by C. D. Payne
In the grocery store, Sheeni bought a large watermelon and permitted me to buy her a Popsicle. We walked back slowly in the heat, the watermelon progressively dislocating my shoulder. Sheeni said the arrival of the Lincoln excited considerable interest in the trailer park. Most residents are still reserving judgment, although Jerry’s large beer cooler on the patio has been disquieting to some. Sheeni said she liked my mom, but thought my father was “perhaps rather dim.” I hastened to point out that Jerry was only my mother’s consort and that I had absolutely no blood links of any kind to him. This seemed to put her mind at ease.
As we passed the cement-block meeting hall, we could hear the congregation inside shouting and stomping. Sheeni said that even though she was no longer a believer, she had to admit that the services were “wonderfully aerobic.”
“You could say the same thing about sex,” I surprised myself by saying.
Sheeni stopped and looked at me intently. “I hope, Nick,” she said, “you’re not going to turn out like all the other young men and have nothing on your mind except carnal pleasures.”
I assured her that was not the case. “I hardly ever think about sex,” I lied.
“I think about it all the time,” Sheeni said. “It’s the hormones at work, you know.”
We walked on in silence. I felt confused. Sheeni ate the last of her Popsicle. I longed to taste the orange sweetness on her lips. She has lovely, full lips that cry out to be kissed. Sheeni turned in at a trailer I had noticed before. It was a 1959 Pacemaker (not to be confused with the medical device) and was the only two-story mobile home in the park. “Father bought it so he could look down upon the world,” Sheeni explained. “For him Christian humility has always been a struggle.”
I carried in the three-ton watermelon and Sheeni gave me a tour. Downstairs was a kitchen, living room, master bedroom, and bath. The usual dark paneling and (somewhat more tasteful) religious art. Up a short flight of stairs were two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom you couldn’t stand up in. My heart was pounding furiously as Sheeni slid open the door to her miniature bedroom. It was cluttered with books, but otherwise was very neat. On the wall above the tiny, girlish bed was a poster of Jean-Paul Belmondo holding a revolver in a sexually suggestive manner.
“Didn’t you love Breathless?” Sheeni asked eagerly, sitting on the bed.
“Yes,” I lied, hunched over under the low ceiling like a nervous teenaged Quasimodo.
“It’s my favorite film,” she announced. “What’s yours?”
I tried to think of a suitably highbrow movie. “Tokyo Story,” I said. “I think Mizoguchi is a great director.”
“Tokyo Story,” said Sheeni. “A great film. But wasn’t it by Ozu?”
I may be completely out of my league.
Sheeni jumped up, checked her face in the tiny dresser mirror (it was still beautiful), and led me downstairs. With extreme anxiety, I asked if she would like to go to the beach that afternoon. Sheeni smiled and said she would love to, but had to visit an “indigent ill person” her father was suing. We made a date for a swim after breakfast tomorrow. As I left, Sheeni waved from the doorway and said, “Goodbye, Mr. Twisp.”
I forced myself to laugh. She may imagine that jest is original with her, but I have been hearing it since preschool days. When people ask what writer I think is overrated, I always say James Hilton. I wish the twit had caught beriberi in Shangri-la.
I walked home in a state of supremely exalted exhilaration. I wonder if this is what religious ecstasy feels like. Perhaps I should ask Mrs. Clarkelson.
The rest of the day passed in a fog. I think we had some sort of meat for dinner. Jerry drank too much beer and asked Mrs. Clarkelson, when she stopped by to invite us to the evening prayer service, to come in and sit on his face. She looked quite shocked and left in a huff. Mom got mad. She has managed to sunburn most of her chest and is irascible in the extreme. I played a lot of F.S. love ballads and thought about my future life in Paris with Sheeni. Where can you buy French-language tapes?
MONDAY, August 20 — Another embarrassing shower episode. I may have to give up bathing on this trip. All night I slept in a state of lingering tumescence (I wonder why). Then, in the shower my hard-on returned—just as the fat, bald guy walked in. He smiled a lot at me and, while lathering his hairy white flab, kept stealing fond glances at my perky pecker. His got kind of perky too. (Not that I was looking!) I got out of there as fast as I could.
Back in the trailer I was trying to decide which bathing suit to wear, when Mom and Jerry waltzed through from the bedroom. Jerry said, “Look, Estelle, your kid’s got a load in his peashooter.” Mom looked. “Better put something on,” she said. “If you’re going out.”
No, I was going to walk to the beach naked!
For my first semi-clothed date with Sheeni, I decided the baggy trunks would be better—especially in view of the present hair-trigger on my erectile response. For this beach excursion I packed along a towel, sunglasses, sun block, notebook, wallet, pen and pencil, book (The Function of the Orgasm), and condom (one must always be prepared, should the times demand it, to grow up fast).
Sheeni answered the door in a knockout yellow swimsuit that concealed yet paradoxically revealed her flowering nubility. She was so breathtakingly lovely, the pleasure I felt in gazing upon her jonquil-draped curves bordered upon physical anguish. Sheeni invited me in and introduced her father—an immense, outsized, larger-than-life, gray-haired, florid-faced, verdant-eye-browed, loud-voiced ogre in a rumpled blue suit.
“I understand you have invited my daughter to the beach,” he boomed.
“Er, yes, Mr. Saunders,” I stammered.
“Aha!” he bellowed, his great eyebrows rising. “Then I trust, sir, you are aware that in doing so you have entered into an oral contract to perform in loco parentis, i.e, to provide for the safety and well-being of aforementioned minor female.”
Sheeni told her father to shut up. He didn’t seem to mind. She picked up a large straw beach bag and pushed me out the door. “Bye, Father,” she said.
“Vaya con Dios!” he rumbled.
We walked along in the warm sunshine toward the beach. I wanted to take Sheeni’s hand, but was paralyzed by adolescent indecision. My companion brazenly looked me over. “You’re all skin and bones,” she said. “Your haircut is impossible. Those sunglasses are an optical outrage. And I believe you could invite my father in to share those awful swim trunks with you.”
The thought was repellent in the extreme. “I wasn’t thinking of inviting your father,” I said suggestively.
Sheeni smiled, wrinkling the faint but lovely freckles on her nose. “Well, I don’t think my mother would be particularly interested.”
“I wasn’t thinking of your mother either,” I said. We passed Mrs. Clarkelson, who cut us dead.
“How about, Mrs. Clarkelson?” asked Sheeni. “I hear she’s hot for your bod.”
“She’s a bitchin’ chick,” I replied. “But wrinkles aren’t my scene.”
“You like them younger?” Sheeni inquired.
“About 14.”
“That’s statutory rape. A felony, I believe.”
“Not if you’re married.”
“God!” exclaimed Sheeni. “Don’t make me barf!”
Since it was a weekday, the beach was pleasantly uncrowded. We spread our towels in the sand and lay down in the hot sun. Sheeni’s book was The Red and the Black by some well-dead Frog named Stendhal. She inspected my reading material approvingly and said Wilhelm Reich was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. “His death in a U.S. federal prison was both a tragedy and a travesty,” Sheeni declared. I was shocked. I didn’t know you could be sent to prison for writing a sex manual.
Sheeni handed me her tanning lotion and asked if I wanted the arduous task of applying it to her “exposed areas.” I gulped and assented. She rolled over on her stomach, exposing her exquisite back. My hands shook as I smoothed the sweet oils into her tanned, warm flesh.
Instantly I got a killer T.E., which I hoped my billowing trunks would conceal.
“My, you get turned on easily,” Sheeni observed.
My hands froze on her back.
“Oh, don’t stop, Nick.” she said. “We all have our hormones to cope with. Girls are fortunate in that it doesn’t show. For all the world knows, my vagina could be moist with desire as we speak.”
“Is it?” I asked nonchalantly.
“That’s none of your business, I’m sure.”
“Well,” I said, “then why are we discussing my penis?”
“Oh, I suppose because the subject came up. I find it very boring.”
“The topic or the penis?” I asked.
“Both,” she replied. “Shall you do my front too?”
I gulped. “OK. I’m up for it.”
Sheeni rolled over on her back, her young breasts straining up against the yellow spandex. “I hope you don’t find it too stimulating, Nick.”
“I’m coping,” I said. I started with her flawless legs, gliding on the oil all the way up to within a finger’s reach of her sweet apex. I could feel her muscles tense as the slippery hand approached, then swerved away in the final split second before contact. With each daring pass, a roar of approval rose from my groin. Then finally, the reckless hand swerved too late, and a finger lightly grazed the softly yielding vee.
“Uh, Nick,” said Sheeni, looking up over her sunglasses. “Maybe you better do the top now.” I moved upstream, lubricating her tanned arms, shoulders, and neck. I saved the chest for last, smoothing oil on the softly undulating foothills in the public domain. So close, but off-limits (for now!) rose the tantalizing, spandex-shrouded highlands. Desperately overstimulated, my T.E. throbbed, my balls felt like they were going to explode.
“Thanks, Nick,” said Sheeni with sickening finality. I handed her the tanning lotion, hoping she would volunteer to do me. She didn’t. She opened her book and soon was engrossed in Great Literature. I did the same. Incredulous that relief was not at hand, my erection clung on defiantly, forcing me to lie on my stomach. Soon I could feel my back barbecuing. I read through 27 difficult pages of The Function of the Orgasm and did not encounter a single tantalizing sex tip. Meanwhile, Sheeni read avidly, pausing frequently to make long notations in the margins.
3 P.M. Sheeni and I are sitting in a cafe drinking coffee and writing in our journals. Except for the smell of burgers, the sound of the C&W jukebox, and the sight of two loutish truck drivers eating apple pie, we might be in a Paris bistro. Sheeni has been keeping a journal since the age of eight and claims to have written more than one million words. She writes rapidly in a charming ovoid script, pausing now and then to look up in abstracted concentration. I saw her writing my name! Then she asked if “puerile” was spelled with one “l” or two.
We have to go. The slatternly waitress just shuffled over and told us to leave. Apparently we are violating their “no loitering” policy. Sheeni became incensed, her fine nostrils flaring dramatically. She told the woman she found their coffee “unpalatable,” their premises “unsavory,” and their rudeness “unalloyed.” Unchastened, the waitress hollered, “Get out!” We did so, but not before Sheeni proclaimed in a loud, clear voice her contempt for “rural America and all its denizens.” I backed her up with a gesture of protest. I withheld the tip.
8:15 P.M. Dreadful news! Sheeni has a boyfriend! She dropped this bombshell on the walk home as I fumbled for her hand. He is 15 and is Ukiah’s other intellectual. He is six-two, speaks French, plays the piano, is a champion swimmer, and writes “Futurist Percussive” poetry. The affected twit is named Trent Preston. Sheeni recited this recent work by him:
RamDam 12
Sizzle mop
Crunch down
Safety net
Hot! Hot! Hot!
Void.
If that’s poetry, I’m a turkey scrotum. She says Trent has a brilliant mind, and daily writes her an “intellectually stimulating” letter. I just hope it’s only her intellect he stimulates.
Temporarily deranged by this shocking revelation, I announced that I too receive daily missives of a culturally enlightened nature from my sweetheart. Sheeni probed for details. I said her name was Martha, she was 16 and had just returned from Nice, where she had been conducting sociological research on the assimilation problems of Italian migrant workers. In addition, I said she was a trained musicologist, earned a large income as a professional model specializing in lingerie, and her IQ was registered in Washington with the FBI as a national resource.
Sheeni looked somewhat taken aback. She said Martha sounded like a “wonderful person” and hoped that someday soon she would have the pleasure of meeting “this remarkable teen.”
I said that was unlikely as Martha rarely ventured out of the city “to small, out-of-the-way places like Ukiah.”
“I certainly can’t blame her for that,” said Sheeni bitterly. “Trent feels even more stifled there than I do.”
Poor Trent!
We walked on in angry silence to the Saunders’ towering trailer. Sheeni looked pensive. I felt terrible. She stopped by their patio gate and asked me how my sunburn felt. I said it was no worse than medieval torture. She said thank you for the lovely time. I said don’t mention it. We stood there awhile, not saying anything, and then I left. As I turned the corner, I saw her extract a letter from their mailbox (shaped like a miniature two-story trailer). No doubt Trent’s latest literary masterpiece.
I am miserable. Plunged from exaltation to suicidal depression in one sunny afternoon. My only diversion from black despair is the bracing contemplation of more and more violently disfiguring deaths for the pining Poet of the Redwoods. As he is older, taller, better-looking, and more accomplished than I, he must die. The gods demand it.
Things were generally tense at “My Green Haven.” Mom went to the park laundromat this afternoon and was pointedly snubbed by all the ladies. Then Jerry came back from a beer run to discover someone had scrawled “SHAME SINNERS!” in scarlet lipstick across the windshield of his Lincoln. Mom speculates that somehow word has gotten around that she and Jerry are cohabitating without benefit of wedlock. I fear the source of the leak may be a beautiful young temptress who has ripped out my heart and stomped on it.
TUESDAY, August 21 — Here’s an hour-by-hour chronology of the worst night of my life:
1 A.M. I decide it was just a case of puppy love and look forward to all the interesting women I shall meet in the future.
2 A.M. I conclude the only way out is suicide. I turn on the light to write a poignant suicide note. Sheeni will see Trent for the shallow pedant he is and will always treasure my memory. Jerry yells at me to turn out the light.
3 A.M. Running through the options, I decide I am too chicken for any of the manly, violent means of suicide. I shall swallow sleeping pills. Where to get them, though?
4 A.M. I decide I can’t die an inviolate virgin. Either I find a way to get laid soon or suicide gets postponed until after high school.
5 A.M. I decide it will be too painful to see Sheeni again. I shall ask Mom and Jerry if we can cut short our vacation and return to Oakland. Someday, Sheeni will read about me in The New York Review of Books and will realize she has wasted her life.
6 A.M. Violent panic! I have to see Sheeni again! We have only three days left together! Maybe she’ll like me better than Trent. Even if she doesn’t, and I am completely humiliated, it will still be worth it. Why did I waste all of yesterday evening when I could have been with her? Even if she does marry Trent someday, I could still be their loyal best friend—like Sydney Carton. I could even save their child from a runaway horse. Then when Trent goes to a tragic early death (poets have a high mortality rate), Sheeni could turn to me for solace. Everything will work out!
6:05 A.M. I drag my weary body out of bed and stumble over to the men’s shower room. At least I will avoid the amorous fat bald guy. Wrong! He enters quickly and sheds his robe with a leer. He approaches, grossly
naked. I retreat under the steaming spray.
“Mind if I share your shower?” he asks coyly. “I hear there’s a drought on.”
As the corpulent blob looms ever closer, I grope for the knob. Finally, my hand touches metal and I give it a turn. The steaming spray turns to a chilling blast. The blob leaps back.
“Sorry,” I say, my teeth chattering. “I like my showers cold.”
Ten minutes later, dressed, teeth brushed, ready for a busy day, I knocked on the door of Sheeni’s trailer. I prayed Mr. Saunders wouldn’t answer. Improbably, God was listening. After several tense minutes, the door opened and Sheeni peered out sleepily. My heart leaped! Oh, to roll over some morning and meet those beautiful, sleep-fogged blue eyes. Sheeni clutched the undiaphanous terry cloth to her exquisite form.
