by Holmes, John
I had only to dress quickly and be off. However, it didn’t quite work out that way. No sooner had I stepped into my little cubbyhole, discarded the towel and reached for my pants than the door began to creek open, so slowly that I thought I’d neglected to shut it tightly. That wasn’t the case. Through the crack I saw two long, shapely legs and a miniskirt. “I’ll be right out,” I said instinctively, turning to step into my pants. The next thing I knew the door was opening wider, then closing, and she was standing inside, smiling vaguely and looking me over from head to toe. “I forgot something,” the girl said quietly. Her voice was soft and feminine, edged with a touch of desperation. In her hands she carried a small paint box and the canvas she’d been working on in class. At that moment, as I struggled with one of the pant legs, I couldn’t have cared less what she was holding. My eyes were on her gorgeous thighs, and my mind was filled with visions of gently fanning butterfly wings.
She leaned the framed canvas against the others that lined wall, then stepped forward to place the paint box on one of the narrow shelves. As she brought her hand down, it gazed my exposed groin, rather accidently, I figured, until it fell back again, this time lingering there. God, my classroom fantasy was coming to life! That, and a flashback to the time when I dreamed of banging my sexy third grade teacher, Mrs. Pryor, in the cloakroom. I’d never made it with “Pussy” Pryor, as the kids jokingly called her, but here I was with very much her equal—a younger version, actually—in much the same secluded setting. “Careful how you handle that, darling,” I warned. “It could get out of control.”
She wasn’t careful, and it did get out of control. Her craving for sex matched mine. We were two desperate animals in heat. We both knew what we wanted, and nothing could hold us back.
What were we doing? It was one thing to be naked in a dim campus closet with a knockout coed, and quite another to have her on her knees with her head buried in my crotch.
“I think we’d better make sure the door’s locked,” I gulped nervously.
She pulled away and looked up sharply. An impish grin crossed her face as she said, “And take away the thrill?” I smiled back, knowingly. She wasn’t the first girl I’d met who had been turned on by the threat of getting caught. It was like having sex in a car on Hollywood Boulevard in broad daylight. Not my idea of a hot time, but if that’s the way she wanted it I was certainly primed to go along with her.
We went at it for a solid ten minutes, oblivious to our cramped surrounding, before she drew back her head and let out a low, choking moan. My hand clamped tightly over her mouth as a searing sensation flooded my groin, jolting me once, twice, again and again with such driving, pounding force that we were left clinging limply to each other, struggling for air. A moment later she slipped quietly away without saying a word. I pulled up my pants and reached for my shirt. It wasn’t on the shelf where I’d placed it earlier; it was under my feet, having fallen to the floor unnoticed. Clean and freshly pressed that morning, it was now trampled, wet and sticky in places and gave off an unmistakable aroma. I held it at arm’s length, flapping it to dry. A few seconds of that and I gave up, put the shirt on, and flicked out the light. I’d already delayed much too long.
The race to the Student Union and back across campus to the bus station on Hilgard Avenue nearly did me in. I wasn’t in the best of shape anyway, thanks to the steamy session in the changing room. My legs felt weak and wobbly; I needed time to rest and recharge. I got more than I had bargained for at the bus station. Sometime between dropping my pants and cashing the voucher, my regular bus had arrived and departed.
Having to take the bus each day infuriated me. It wasn’t so much the ride as the wasted time. I had a car, a borrowed one that I drove to school. What I didn’t have was a permit to park on campus. Without one, and with the hundred-dollar parking fee, I was forced to park two miles away. I could have walked the distance, I suppose, but that too would have eaten into my schedule. Five nights a week, I washed dishes at a small hotdog stand in Hollywood. I was due on the job by four-thirty, which meant I had to hustle, not sit on bus benches.
The car belonged to my roommate, Linda, a magnificently put-together 22-year old with a sharp mind and a quick wit. Linda was a real crowd pleaser, in more ways than one. When we first met, she was working as a secretary for a high-rolling attorney in Hollywood. She was also on call for evening activities with her boss’s clients, a money sideline she kept to herself during the earliest days of our friendship. Apparently she enjoyed her evenings more than her days, for she soon left the attorney’s employ to concentrate on a less restricting career, one that put no demands on her shorthand and typing skills. Her office became the topless joints and clubs along the Hollywood strip, where she met an endless supply of horny men with money to spare. Linda’s new occupation worked fine for me, too. With her days reserved for sleeping, she had little use for her car.
One day, following the Life Drawing class, I returned to our apartment to drop off the car before heading to the restaurant. Linda was waiting for me, anxious to talk. “Not now,” I said, rushing. “I’m late for work.”
“How would you like to make a hundred bucks?” She asked with a sly smile. I slowed down.
“What did you say?”
“One hundred dollars,” she repeated, punctuating each word. “Quick and easy”
Money from Heaven, “Who do I have to kill,” I asked facetiously.
“I met a guy last night who makes dirty films for colleges and stag parties. You know, the kind where they show two people getting it on.”
“And ? ”
“Well, he wants me to be in one of his films. You and me! I told him we make a great team.”
Linda and I weren’t strangers in bed. Whenever she had a rare night off, we’d sleep together. She was totally uninhibited.
“One hundred bucks!” I could see myself driving onto campus with my permit and pulling into a parking space. It sounded too good to be true. Getting paid for a few minutes of sex with my roommate? Surely, there had to be a hitch. “Come on, who do I have to kill?” I repeated.
Clever, clever me, Where had I heard that line before? On television or a movie, spoken by Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson? They were words that pleased the silent majority of patriotic Americans who stood by the government’s effort in Vietnam, and sent chills through the hearts of draft resisters and flower children who proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and “Girls say ‘yes’ to boys who say ‘no’.”
“Who do I have to kill? Six words spoken in jest, certainly without malicious intent! They were words that would come back to haunt me in the years ahead.
It was close to 11:00 a.m. when the doorbell rang. Through the curtains in the glare of the porch light, I could see the shadowy figure of a man pacing nervously back and forth. He appeared short and grossly overweight.
Linda beat me to the door. She opened it and quickly steeped aside. “Come on in, Harry,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Why not,” the fat man asked as he struggled through the opening. He turned his bloated body slightly so as not to bang the equipment in his arms. He carried a large, battered suitcase, two long light standards, and a tripod.
“I was afraid you might have a little trouble finding this place,” Linda replied.
“Trouble? Don’t mention the word.”
“You know what I mean, Harry. Sometimes my directions are…”
“Listen, I made it,” he interrupted. Setting the equipment on the floor, he plopped into the nearest chair, letting out a great rush of air as he landed. For a moment, he leaned back, wheezing, looking out through heavily lidded eyes like a dog on the alert. “Stairs,” he gasped, “You didn’t tell me about stairs.”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Linda apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.”
A hacking cough jolted Harry upright. He learned over the edge of the chair, gagging, his enormous belly tugging between his legs, seemingly on the verge
of throwing up. His eyes bulged and turned glassy; he grew flushed and sweaty. At last, he dislodged some foreign matter deep in this throat and brought it forward on his tongue, letting it rest between his thick, rubbery lips before wiping it away with a small, dirty rag from his breast pocket. That done he sighed agonizingly, mopped at his face, neck and, hairless dome, and returned the rag to his shirt.
“Would you like some water?” Linda offered.
“No,” Harry said, waving her off. He struggled to his feet. “I’ve got to get busy—it’s getting late.”
“I want you to meet John,” said Linda. “He’s the guy I was telling you about.”
With all of his distractions, it is doubtful Harry had really noticed me, even though I was in the same small room, sitting directly opposite him on Linda’s bed. At least, that was the impression I got when he turned my way.
He stared more at my crotch than at me. I was dressed so he couldn’t see anything, but he kept quiet. I had a sinking feeling that Harry didn’t approve, and the possibility of bringing in a substitute to work with Linda began crossing my mind. I hoped I was misjudging his lack of comment, because I’d psyched myself up for the job. At the moment, getting on with it and collecting my money was all that I wanted. In the thirty hours since Linda had asked me to participate in Harry’s little epic, I’d had time to think about what I was getting myself into. Having sex in front of someone didn’t bother me—I’d “performed” in front of people before, but only women. The thought of having a man looking on was something else.
Linda had tried to ease my fears. “He’s just a slob who works in a bar in Hollywood and sells stag films to people in back alleys,” she had told me. “He’s nothing but a big jerk… Don’t worry about him.”
I wanted to believe Linda, but I was apprehensive nevertheless—until Harry walked in. The moment I saw him I knew I’d do just fine. Harry didn’t qualify as anything quite human. How he felt about me was another matter.
“You’ve never seen anything like John in action, Harry,” Linda prodded. “He’ll have your eyes popping.”
“Good, good,” Harry drooled. “That I want to see.” He tugged up his pants and waddled over to the battered suitcase, pulled out a roll of aluminum foil, then scurried toward the large, curtained window.
“I’ll be in the bathroom,” Linda whispered to me. “Don’t do anything until I come out.”
I remained on the bed to watch Harry unrolling large sheets of silver paper. “What are you doing?” I asked.
He drew the curtain aside and pressed his fat face to the glass, scanning the street below. Pulling back quickly, he began covering the panes with foil. “The lights are like beacons at night,” he puffed. “If a cop drives by and see them, he’ll know what’s going on up here.” I knew that stag films were both very popular and highly illegal, but I wasn’t prepared for what Harry was about to tell me. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to start babbling. “The cops make it difficult,” he said. “They bust in during a shooting and do you know what you get? Ten years, that’s what. Armed robbery gets one year. Murder gets seven. Think about it.”
I did. Harry was making me nervous. The numbers he tossed out so freely made the paltry sum I’d be collecting—and indeed, everything else—seem incidental. I was so steeped in thought that I didn’t notice Linda until she was standing beside me. She had changed into a beat-up terry cloth robe, and she smelled delightful. “Are you going to get undressed?” she asked, nuzzling my ear.
“What?” I stammered.
She looked at me oddly, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
“Who, me?” I asked, forcing a grin.
“Then come on. Harry’s almost ready.”
Over her shoulder I could see Harry shuffling around. He’d already set up the lights; now he was mounting an 8mm camera on the tripod. I kicked off my tennis shoes, unzipped my pants, pulled them down, and was working on my shirt when I felt her moist tongue slithering around my crotch. I became aroused immediately.
“Good…good,” Harry cried. “That’s what I need. Just keep it up… but get on the bed.” He snapped on one light, then the other, flooding the room with a blinding glare. “Now the camera,” he said. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I muttered, hovering over Linda’s waiting body. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do next, only that I was about to be in my first—and last—sex film.
Little did I know…
2
August 8, 1944 As the Nazi war machine continued its devastating march across Europe, leaving the Continent in flames, squadrons of Allied planes took to the skies above Cannes to begin their counterattack to recapture occupied Paris. On the home front that August day, Americans were buying War Bonds, doling out ration stamps, working in defense plants and tending victory gardens. Students crowded high school gyms at lunchtime to demonstrate the latest dance craze, the jitterbug. The taverns, malt shops, and jukeboxes blared The Trolley Song, Swinging on a Star, and other Hit Parade favorites for a nickel a play. Movie goers lined up to see Since You Went Away and Going My Way. GIs with crew cuts pasted pin-ups of Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner in their lockers. Teenage girls in sweaters, knee-length skirts, and bobby sox daydreamed of Frank Sinatra, Guy Madison, and Van Johnson. Oklahoma! was Broadway’s big show. And on a wooden table in the kitchen of a modest Ohio farmhouse in Pickaway County, my mother gave birth to her fourth child, a son: John Curtis Holmes.
No doctor was present in my introduction into the world. There was only a strapping neighbor lady who acted as midwife. The woman had assisted in dozens of deliveries, but from her reaction, she’d never seen anything like the long, hairless infant she held in her arms. After a scrutinizing once-over, her first words were not the customary announcement of gender or well being, but a disbelieving “This baby has three legs and two feet.” In the years to come, the midwife’s remark would be repeated countless times over, in varying forms and degrees of excitement. Her offthe-cuff reference to my middle “leg” was surprising considering the puritan surroundings. Any other euphemism, even clinical, would certainly
13
have shocked my poor mother. As it was, she could easily have been led to believe that her latest-born was strangely deformed. The little framed farmhouse belonged to Mother’s folks, Carrie and John Barton, a hardy, hard-working, deeply religious couple who shared a love of the land and family; good, proud people guided by God rather than money and its rewards. The long hours they put in daily should have earned them more than self-satisfaction, yet they never complained. To their way of thinking, luxuries were playthings of the rich, of far less importance than the minimal necessities of life. In that regard they had everything they could possibly need. It mattered little that the “facility” wasn’t located inside, or that the wood burning stove in the kitchen was their main source of heat when temperatures dropped to freezing, or that running water came not from a faucet but from a pump that had to be primed.
For six days a week, from dawn till dusk, Grandmother Barton tended to chores in and around the house. She had more to keep her busy cleaning and preparing meals. In the spring, she planted crops in the family garden: sweet corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, squash, and more. In the summer and fall, she set the kitchen steaming with bubbling kettles filled with harvest to be stored in glass Mason jars for winter eating. And, always, there were pigs to slop, chickens to feed, and eggs to gather.
Grandpa Barton, a tall, fair-haired Scotsman with electric blue eyes, worked for a local railroad company. Each weekday morning at sunrise he could be seen walking the short distance from the house to the tracks where he’d await the early train that would carry him through the lush Ohio Valley into the big city, Columbus, some eighteen miles to the west.
Sundays were devoted to churchgoing and rest. It was also the day when the Holmes kids came to visit, which often made relaxing difficult, if not impossible. We were a boisterous bunch, and a houseful. In addition t
o me, there were brothers William and Eddy, and sister Ann. To help channel our energy and keep us out of the grown-ups’ hair, mother kept coming up with tasks for us to do. If she wasn’t sending us off to the railroad tracks to collect scraps of wood for the kitchen stove (which, thinking back, was like shooting us out to the freeway to play), she’d have us pulling weeds in the vegetable patch or cleaning the poultry pens. Each of the assignments wisely kept us out of doors, away from the house. If the truth were known, the plot to “keep the kids busy” was probably more for Mother’s benefit than for Grandma or Grandpa, who seemed genuinely delighted to have us underfoot. In fact, John Barton frequently took me aside to tell adventurous tales of his childhood. Having been named after him probably had a lot to do with our close relationship. He was also pleased that I was “the spitting image” of him as a boy, the only one of his grandchildren who had his fair hair and blue eyes. “If I’d had a twin brother when I was growing up,” he’d remark with a disbelieving shake of his head, “he’d have looked exactly like you. Why, having you around is like turning back the clock.” Then, poking a long finger in my ribs, he’d crack, “But don’t let that get you down.”
No such bond developed between any of the Holmes children and Father’s side of the family, and for good reason: we rarely saw them, nor was much ever said about them, at least in any complimentary way. Whenever one of their names came up, the word “hillbilly” always popped into the conversation. As for Father, well…Mother was always making excuses for him, especially when we’d go visiting. “Ed is finishing up a job today,” she’d explain to her parents, making him sound conscientious. Most often, however, she used a sympathetic approach. According to Mother, her husband had more colds, sore throats, and upset stomachs than a room full of kindergartners. She should have saved her breath. Everyone knew better, and they couldn’t have cared less.
