When I was growing up in the Homewood section on the north side of Pittsburgh in the late thirties and forties every house with young boys in it had an old fashioned red rubber bulb type enema syringe in the medicine chest and the fathers made sure that their wives were experts in how to use it. And all it would take for me and my twin brother Gino to start hopping up and down and bawling our heads off was to see the visiting nurse from school walking up the front steps of the porch to the screen door with her black leather nurse’s bag hanging over her arm. It all started when we were about three years old and all it took was papa would complain to mama about how the twins were looking a little pale and maybe they needed “‘nu bel piccolo lavadin’” (a nice little enema) so he would right away get on the telephone and call the nurse to come over and give the twins this “nice little enema” by which he meant two or three full 4-oz. bulbs apiece of hot soapy Fels Naphtha. After a while though he just figured it would be simpler for her just to show up on a regular deal every Saturday morning after he got home from work at the Heinz pickle factory.
Gino and I would be watching that door like death row prisoners and sure enough just like clockwork every Saturday morning at nine o’clock sharp here comes nurse Lohmann bag in hand and with a look on her face like she was really looking forward to what she came there to do.
Well, Gino and I were out of there like a bat out of hell and up the stairs and under the bed in no time at all and I wonder why cause it never worked and papa and mama were right there after us and mama would grab Gino by the leg and papa me and the next thing you know we’re being marched by the ear from our bedroom back down to the living room where the nurse whose name was Frau Hedwig Lohmann is setting up the scene: she puts a straight back chair for herself at right angles to mama’s armchair and one for papa at an angle facing both; she pulls a side table which is covered with a low hanging white linen cloth up to the right of her chair; and she starts emptying the contents of her black leather nurse’s case: three or four thermometers which she puts in an immaculate glass with etched lines on it like a measuring cup, a blue glass bottle of alcohol, a box of gauze and one of cotton, a large jar of Vaseline which she opens, and an old fashioned red rubber bulb type enema syringe with a shiny black nozzle on it which she sets on its smooth flat round disk butt end with the nozzle sticking straight up.
By this time papa has got a hold of both me and Gino and is sweet talking us while he’s holding onto us with Gino (always the little butchie) trying to punch him in the face and get away and me just screaming my head off like the little sissy I was when I was just three years old, whaddyuh expect, huh?
Nurse Lohmann is setting up her gear and mama is going up the stairs to the bathroom and you can hear the sound of fast running water and in a little while she’s coming back down holding a big white enamel tray covered with a white linen cloth and a half gallon size glass chemist’s flask with a long glass stirrer in it and a big cake of Fels Naphtha at the bottom filled to the brim with a sulphurous yellow strong smelling steaming hot fluid. Well, just one look at that hot soapy water and Gino starts punching papa all the harder and I’m roaring my fool head off and trying to get loose of papa’s vise grip around my waist when nurse Lohmann has got this wicked grin on her face and she just grabs a hold of my hands and prying them off of papa’s arms picks me up like a bag of potatoes and steps over to where mama is sitting in her armchair with a doubled up thick white cotton towel over her lap and sets me right down ass end upward over mama’s lap. Papa is wearing his black vest and black suspenders with his shirtsleeves rolled halfway up and he has got this toothpick sticking out of his mouth as usual and he’s holding onto Gino and talking consolingly to him and craning forward in his chair and saying, “Oh, brava, Signora! … Brava!”
What happens next depends on what time of year it is, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same: nurse sees to it that little boy ends up with very bare ass! In the winter time we would be wearing our red flannel night suits with the flap that drops down in the back. The rest of the year it was just a white cotton night gown. So whatever season it was just a piece of cake for nurse Lohmann to “get to the seat of the problem,” if you know what I mean. Take winter. Once she’s deposited me southern hemisphere upwards kicking and screaming over mama’s lap, nurse Lohmann tells mama to hold on tight and one by one she grabs a hold of the buttons, five in number, around the seat flap of my red flannel night suit and, starting from the upper left hand side of the square field, deftly unbuttons the first, then the right hand one, then the middle. Moving to the one on the left hand halfway down the side flap, she unbuttons that one, then on to the last button on the right hand side and, presto! With the thumb and forefinger of each shapely hand holding the top edge of the flap, her pinkies delicately crooked, she slowly pulls the flap away and well downwards exposing in all their plump white nakedness the bawling boy’s smooth round ass cheeks. Now that’s winter.
Summer’s pretty much the same but instead of having to drop a flap downwards she’s going in the opposite direction. Once he’s ass end upwards over mama’s ample lap nurse Lohmann’s hands are putting those same thumbs and forefingers on the shirt tails of the boy’s night gown which she hikes up as easy as peeling an onion, slowly and delicately, upward to his waist where mama grabs a hold of it and, taking nurse’s cue, bunches it up in her hands and holds it well out of the way so his plump white bare naked butt cheeks are laying there nicely propped and arched up by mama’s left knee and ready for the nurse’s very slow and thorough examination.
But whether it’s seat flap down in the winter or shirt tails up in the spring, one thing is for sure. No sooner does nurse Lohmann have his plump white ass cheeks buck naked and starts slowly rolling up her right sleeve to well above the elbow than papa starts clapping and laughing like a madman and, pointing to Jerry’s soft white culo, bared real nice and arched over mama’s apron covered lap, he lets out this shrill earsplitting whistle. And holding onto Gino and swaying him from side to side he sits well forward in his chair craning his neck and staring wide-eyed straight at poor little Jerry’s plump naked buttocks propped up just right and arched up at the perfect angle for nurse Lohmann’s intense examination.
So hey, Greg, you should just see this old broad who is the spitting image of Judith Anderson in “And Then There Were None” grinning from ear to ear and caressing poor little Jerry’s plump soft bare naked rump cheeks. And papa is sitting there with his eyes just about popping out of his head and half whispering, “Oh, Dio vi benigna, Signora! … Guardatelo, che bel culo nudo! … che bel culo nudo liscio vi presenta questo guiaone cattivo! … Ohhhh, g-guardatelo!” (“Oh, God bless you, Signora! … Just look at the nice bare ass on him! … Look at the nice smooth white bare ass the little brat is showing you!”) As if she needed any encouragement!
With the thumb and forefinger of her left hand she delicately parts the boy’s smooth white fanny cheeks at the bottom overhang of the cleft and peers inside. My old man is going crazy by now as he cranes forward and stares with his face a matter of inches away from where nurse Lohmann’s fingers are parting little Jerry’s sweet pink little immaculate ass hole!
She picks up a thermometer out of the glass and, wiping it with alcohol on a piece of cotton, shakes it down. She holds it up to the light and reads it, then tells Jerry in a gruff Prussian whisper to open his mouth. She pops it in and smiles in papa’s direction while mama pats his cheek (one of the upper ones, that is) and caresses his hair. So here’s little Jerry bare ass upward over mama’s lap with a thermometer in his mouth and the hot salty tears just rolling down his cheeks onto the carpet blushing beet red and turning his head around to look at papa as if he’s going to help him when he knows damn well he has got the chance of an ice cube in hell not melting that his old man is going to raise a finger to prevent what he loves to see, and I guess I don’t have to tell you what that is, huh Greg?
After a few minutes nurse Lohmann takes off her pinch nose glasses and, taking a big white soft cotton handkerchief that mama holds out to her, breathes on them and polishes them clean. Putting them carefully back on, she smiles at papa and whispers to the boy to open his mouth, pulls out the thermometer and, squinting as she holds it up to the lamplight, reads it. Shaking her head with a wicked grin on her face, she tells him to open his mouth again and sticks it back in. So here you have papa getting hotter and hotter every second cause he knows what is going to happen next and it is one of the best parts, that’s for sure! And he’s starting to stutter and he keeps saying: “Ohhhhhh, b-brava, Signora!, b-brava! … E l’altro? … L’altro? … Ma che fara la norsa col’altro, Girino? … Oh, ma che fara adesso col’altro la Signora norsa? … Ohhhhhh, b-bravissima, Signora!” (“Oh, excellent, Signora! … But what’s she going to do with the other one, Jerry? … Oh, excellent, Signora!”)
Nurse Lohmann is grinning sweetly at Jerry and, winking at papa, picks up another thermometer but this one has got a large round knob at the end of it. She wipes it with cotton and alcohol and shakes it down. She takes the reading and dips it delicately into the jar of Vaseline and pulls it out with a big gob of grease on the bulbous tip. She rolls her right sleeve way high up on her arm. She delicately parts Jerry’s naked buttocks at their lower curvature with her left thumb and forefinger and, softly stroking the tight squeezed inner rim of the blubbering boy’s tender pink ass hole with the bulbous greasy tip, daubs it all around and in the very center with a thin coating of the viscous lubrication.
For sure, Gregf, you never heard such a pitiful yowling, which sounded something like a gradual progression from a hoarse “Arggggggh!” and ‘Waaaaaaaah!” to a shrill “Eeeeeeeeek!” as poor little Jerry let out then! Papa, of course, was blissed out and egging her on with hoots and howling, “Ooooh, che bellezza, Signora! … Che bellezza!” (“Oh, beautiful, Signora!”) “M-Mettetelo adesso l’altro dentr’il culo! … Mettetelo ora l’altro dentr’il culo! … B-Bravissima, Signora! … B-Bravissima!” (“Now put the other one in there, Signora! … Now put the other one in his ass!”). Which she does in her own good time, slowly and delicately inserting the cool, well greased thermometer to half its length into the little rascal’s tight squeezed ass hole while Jerry just bawls his head off and his father explodes with raunchy laughter.
By now papa is sitting on the edge of his chair and, still holding Gino tightly in a scissor grip between his knees and craning his head in the direction of nurse Lohmann’s intense preoccupation with Jerry’s bare naked rump nicely arched over mama’s right knee, he puts his two little fingers in the corners of his mouth and lets out a shrill earsplitting whistle and roars, “Ohhhhhh, brava, Signora! … Che bellezza! … ‘Nu pezzo di vetro nella bocca eppure ‘n’altro nel culo! … Bravissima, Signora! … Ohhhhhh, che bellezza!” (“Oh, excellent, Signora! … Just beautiful! … A stick of glass in his mouth and another one up his ass! …Beautiful!”)
Never one to rush her “examinations” of young boys’ posteriors, nurse Lohmann inserts and removes the thermometers, fore and aft, several times before she says she’s satisfied that a thorough and accurate reading has been taken, papa all the while marveling at and applauding the awesomely embarrassing situation that poor little Jerry finds himself in. But as if there was anything that could bring him to a higher pitch of excitement than he already finds himself in, he reaches it when nurse picks up the red rubber bulb of the syringe. Slowly she dips the tip into the steaming chemist’s flask and, pressing the smooth flat disc shaped butt of the bulb, lets the hot liquid swish with a low gurgling hiss into the bulb.
But nurse Lohmann is a past mistress of adding suspense to terror in the performance of her essential hygienic services to young boys and no exceptions are made, especially when she finds herself in the presence of so appreciative an audience as the Rossellis, Gaetano and Severanna. After filling and emptying the steaming contents of the bulb several times, holding the syringe ten or more inches over the surface of the burning lake and ejecting the fluid in a straight thin hissing stream, she fills it one last time to the fullest and, taking precise aim at the center of the “bull’s eye,” she inserts the black shiny nozzle halfway to the hilt into the screaming boy’s ass hole and squeezes the bulb and I don’t know which one was louder Jerry’s screeching or his dad’s raunchy applause.
As for the ending of this often repeated scenario, Greg, I leave it up to your own imagination. Just let’s say that the twins were visited at least once a week for the next two years by nurse Lohmann who gradually gave up the wielding of the pompa (or “pump”) in favor of Severanna Rosselli who over the next nine years proved herself as expert in its use as the nurse, though more often on me than on Gino, who showed himself far more savvy in taking off and hiding, though I can tell you from first hand experience that papa was less likely to pushing it with him than me. Cause he really loved watching mama pump my nice bare ass with that enema syringe while I just bawled my head off and begged for mercy instead of trying to deck him like Gino. And I have no doubt now that I look at it ass backwards from over fifty years later that mama realized early on that papa’s anyhow gargantuan sexual potency surged hotter and oftener with this fresh image of mama’s beautiful white hand holding “la pompa paurosa” (the fearsome pump) delicately poised and ready over the little sissy’s nicely arched and bared “culaccio di ragazza” (big girlish fanny). So much so that he kept a sharp eye and a tight hold on me whenever mama looked to be in the mood to satisfy his passion for watching her pump my ass whereas Gino as often as not would kick and scratch and be out the back door and down the alley in no time flat. But I would just stand there bawling my head off and papa would grab a hold of me and half cajoling and half threatening hold on tight until my three older sisters, Maria, Rosina, and Susanna marched me bawling on up to mama who was already waiting in the bedroom.
As always, my uncle Frank and my older brothers, Fred and Johnny, would be sitting in their chairs with big grins on their faces joking and giggling in anticipation of the little “strip tease” starring mama with her pompa paurosa and bawling Jerry with his BVD’s at half mast vainly begging for mercy through the whistles and catcalls and laughter of the men in the room. As for the girls, mama picked up a long time ago on papa’s obsession with “il piacere giusto delle donne” (the natural pleasure of women) which to him and most of the men in my old neighborhood was “spogliare i culi dei ragazzi” (to bare boys’ asses).
So, appropriately enough, papa, uncle Frank and my brothers were always “in attendance” so to speak at these mysteries and always in a state of raging hormones when mama would line the girls up like Vestal virgins along one side of the bed and they would hand her in turn, from one to the other, first the “fore” thermometer, then the “aft”, and finally the dreaded “pompa paurosa” itself, passing them from cadet to senior, from Maria to Rosina to Susanna. Maria, as appropriate to her rank, always held the large jar of Vaseline for mama, who used it liberally. Looking back on all this from the perspective of years, I have no doubt that papa’s boyhood was just as full of a nightmarish dread of nonna ‘s potent clisteri and of nonno’s gloating voyeurism.