Merry Monroe #1

Growing up, Keith & Kyle would poke around their dad's office for the back-issues of National Geographic. They were looking for photographs of indigenous women nursing their children, essentially, and thought they were the only two 11-year-old boys who had discovered the sneaky way to find out what these old (by their standards), sad (by the photographer's) women's breasts looked like. Of course, the other boys in their class with older brothers sneaked peaks at the magazines stashed in the bedrooms, bedrooms that smelled like a sweet mixture of sweat, garlic powder and Febreeze. Still, afternoons before their parents came home were spent pointing and staring for far too long, far too closely, as if a magic 3D picture of these women's other private parts would pop out at them if they crossed their eyes just so and stared long enough. The magazine hadn't incorporated that feature yet with their pull out maps and close-up photos of polar bears and lion cubs.
Keith & Kyle, with their annoyingly alliterative names their parents had anticipated would be clever and cute -- which, of course, were neither --- would run into the dining room as soon as they heard the rumblings of the garage door open, re-stacking the magazines back in their pile on the shelf. Their father would come in the side door, throw his keys and leather bag on the table and go to the front door to check the mail. When the boys saw the bright yellow border with the brown paper wrapping around the newest issue of The Magazine, they would glance at each other, knowing that it meant promise of more after-school entertainment, hoping against hope it wouldn't be another lame issue on global warming or Antarctica.
Years later, when the subscriptions would stop, replaced with Reader's Digest, the boys no longer needed the glossy pages of a nature periodical to fulfill their curiosity, which of course had changed to more than mere gape-mouthed stares at women they'd never met. They never mentioned those afternoon literature reviews to each other once they hit their teenage years, slightly embarrassed at what had transpired. Kyle had considered mentioning it tongue-in-cheek during toast at Keith's wedding, but realized that it would be a tired joke, the gentle ribbing of past semi-sexual escapades
Of course, when Keith had his first son, Kyle wordlessly, winklessly gave him a subscription to National Geographic, renewing it every year. Kyle, in turn, collected every month's issue after reading the interesting articles (even the ones on Rivers of the World), and stacked them in a pile in his office, dutifully awaiting their eventual discovery.