Chapter 6

It was a good thing I’d decided to be happy with what I’d been given, because it was almost two months before I got any more sex. School had let out and it was June. The weather was great. The world should have been sweet. I wouldn’t have thought a guy could get so worked up from a lack of nookie. I went out on a few dates, and found that it was much harder to stop when the girls wanted me to. On the other hand, I had learned a lot with the posse. I was getting better at getting them off, and there was always Mother Palm and her five daughters afterward in my room, easing the strain. I began to think that Donna and Robby weren’t going to accede to the sheriff’s plan, but actually I didn’t mind. I was ten times more lucky than most guys my age by then. Well, okay, four times more lucky, if you count the encores Claire and I had engaged in.

I found out later that Claire had decided she needed to be a little more careful about things. She had waited until she knew Donna got her ‘visit’ and then counted down from that to decide when Donna should surrender her virginity to the posse’s sex toy. She also wanted to make sure she had her own period after our dangerous afternoon delight. But she did and one day, in the middle of the day, Miss September rang the bell when I happened to be in the kitchen making a sandwich. My Mom was doing laundry and Claire was in her room. When I opened the door Donna stared at me and stepped back a step, blushing. If she’d have told me what she was there for in plain English she couldn’t have been any clearer.

Donna had come to deliver up her virginity to me.

I tried to put her at ease. “Donna! I’m so glad to see you. You’re looking particularly beautiful today.”

Now, anybody who knew me would have done a double take to find out who the Watkins family had invited over, and who had taken it upon themselves to answer the door. They’d have seen me standing there, but never in a million years would they have believed it was actually me. Not after hearing me say something like that. They’d have thought I had a twin brother nobody had ever heard about ... a polite twin brother, who had suddenly appeared.

Donna didn’t believe it either. “I’m so stupid!“ she said to herself. “I can’t do this.” She turned around to leave and I called to her.

“Donna!“

I could see her body jerk in sympathy with her wince. She stopped and turned partly around, looking at me over her shoulder. Man she was good looking!

I tried again. “Look, Donna, you don’t have to do anything. Okay? Just because the rest ... well it doesn’t matter what they did, okay? You don’t have to do anything. Nothing has to change.”

I was really trying to put her at ease, but it didn’t work.

“I knew that’s what you’d say. Suzy said you’d say that. But everything already has changed Bobby. It’s just not the same any more.”

Well, she was right about that of course. I went outside and sat down on the top step.

“You’re right I guess,” I started out. “I mean there have been changes. Big ones too, as far as I’m concerned. But that doesn’t have to change things between you and me.”

Now that was a patently stupid speech. Donna and I didn’t really have a relationship to change. We’d known each other for years but, other than lusting after her for the last two or three of them, the only communication between us had been in the form of barbs or jokes or whatever. Nonetheless, I patted the porch beside me, inviting her to sit down. She did, leaving a good foot and a half between us. She was looking down and her long red hair shielded her face from me.

“Why did you guys even agree to do ... this ... in the first place? I mean that’s really screwy,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining or anything, but to be honest I was really amazed that you all would make that kind of pact.”

She looked at me through her hair. “You really don’t understand, do you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I guess I don’t,” I said.

“And you just thought Claire came up with this wild plan and we went along with it,” she said.

“I guess so.” I had a premonition that I was about to hear something I might not like.

“So you think we’re all brainless imbeciles who Claire can push around and make do whatever she says.”

That sounded ominous.

“Well, no,” I lied. “I mean I know you’re all best friends and all that, and they’re forever telling us that peer pressure can be good or bad. I just thought...” I trailed off as I realized that what I thought would just confirm her suggestion. “I guess I don’t know what to think,” I added, trying to salvage the situation.

She looked at me for a minute.

“Do you really call me Miss September because you think I look like that Playboy Bunny?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately. The truth was easy to come up with. “But I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She didn’t say anything. “If I did.” I kept trying to salvage as much as I could.

“Does that mean you think I’m sexy?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. Keep it simple. That’s my motto. Unless I’m engaged in serious bullshitting. All these repeated questions about whether they looked sexy, and whether I liked them had convinced my brain that they weren’t just simple questions. Not to the girls. They were real questions ... important questions ... questions that the answers to mattered.

“Then why didn’t you ever ask me out on a date?” she asked.

Now that was an interesting question. It was interesting because it had a multitude of answers. Some of those answers I thought would be obvious to her. I tried one of them first.

“Well, you’re two years younger than me,” I started out.

“So is Mandy Peters, and you took her out,” she came back immediately.

That was true. I had asked Mandy out. She was a Freshman cheerleader and I had the hots for her. She drew the line at kissing, though. She had an older sister who had gotten pregnant right out of High School and the father had taken off and joined the Army. She didn’t want to have anything to do with anything that could remotely make babies. As it turned out she was the one who broke up with me, because she fell in love with a football player. Five months later she was walking around with a swollen belly. Life just isn’t fair that way.

“Okay, then, you’re one of Claire Bear’s friends,” I said.

“So is Tiffany Baldridge, and you took her out,” shot back Donna.

That, too, was true, though Tiffany was a year older than them and wasn’t in the posse. She and Claire had dance classes together and she’d come over a few times, but when the dance classes were done they didn’t hang around each other much. She had actually asked me to a dance at school - the annual Sadie Hawkins dance - and we’d had a lot of fun. She liked to have her breasts fondled, and she had really nice breasts, which I liked fondling, so it had worked out pretty well. But she wanted to do more, and, because she wanted to do more, she broke up with me because she actually didn’t want to do more. That was what she told me when she said we couldn’t go out any more.

Who understands teenaged girls?

“But she’s not in the posse.” I argued.

“So being in the posse means you won’t ask any of us out?” she asked in that tone that meant it wasn’t a real question.

“I guess. It would just seem ... odd,” I said.

“But having sex with us isn’t ... odd.” Her voice was level, but I could hear heat in it.

I was trying to make her feel better, but it was making me feel worse somehow. And I definitely smelled danger in this conversation.

I fell back on another answer I’d thought of. It was one that I was afraid would get me in trouble, but it was all I had left.

“I’ve always thought you were cute, and if I’d have taken you out I’d have tried to get in your panties, and if that didn’t work out then you’d have been mad and still coming over to see Claire and it would have been all awkward. Or it might even have broken up your friendship with Claire.” I let that drop into the semi-silence of a spring afternoon. I could hear a lawn mower off in the distance somewhere.

Donna brushed the hair behind her shoulder and I could suddenly see her whole face. “Is that true?” she asked. “Is that the real reason you never asked me out?”

We had been talking about why I hadn’t asked her out for ten minutes, and I just that second realized that she’d wanted me to ask her out ... and I never had. Us guys can be dense like that sometimes.

“Uh ... yeah, I guess it is.” I said. I wouldn’t have believed me if I’d been hiding in the bushes listening to this conversation.

But she did.

“And the others? Is that why you never asked any of us out?”

I was in trouble. If I answered “Yes” then that meant I’d lusted after all of them at one time or another. That was actually true, except for maybe Robby. But you didn’t admit that to a girl who you’d just admitted to lusting after. Right?

On the other hand, if I answered “No” then that meant I didn’t think her friends were all cute and that there were some of them I didn’t lust after, which meant I was a pig because they were all her friends. Right? Plus I had agreed to have sex with them.

Now you know why teenaged boys don’t want to enter into serious conversation with girls. It’s too much like taking a stroll in a mine field.

I came up with something brilliant. “I think I never seriously considered asking any of you out because it might cause problems. I didn’t want Claire to be mad at me, and I didn’t want any of you to be mad at me, so it was easier just to keep things ... you know ... on a simpler level. I guess I like all of you and don’t want to mess that up.”

She looked at me with those green eyes of hers and said, “If you’re lying I’ll cut your balls off. You want to go swimming?”

Girls can do that. They can deliver the most dire threat and then say something completely innocuous in the same tone of voice so that you almost think there was no threat there at all. You think you must have misunderstood them. But somehow I knew that Miss September owned a knife, or knew where to get her hands on one. I envisioned a filleting knife, one of those long thin ones that are extremely sharp. At the same time, she wasn’t trying to leave any more. That would have gotten me in trouble with Claire, no doubt, so things were better. Right?

“Sure.” I said. “Let me go get Claire.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Just you and me. Down at the creek.”

Damn. I’d stepped on another mine. It was one of those that doesn’t go off until you let the pressure off, and I was standing right on top of it.

“Okay, but if I get in trouble you have to back me up,” I said.

“Deal,” she said. She stood up, and for the first time, I saw she had a rolled up towel in her hand. Inside it was, no doubt, her bathing suit. She’d brought it with her.

“You already have your suit.” I was a master of pointing out the obvious.

“It was Claire’s idea. She planned on having you take us - her and me - down to the creek. I got the idea you and I were supposed to fool around when we get there. She’s impatient with me because I don’t want to do this. But having Claire there would creep me out. I’ll go with just you, except I’m not so sure about the fooling around part, okay?”

“Okay” I said, not at all sure that this was a good idea.

“Just get your suit and a towel and some suntan lotion,” she said. “And don’t tell Claire what you’re doing.”

Who would say “no” to Miss September?

Fifteen minutes later I was strolling along beside Miss September, three blocks from home ... and Claire ... heading for the creek.

“Creek” is probably the wrong word for where we were headed. Everybody called it that, but it was lots bigger than a creek. It wasn’t quite a river though, and if it had a real name I don’t know what it was. Everybody called it Turkey Creek, because there were wild turkeys in the woods around it. There were two bends in Turkey Creek where it went by our town. One was an accepted swimming hole, with a rope swing, and a little broken down dock you could jump off of. The water there was probably eight or nine feet deep and that’s where most of the kids went to play and swim if they didn’t go to the city pool. It cost fifty cents to go to the city pool, which sometimes made the difference.

The other bend was flanked on one side by dense woods, and the other by old Mr. Jenkins’ hay field. It had all manner of signs warning trespassers to stay away, but Mr. Jenkins was probably eighty and never came down there unless he was on a tractor. You could hear that a mile away. The water there was only about four feet deep and the bottom had that kind of mud that squishes between your toes and you have to actually scrub at it to get your feet clean when you’ve been wading in it. It was good for lying on the grass to dry off and do some sunbathing, but most people didn’t actually swim there.

That’s where Donna wanted to go.

It was probably only seventy-five degrees, and the water was really cold still, so while we went in and waded around for a little while, we didn’t spend long in there. Then we lay out on the towels. Donna had on a two piece swimming suit that was greenish blue and had pictures of fish on it. It was styled about like a pair of bra and panties, but the fish spoiled the illusion. She lay down on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows.

We had been talking about nothing in general. You know, how nice the weather was, and how gooey the mud was between our toes, and whether there were fish in the creek, and whether they would bite if there were. Just stuff. When I lay down beside her though, that changed.

“You know I went and found that magazine,” she said. “The one you said had the woman in it you named me after.”

It was hard enough for a boy to get his hands on a Playboy in those days. I couldn’t imagine how a girl did. “How in the world did you get one?” I asked. Not “What did you think of her?” or “You’re just as pretty as she is.” It was a practical question, and guys are practical, even when we shouldn’t be.

“Well ... actually ... I told my mother about it and she brought the magazine home for me to look at,” she said.

Now Donna could have told me that little green men from Mars had just landed behind me and were about to zap me with a Buck Rogers ray gun and I would not have been more astonished. Her mother bought a Playboy? To show her fourteen year old daughter?!

“Wow.” was all I could manage. Then I blurted “You told your mother?!“

Donna laughed. “Of course I did. I didn’t know whether to be mad or flattered. My Mom’s grown up so I knew she’d know what to tell me. She laughed about it first. She likes you. She said it had to be a compliment, but she’d never seen a Playboy either, so she went to the comic book store to get it.”

Us kids all call it the comic book store, because they have a whole line of comics. But they also sell all kinds of magazines, both new and used. They have used Playboys there, and some other girly magazines but no kids ever get to see them. The place is owned by Mr. Johnson who has three kids in grade school.

“Mom said that Mr. Johnson about had a cow when she asked for the Playboy. She said it was worth the dollar just to see the look on his face when he handed it to her.”

I had a vivid vision of Donna’s mother, who was a beautiful woman in her own right, standing in the comic book store holding out her hand for a girly magazine that Mr. Johnson kept behind the counter so that us boys wouldn’t be corrupted by looking through it. Of course he had undoubtedly looked through it, quite thoroughly, and was now having to hand it to a woman. I laughed at what must have been going through Mr. Johnson’s mind.

“Wow” I said again. “That’s amazing.”

“Why is it so amazing?” asked Donna. “If men can look at naked women, why can’t anybody else?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems weird, I guess.” It was a philosophy I could get used to though. I thought about sitting around with a bunch of girls and looking at pictures of naked women. That might actually be interesting. It was one of those completely new ideas - something you never had a glimmer of a thought about before - that hit you right in the middle of the forehead and knocked you off course.

“So what did you do then?” I asked.

“We opened it up and looked for the woman named Donna. She was in the middle and her picture opened out and was real long.”

I knew that. I’d looked at the same picture. I was entranced now with this story.

“So what did you think?” I asked.

“I thought you were an idiot,” she said calmly. “I didn’t look anything like that woman. She was all beautiful and sexy and ... well she was beautiful.”

“You’re wrong.” I said firmly. “You look so much like her that she could be one of your relatives.”

“I thought she looked like my mother, not me.”

I disagreed. Mrs. Miles had blond hair with reddish highlights, not dark red like Donna. Of course her breasts were larger and her hips too, and she had that hour glass figure that the woman in Playboy had, but I had superimposed Donna’s picture over the Bunny’s picture for so long I couldn’t see anyone else.

“What did your mother say?” I asked.

“She told me it was too bad we were so young,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“She said ‘Donna, honey, it’s too bad you two are so young. He’s going to make a good catch for some girl some day.” Donna sighed. “And then she said you’d paid me a very nice compliment. She also said she might have a talk with your mother about older boys making compliments like that to younger girls.”

My mother had never said anything about it. I wondered if Mrs. Miles had actually talked to her. I was distracted by a thought that landed in my brain.

“So, if she said it was a compliment ... and it was, by the way ... why did you always get mad when I called you that?”