Chapter 1

“Hunter, I don’t know why you are upset. We just moved here, and you have never been left home all alone!”

“Mom, we live in a gated community. I am growing up! I have straight A’s, and I am going to be in high school next year, it’s not a big deal! Please, this is embarrassing!”

“You will always be Mommy’s little boy,” my mom held my cheeks in her hands and admired my face. I am sure I looked innocent and immature because I was a wet-behind-the-ears little squirt that had yet to hit my growth spurt. “No matter how old you get, I will always think of you as my little boy. Can you just do me this one favor and go along with having a babysitter so that I don’t have any reason to worry about you while I am on my date?”

“You DON’T have to worry about me, Mom!!” I insisted that I’d be watching television and playing with my Atari 2600. “Freddy Krueger isn’t going to pop out of the box

“Pahrump has a lot of crime, and even though we have a gate, there are probably ways people can still get into our community.”

Pahrump, Nevada – the Devil’s sweaty armpit. I was so wet behind the ears when we moved here that I had no idea what kind of place it was.

If you like a whole lot of nothing at all, then Pahrump has everything you could ever want.

My only frame of reference was the sheltered life that I lived inside a gated community in an upper-class neighborhood in Beverly Hills. The weather was always pleasant, people were friendly, groundskeepers manicured the lawns, maids tidied the houses, and grocery stores had everything you needed. My life in the early 1980s was channel thirteen, Saturday morning cartoons, and Honeycomb cereal.

I had the real G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip, Steve Austin (not the wrestler, the Bionic Man), and the original Stretch Armstrong. I still played with toys, but I was aware of girls and had an interest in them. I was just so wet behind the ears that I didn’t even think about what I’d say to talk to one.

I had seen television shows like Three’s Company about a guy living with two sexy girls in a small apartment. I’d watched the TV show Good Times about how black people lived in the Ghetto in a tiny little apartment, but those were fictional scenarios, and so far removed from my reality that I never considered that other people didn’t have it the same way that I did.

Good Times and Sanford and Son may as well have been Star Trek or the Addams Family because I didn’t know anyone who was poor, and I assumed that I was middle class. I wasn’t, though – my parents were wealthy, and they had just recently divorced. My mom left my dad in California and bought this place in Pahrump only a few weeks earlier, and now she was going out on a date, and I wasn’t ready for it.

“Look, I just met this guy. He’s nice. I didn’t expect to hit it off. If I left you home alone, I’d worry about you and I’d probably make an excuse to leave early and sabotage the whole date,” my mom said.

I had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t understand why a woman would sabotage a date she wanted to be on – so I shrugged and told her not to worry.

“It’s so simple in your world, isn’t it, Hunter?” she grinned and looked down at me. As I said, I was still a little squirt with a freckled face and glasses. “Just don’t worry, and then I won’t?” she chuckled. I was so naïve that I had no idea why she thought that my advice was funny.

I had been raised never to question authority or my parents, and so I didn’t argue. I was at that stage where I was starting to think about standing up to my mother, but she was an adult. My mother was a titan to me, as far as I was concerned. She was still taller than me, more mature, and she knew all the answers to life’s mysteries as far as I knew.

“Look, just be a good boy, do as the babysitter tells you, and we’ll talk about it when I get home. You may be right, and you may be ready not to have a babysitter. I could be the world’s worst mom and not know what is best for my baby,” Mom said. I was too inexperienced to know what passive-aggressive was, but that was my mom’s usual tone.

“It’s just embarrassing! If anyone hears about this, I’ll be laughed at,” I pouted.

“You’d have to have friends first for anyone to laugh at you,” my mom instantly regretted how that sounded when she said it. I knew she meant it as a joke, but I couldn’t hide how offensive that was -it felt worse because it was true.

“I am sorry, Hunter,” she brushed the hair out of my eyes, licked a finger and washed away an imaginary tear from the corner of my eye. I wasn’t crying but I was said. “We just moved here – who knows, maybe this babysitter will know some boys your age and you can make friends with them? She comes highly regarded!”

My mom spoke very well, and unfortunately, that translated to how I spoke back then. It sounded right and appropriate coming from a poised, confident woman of the 1980s that knew who she was and where she was going in life.

Using big fancy words and speaking well made me sound like a fancy-pants know=it-all little asshole, but I was too young at that stage to know any better.

“You are right, mother. I’ll try – but we need to discuss this further when you get home,” I insisted. My mom probably snickered because she thought my insistence that I could demand her time to talk about an issue was funny.

“Maybe I will cancel the babysitter,” she said, much to my relief, just as we heard the knock at the door.

I didn’t hear the truck pull up, but suddenly there was a knock at our door and there she stood – a Greek goddess and my babysitter all rolled up in one.

She was as tall as my mother, and that made her seem intimidating. She had big 80s hair – blonde in a way that reminded me of Morgan Fairchild. She had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and a cherubic, angel face – the kind that could do no wrong and had a silly smile etched on it.

She had so much energy, vivacious and electric – it was like a switch was turned on when she walked in and the entire room lit up a little more. My babysitter didn’t take herself seriously or act like a goddess but I was truly in awe – jaw open, staring at her like she fell from heaven.

I had my eyes mostly on her boobs and pretty face – so I didn’t notice at the time the reason she was wearing a half-shirt was that she was pregnant and her tummy was a little too big to pull it all the way down.

I am sure that my mother noticed right away – she never missed things like that.

I was in awe – like an angel had walked through my door, fresh from heaven. She had huge knockers, but not the fake kind you see on a Barbie Doll. They were natural and reminded me of two lumpy sacks of flour hanging off of her chest, just under her t-shirt. I could see the tent of her enormous nipples poking through the material, and I blushed and looked away. The material was so sheer that I could make out blue veins and the outline of her puffy nipples – and she either knew that and didn’t care or was completely oblivious.

I assumed the girl must not realize that a boy like me must never see even the outline of nipples through a t-shirt, and that she would be upset if she caught me staring at them. They seemed so unnaturally huge that I didn’t think they were even real.

I didn’t have the Internet, or even girly magazines, but I’d seen tits in movies on Cinemax, and they didn’t look like these at all. The tits on television stuck out straight like perfect orbs and hers hung down with gravity – which puzzled me.

She had a shapely figure, and I barely noticed that she was chubby, had a bit of a pooch for a belly, and wide hips stuffed into impossibly tight jeans.

“Hi, Mrs. Davidson, I am Penelope Jenkins,” she introduced herself in a slightly sassy southern accent that was a bizarre admixture of a dozen different southern accents. Her voice was scratchy and sounded mature for a teenage girl – it was sexy and exotic to me.

Penelope was bubbly, effervescent and I could have sworn the light in the room got a little brighter when she appeared at the door.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, this is my son Hunter,” my mom introduced me. I was too stunned to say anything as I stared into her deep blue eyes and tried not to glance down at those big bazooms hanging freely on her chest.

There was a popular commercial on television at the time. A hot woman with big hair and cherry red lipstick shows up in a sports car. She stops in front of a teenage boy and puts her finger to her lip, let’s her sunglasses dangle and flips her eyes up at him “Are those Bugle Boy Jeans you are wearing?”

I don’t know what the fuck the kid said back to the woman – I was always too enamored with that fantasy to give a shit. It was probably an awkward “Yeah”. She invites him into the car, and they drive off together – ostensibly to have sex.

This was the age of movies like Weird Science. Two total dorks invent a hot woman with big titties and take a shower with her but keep their clothes on. A duck shows up from outer space and bangs a hot woman. Morgan Fairchild epitomized the 80’s blonde with big tits, big hair, big make-up, did I say big tits?

The idea that a guy like me could get a girl like my babysitter was the stuff of fantasies in movies, but in reality, that was never going to happen in a million years. Girls like her liked guys with mustaches and cars, and she was stacked -like a brick house. She had the body of an adult, so I treated her like an adult.

“Hello, Mrs. Jenkins,” I stammered awkwardly. I envisioned myself playing a roguish James Bond type, taking her hand and kissing it before putting a Martini in it and then whisking her away in my Austin Martin.

“You don’t have to call me Mrs. Jenkins,” Penelope was so happy and down-to-earth. She seemed genuinely pleased to meet me, and that thrilled me. I hadn’t given it any thought, but I’d gone from not wanting a babysitter at all to wanting one with all of my entire being at the cellular level. “You are quite a bit older than most boys I babysit. I am looking forward to not having to change your diapers!”

She made a funny face that I assumed was some sort of nervous tick. I didn’t know it at the time, but she made these cute faces all the time to punctuate her jokes. I honestly assumed pretty girls had no sense of humor and that maybe this girl had some sort of disability that caused her to have involuntarily facial spasms.

My mom didn’t smile. She was terse and replied, “I am sorry you came all the way out here, Penelope. You came highly recommended on short notice. I am a newly single mother and wanted to have a babysitter for my son while I went on a date.” My mom explained. I knew she was about to pull the plug on the babysitter, and I was about to jump like a heroic soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save his platoon in order to stop her.

“Oh, you are?” Me too!” Penelope’s smile was the kind of natural smile that made everyone else’s smile. She didn’t have perfect teeth, but the imperfections of one tooth being bigger than the others, and the slight gap were perfect in their imperfection.

To say that I had a slight crush was to say that Romeo and Julie was a story about two kids who sort of liked each other.

“Well, not yet anyway,” she patted her tummy and said that she was knocked up. I didn’t know that meant pregnant. “I won’t be going to school next year, and I need all the money I can get.”

My mom was obviously sympathetic, and she immediately turned to look at me the same way she had when she was about to tell my sitter that she had reconsidered hiring her. “Honey, will you do me this big favor and just be a good boy for Penelope?”

GOD-DAMNIT IT, MOM! I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs that she didn’t have to ask me like that. I was smart enough to know that my mom could no more reconsider hiring this girl than she could have run over a puppy that was in the middle of the road. She didn’t have to patronize me and ask me if I’d be a good boy – but she had.

“Sure, Mom!”

“Wow, your son really is well behaved.” Penelope seemed pleased with me, and that was enough to make me feel less humiliated that I was called a good boy. “He sure is big for his age, too!”

I didn’t realize what she meant by that at the time. It was something that Penelope said that went straight over my mom’s head as well. I wasn’t big at all. I was a pipsqueak. I was flattered. I pushed my chest out, stuck my chin up, shoulders back, and preened.

My mom must have assumed she was just flattering me and didn’t address it.

“Okay, well that’s settled, you can let your ride know you are here for the evening, and if I need you to spend the night, then I will call around 10 pm so you can call home and make arrangements?” my mom asked. She was always making plans within plans and was great at details.

“I think Peapod is already gone,” Penelope glanced out the window shade. “I’ll be fine. You do what you need to do, and Peapod will be on its way to pick me up. We’ll work it out, Mrs. Davidson,” the pretty girl made another strange face. IT was over the top and silly, but neither my mother nor I reacted to it because we had never seen anyone behave like that before.

“Well, Peapod should wait when you are coming to a new client’s house before driving off in case anything changes,” my mother advised in her passive-aggressive tone.

“He’s got to get my sister and mom to work, and then probably get up to no good,” she said.

“It’s almost 7 pm. Do they work the night shift?” My mom was shocked to hear that her mother and sister were working at night.

“Yeah, they work up at Dannys, I’ll probably end up there too after the baby comes if I don’t stay fat,” Penelope patted her tummy in a self-deprecating way and frowned.

This girl was not fat–not by today’s standards. She wasn’t a silicon Barbie Doll. She was tall (to me), big-boned, and a little chubby -with the cutest cheeks on her face (and a nice big butt). I didn’t think she was my “type” because I would never have presumed to get with her, but she was a natural beauty that exuded raw sexual energy.

Puberty was hitting me hard that evening because I was breathing in whatever primal pheromones she was emitting, and I was hungry for my babysitter, even if I was too bashful and naïve to know what to do with her.

“You aren’t fat, Penelope, and I don’t want you to put yourself down. You seem like a bright young lady. Have you considered college?” my mom asked.

The blank stare on Penelope’s face was the equivalent of asking a drowning man if he had considered just not drowning. My mother came from money and had money, and the idea that someone couldn’t afford college probably never occurred to her. It didn’t happen to me either. I’d always assumed I was going to college and didn’t have to worry about things like that.

“I’d have to get through high school first, and they don’t let preggers attend Pahrump High,” she gritted her teeth and made an ugly face that was just as exaggerated as the funny faces she made earlier. I was still convinced that the girl may be suffering from a form of nervous tic or facial spasms.

I didn’t think she was in high school. Penelope seemed above high school – like she was so hot and mature that they just exempted her from having her attend and let her immediately become an adult because she was physically mature.

The realization that after the summer, I might be attending school with my babysitter filled me with dread. My experiences with girls involved them shunning me, giggling at me, or ignoring my existence. I was largely invisible to them because I had not yet developed in middle school. I hypothesized that Penelope might tell my secret shame that I needed a babysitter to potential new friends and tease me.

I didn’t know her very well at the time, I just assumed that a pretty girl might do that because pretty girls can be cruel and petty (so can most people).

I was terrified and secretly glad that she said she wouldn’t be able to continue school. I’d feel guilty about that years later, but at that moment, I wasn’t considering the bleak future that might await her without a high school education as a teen mother. I was simply happy that my secret shame of being babysat would never get out.

My mom walked Penelope around the house, gave her the number of the restaurant she’d be at, showed her where the food was that she had prepared for us, and told her to make herself comfortable.

“This sure is a big house, look how many bathrooms you have! And it’s just the two of you?”

We came from a much bigger house in California. I scoffed and said something about the big house in California that is going to sound really snotty and pompous if I were to write it out.