Chapter 7: Winter 1988-89-2 Marcy

I installed an answering machine in my room because I didn't want to miss calls from Marcie. I enjoyed speaking to her and I got the impression the feeling was mutual. She loved to talk about football. She remembered plays I had made during the football season that I had forgotten and she knew every play that involved Press. She even made minor details that I didn't think very important, sound impressive. I wondered what their dates were like with her talking about sacks he had made and him wanting to get her in the sack.

I looked forward to Marcie's Saturday morning calls, but I didn't hear from her again until the end of Christmas vacation. It occurred to me that she waited to call until she was sure Cindy had come and gone.

"Are you ready to go back to school?" she asked. I told her I was.

"Did you get to spend much time with Cindy?"

I laughed.

"What's so funny?" Marcie asked.

"Why don't you come out with it? Why don't you say, 'did you get it on?'"

Marcie snickered. "Did you?"

"Actually, we did. But she kind of turned me off when she forgot my name."

"What do you mean?"

"She called me Otto," I said, hoping it wouldn't spread all over Speedwell that Cindy had called me Otto during a moment of passion.

"You mean? While you were ... you don't mean she called you Otto while you were... ?"

"Fucking? Yes," I said, amused at how Marcie couldn't bring herself to say it.

And that's how I discovered Marcie liked hearing about my sexual exploits. I stopped worrying about every girl at Speedwell learning that Cindy and I had spent four nights and one entire day together in my bed. I gave her blow-by-blow details that I would never have told a male friend. At times she exclaimed and at other times she asked me to repeat or elaborate on a minor detail. Somehow I knew I didn't have to warn her not to talk.

"Did you ask who Otto is?"

"No," I said.

"Do you think it's someone she knows?"

"Yes."

Marcie called again the next day, urging me to tell her more. Over the following weeks she got me to tell her about nearly every sexual encounter I'd ever had. It took three weeks to cover Ellen, Paula and Colleen, not necessarily in that order and our conversations were not limited to three telephone calls in the three week period. Marcie would often call back and leave a message on the machine. 'Did Ellen really, you know, do it without charging you?' 'What were Paula's exact words when you accused her of blackmailing you?' 'Poor Colleen, did she really let you eat her with Josh watching?'

I made two mistakes. One day when I was describing how interested Margaret was in what I was doing to Paula's pussy, I heard halted, raspy breathing at the other end of the line. "Marcie, are you playing with yourself?" I asked and immediately regretted saying anything when the line went dead.

Ten minutes later when she called back I apologized, saying it was none of my business what she may or may not be doing.

"For your information I'm really, really pissed at you for interrupting what was going to be very pleasurable," she said, merriment in her voice.

The second mistake happened shortly after the first. I was trying to think of a way to skip Alice and go on to the Baldwin sisters because I didn't think she would believe that Alice, who was ten years older than me, would call me one morning and suggest that we could help one another. Having been friends with Alice for nearly four years, I still could barely believe it myself. It occurred to me that information was only flowing one way. I was telling Marcie everything about my past sexual relationships; she was telling me nothing about hers.

"Has Press dipped his wick in your well yet?" I asked and heard the click at the other end.

Damn, why did I say it like that? Where did I ever hear that phrase, 'dipped his wick in your well' anyway?

I had to wait over thirty minutes for the phone to ring, but when she called she was laughing. I didn't need to apologize.

"Oldham, sometimes you can be so fucking crude it makes me want to throw up."

"I know. Crude is my middle name. I don't even know what 'dip his wick' means," I said, glad to hear she wasn't mad.

She wasn't mad, but she didn't tell me anything either. It was two weeks later before I got the answer to my question.

"Do you think I should?" she asked.

A young woman was asking me if she should give up her virginity to someone I hardly knew. Press Morgan was a year behind me at school and we played on the varsity team together. I liked him for the way he played, but I didn't know him.

"What does Press say?" I asked.

"What do you think?"

"He's urging you to do it," I said, laughing and she laughed too. "You're not ready," I gave my verdict based solely on something I heard in her voice.

"Thanks, Oldham, I owe you," she said, emphasizing 'owe' and dropping her voice at 'you'.

"I owe you more," I countered and this led to a ten-minute argument about who owed whom the most. She maintained that by dancing with her, I had brought her out of her shell, changing her from a shy, ugly wallflower to a popular girl with a new outlook. I argued that she had done more for me by sending her brother to change the Colonel's attitude toward me. When we hung up that day we were still saying, 'I owe you the most, ' until we were laughing too hard to continue.

At the end of the second quarter I was still ranked fifth in the senior class standings. All five of us made Captain and it was a given that Adam Corning would make Major at the end of the third quarter. He had become editor of the school newspaper. I had to pick an extracurricular class and I chose drama. Two plays were being jointly produced with the Speedwell drama club and meetings were commencing soon, although the productions were not scheduled for presentation until the spring. Marcie came to the first joint meeting of the drama clubs and when she said she wanted to do set design, I volunteered to help her. This gave us something to talk about on Saturday mornings besides my sexual conquests.

"Press is pressuring me. He says shit or get off the pot," she said when we talked.

"I'll speak to him," I said, decisively.

"No, he mustn't know I told you."

She was right. I suspected she had never told Press about our lengthy phone calls.

"Then you'll get off the pot," I said.

"Oh, Sammy, I hate to admit it, but you're probably right," she said.

"Hey, do you want to come to my birthday party? You can come home with me on Friday and we'll take you back to school on Sunday," I said.

"That would be so neat, sleeping over in your house."

"We could work on the set designs," I suggested.

She couldn't come for two nights, but her brother drove her to my house on Saturday morning. I was across the street in the park with Curtis when I saw the car stop in front of our house. I told Curtis I had to go meet the big man driving the fancy sports car. Bernard Cochran was cautiously friendly. He came into the house, met Mr. Oldham and Suzanne and insisted on carrying his sister's bag upstairs to the room she would be occupying. I showed him the room that Spence had used when he visited me the year before. He looked skeptically at the bathroom between Marcie's room and mine, checked the lock on her side of the door and mumbled something about the toy-soldier wallpaper in my room. I didn't think it was a good time to thank him for convincing the Colonel that I could be trusted, given that Bernard was clearly having doubts about my trustworthiness now.

"I told Bernie you're just like him, over-protective of me, but as you could see, he didn't believe me," Marcie said after her brother left.

"He knew he didn't have anything to worry about when he saw the wallpaper in my room," I said, making Marcie giggle.

We went to the park because Curtis was still there waiting for me. I introduced Marcie to him and watched them shake hands. She had let her hair grow long and was wearing it in pigtails. She had lost weight, but was still self-conscience about her looks. I told Curtis I was going to show Marcie around the neighborhood and invited him to tag along, but he rejected the idea, diplomatically saying he had seen the neighborhood.

It was the eighteenth of March, 1989 and although it was still jacket-weather, spring was right around the corner. I took her hand and began pointing out some of the landmarks. Marcie was impressed with the park, the running track, the tennis courts and the infamous cottages. She looked around, nodding her head like everything was the same as she had pictured from my many descriptions.

"Can I see the inside of one of the cottages?" she asked, wistfully. I told her that I didn't have the keys, but promised to show her the inside of one of the cottages later.

She had her hair parted at the center of her head and pulled back into pigtails, making her ears visible. "You're cute with your hair that way," I complimented.

She wrinkled her brow. "Do you really like it this way?"

"Yes."

"I like it long. I wear it in a pony tail when I run, but tonight I'll brush it out and you'll be surprised at how sexy I look."

"Does Press think you're sexy?"

I felt her grip my hand. She turned to me and smiled. "I think so," she said.

I pointed out where Alice's parents lived, where Dr. Koskowski and Ann lived and then we headed over to see the Baldwin house.

"I let him diddle me," she said, making me stop in my tracks. I looked down at her. She was watching me, waiting for a reaction, approval, disapproval, I didn't know. I was so stunned I couldn't speak. Talking on the phone was different. We could say anything and not see the other's reaction. Even the need for a long pause to regain our composure could be disguised. I felt her hand squeeze mine. "Do you know what that is?" she asked.

"I think so," I said.

"Are you sure? You don't sound very confident."

"I'm pretty sure I know," I said.

"That's what Press calls it. As you probably know, diddle is a verb. To diddle involves the boy's middle finger and the girl's pussy. Diddling is to insert the finger in the pussy and move it back and forth." Marcie finished the explanation and looked to see if I fully comprehended.

"That's what I thought it was," I said. We walked on in silence, Marcie contented with the way I had reacted to her meaning of the word.

I couldn't let her think she's shocked me. "Did he give you an orgasm?"

She broke away from me, jumping five feet before turning. What I saw was a mixture of horror, combined with excitement. Her face was flushed and her eyes blazing. She turned and her whole body shook before she regained self-control. "CLICK! Did you hear that? CLICK! This is where I hang up on you."

"I'll wait until you call back," I said, mischievously watching her body shake, obviously furious with me.

It took her five minutes to calm down, but when she turned her face was a mask. There was no residue of irritation, except for a faint blush that hadn't disappeared. She came up to me and spoke, sounding like she does when she calls back. "Oldham, if I didn't owe you so much I would never speak to you again."

I hugged her and whispered in her ear. "Well, did he?" She wouldn't say one way or the other, but she let me hold her for a moment.