Chapter 56: The Movie Racket

The alarm clock woke me at five to seven.

School day, shit! I hit the alarm shutting it off, get up and trudge to the shower. I heard my mother downstairs getting ready to head out to the office. I wondered if she'd still be by the time I got downstairs. Feeling guilty about letting her leave without saying good morning, I half stumbled down the stairs and greeted her with a peck on the cheek. It's obvious she was waiting for me and I appreciated it although I don't let her know. Hell she knows anyway.

"Could you reach in the fridge and get me that baggie of carrot sticks, sweetie?"

Of course I can, and do. I take a glass and fill it with milk. If Mom weren't there, I'd have drunk from the container, but she was, and I didn't want to piss her off.

She thanked me and started to leave, then turned back and kissed me on the lips. She had a run in her pantyhose, but I didn't mention it. It would bother me for the remainder of the day. I don't know why I did things like that, but I did, consistently.

I drove directly to the MacDonald's and joined Tim Battle and J. P. Pacillo, my center at a corner table. Through the window watched the girls passing by on their way to school as well as the occasional older woman, either stopping at MacDonald's for coffee, or going into the insurance company building next to MacDonald's. We talked about tits and asses, comparing them; and the others bragged about imaginary conquests. I never talked about my "conquests" and they knew it, and when I interrupted them, they knew without being told that I've "had" the girl in question and put an end to whatever they are speculating about her.

Bam-Bam Eddie Norton, my former left guard and now our middle linebacker joined us all fired up about a little chat he had with Coach Spagnitello earlier. Eddie wants to go to Notre Dame, it's his obsession, and the coach nurtures it almost daily to keep him on track, But from the coach's comments I doubt Notre Dame will be calling on him.

" ... that's what Coach told me," he was saying. J. P. gave him an irritated look as he bit into his sausage and egg muffin. Tim just grinned at me and said nothing as usual. He had a way of conveying the damnest things with a grin. I wondered if he did that with the girls too. But since we had never double-dated, I wasn't sure.

"Try not to take everything Coach says to heart, Eddie, he's always trying to motivate people. You know that," I said, looking him in the eye.

"Aw, I know, Bree ... but geez, he's got contacts, you know, and I want..."

"To go to Notre Dame," both J. P. and Tim said together.

That turned Eddie off. In the sudden silence Tim announced, "That's where they came up with the phrase 'dumb jock' — because of ideas like that!"

"Okay, okay!" I said quickly, wanting to cut off the fight that was about to occur in MacDonald's and get us barred from the place, possibly even suspended from school.

"He's only ragging you, Eddie, don't take it to heart."

"I don't like the way he kids," Eddie snarled.

"Water off a duck's ass," I said again hoping to quell his anger.

"Ain't a duck's ass, Bree," Tim said.

Everyone looked at the usually quiet wide receiver.

"It's a duck's back that all the water runs off."

"Who gives a shit?" Eddie snapped, but we could see that his anger was dissipating rapidly.

"Anyone study for the English test today?" I asked, knowing the answer beforehand.

"Naw," Eddie replied.

"What test?" J. P. asked as if a test were an alien topic.

"I ready," Tim said, and went on a spree using Ebonics, just to have fun with us white boys. "Mrs. Robbins flashed me yesterday. She gonna give me the answers and just maybe a little something extra."

"Get fucked, Battle," J. P. said.

"Thas right. She gonna maybe fuck me. I'll let you guys know when it happens too. Just to see the looks on yo faces."

Tim was really into his act now.

Eddie couldn't contain himself and asked, "How do you know this, bro?"

"Bro? You callin' me 'Bro' now? I knows you got a tan, man, but is you tryin' to pass?"

"No, I'm not trying to pass. Now what the fuck are you talking about? And try English, since that's what Mrs. Robbins teaches."

"I'm saying she flashed her tits at me yesterday, and it wasn't the first time she did it either."

"She really flashed you? I asked, going with the flow.

"Shit, yeah, she flashed me. Just lifted up her blouse, let me glom on her big titties."

"No she didn't," J. P. said.

"I swear she did. Just lifted her blouse and showed me everything. Lawd, but she's got these melons hanging there."

"She's old enough..." J. P. said, but stopped short of using the word 'Mother.'

"Two watermelons bouncing in a hammock ... and I am partial to watermelon. No racial remarks, please," Tim said and flashed his sparkling white teeth at us.

I was laughing. Eddie joined me, but J. P. hung back. He was thinking about the image of Mrs. Robbins actually showing Tim her tits. He seemed to relish the thought, and that kept me laughing longer than I would have otherwise.

"Tim Battle, you can catch the impossible pass, but in this case, you're a liar," I said, and tapped him playfully on the shoulder.

"Maybe so," he said laughing with us now, "But Shelly Summers showed me her ass last Wednesday."

That might have been true, and I made no comment on the subject, but J. P. bit again, and we were off on another entertaining tale from Battle, a man who could certainly make us laugh.

The following Saturday you'd have thought we lost the game the night before instead of winning it 23 — 20. But at the team meeting that morning, the Coach didn't seem to have noticed.

"You may not know it," he ranted, "but Faraday Prep has got the weakest offense in the District. Yet we gave 'em 20 points! And this week we come up against a real powerhouse in Jackson. Looks like we're gonna get plowed over."

I sat there; muscles stiff, my left shoulder ached from being sacked three times. There had been nothing wrong with Faraday's defense. Especially the two monsters that seemed capable of picking up and tossing aside Oringello and Lemingello Johnson.

Coach Spagnitello finally got around to our offensive lines play.

"Webster, you have too much coffee or Coke before the game? I counted two times you let that guy draw you offsides. Two! My God, all he had to do was twitch his nose, and there you go.

"And you guys have to give Morgenthall more time. My God, Lemingello, I counted four times it looked like you gave up to soon — let them skinny junior high school kids run right past you and half kill, Morgenthall here."

And that's the way our team meeting went. Then it was quiet for a moment, the only sound being that of the projector as it keep spinning the reel of last night's game.

"Right there!" Coach said, "Now that was a good effort Johnny Mack..." Coach paused, hit the rewind and watched Johnny Mack Brown repeat his 85 yard scamper into the end zone with what proved to be the game winning score.

"We got us a lot of work to do. And we start Monday. We gonna have us a good year. Yes sir, it's gonna be a good year."

Now, I'm going off track a bit, but this has to be put in somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. P. J. likes to tell a story on me in which he claims I went from being a good football player to a legendary one on a sunny day during P. E.

Some of us on the varsity were playing a game of touch, just jacking around. Our game and a softball game were kind of intruding on each another, and none of us were far from the high-jump pit.

I happened to catch a pass and was side stepping people. On my way to a touchdown, I scooped up a grounder between second and third in the softball game and threw out the runner at first base; then without breaking stride, I sprinted over to the high-jump pit and cleared the bar at 6-6. And then I trotted into the end zone. That evening I went on a double-date in Hayley's daddy's Cadillac, not only did I screw Hayley in the front seat, but I smooth-talked Jessie Von Broklin into giving Curtis a blowjob in the backseat while Hayley and I looked on. It really was a great day.

Oh, and only two days later, Hayley sweet-talked her into making a video with us that wound up making us $40,000. Oh, yeah, we were big time operators for a while there.

Many of the girls I encountered while playing quarterback were a hidden minefield of delight. Their expressions of arrogance intrigued me. Their manner of dress, which varied dramatically, always proved deceptive — underneath, the plump ones wouldn't be that plump, and the skinny ones wouldn't be that skinny. The fact of the matter was once I got beyond their icy glares and worked my way to the goal line with one of them, what I'd have on my hands was a squealing, back-clawing, lust ridden, talk-dirty-to-me, won't spill a drop, Nympho-acrobat.

It's a damn good thing for me that I was truly athletic.

Hayley and I were churning out two movies a week and that meant Saturdays and Sundays, since those were the only days we had to actually shoot the films. I, of course, had football practice everyday, with most games on Friday nights.

That left Hayley to set up things such as locations, (easier than one might think to accomplish) and extra cameramen, or women. (We found that some of the girls had greater artistic talent than the men who walked around with boners sticking out while working.)

Then Hayley suggested using a previewed script for the first time. It was a great idea and I knew it, but I must have had a weird look on my mug as I wondered just who was going to write these scripts.

Hayley grinned at me and said, "You look like somebody licked all the red off your lollipop."

"Well, yeah ... I mean who's gonna do it?"

"I've got two college guys, um; actually one of the guys is a girl. But they're English majors and they're into porn in a big way. I see no reason why they can't take a particularly good story and hone it down to something we find manageable."