by Tim Sandlin
“Have the judges reached their decision?”
Hayley Mills, Doris Day, and Maurey Pierce all nodded simultaneously.
“The envelope please.”
Doris Day stood and handed the paper to Mr. Gleason. Her eyes were glazed and her forehead the most relaxed it had been since babyhood.
Mr. Gleason opened the envelope as he swung back to the crowd. “And the winner of the Wyoming State Fair blue ribbon for orgasming women is,” the crowd held its collective breath, “Sam Callahan.”
Yea!
As Sam made his modest way to the stage, a band broke into “Semper Fidelis” by John Philip Sousa and the Cheyenne JayCees’ fireworks display lit the air. The crowd went wild with enthusiasm.
Sam shook Mr. Gleason’s hand and accepted the award. Then he turned to the judges and smiled. At the sight of Sam’s tongue, Doris Day passed orgasm again.
***
Having never made out or even kissed before Maurey came along, I only knew one way to do it and that caused me some grief at Chuckette’s teen party. Grief isn’t exactly the word. I didn’t care enough for that. More like unpleasantness in an ugly way.
It ended up in the closet just like Dot said it would. Dot comes off as a pleasant ding, but whenever she says something will happen it generally does.
I was about ready to throw up, watching Dothan and Maurey flirt. He came dressed in black corduroys that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. He had on this jeans jacket with his shirt not tucked in so the tails flapped around like tabs on the front and back. I hate that. Maurey couldn’t say a sentence without touching him and he couldn’t say a sentence without her flying off into laughter.
She looked good too. Her eyes were brighter and her breasts seemed to be growing by the day. It was Saturday and every Saturday Annabel drove over to Idaho Falls for the AAUW bridge club, so we’d got in the routine of practicing on Saturday mornings while Lydia was off doing something wholesome on a snowmobile with Hank.
I spent that morning in bed with her but Dothan got the date. What a gyp. Maurey and I about had the practicing thing down. We’d discovered there’s more to it than boy-on-top. As long as this stuck to that, you could wander all over the room—the thrill of the odd position. Maurey even got off again, a lot quicker this time. My jaw didn’t feel like I’d chewed eight pieces of Topps baseball card gum.
We French kissed a long time afterward and I liked that just fine, better than the actual humping.
“You disappeared,” Maurey said.
“I’m right here with you.”
“Every now and then your eyes go away and your mind leaves the room. I feel as if I’m somebody else to you.”
I rolled off her but stayed where I could see her face. “I make up stories sometimes.”
“Like Mark Twain?”
“I guess. If I can’t be a baseball player, I’d like to be a writer someday.” I’d never told anyone, not even Lydia, that one. I couldn’t believe the stuff I exposed to Maurey. I mean, I didn’t know her that well outside of the sack.
“When you’re with me, you should pay attention.”
“Are you really going to this dumb party with Dothan?”
She sat up. “It’s impolite to give me a hard time while I’m still glowing from an orgasm.”
“Glowing from an orgasm? Where’d you hear that?”
“Redbook. It was a test. And, yes, I’m going with Dothan and you’re going with Charlotte. It’ll be good for you to watch me with him, keep you from getting attached to me.”
“But I’m already attached to you.”
“We can’t practice anymore if you get attached.”
“Okay, I’m not attached. I don’t give a hoot for you.”
She didn’t care either way. “Orgasms make me nauseous. Isn’t that weird?”
“Did you ask Lydia about that?”
Maurey leaned back on her shoulders to pull on her panties. “Just don’t be squirrelly around Chuckette. This is your big chance to get a girlfriend.” Maurey had a beautiful back.
***
Five hours later we played this idiot game where each girl writes down a name from the first four books of the New Testament and the boys say which one we’d like to be and when there’s a match, the guy and girl go in the closet for five minutes of timed fun. Biblical necking.
The damn game was rigged. Every girl there got the boy she’d picked out ahead of time. There were four couples: Kim Schmidt and LaNell Smith, this guy and girl from Jackson named Byron and Sharon, and us. Sharon had long blonde hair and, coming from Jackson, had everyone swamped in the sophistication deal. Chuckette sucked up to her like the Sharon stamp of approval was the last thing in parties. LaNell looked slightly lost without LaDell there to giggle with. She and Kim didn’t pass two words with each other outside the closet. I bet nothing happened inside either.
Maurey went first and I said “Luke” because I knew she liked Little Luke on The Real McCoys, but Dothan said “John” and got her. They either set it up or she knew he could only remember one book of the Bible. As they were stepping into the closet, Dothan grinned at me and winked—I could have shot his leg off—and as they came out, Maurey smiled at me. God knows why.
In between Chuckette went on about the fondue and 7-Up.
“Try dipping a piece of cauliflower, Sharon. I don’t eat hard vegetables on account of my retainer, but I know they’re good. We bought the fondue pot in Yellowstone Park.” Sharon looked at the cauliflower distastefully without touching it. The fondue pot had a spouting geyser on one side and some little bears following their mother.
Sharon was at least as beautiful as Maurey, who was in the closet. And LaNell wasn’t all that bad when she kept her mouth shut. The truth is I was more attracted to every girl at the party than I was to Chuckette, which is kind of sad because when she wasn’t sucking up to Sharon she was sucking up to me.
“Want some more 7-Up?” she asked.
“Okay.” Out of pity, I dipped some cauliflower in the melted Velveeta. I always feel like crap when I do something out of pity.
“Do you like ‘Dominique’ by the Singing Nun?” Chuckette asked. “It’s number-one on every station.”
I nodded and Sharon sniffed. Byron spent the whole party inspecting his boots. Kim and LaNell sat on the couch with paper plates on their laps. Neither one looked at anybody or said anything, except once when Kim did his barfing-dog imitation.
“I think Dion is gross,” Sharon said.
Chuckette and I agreed immediately.
“Gross,” said Chuckette.
“Gross,” I said.
LaNell coughed politely.
Since the whole valley seemed to have me fated for Chuckette Morris, I’d gotten the lowdown from Maurey. Chuckette didn’t have a tremendous amount to look forward to after the seventh grade. Her father, Don, worked for the phone company. Jackson already had dial phones and the outlying areas would follow by spring.
Don Morris once sent an entire paycheck to Oral Roberts. The family had to live on Wheaties and potato chips for a month. Chuckette had a younger sister named Sugar, who was destined to take everything Chuckette ever got away from her. Even at the party, Sugar hung around on the periphery of the action, going through the stack of 45 rpm records and telling Chuckette which ones mattered. I wanted to see Sugar naked.
Chuckette’s turn at the game came and we both said, “Mark.” The last thing I remember before they closed the door was Maurey looking at me from the back of the group. She held her fingers up in an A-Okay sign. Or maybe it was something dirty, I don’t know. I’d hoped she might be a little bit jealous.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Chuckette asked. Girls are all the time asking me that question. What do I look like anyway?
I nodded but it was way black and she couldn’t see my head. A tiny crack of
light came under the door, enough so the penny in one of her loafers reflected a brassy color.
“Have you?” I asked.
“Lots. At church camp last summer three boys kissed me in one night. Deacon Saltzer said they would go to hell.”
“You told the deacon?”
“I can’t lie. If I lied he would have sent me to hell.”
“What’s hell like?”
“Are you going to kiss me or not? We’ve only got five minutes.”
“I don’t want to go to hell.”
“I was twelve last summer. I’m thirteen now. It’s okay to kiss when you’re a teenager.”
“Where’s your face?”
In the dark, Chuckette’s face seemed almost regular. She didn’t have pimples or zits or anything weird like that. Those would come later. I took her by the shoulders and kissed. The poor girl had nothing worth squat in her life, and I felt bad because of that, so I gave her a real kiss. Heck, I admit it, I got into the deal some. I’d never kissed anyone except Maurey, and Chuckette’s lips felt different. They were stiffer. The only weird part was when I touched the retainer.
Chuckette put out a little scream and bit my tongue. I yelped and jumped back, banging into the door. Voices came from outside the closet.
“What’s going on in there?” from LaNell, “Go get ’em, Sammy,” from Maurey, and Dothan, “No copping feels.”
Chuckette kind of whimpered. “That’s disgusting.”
“It was a kiss.”
“With your tongue out? It’s all wet.” We were flattened against opposite walls of the closet, as far away from each other as we could possibly be—about ten inches.
“Is that how people kiss back East?” she asked.
“Sure.” I didn’t know but I had to convince her I was normal and she wasn’t.
“Your mouth was open.”
“That’s how you do it, Charlotte.”
“That’s not how Southern Baptists do it.”
When I leaned to the right, a hanger bonked me in the forehead. My tongue felt stung. I didn’t know if I was bleeding or not and I sure couldn’t go back to the party with red dribble on my chin. I felt around until I found a coat or something and blotted my face and tongue.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“Waiting for our five minutes to end.”
Chuckette started sniffling, as if she were trying to hold back tears. When I didn’t do anything, she sniffled a good honky one.
“What’s the matter?”
“The party’s ruined.”
“The party’s ruined because I gave you a French kiss?”
“Is it Eastern or French? Make up your mind.” I didn’t say anything so she kept talking between sniffles. “Daddy said it would end like this.”
“Crying in the closet?”
“He said boys would try to get me passionate so they could make me pregnant and ruin my life and make me go to hell.”
“You don’t sound passionate to me.”
She sniffed a few more times and blew her nose on something. “I wasn’t ready that time. Let’s try again.”
***
When I came home I found the toaster oven in the front yard. Someone had evidently stood on the porch and heaved it. I picked up the screen deal you put the food on, but left the rest.
The first I noticed when I went inside was a pair of toilet paper tubes up Les’s nostrils. Lydia’s voice came from the kitchen. “When was the last time you did something spontaneous? Just cut loose regardless of the consequences?”
Hank’s voice answered. “Every action has consequences.”
“You’re an Indian. Indians are supposed to get drunk and be stupid.”
“If I’m stupid I go to jail.”
I walked in the kitchen to find Lydia sitting at the table, rolling eight or nine eggs under her hands. Evidence of several more were splatted on the floor at Hank’s feet. Alice lapped at the mess. I set the screen from the toaster oven in the sink.
“Hi, Mom, I’m home.”
She sent me the look and rolled an egg slowly off the side of the table. It went into a slow motion effect as it fell, then it made a pop sound and blew up. The yolk didn’t break.
Hank sat in the other chair with his hands on the varnished wood tabletop, his thumbs touching each other. “When you’re stupid, you get shipped off to live with the common people for a few months. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is you might lose your trust fund.”
Lydia rolled another egg off the edge. Pop. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “Either you guys want one?” They didn’t look at me.
“I wish just once you’d do something you hadn’t planned to do,” Lydia said.
I opened my pop and sat on the milk crate to listen. It took ten minutes of back and forth to figure the situation, but near as I can tell, they’d gone with Delores and Ft. Worth to a new pizza place outside Jackson and Delores and Lydia got in a vicious fight about how many glasses of beer come in a pitcher.
Hank didn’t back up Lydia with enough enthusiasm, or maybe he took the what-does-it-matter stance. Anyhow, he’d failed her and Lydia didn’t cut slack when men failed her.
“You’re passive as wet toast,” Lydia said.
“Who sat on her couch for three months, refusing to accept where she was.”
“Who lives in a twelve-foot trailer with a kitchen table that makes into a bed.”
“I do.” Hank’s face had gone rock. I was impressed.
“I’m not about to spend my life waiting for free-cheese day at the county extension office,” Lydia said.
“Who asked you to?”
“You are beneath my dignity.”
Hank reached across the table. I thought he was going to hit her and I think Lydia did too—she paled real quick. Instead, Hank swept all the eggs off in one swoop of the arm.
“Take your dignity and stuff it up your ass.”
Lydia’s color came back. “How dare you resort to violence in my house.”
Hank stood up, knocking his chair back. “You want spontaneous violence?”
“Let’s see it, big man.”
The distance between me and Hank’s head was about six feet. I figured if he lit into her, I could knock him cold with the Dr Pepper bottle before his second punch.
But Hank went indecisive. I saw it in his eyes. He knew she wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t take action and would hate him if he did. Typical Lydia positioning. He gave me a helpless look and left—didn’t even slam the front door. We sat listening as he started his truck and moved off down Alpine. Lydia stared at a spot on the wall.
“Got rid of another one,” I said.
She closed her eyes and exhaled. “Go fuck your little girlfriend and leave me alone.”
***
Right before the 10:30 bottle Lydia caught Alice peeing in her panty box. I heard a crash and a yell, then Alice tore through my room and into my closet.
Lydia threw a full-scale temper tantrum. Glass broke, tables turned over, threats rained. I sat at my desk trying to avoid notice. At first she blamed all her personal problems on Alice, but the bile soon turned on me.
“I’m sick of that cat, I’m sick of this town, I’m sick of you. Every time I turn around there’s your hurt stare. I can’t breathe without you judging me. Well, I’m a whore and a bad mother, okay. You satisfied?”
“No.”
“But you, you know what you are? You’re pathetic. A pathetic little boy.”
What I knew was I had to clean up the glass, and in one hour—half a pint of gin—Lydia would turn on herself; and in two hours—full pint—she would cry and touch me and beg my forgiveness. Say she couldn’t live without me, I’m all she’s got.
Et cetera. So on. Boring.
&
nbsp; The forgiveness part of the deal was harder than the being called pathetic part. I know thousands of kids go through this process every day, but it’s still a pain in the butt.
***
The next day while Lydia slept I washed all sixty pairs of panties, folded them, and put them in her bureau drawer where Alice couldn’t pee. I didn’t see the pictures of my possible fathers. Lydia must have moved them.
***
Monday morning was cold at a level you’d never grasp in North Carolina. I woke up to a half-inch of ice along the inside bottom frame of my bedroom window. When I turned on the hot water for my shower, the water heater made knocking noises and the faucet emitted a tiny, pathetic sigh. I brushed my teeth with Dr Pepper.
Lydia had her electric blanket cranked to ten and her head buried.
“Water’s frozen up,” I said. “No bathing till the thaw.”
Her voice came from under the pile. “I cannot survive without a bath each and every day.”
“Keep up the pioneer spirit, Lydia.”
“To hell with the pioneer spirit. We’re going to die in this hell hole and no one civilized will remember our names. The no-neck locals will feed off our bodies.”
“I can’t make you coffee.”
“I shall not be moved from this bed until Caspar sends us two tickets to somewhere warm.”
“Coffee would just make you pee anyway and the toilet won’t flush. Sensitive as you are, you’d better not open the lid.”
Lydia let out a low catlike moan.
I put on about eight layers of sweaters, coats, and scarves and headed for school. The day was an unbelievable clear blue. Humidity froze in the air, making for a sparkly Wonderland atmosphere. Each step caused a loud protesting squeal from the snow. Would have been neat if my cheeks hadn’t stung and the mucus in my sinuses hadn’t iced up a half-block from home.
The White Deck windows were so frosted over on the inside that I couldn’t see who was doing the morning coffee deal. I hadn’t run into Hank since the unpleasantness and I wasn’t sure how to come across—friendly buddies together against the opposite sex: “They’re all bitches, Hank. You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em”; or loyal son: “Don’t mess with my mama, man.”
