by Caryl Rivers
“Again? You were there last weekend.”
“Lee likes me to come down as often as I can.”
“When we get to New York, I know who one of your lovers will be—he’ll probably be an admiral by then.”
“Oh Peg, it takes years to get to be an admiral. You have to play it just right, get the right assignments, the right commanders, not get stuck in some little jerkwater place with someone who sits on your promotions.”
“You sure know a lot about it.”
“Well, Lee talks about it a lot.”
I looked at her. “Hey, Con, you’re still going to go to New York, aren’t you? A sacred vow, remember?”
She looked up and said, “Sure,” but she hesitated just an instant before she said it.
“Have you been going out with other guys?” I said, suspiciously.
“Of course.”
“Who?” I demanded.
“Chuck, from U.S.C.”
“That was Christmas.”
“Yeah, well—”
“You’re always on my back all the time for only going out with Sean.”
“This is different.”
“Yeah? How?”
She looked up at me with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Lee Masters is not going to be a priest. That’s for damn sure.”
I leaned over to peer into her eyes. “Still a virgin.”
“You can tell?”
“The eyes really show it.”
“Just you wait,” she said with a grin.
“Big talk, no action.”
“Wait,” she said.
The next day Con came up to me and said that Sister Immelda had nominated her to be Immaculate Heart’s delegate to the regional Catholic Youth Against Dialectical Materialism conference coming up in two weeks. Kids from all over the East Coast were coming. With Con’s interest in the Web of Deception, she’d be perfect, I said.
“It’s on a Saturday. I won’t be here. Want to go?”
“Me? I’ve had my fill of smashing commies, thanks.”
“A lot of cute guys,” she said.
I reconsidered. My kissing addiction to Sean was getting worse, and here was my chance to bust out. Lots of cute guys, all Catholics, gathered under one roof to fight communism.
“O.K.,” I said, “I’ll go.”
But as it turned out, Sean was the delegate nominated from Sacred Heart, so we drove together to the conference, at the Shoreham Hotel, in the white Caddy. Sean was all dressed up in a new suit, and he wore a lime-green shirt that matched his eyes, and he looked at least twenty. I thought that the other cute guys would really have to go some to be cuter than Sean.
The conference, though, turned out to be really dull. My workshop was on Marx and Engels and the dialectical process, taught by a Jesuit who really knew his stuff, but who droned on and on and drew lots of complicated charts on the blackboard. I began to feel nostalgic for Count Orlov and his ermine-lined cape and his sword. He sure would have livened things up a little bit.
In the afternoon, there were more boring workshops, and an assembly at which the keynote address, “How Catholic Youth Can Destroy Marxism at Home,” was given by Donald Tolsen of St. Stanislaus High in Philadelphia. Then there was a dinner, and afterward a special treat—a dance in the Blue Room with a real orchestra and fruit punch and cookies. The kids had already dubbed it “The Lenin Ball.”
Sean and I went in together to the ballroom, and I said to him, “We have to meet people, Sean; we can’t just hang around together and not talk to anyone else.”
“Why not?”
“Because we are here to meet other Catholic leaders,” I said.
“I guess so.” His face looked as if I had just told him we were going to be thrown to the lions with all the other Catholic leaders.
“Oh, Sean, don’t sulk,” I said.
“I will if I want to!”
When he got into one of those moods, there was just no dealing with him, so I went up to the table to get myself some punch. I poured myself a cup of raspberry glop and suddenly Donald Tolsen, in the flesh, from St. Stanislaus High in Philadelphia was standing next to me.
“Want to dance?” he said.
I was flattered. Donald Tolsen had been chosen, from all the Catholic kids in the East, to give the keynoter. He gave a very forceful presentation, and some of his ideas were quite interesting. I wasn’t too keen on the one where he said that Catholic Youth should march into libraries, seize left-wing books, tear them into shreds, and hurl them in the gutter. But then he smiled at me, and he had two wonderful dimples on both sides of his cheek; I decided I could ignore a little incipient fascism in a boy who had dimples like that.
He led me to the dance floor, and held me close right away. As we twirled, I saw Sean, standing by the punch bowl. He looked at me and his face had that hurt look he always used to get when we were kids, like the time I stepped on the seven-story parking garage he had spent three hours building in the sandbox. I did it just to be ornery. But I wasn’t trying to be mean to him now. Con was right, I needed to get to know something about men. I had certainly bombed with Harry Wexler. Maybe I was repressed. I was obligated to try again. Don twirled me around again, and I looked for Sean, hoping I hadn’t hurt him too badly. I’d dance with him next, I promised myself. And then I saw him, the rat fink! He was dancing with just about the cutest little blonde I ever saw, and she was gazing up into those cool green eyes as though she’d never laid her peepers on anything so gorgeous. And Sean, the future Father McCaffrey, was flirting with her like mad. He was laughing, and he turned up the wattage in his green eyes until they all but knocked her over on her ass.
I thought about tearing her eyes out. I pictured the headline in the Washington Daily News.
CATHOLIC GIRL SCRATCHES
EYES OUT OF PA TEEN IN
LOVE DUEL OVER PRIEST
Of course, she didn’t know she was dancing with the Hero Priest of the Amazon, but I did. I noticed again how good-looking he was, and thought about how I liked to kiss that wonderful, sensitive mouth, a Montgomery Clift mouth, and then he pulled the blonde close to him and whirled her around and I asked God to send a plague of frogs to pee on her bleached head.
I moved even closer to Don, and he bent over and kissed me, right on the dance floor, and I let him do it. I looked over at Sean and saw he was watching me. Defiantly, I kissed Don on the cheek. Take that, faithless wretch! I thought.
But then, when Don twirled me around again, I saw Sean kissing the blonde, right on the side of the neck. I was shocked. Sean, my Sean, kissing a blonde strumpet, and in public too. I asked God to let the frogs pee on his head too.
It kept going like that—me kissing Don and Sean kissing the blonde, and then Don asked me if I’d like to come to his room for a drink and I said, “I’d love to!”
I flashed a look at Sean that said, Eat your heart out, you Judas as Don and I walked off the floor. I had a momentary second thought, but I figured, what the hell, this wasn’t Go-Go Gunderson, fastest tongue in the East, or a man who pulled legs off of grasshoppers; this was the Catholic Youth who was going to smash Lenin. How could I be safer?
We went back to Don’s room and as soon as we got in he pulled open a drawer and took out a bottle of Scotch. He poured some in a water glass and glugged it right down. “Better than the fucking punch,” he said. “Want some?”
“No thank you.”
“Puts hair on your chest.”
“Just what I need.”
“Your chest is just fine like it is,” he said, leering at me. “You got a great body.”
Somehow, I hadn’t expected that kind of talk from the Catholic Youth who was going to smash Lenin. I wasn’t sure what the correct response should be. Con would have known; something fast and snappy, like, “Yeah, read the small print. No trespassing. This means you.” But I just didn’t say anything. Don gulped down the Scotch, poured himself another glass, and
drank it in one gulp. Then he grabbed me.
“Come here, woman!” he said.
I guessed he meant me, because we were the only two people in the room. I didn’t feel like a woman; I had hardly gotten “girl” figured out yet.
Then he started kissing me, and in between kisses he’d take another swig of Scotch. The fumes were really starting to be overpowering. I thought to myself, This is really sophisticated, but I’d have liked it better if he were drinking banana daiquiris; his mouth would have smelled better.
Then zap! out came the tongue, and I wondered if it was going to be GoGo Gunderson all over again. But at least he didn’t try to put it in my ear, so I was ahead of the game. I wondered why I liked soul-kissing with Sean and it was kind of weird with other guys. Maybe because I’d known Sean’s tongue so long. We used to lick cake pans together after my mother baked, and we’d slurp each other trying to get at the chocolate.
“Oh baby, you are some kisser!” Don said, slurring his words a little. “Oh, I like kissing you.”
“Thank you,” I said. That sounded dumb, but polite. He was starting to make little noises in his throat that reminded me of Harry. I wondered if my kisses really were something special. Did I really drive men wild with passion? And if so, why? I was five feet eight, had curly brown hair, was a great jump shot, and had nice legs. That did not, in my mind, add up to a femme fatale. Harry, of course, had a reason to start humming in his throat. He thought I had screwed half of West Point, and that he was next in line. But Don knew I was just your average Catholic high school girl who was against Dialectical Materialism. Maybe it was my kissing. Maybe I just had the Kiss of Fire, and men just couldn’t help themselves.
Suddenly, Don stopped kissing me and said. “Be ri’ back!” and stumbled off into the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess and my lipstick was smeared all over my face—I looked like I’d just gone three rounds with an eggbeater. In the movies, women always got just a touch mussed after they kissed a lot. Why did I look like Tugboat Annie?
I was studying myself in the mirror when Don came out of the bathroom.
“Hi,” he said, and I turned around and nearly had a coronary. He was standing there, wearing nothing but his shirt. Oh God, it was happening again.
All these years and I barely knew what a penis looked like and now they seemed to be sprouting all around me like mushrooms. Why did guys want to take off their pants when I showed up? Was it me? Did I have it printed in big, invisible (to me) letters on my forehead UNZIP?
Before I could say anything Don made a flying leap, knocking me over on the bed and landing on top of me. He started tugging at the buttons on my blouse.
“Stop that!” I said, pushing his hands away. Then he tried to get his hand up under my skirt.
“Come on, babe, you’re hot, real hot!” he said.
Hot was the one thing I absolutely was not. Ready to throw up from his breath, yes. Feeling my ribs splintering into little pieces, yes. That did not add up to passion.
“Oh babe, oh babe!”
“Stop it, you animal!” (I wondered if he’d heard Straight Talk for Teens.)
“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty!”
He had me on the bed, pinned down. He was a big sucker, too. I knew a way to get him off, but I didn’t want to resort to that yet. I thought of Father Milliken and tried another tack.
“I am a Child of Mary,” I said.
“Oh bullcrap,” Don said.
So much for the religious approach.
I flexed my knee. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said, getting ready to give him a good one.
Just then I heard a knock on the door.
“Peggy, Peggy, are you O.K.?” It was Sean’s voice.
“Not exactly,” I called back.
“Do you need help?”
“That would be nice.”
Sean came barreling through the door like Elliot Ness and the Untouchables. He stopped and gaped openmouthed at Don, who still had me pinned to the bed and was moving his body up and down.
“You bastard!” Sean yelled. “You fucking rapist!” He dragged Don off the bed, to his feet. Don, who by now was too drunk to know exactly what was happening, grinned.
“Hi!” he said. “We’re fucking.”
Sean reared back and gave him such a vicious upper cut that it knocked him half across the room. Don collapsed against the wall and slid down it.
“Are you all right?” Sean said to me.
“Yeah, I’m O.K.,” I said, tugging at my blouse and trying to wipe the lipstick off my face with my hand. I went over to Don. “He’s breathing,” I said. “He really did give a nice speech, too.”
Sean grabbed my hand. “Come on, I’m taking you home!”
In the car, we rode silently for a while, and then Sean said, “Peggy, why did you go off with that creep?”
“What do you care? You were so busy making eyes at the Catholic Sandra Dee you didn’t even notice what I was doing.”
“I noticed,” Sean said. “I noticed when you were practically necking with him on the dance floor.”
“What were you doing with the blonde? Making a novena?”
We were quiet again for a while and then I said, “Oh, dammit, Sean, I’ll never get the hang of this man-woman stuff. I mean if you don’t kiss guys, they say you’re frigid, and when you do kiss them, they take their clothes off.”
He burst out laughing.
“It is not funny,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said, but he was still laughing.
“I think I just meet weird guys. I mean, you don’t take your clothes off when I kiss you.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
“You do?”
“Sure.”
“You just have more self-control, right?”
“Right.”
“Oh, I wish all boys were like you. Then girls would be safe!”
He looked at me strangely, a little crossly, I thought. But why should he be mad? I meant it as a compliment. He drove for a while, and then he pulled the Caddy into Rock Creek Park, and parked it in a secluded spot under a tree. We climbed in the back seat, and I was ready to settle in for an hour or so of necking with good old reliable Sean and his Illuminated Map of Sin. I closed my eyes, and then I felt a hand on a part of me that was of the most interest to the Nemesis of Smut. Sean had his hand on the front of my blouse—and it wasn’t even the prom.
“Sean?” I said.
He didn’t say anything, but then he gave me an even bigger shock. He started unbuttoning my blouse.
“Sean, what do you think you are doing?”
He still didn’t say anything, but doggedly kept working on the buttons. I thought of how I’d been ready to maim Donald Tolsen for life, and here I was letting Sean unbutton away, and I wasn’t even lifting a finger. I was starting to feel tingly inside, which was an even better indicator of sin than Sean’s illuminated map—which by now must be lighted up like the War Room when a flight of Russian ICBMs passed over Rome.
My blouse was all unbuttoned, and I knew I should be thinking about sin, but I was thinking, Oh shit, I didn’t have on my lacy bra but the old one I wear for basketball that was really ugly and stained and smelled of Clorox because it got gray and my mother had to pour on the bleach to get it clean.
And then Sean had his hands on the clasp of my bra and was tugging on it. I was still undecided about what to do. I knew I should slap him, but on the other hand nobody had ever seen my boobs but me, the bathroom mirror, and Dr. Parkinson, which seemed like a real waste. I was really proud of them, and it seemed to me to be in much better taste to give a good friend like Sean a peek at them instead of flaunting them around in the drag house in front of a couple of fake Scarlett O’Haras.
Finally, the clasp came open and Sean just pulled the bra away gently and looked at me. He looked, that’s all, for a long time and finally he said,
“They’re really beautiful.” Then he shocked me out of my socks by leaning over and kissing me gently, on each nipple, and if that wasn’t big-time sin I was Pope Pius the Twelfth. I tried to think about sizzling in hell, like Sister Justinian said I should, but all I could concentrate on were these little shivers that were going through me, because Sean had his hands under my breasts and was taking turns nibbling gently on the right one and then the left one, and it occurred to me that if he would just keep on doing that, it might be worth a few eons in hell. I wondered if he had been reading Savage Warrior, because even Soldred couldn’t do it any better, and Soldred did it every ten minutes or so, it seemed. All of a sudden one big shiver went through me, and then another. I knew what it was all right, but I didn’t think you could get one of those this way. Suddenly I was very grateful to my hormones for coming up with the boobs, however belatedly.
I must have sighed, loudly, because Sean looked as pleased as punch, sort of the way he looked when he won the seventh grade spelling bee: very happy and a trifle cocky. He kissed me again, with a new air of authority, I thought, and then he pulled me down on the seat beside him and drew my hand down between his legs. I started to rub it gently—it was, after all, an old friend, and he moved his hand up under my skirt. I figured we were already way past venial sin, so what the hell, in for a buck, in for a quarter. It wasn’t long before I was on the roller coaster again, and I let out a little whoop, which really felt good, because I couldn’t do that when I was in bed pretending to study, with Savage Warrior stuck behind my geometry book. Sean was lying on the seat, moaning softly, and I thought I ought to return the favor. I reached down and unzipped his fly, and got my first look at the Natural Wonder since it was five years old. It had grown up a bit in the intervening years, and it certainly wasn’t soft at the moment, but I liked it as much as ever. I thought I detected the faint smell of canvas.
I was very solicitous of my long-lost friend, and Sean moaned a lot more and then he rolled over and I guess he aimed, because he unloaded right on the floor of the Caddy, a perfect shot. I was enthralled, and for a minute I felt a surge of genuine penis envy. But then I remembered the boobs, and I decided I wouldn’t trade them, not even for something that could be shot off like a bazooka.
