Chapter 2

Part of our relationship was based on teasing. My reference to calling her a scrawny little girl is an example. We teased each other a lot. She called me old and fat. She’d say something like, “You’re not stupid, Uncle Bob. You’re just ignorant. There’s a difference, you know.” I’d say something like, “You couldn’t hit the ten ring if you put the muzzle on the paper.”

I was pretty stupid about it. I say stupid rather than ignorant, because I was not ignorant of the fact that all girls eventually start exploring their sexuality. They get curious, and they’re often self-conscious. A lot of them have body image issues. They want to be noticed as a female, and yet that terrifies them. They want to try things, but are scared to. I’m fully aware about all the angst involved with puppy love and broken hearts and crushes and all that stuff that’s completely normal. It’s how the vast majority of girls claw and tear their way into womanhood.

I just don’t think I thought about Chastity doing any of that stuff. I think it was a can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees situation.

Well, I couldn’t see the forest until I smacked into a tree, anyway.

And Chas had access to men that the average girl doesn’t have. By the time she was fourteen and fifteen, she was on a first name basis with a couple hundred men, who she saw at the range all the time. And they were men of varying ages and experience, too, from young bucks in their early twenties to hoary old men in their late seventies. We had four of the local cops as members, and practically the entire local VFW post belonged to the range. I had members who were plumbers, accountants, teachers, a bar owner, just about everything under the sun, and she was pals with all of them. The prosecuting attorney is even a member, though he doesn’t show up all that often.

I’ve heard her giving men marital advice. I’m not kidding. Of course, from her perspective, she was just telling the man what women wanted, and why his wife was probably mad at him, but you get the idea. She had lots of men to talk to and be around, so men weren’t that much of a puzzle to her.

She got good grades, but she had very little interest in extracurricular activities at school. She could deal with a cranky old Vietnam vet with no problem, but she complained constantly about boys her own age. She called them vapid and egocentric. She actually used the word “vapid”!

Okay, so I hope, by now, you have some feeling for what our relationship was like. I was her uncle. I was her boss, at the range. I was a shoulder to lean on. I was her sounding board. I was somebody she felt comfortable hugging while she was half naked. I was all these things to her, and we were very close.

And no, I didn’t become all these things to groom her for having sex with. I didn’t even think about them.

Nor did I think about the fact that she was probably my best friend. We were even closer than Amy and I were. I knew everything about her. I liked her, and I liked being around her. She was fun to talk to, and a huge help at the range, even if it was on an unofficial basis.

In a sense, I think she replaced the closeness I’d had with Lucy, after she died. I didn’t intend for her to do that. It just happened.

Sitting in a jail cell gives you time to think. Upon reflection, I’ve remembered some things that, at the time, didn’t mean a lot, but with hindsight were important. They don’t go in any real order. I just remember them happening. So I’m just going to put them on paper. It might seem a little disjointed, and it certainly doesn’t provide a narrative that illuminates the path I took. But the steps I’ll describe got me where I am.

And yes, I’m aware that nobody made me take those steps.

I think one thing that started the train going off the tracks was on her sixteenth birthday. Her mom said she could have a party, but she didn’t want anything big, with lots of guests. I know she had friends at school, because she talked about them. But she didn’t want that kind of party. She just wanted her mother and me to be there and for there to be only one candle on the cake.

“Why one candle?” Amy asked.

“Because this is the first year of my adult life,” said Chas.

“Nice try,” said Amy. “You can start dating, but you’re not an adult.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Chas. “This is the first time I’ve felt like I’m becoming an adult. That I need to start thinking about being an adult.”

See what I mean? What average sixteen year old thinks about things that way? Most kids that age just want to have fun and get away with as much as they can until the world forces them to become an adult.

But not Chastity. Chastity was thinking about her future in an entirely different way.

That year also started a shift in the kind of teasing Chas sent my way.

She started flirting with me.

I recognized it as flirting. I fully admit that. I just thought she was testing the waters, you know, practicing. I saw her flirt with guys at the range, too, though the flirting she did with them was very subtle. With me it was more obvious. I say more obvious, but it’s also hard to describe.

Take her hugs, for example. They had always been tight, and long. Now there was a very subtle grinding to them, as if she was trying to get comfortable and there was something in my pocket that was in the way. Her fingertips often rested on my neck, instead of my shoulders, like in the past. She turned her head, to press her cheek against my chest, instead of just bumping her nose into my shoulder. She started reaching up on tiptoes to kiss my cheek.

“I like your beard,” she said, one day. “It’s soft.”

“I like my beard, too,” I said, a little confused. I’d had a beard ever since Lucy died and I was too distraught to go through daily rituals like that. It turned out having a beard wasn’t so bad, and then I found out it had some advantages, so I’d never shaved after that. This was the first time she’d talked about it, though.

She reached up and brushed the back of her hand across my chin.

“I wonder what that would feel like...” Then she stopped.

“What?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she said.

I didn’t think anything about it then, but six months later I was dragging my beard all over her naked body - at her request. Now that I think back on it, I think that’s what her unfinished comment was about. She was interested in exploring her sexuality with me back then. You’d have to ask her about that, but that’s what I think.

She wanted me to take her shopping for a new bikini. If I’d have thought about it then, I might have realized that was odd. I mean she certainly didn’t need my help in picking out a new suit. I think she wanted to see what was in my eyes as she modeled suits for me. I remember telling her one of them was a bad idea, because it had ties on either side of the hips.

“Why is that bad?” she asked.

“Because some boy will be tempted to pull them,” I said. I reached and pantomimed tugging at a string. “Presto,” I said. “A treat for him, and embarrassment for you.”

“No guy would really ever do that,” she scoffed. “And I’d kick his ass if he did.”

“And yours would be naked while you did it,” I said, grinning.

She eventually selected that suit and bought it. I thought she just didn’t believe me.

Later that summer she stood in front of me and pulled those strings herself, asking me if I had ever skinny-dipped.

There was one time when we were getting ready to go to the range and she came out of her room in a tank top. She had clothes at my house and had appropriated a bedroom for her use. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t using it for anything anyway. When I looked at her, I could see her nipples poking through the shirt.

“Are you not wearing a bra?” I asked.

She looked down at her chest.

“I don’t have any clean ones,” she said.

“Well you can’t go like that,” I said.

“They’re just boobs,” she said.

“In this case they’re just nipples,” I pointed out.

“Don’t guys like that?”

“Of course they do, but I don’t want men staring at your nipples. Your mother would kill me.”

“Not if she didn’t know about it,” said Chas, as if that was a reasonable position.

“I do not want strange men staring at your nipples, Chas,” I said, firmly.

“Most of them aren’t strange. I know most of them,” she argued.

“Chas!” I yelled.

“Okay, okay,” she said, turning around.

She came back in a halter top that was way too small.

“What are you doing?” I asked. She’d finally gotten my attention.

“Going to the range?” she asked, with exaggerated sarcasm.

“Why do you want to show your breasts off?” I asked.

She looked down again.

“They’re just boobs, Uncle Bob. Every girl has them.”

“Yes, but every girl doesn’t flash them around like you’re doing.”