the lectures on women

somehow this red head kid
knew

more about the world then
we did.

he was only a few years older,
but he knew, or at least
made claims that he knew

what made women tick.

we were only ten or eleven
at the time,
but he would lecture us on the ways

of girls.

do this, don't do that.
women are like fine musical
instruments,

he'd say, holding court in
some stairway or
laundry room
of a cold dank

apartment building, we somehow
managed to get
into because the locks
were broken.

wide eyed, we'd listened
to him ramble on, about
the biology of women.

from head to toe, he'd describe
them, occasionally
pulling out a playboy magazine
from his coat

that he stole from his father,
and showing us
what we were in store for,

telling us what to do and not
do when we
got one. one being a girl.

he was thirteen with flaming
red hair, bright blue eyes,
and a hive of freckles on his face.

and when I see him on facebook
now,
an old man,
enormous and grey, breathing
through a tube, I want
to ask
him, if he remembered his
lectures

on those cold winter days.