Chapter 1

The world is full of little dangers. It's a little like trying to navigate a jungle, in which there are snakes, poisonous plants, patches of quicksand, unfriendly natives, and other things you want to avoid. When you move at a sedate, studied manner, you can look out for, and avoid most problems. It may take you a while to get where you're going, but at least you'll get there in one piece.

But sometimes, you can't move at a sedate, studied pace. And sometimes things get out of control.

That's what happened to Judith Tanner the year her father's football team won the Super Bowl.

To go back to that analogy of the forest - only for a little bit longer, I promise - it evolved that she ended up having to run through the jungle. Had there been only one problem to avoid, she'd have been fine. But there were many hurdles, and in trying to jump them, she ended up in the quicksand.

Hmm. My jungle analogy sort of slipped into a sports analogy. How about I just tell you what happened.

Judith Tanner, who never even thought about shortening her name to "Judy" until she graduated high school, was raised in a world that was, in many ways, much like that of other kids her age. Her parents were well off enough that she wanted for pretty much nothing. Except, perhaps, a normal childhood. How can I say her life was typical, but then turn around and say it was abnormal? Let me explain.

Judith was a single child, born to the unlikely match of an assistant football coach at a major university and the daughter of the president of that university. The assistant coach and the president's daughter did not plan to have a baby. Not at all. Neither did they plan to elope one night. But their romance was full of fiery passion, and that passion drove them to actions that they might not have taken, had they taken the time to think things out.

What complicated things was that she came from an old, very traditional Catholic family. He, on the other hand, was a protestant. In truth, he started out as merely a bit of rebellion, in her mind. But things got out of control, as they sometimes do.

Even then, had the parties involved actually wanted love to conquer all, things might have worked out. But her parents convinced her he was at fault for everything. Her parents took control, and the marriage was annulled. Naturally, the "wayward" assistant coach was fired, and sent packing.

That was before they knew she was pregnant, of course.

And, of course, being Catholic, they were stuck. Their religion forbade terminating the pregnancy, and her parents' pride prohibited allowing someone who actually wanted and would love the child to raise it. In a throwback to a time five or six decades in the past, Susan was sent away to live in shame with her aunt, until the baby was born.

Bob Tanner only found out he had a daughter by accident. It happened two years later when he ran into Ricky Temple, who he had worked with back in those days, and who, while having a couple of drinks with his old buddy said, "Who knew you'd knock up the daughter of the president of the fucking university?"

He inquired, of course, and was repulsed, of course, up to and including a restraining order. But Bob Tanner, of all the people involved, actually felt more for the little girl than anybody else. If she was his daughter, he was going to be in her life. And he knew how to hire a lawyer too.

It took six years before a court awarded him joint custody of his little girl. In the end, the mother's petition had only one non-negotiable part. It concerned the plan for the formal education of the girl, which the mother asked the court to decree.

The father, in turn, also had only one non-negotiable demand. That was that the girl would officially bear his last name.

The judge expected there to be resistance to both of these when she called the two parties into her chambers to discuss things. Oddly, while there was significant tension (it was the first time they'd seen each other since their marriage had been annulled) there was almost no disagreement. He said, "You can have her educated wherever you want, as long as she has my last name." She said, "Fine. My parents are embarrassed by her having our last name anyway."

The judge had them sign the papers, and that was that.

Judith was, as this unhappy drama played out, already attending St. Clementine's Academy, a parochial school that would take a girl from kindergarten all the way through an associate's degree. After that, she'd be accepted to any Catholic college to complete her education. Her mother's decision on this was the result of two things. First, the grandparents demanded that the girl be raised Catholic. But Susan would have done that anyway, based on a complicated ethos in which the putative stance was that women are weak, and will submit to the advances of an unscrupulous man. And since, in this ethos (also assumed to be fact) all men are unscrupulous, Susan chose the path for her daughter that would, at least in theory, insulate her as completely as possible from the male of the species.

This philosophy was a learned one. Susan was the product of Catholic schools herself. The nuns had taught her many things, among them things that the nuns hadn't actually intended to teach. The untrustworthiness of men was one of those things. "Facts" can be of two types: established ... and inferred. You can only warn a girl about the hazards of intergender relationships so many times before the message begins to take on undertones you might not intend it to have.

That said, some messages are quite direct, and one must give credit to Sister Mary Margaret, whose catch phrase for just about everything having to do with men was: "If you give them what they want, you'll end up as a slut!"

And, in truth, by the time Susan went out with the nice young man who worked for her father, she already knew exactly how easy it was to "give them what they want, and end up as a slut." While she told him she was a virgin, she was not. He was the first, however, to actually care about her, and that was absorbed by her lust-fogged brain, perhaps. It's probably why she suggested in a rush of emotion that they visit Reno. Bad judgment can happen to both people in a relationship. Booze helps, and when they tied the knot in a wedding chapel, Bob was pretty tipsy.

The explosion afterwards destroyed whatever budding romance there was. He was suddenly missing from her life, and she was convinced he would be gone forever. The pregnancy complicated things even more, and suddenly she was infused with the wisdom that would have prevented all this in the first place. Having learned her lesson the hardest way possible she found a school that would guard her own daughter until the girl was twenty-one, and believed that perhaps by then, little Judith might have the intelligence and will to continue avoiding men on her own.

There were "only" half a dozen or so problems with this plan. The first, and most obvious, was that while Susan might have been turned off to men by the events in her life, that didn't mean that her daughter would grow up turned off to men as well.

Then, while there may not have been boys in the schools Judith was sent to, that didn't mean there were no boys anywhere. So Judith knew boys existed. Next, the vast majority of her schoolmates had frequent interaction with boys, both at home and elsewhere. And it is true, just in case there is any doubt about it, that girls like to talk about boys. Especially when the boy is involved in something secret, sexy, dangerous or otherwise interesting. Such as seeing how far he can get with a girl wearing a Catholic school uniform.

In addition to the informal "crowd source" sex education sessions Judith attended, in little huddles of whispering girls, and secret gatherings in the unauthorized party room of the residence hall, there was also the formal sex education Judith Tanner received.

Susan wasn't aware of how progressive parochial schools had become since she went to one herself. The school she'd attended was in Hollyhock, North Dakota, which had both a minimum of extra boys hanging around, few opportunities to go home for a visit, and no hint of formal information involving how a baby was made. What the girls were taught there was "Sex is for making babies, and when you have sex, you will, in fact, make a baby. After you're married, of course."

In fact, over the years after Susan left school, Catholic schools had evolved into a social system that quite possibly provides one of the most comprehensive sexual education programs possible, even if it isn't in the official curriculum.

Which brings up another of the problems Susan wasn't aware would affect her plan.

Men were hired to teach the girls. And some men were quite willing to teach the girls much, much more than what was in the normal curriculum.

Not that Judith Tanner got nailed by any of her teachers. Some of them wanted to, of course. The sort that was willing to do that, actually ached to do it with Judith, because she was a genuine, qualified, make-your-dick-stand-up-and-salute stone fox from the time she was about fourteen. And she just got better looking as the years piled on. And Judith would have had to been blind not to notice the attention she got from the men she was exposed to. Even if it was silent attention. Remember, it is argued that seventy percent of all communication is non-verbal.

But Judith Tanner was one of those girls who knew what she wanted. Even when she wasn't sure what she wanted.

I know that sounds confusing. Perhaps it was more that, if she didn't actively want something, then as far as she was concerned, she didn't want it. She sort of had 'default positions' in her life. Like the first time she was offered a bottle, and a hit off the joint as it went around the circle of girls gathered in the candle-lit attic of Martin Residence Hall, after curfew. It was her first time at such a gathering. Some of her older classmates had decided it was time for pretty little Judith to join the crowd. She did, in fact, take a sip from the neck of the bottle of the Jim Beam, and decided immediately that she didn't care for it. But she wasn't stupid. After that, she put the bottle to her lips, tipped it up, plugged the tip with her tongue, and then shuddered and swallowed noisily as she passed it to the girl on her left. The joint she already knew she wasn't interested in, so she just said "I don't smoke." After the first time she passed it, the girl on her right passed it directly to the girl on her left and she never touched it again.

In this example we can see that she was politically astute, insofar as peer pressure affects social standing, and yet made her own decisions about things that could affect her life in momentous ways.

But you want to hear the story, so I'll just cut to the chase and say that, while Judith didn't have a chance to have any boyfriends, or get any sexual experience (with boys) while she was at school, that didn't mean that she was uneducated about the role men might someday play in her life.

There are two other things that must be said before we go on to explore what happened to Judith on the day her father's football team won the Super Bowl. One is that the primary male role models in her life were her father and the male instructors at St. Clementine's. They were the only males she spent enough time around to be affected by. The teachers were transient role models. Her mother was somewhat aloof, quite possibly because Judith reminded Susan of her original sin, so to speak. Her father, on the other hand, always lit up whenever he saw her. From him she got the hugs and nurturing that every child craves. All girls fall in love with their fathers, at one point or another.

Judith, basically, just stayed that way. She loved her daddy on a level no other man even approached.

The other thing is that she was fearless. It was a fearlessness based on self confidence, and an innate trust that she could handle whatever life threw at her. Of course she had no idea just how much life could throw at a young woman from a protected upbringing.

But about two and a half months after she turned seventeen, she was about to find out.

Bob Tanner was the youngest head coach of a professional football team in history. So of course he was the youngest head coach to get his team to the Super Bowl. Or for his team to bring with them to the Super Bowl. That was one of the things that made his team so formidable. He made sure they knew that it was their talent that had gotten them places. At the same time, they'd all been in the game plenty long enough to know that it took someone with real talent of his own to organize their talent, to end up as winners. He knew that too, of course. He just wasn't conceited about it.

Mutual respect is a very powerful asset.

In any case, emotions were running high as the day of the big event loomed closer and closer. The players were ready, and Bob Tanner and his assistant coaches were ready. They just wanted to be on the field, doing what they did so well.

Of course celebrations needed to be planned, in case they won. Actually, the celebration would take place either way. It would just be a hell of a lot more manic if they won. Even if they lost, though, they all still made a bundle, and any great plays would have been seen by millions. Careers could be made in a game like this, even if your team didn't win.

And it was, in fact, Bob's youth that caused him to assign the preparations for merry-making to the wrong guy. Well, maybe not the wrong guy, exactly. It was more that he didn't have the experience to give anywhere near enough guidance on what form said merrymaking should take.

The man he assigned was Tommy Hill, the assistant coach for strength and conditioning. In truth, Bob thought that asking Tommy to arrange the festivities was simply a reward for the man's hard work with the offensive line, which was routinely kicking ass all over the field. To that end, he said "Win or lose, Tommy, the guys will never forget this game. We need a party to go with that. Lots of champagne! It should start in the locker room, and keep going from there."

What he wasn't aware of was that Tommy had partied hard in college and, being unmarried, the only reason he didn't still party hard was because he had to be awake and functional at four in the morning every day.

So Bob had no idea that, in Tommy's mind, what you had to have with good champagne, was beautiful (and ideally naked) women to help the men drink it.

Chapter 2 »