Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (14 page)

“He’s your mortal enemy.”

“Dothan cheered when John Kennedy died. He rubbed our faces in the snow.”

“He told me he’s sorry. He was jealous when he saw you sitting with me. He’s liked me since the fifth grade.”

“Do you like him, as in boys and girls the right way.”

She came toward me. “That’s not the point. Dothan’s sixteen and can drive a car. We could double with you and Chuckette sometime. You need to get out and meet people.”

“Me and Chuckette.”

“She’s got a lot of personality.”

***

In my room we undressed quietly so as to not wake Lydia.

“You remember when Delores was saying she gets wet just from talking about doing it?” Maurey asked.

“Kim Schmidt tore this T-shirt in gym a couple of weeks ago. Look at that.”

“I think I know what she means. I was reading
Lolita
and there was this part where a real old man and a girl went to the edge of doing it.”

“Perfectly good shirt. I look like a hobo.”

“Then the author skipped like they all do, but now I know what happened next. And I got kind of excited.”

“You’re wearing a bra.”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it, Sam. If you make a big deal I’m going home.”

“Do you need a bra?”

“A young lady of sexual experience must be aware of certain things.”

“If you’re doing it, you should wear a bra whether you need one or not?”

“I need one. Or I will soon. Look at that.”

“Where?”

“Don’t be a doof, Sam.”

“Let’s stand side by side next to the mirror and see if your chest sticks out more than mine.”

We tried and Maurey was right. She did have breasts. The one on the right was a tad bigger than the one on the left. We moved to the bed.

“What’s this?” Maurey asked.

“A mole.”

“You sure it’s not cancer.”

“If it turns black and falls off it’s cancer. Right now it’s just a mole.”

“Does it hurt if I touch it?”

“I don’t think so. It feels kind of neat.”

“Touch me there.”

“Can we kiss this time? It seems weird to learn all this stuff about doing it and not learn how to kiss.”

“Have you ever kissed a girl? Move your fingers in a circle now.”

“Of course I’ve kissed girls. Loads.”

“I bet you haven’t. I bet you got screwed before you got kissed.”

“I have too kissed girls.”

“Let’s see if you can kiss. Only no getting syrupy. It’s only practice.”

I went in for what seemed like a Rock Hudson-Doris Day knock-your-socks-off smacker.

Maurey said, “Open your mouth, for Chrissake.”

“Let me try again.”

“Stick out your tongue this time.”

“Right.”

***

“Not like that. Move it around some. Softer, like a lick, not like you’re mad at somebody. Pretend you’re down there only the crack goes sideways instead of up and down.”

“Where’d you learn so much about kissing?”

***

“That one was better, only less suction and open your mouth even wider. Try to touch as much of me at once as you can.”

“I bet you’ve kissed Dothan Talbot lots of times.”

“It’s time for you to make me wet now.”

“But I’m enjoying this. Can’t you get wet this way?”

“I’m tingly. I want to see what it feels like with your tongue. Try licking your way down.”

I did Maurey’s neck and the little brown bull’s-eye tits, right first, then left. It was kind of fun, like feeding on a pool table. I played in her belly-button hole awhile until she pushed me down lower. Her breathing was different, faster.

“You’re gonna be good at this someday,” Maurey said.

“I’m good at it now.”

When I finally licked down to the taco shell, I went way to the bottom and deep for a few seconds, then up to the top where Mom had shown us the magic spot. By listening to Maurey’s breathing, I could tell what was what—when to go up or down or around, when to put on more pressure or less. I must have been at it a good while because I went into a neat Hayley Mills fantasy.

“Oh, Sam, you make me so wet. I’m nothing but a sponge under your lips.”

“Oh, Hayley Mills.”

“Oh, Sam Callahan.”

It sunk in that Maurey’s breath had jumped a pitch. Her back was arched against me and her fingers dug at my ears.

“Had enough?” I asked.

“Stop now and I’ll kill you.”

Then she went louder and moved into audible peeps. I put on some more pressure and Maurey went nuts. Made painful noises and scratched my one ear. Her spine came way up high, banged her magic spot against my teeth, then she fell back deadlike.

I stopped. “Did I hurt you?”

“Holy moley.”

“Maurey. I think we did something wrong.”

“Holy moley.”

“Can you move?”

“Come here, Sammy.”

I crawled up the bed and she put her arm around me. I lay in the hollow under her collarbone, next to her little tit. It felt nice, like maybe we were really dating now and not just practicing.

“What happened?” I asked.

“My body blew up.”

“That’s peculiar.”

“I wonder if I messed something up, like maybe I can’t have children anymore.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around, maybe we made you pregnant and that was the baby being made.”

Maurey went quiet. I put a hand on her tummy, where I imagined the explosion had created a new kid. “I better go talk to Lydia,” she said.

“She’s asleep, unless all that noise woke her.”

“She can tell me if anything like this ever happened before. Maybe it’s normal.”

“Maybe all women blow up when they fuck.”

“I don’t see how what I just did could be normal.”

“Mom’ll know, she’s experienced.”

Maurey started to slide off the bed. I sat up and grabbed her arm. “But I haven’t put it in yet.”

She friend-kissed my cheek and held my thing, “It’ll keep.”

“I’m ready to get off now.”

“This is important, Sam. Your thing will keep.”

***

The special that night at the White Deck was navy beans and hamhock with cornbread. I’d never had beans before we came to Wyoming. Lydia considered beans peasant food and worried about gas. The gas worry might have been for real. Personally, I was a kid, I looked forward to farts, except in class. Anyone who farted in class might as well commit suicide right there for all the bile that was heaped on him.

Lydia had a steak. She was trying to lose weight, although she didn’t tell anybody but me, and she’d decided to become a meatatarian. She went over a month on meat, Dr Pepper, and coffee—lost seven pounds, but gained it back again as soon as she returned to normal person’s food.

“Did Hank call?” she asked.

“You know he did. He called four times while you were pretending to be asleep.”

“I never pretend anything.” Lydia inspected her teeth in her knife. She was really paranoid about talking to someone with a chunk of meat hanging out. Dot came by to refill our coffee.

“I hear you’re going to Charlotte Morris’s party,” she said.

Lydia kind of arched an eyebrow at me. She’d never heard of Charlotte Morris.

I looked down at cold beans. “Guess so, I’ve never been to a party out West. What happens?”

“Same things as a party out East. Records and games where you get flirty with girls other than your date. You’ll probably end up in a closet with someone. That always happened to me.”

“Never happened to me,” Lydia said.

“That’s where Jimmy and me kissed the first time, Annabel Watkins’s front-hall closet. She’s Maurey’s mother now. Jimmy kissed me and I like to died. We went steady for seven years, then graduated and got married. You want pie, it’s lemon.”

I smiled and Dot took that as a yes. Lemon pie is good but I scrape off the meringue. I’m not into meringue.

Dot brought my pie while Lydia sipped on her third cup of coffee. No wonder it took a pint of Gilbey’s to put her under at night.

“So you got Maurey off today,” Lydia said.

I shaped the meringue into a little snowman with my spoon. “I guess so. We didn’t know what it was when it happened.”

“It was a female orgasm. Females who don’t get them lead sad and cheerless lives.”

“It seemed a lot different from a male orgasm.”

“As different as ice cream and gin.”

“Why do they use the same word?”

As with any question she can’t answer, Lydia ignored me. “Maurey’s life will never be quite the same again. It’s like hearing music for the first time.”

“Do you think she’ll like me now?”

Lydia did an eye squint at me, then went back to her coffee. “She’ll always have a warm spot in her heart when she thinks of you.”

“Is that the same as romantic liking?”

“No. Giving orgasms will make you popular, but it won’t get you loved. You’re lucky. Being popular is more fun.”

“I’d rather have her like me.”

Lydia lit a Tarreyton. “Here’s the deal, Sam. If you sleep with a girl, and afterwards she still likes you as a friend”—Lydia did body language quotation marks with her hands on “as a friend”—“then she’s always going to like you as a friend and she’s never going to like you as a lover and there’s nothing in the hell-bitch world you can do about it.”

I considered this over my pie, which really was good, by the way. Good lemon pie goes to those front-of-the-tongue taste buds and dances. It didn’t seem fair that there are two ways of liking someone and girls have total control over which way things happened. Why didn’t I have a say in the deal? I didn’t know if I wanted to grow up and marry Maurey, but I wanted to hold hands with her on the street or buy her a Valentine card or tell the guys in gym class I had a girlfriend.

Unlike the books, fucking or not fucking didn’t seem to have any say in which of the two ways a girl liked a boy. Chuckette Morris liked me the right way and we’d never spoken over six words to each other, but Maurey didn’t and I’d given her an orgasm.

“What’s a female orgasm feel like?” I asked Lydia.

She took a lung-killer hit on her cigarette, as if she fully intended to smoke the whole thing in one big suck. When she exhaled I felt lost in a Hollywood fog machine.

“There are certain things one sex should keep secret from the other.”

“Come on, Lydia, Maurey first said her body blew up, then she said it didn’t. Is it a spaz thing like mine?”

“It’s more like being underwater and your body expands in every direction at once.”

“Is this literal or metaphorical?”

Dot came over to drop off the check and Lydia asked her. “Sam wants to know what an orgasm feels like.”

Dot went into Jell-O–jiggle laughter. “I swear, I never know what’s going to come out of you two’s mouths. Ya’ll are as entertaining as TV.”

Lydia took that as a compliment.

Jackie Gleason waddled up to the podium and blew into the microphone. The immense crowd at the Wyoming State Fair rustled and grew quiet as wind over the prairie. Mr. Gleason turned sideways so he could see the three women and speak into the mike at the same time.

“Have the judges reached their decision?”

Hayley Mills, Doris Day, and Maurey Pierce all nodded simultaneously.

“The envelope please.”

Doris Day stood and handed the paper to Mr. Gleason. Her eyes were glazed and her forehead the most relaxed it had been since babyhood.

Mr. Gleason opened the envelope as he swung back to the crowd. “And the winner of the Wyoming State Fair blue ribbon for orgasming women is,” the crowd held its collective breath, “Sam Callahan.”

Yea!

As Sam made his modest way to the stage, a band broke into “Semper Fidelis” by John Philip Sousa and the Cheyenne JayCees’ fireworks display lit the air. The crowd went wild with enthusiasm.

Sam shook Mr. Gleason’s hand and accepted the award. Then he turned to the judges and smiled. At the sight of Sam’s tongue, Doris Day passed orgasm again.

***

Having never made out or even kissed before Maurey came along, I only knew one way to do it and that caused me some grief at Chuckette’s teen party. Grief isn’t exactly the word. I didn’t care enough for that. More like unpleasantness in an ugly way.

It ended up in the closet just like Dot said it would. Dot comes off as a pleasant ding, but whenever she says something will happen it generally does.

I was about ready to throw up, watching Dothan and Maurey flirt. He came dressed in black corduroys that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. He had on this jeans jacket with his shirt not tucked in so the tails flapped around like tabs on the front and back. I hate that. Maurey couldn’t say a sentence without touching him and he couldn’t say a sentence without her flying off into laughter.

She looked good too. Her eyes were brighter and her breasts seemed to be growing by the day. It was Saturday and every Saturday Annabel drove over to Idaho Falls for the AAUW bridge club, so we’d got in the routine of practicing on Saturday mornings while Lydia was off doing something wholesome on a snowmobile with Hank.

I spent that morning in bed with her but Dothan got the date. What a gyp. Maurey and I about had the practicing thing down. We’d discovered there’s more to it than boy-on-top. As long as this stuck to that, you could wander all over the room—the thrill of the odd position. Maurey even got off again, a lot quicker this time. My jaw didn’t feel like I’d chewed eight pieces of Topps baseball card gum.

We French kissed a long time afterward and I liked that just fine, better than the actual humping.

“You disappeared,” Maurey said.

“I’m right here with you.”

“Every now and then your eyes go away and your mind leaves the room. I feel as if I’m somebody else to you.”

I rolled off her but stayed where I could see her face. “I make up stories sometimes.”

“Like Mark Twain?”

“I guess. If I can’t be a baseball player, I’d like to be a writer someday.” I’d never told anyone, not even Lydia, that one. I couldn’t believe the stuff I exposed to Maurey. I mean, I didn’t know her that well outside of the sack.

“When you’re with me, you should pay attention.”

“Are you really going to this dumb party with Dothan?”

She sat up. “It’s impolite to give me a hard time while I’m still glowing from an orgasm.”

“Glowing from an orgasm? Where’d you hear that?”

“Redbook. It was a test. And, yes, I’m going with Dothan and you’re going with Charlotte. It’ll be good for you to watch me with him, keep you from getting attached to me.”

“But I’m already attached to you.”

“We can’t practice anymore if you get attached.”

“Okay, I’m not attached. I don’t give a hoot for you.”

She didn’t care either way. “Orgasms make me nauseous. Isn’t that weird?”

“Did you ask Lydia about that?”

Maurey leaned back on her shoulders to pull on her panties. “Just don’t be squirrelly around Chuckette. This is your big chance to get a girlfriend.” Maurey had a beautiful back.

***

Five hours later we played this idiot game where each girl writes down a name from the first four books of the New Testament and the boys say which one we’d like to be and when there’s a match, the guy and girl go in the closet for five minutes of timed fun. Biblical necking.

The damn game was rigged. Every girl there got the boy she’d picked out ahead of time. There were four couples: Kim Schmidt and LaNell Smith, this guy and girl from Jackson named Byron and Sharon, and us. Sharon had long blonde hair and, coming from Jackson, had everyone swamped in the sophistication deal. Chuckette sucked up to her like the Sharon stamp of approval was the last thing in parties. LaNell looked slightly lost without LaDell there to giggle with. She and Kim didn’t pass two words with each other outside the closet. I bet nothing happened inside either.

Maurey went first and I said “Luke” because I knew she liked Little Luke on
The Real McCoys
, but Dothan said “John” and got her. They either set it up or she knew he could only remember one book of the Bible. As they were stepping into the closet, Dothan grinned at me and winked—I could have shot his leg off—and as they came out, Maurey smiled at me. God knows why.

In between Chuckette went on about the fondue and 7-Up.

“Try dipping a piece of cauliflower, Sharon. I don’t eat hard vegetables on account of my retainer, but I know they’re good. We bought the fondue pot in Yellowstone Park.” Sharon looked at the cauliflower distastefully without touching it. The fondue pot had a spouting geyser on one side and some little bears following their mother.

Sharon was at least as beautiful as Maurey, who was in the closet. And LaNell wasn’t all that bad when she kept her mouth shut. The truth is I was more attracted to every girl at the party than I was to Chuckette, which is kind of sad because when she wasn’t sucking up to Sharon she was sucking up to me.

“Want some more 7-Up?” she asked.

“Okay.” Out of pity, I dipped some cauliflower in the melted Velveeta. I always feel like crap when I do something out of pity.

“Do you like ‘Dominique’ by the Singing Nun?” Chuckette asked. “It’s number-one on every station.”

I nodded and Sharon sniffed. Byron spent the whole party inspecting his boots. Kim and LaNell sat on the couch with paper plates on their laps. Neither one looked at anybody or said anything, except once when Kim did his barfing-dog imitation.

“I think Dion is gross,” Sharon said.

Chuckette and I agreed immediately.

“Gross,” said Chuckette.

“Gross,” I said.

LaNell coughed politely.

Since the whole valley seemed to have me fated for Chuckette Morris, I’d gotten the lowdown from Maurey. Chuckette didn’t have a tremendous amount to look forward to after the seventh grade. Her father, Don, worked for the phone company. Jackson already had dial phones and the outlying areas would follow by spring.

Don Morris once sent an entire paycheck to Oral Roberts. The family had to live on Wheaties and potato chips for a month. Chuckette had a younger sister named Sugar, who was destined to take everything Chuckette ever got away from her. Even at the party, Sugar hung around on the periphery of the action, going through the stack of 45 rpm records and telling Chuckette which ones mattered. I wanted to see Sugar naked.

Chuckette’s turn at the game came and we both said, “Mark.” The last thing I remember before they closed the door was Maurey looking at me from the back of the group. She held her fingers up in an A-Okay sign. Or maybe it was something dirty, I don’t know. I’d hoped she might be a little bit jealous.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Chuckette asked. Girls are all the time asking me that question. What do I look like anyway?

I nodded but it was way black and she couldn’t see my head. A tiny crack of light came under the door, enough so the penny in one of her loafers reflected a brassy color.

“Have you?” I asked.

“Lots. At church camp last summer three boys kissed me in one night. Deacon Saltzer said they would go to hell.”

“You told the deacon?”

“I can’t lie. If I lied he would have sent me to hell.”

“What’s hell like?”

“Are you going to kiss me or not? We’ve only got five minutes.”

“I don’t want to go to hell.”

“I was twelve last summer. I’m thirteen now. It’s okay to kiss when you’re a teenager.”

“Where’s your face?”

In the dark, Chuckette’s face seemed almost regular. She didn’t have pimples or zits or anything weird like that. Those would come later. I took her by the shoulders and kissed. The poor girl had nothing worth squat in her life, and I felt bad because of that, so I gave her a real kiss. Heck, I admit it, I got into the deal some. I’d never kissed anyone except Maurey, and Chuckette’s lips felt different. They were stiffer. The only weird part was when I touched the retainer.

Chuckette put out a little scream and bit my tongue. I yelped and jumped back, banging into the door. Voices came from outside the closet.

“What’s going on in there?” from LaNell, “Go get ’em, Sammy,” from Maurey, and Dothan, “No copping feels.”

Chuckette kind of whimpered. “That’s disgusting.”

“It was a kiss.”

“With your tongue out? It’s all wet.” We were flattened against opposite walls of the closet, as far away from each other as we could possibly be—about ten inches.

“Is that how people kiss back East?” she asked.

“Sure.” I didn’t know but I had to convince her I was normal and she wasn’t.

“Your mouth was open.”

“That’s how you do it, Charlotte.”

“That’s not how Southern Baptists do it.”

When I leaned to the right, a hanger bonked me in the forehead. My tongue felt stung. I didn’t know if I was bleeding or not and I sure couldn’t go back to the party with red dribble on my chin. I felt around until I found a coat or something and blotted my face and tongue.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Waiting for our five minutes to end.”

Chuckette started sniffling, as if she were trying to hold back tears. When I didn’t do anything, she sniffled a good honky one.

“What’s the matter?”

“The party’s ruined.”

“The party’s ruined because I gave you a French kiss?”

“Is it Eastern or French? Make up your mind.” I didn’t say anything so she kept talking between sniffles. “Daddy said it would end like this.”

“Crying in the closet?”

“He said boys would try to get me passionate so they could make me pregnant and ruin my life and make me go to hell.”

“You don’t sound passionate to me.”

She sniffed a few more times and blew her nose on something. “I wasn’t ready that time. Let’s try again.”

***

When I came home I found the toaster oven in the front yard. Someone had evidently stood on the porch and heaved it. I picked up the screen deal you put the food on, but left the rest.

The first I noticed when I went inside was a pair of toilet paper tubes up Les’s nostrils. Lydia’s voice came from the kitchen. “When was the last time you did something spontaneous? Just cut loose regardless of the consequences?”

Hank’s voice answered. “Every action has consequences.”

“You’re an Indian. Indians are supposed to get drunk and be stupid.”

“If I’m stupid I go to jail.”

I walked in the kitchen to find Lydia sitting at the table, rolling eight or nine eggs under her hands. Evidence of several more were splatted on the floor at Hank’s feet. Alice lapped at the mess. I set the screen from the toaster oven in the sink.

“Hi, Mom, I’m home.”

She sent me the look and rolled an egg slowly off the side of the table. It went into a slow motion effect as it fell, then it made a
pop
sound and blew up. The yolk didn’t break.

Hank sat in the other chair with his hands on the varnished wood tabletop, his thumbs touching each other. “When you’re stupid, you get shipped off to live with the common people for a few months. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is you might lose your trust fund.”

Lydia rolled another egg off the edge.
Pop.
I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “Either you guys want one?” They didn’t look at me.

“I wish just once you’d do something you hadn’t planned to do,” Lydia said.

I opened my pop and sat on the milk crate to listen. It took ten minutes of back and forth to figure the situation, but near as I can tell, they’d gone with Delores and Ft. Worth to a new pizza place outside Jackson and Delores and Lydia got in a vicious fight about how many glasses of beer come in a pitcher.

Hank didn’t back up Lydia with enough enthusiasm, or maybe he took the what-does-it-matter stance. Anyhow, he’d failed her and Lydia didn’t cut slack when men failed her.

“You’re passive as wet toast,” Lydia said.

“Who sat on her couch for three months, refusing to accept where she was.”

“Who lives in a twelve-foot trailer with a kitchen table that makes into a bed.”

“I do.” Hank’s face had gone rock. I was impressed.

“I’m not about to spend my life waiting for free-cheese day at the county extension office,” Lydia said.

“Who asked you to?”

“You are beneath my dignity.”

Hank reached across the table. I thought he was going to hit her and I think Lydia did too—she paled real quick. Instead, Hank swept all the eggs off in one swoop of the arm.

“Take your dignity and stuff it up your ass.”

Lydia’s color came back. “How dare you resort to violence in my house.”

Hank stood up, knocking his chair back. “You want spontaneous violence?”

“Let’s see it, big man.”

The distance between me and Hank’s head was about six feet. I figured if he lit into her, I could knock him cold with the Dr Pepper bottle before his second punch.

But Hank went indecisive. I saw it in his eyes. He knew she wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t take action and would hate him if he did. Typical Lydia positioning. He gave me a helpless look and left—didn’t even slam the front door. We sat listening as he started his truck and moved off down Alpine. Lydia stared at a spot on the wall.