alive today to tell this story, because the very memory of that smell would kill me.)

       One detail I failed to mention about their backyard was that the play set was set up next to a garage.  And the way things were set up in that particular neighborhood, as I’m sure is a common case on streets with no alley; the garages were set, for the most part, back to back.  We being on 58th the garage to one of the houses on 59th was not standing exactly back to back with theirs, but instead was sitting behind the set.

There was about 3 feet of space between the 59th street garage and the garage that belonged to the house next door to the girls’, and covering these 3 feet was a spaced out white fence, like something stolen from Aunt Polly’s front yard.

There were only two figures occupying the swings in that back yard.  The eldest girl and myself, whose name, now that I think about it, I want to say is Nicole, but I’m probably wrong.  Maybe, if this gets published, there’ll be some young woman reading this, the sights, sounds, smells and air just coming back, the memory overcoming her, and then she’ll return to despising me, where as before I was safe, totally forgotten.
Now, in my defense, I was in total, unflinching awe of this girl.  She was, TV personalities aside, my first true, unconfessed, love  Shaun knew it, I’m sure her sisters, Katie and the cunt knew it, maybe even our parents, but it never came to any kind of fruition.  They moved a while after the incident and I never saw any of them again.

We sat on the swings, lamely moving to and fro, not talking about anything, as far as I can remember, when from behind the fence, I, well, we, I’m guessing she heard them as well, heard a group of young boys, most around my age, some maybe older, some maybe a bit younger.

And for the life of me I cannot remember one single solitary thing that was said, it’s as if at that moment I had frozen in time, leaving her, poor “Nicole” to be victim of the vicious various elementary sexual advances of the scum behind the white fence.

It was then that time came unstuck, and she was crying, and they continued on with their jests, knowing well, that a boy my size, I was a tiny one, and with glasses, was more likely to do nothing than do anything.

Well, I sure as all hell proved them wrong.

I immediately got out of my seat, to my feet, and ran to the fence.  Prior to making my way through the spaces, just small enough to squeeze through, I grabbed the biggest rock I could find, and then proceeded to place myself on the property of the 59th street garage.

I ran up to the biggest one and jumped, I had to jump being as tiny as I was (I attribute my height, or lack thereof, to my hunger for coffee at the age of no more than 3), and slammed him in the face.  He fell immediately, and the others, save for one, ran away.

The one who was left, or voluntarily stayed, behind was left to my mercy, of which he received none.  He too met with a blow to the face, not to the head, I didn’t want to kill these guys.  Well, I did, but as weak as I was, I wasn’t capable of seriously injuring an infant.  But, with the two hecklers on the ground, crying their apologies, I exited back to “Nicole” and hugged her and held her and kissed her head until her tears disappeared.

Now, I suppose it’s not fair, considering the circumstances, to coat on potentially false story with even more falsities, so, sadly, with a hanged head, I present to you the true account (as true as a possibly false story can get) of the actions that followed:

I immediately got out of my seat, to my feet, and darted, as fast as humanly possible, the prey and the victim behind me, for home.  I found my dad and told him what had happened and, crystal clearly, I remember his words:
“Well, why didn’t you do anything?”