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Mel

"... He starts to shake and cough,
just like the old man in that book by Nabokov."
--the Police from Don't Stand So Close To Me

. I, like most kids growing up, had not one religious bone

111 my bony body. However, parental discretion dictated that I

attend church/Sunday school every week. When I was nine or

ten a certain late-thirties member of our church, Mel Lessiter,

~,O~ka liking to me. In a word, he terrified me. He was

. shghtly retarded" and a known child molester, my mother

~nf?rmed me. Some years before he had been fired from a

]al11torial job for trying to manhandle a young boy. I had this

fear that one Sunday I'd be pissing in a restroom in some

remote wing of the church and he'd walk in and start to fondle

me ~ith his large paws. He was gangly tall, with an

oversIzed, misshapen head topped by a nest of unkemp.t,

rather greasy hair. Shaded coke bottle glasses clung to his

nose as he bumbled along pigeon toed. He was an accepted

member of the church community, even though everyo~e

knew of his past penchant for little boys. He lived with hIS

mother, a white-haired widow who attended our church and

kept an eye on him. He had one passion/forte: phot?wap~1Y·

He was quite good with a camera and held the unofficial title

of church photographer. ..

. He saw his camera as a way of nurturing a friendship

with your truly; he began clicking pies of me. He would click

me coming out of the sanctuary, or coming from Sunday

school class or in the Parish Hall during coffee hour. He even

started coming to my soccer, baseball, and basketball games

and snap snap snap. I'm not sure how he knew when my

gat?es were. Maybe he pilfered schedules from the PAL

offIces or maybe he looked in the paper. But for years he was

at almost every game. And after every game he'd approach me

and hand me the action glossies from the last game. He was

very shy and stuttered in his rumbly voice: "Here, these are

!for you" or something eloquent like that. uttere~ my breezy

thanks and politely ohhed and aahed the pICS. This obviously

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