Skipped Parts: A Heartbreaking, Wild, and Raunchy Comedy (10 page)

Maurey hit me lightly on the thigh. “That’s for whores. Good girls do it for free.”

“And bad girls do it for money?”

“Jesus, you’re naïve, Sam. This next paragraph Aarphy talks about making the high school girls ‘put out.’ I wonder what they put out. I always thought stuff came out of the boy’s body and went into the girl’s.”

***

We tried it lying down on the bedspread, first next to each other with her back to me, then next to each other with her facing me. Faced together, Maurey got the giggles and we had to stop.

***

“When Otis did it he got stuck.”

Maurey stopped giggling. “Jesus.”

“They were butt to butt and Otis looked unhappy, but the female was in a lot of pain, made an awful sound.”

“Nobody in a book ever got stuck.”

“Soapley dumped buckets of water on them, but they didn’t unstick for over two hours. Lydia wouldn’t leave the house while they were yowling.”

“What will we do if we get stuck? There’s no one to throw water on us.”

I couldn’t answer that one. My thing lost most of its stiffness and Maurey had to touch it with two fingers to bring it back.

***

I was hot and it just wasn’t working. “Look. You’ll have to spread your legs and I’ll have to lay in between them right on the tunnel. It’s never going to go any other way.”

“On top of me?”

“Sorry.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“One-twenty-five,” I lied, giving myself an extra ten pounds.

“How can I have a hundred twenty-five pounds on me. You’ll break my ribs.”

“Can you see any other way to do it?”

***

“I think you’re almost in. Maybe if one of us touched it, gave it a little guidance.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Sam, what are you doing?”

“Uh.”

“Sam, stop grinding.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sam.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh gross. You promised, Sam. You jerk, what if I have a baby now.”

I couldn’t answer. My mind had gone void. Maurey shoved me off and sat up. “Look at this gunk. That’s nowhere near a third of a cup. You promised you wouldn’t squirt and you lied about how much comes out. This is three tablespoons, tops, Sam.” She hit my chest. “You’re cross-eyed.”

I held one arm over my head. “That was fun.”

***

“We couldn’t have made a baby. None of it went inside.”

“I told you—no kissing, no squirting.”

“I discovered something, Maurey. The boy can’t control his squirt.”

“Look at that. How long before it gets stiff again?”

“Beats me, that was my first time. Do you think we lost our virginity?”

“I sure as hell didn’t.”

***

“This is hurting, Sam.”

“You’re too tight, are you certain we’ve got the right hole.”

“Your finger’s smaller. Try that.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Down lower, you’re way too high. Hold it, move up. You’re poking something.”

“This isn’t romantic, Maurey.”

***

“Stop grinding for Chrissake.”

“That’s the only way to force it in.”

“You’re on my hair.”

“It’s coming again.”

“Oh, hell.”

There was a long pause, then a quiet voice. “Smooth move, Ex-Lax.”

***

Maurey and I were back at the kitchen table, playing gin rummy and not speaking, when we heard Lydia charge in the door.

“Dibs on the John,” she called.

“Hell with that, honey,” another voice said, a raspy female voice. Then we heard a race across the living room followed by the crash of a slamming door and, “Shit. I’m gonna go in the kitchen sink if you’re not out in thirty seconds.”

“Someone’s with her,” I said to Maurey.

“Sounds that way.”

The voice in the living room muttered, “Crap it all anyway,” then a short woman all in white tromped into the kitchen. She stopped at the sight of us. “Maurey.”

“Delores. I heard you were on a roll.”

Delores was short—I’d say five foot even—and petite, but proportionately, she sported a huge set of breasts, way bigger than Lydia’s or Maurey’s. I’m talking out there. And she was dressed like a hooker doing a cowgirl fantasy—white pointy-toed boots, white skirt down to her upper thighs, a white fur vest, rabbit or weasel or something, over a white yoked shirt, and a white cowgirl hat with a peacock feather eye in the dead center. The skirt was held up by a black plastic belt and a turquoise rock of a buckle.

She was chewing gum, of course. “Maurey, hon, I won’t tell Annabel I saw you if you won’t tell her you saw me.”

“What’s in the bottle?” Maurey asked.

Delores’s right hand covered her mouth when she giggled. I’d have given whatever future I possessed to see her naked. “Turpenhydrate and codeine—good drink for when you’re ready to stop drinking.”

“Your turn.” Lydia came around Delores and into the kitchen. Delores whirled and ran.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Who?”

“Hi, Lydia. This is my friend Maurey from school. I told you about her before.”

Lydia opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “So you two are getting along now?”

I glanced at Maurey to see if this was true. Her eyes were on Lydia, I think admiringly. She was probably going through the same comparison-analysis I had when I met Annabel.

Lydia perched on the sink with one foot touching the floor. “Sam tells me your mother cuts the crusts off your sandwiches.”

Maurey looked down at the cards in her hand. “Only on holidays, or for company or something.”

“That’s okay. If my mom had cut off my crusts, things might have turned out better.”

There was a short silence that, as the host, I felt obligated to fill. “Things turned out okay anyway. I think. How was your party?”

“Fairly boring. Six drunk yahoos wishing four would go away so they could go manly on Delores and me. Thank goodness for numbers. Wasn’t a cowboy in the bunch had a full set of teeth.”

Delores tottered back in the room, adjusting something under her skirt. “God, I whizzed like a racehorse. I swear, you don’t buy beer, you only rent it.”

At the word
horse
Maurey and I exchanged a quick smile. It helped that each of us was related to one of the two drunks.

“Sam,” Maurey said, “meet my cousin, Delores. Ray’s looking for you.”

Delores unscrewed her little medicine bottle. “Hell, he found us. Him and a bunch of his logger buddies.” She took a swig. “They come busting in the door of this motel room, I didn’t tell you about the motel room, wanting to save my honor and haul me away, but Lydie’s friends…”

“Nobody was going to lose any honor in that scene anyway,” Lydia said.

“Speak for yourself. ’Nother hour I’d of figured a way.”

“Sure.”

Delores hit the codeine. “A fight ensued. Lydie and me escaped by the emergency ladies-only exit.”

“Bathroom window,” Lydia said. She looked very happy, and not really all that drunk. Her face was flushed and her eyes alive—although maybe she’d been at the codeine bottle herself. “That’s the fourth, no fifth time I’ve had to beat retreat out a can, and it’s always a blood pounder.”

“Always costs me a pair of hose.” Delores lifted her leg to show us. The rip in her nylons went right up past the skirt line. Maurey caught me following it up.

“I need a cigarette,” Lydia said.

From somewhere on her person, Delores pulled out a pack and tossed it. Lydia held the pack out to show me. They were Montclairs. “Look at this, honey bunny. Something’s come out since we left tobacco-land. Some new kind of menthol mixed with cigarettes. Tastes like they soaked the weeds in gasoline.”

She’d never said H-B in front of anyone before. I would have given anything for a gun. “They had that stuff before we left Carolina.”

“You sure? How could I have missed it?” Lydia lit one and took a long drag. She blew smoke out her nostrils. “What I don’t understand,” she began, “is how a woman who smokes cigarettes cured in gas and drinks codeine from a bottle could be related to a little girl whose mother cuts the crusts off her sandwiches on holidays.”

Since Maurey and I had the only chairs and Lydia held down the counter space, there was nothing left for Delores but a cardboard box full of cookbooks. This gave me a great alley shot, so that, miraculously, Dirty Dick perked up again.

“I’m not related to her mom,” Delores said. “Maurey’s father—that’s Buddy—his father and my grandfather were brothers, weren’t they, hon. Her grandpa came here and started a ranch and mine stayed up in Dubois cutting timber. I guess we got the wild hair side and they got the boring. Present company accepted.”

Maurey discarded the five of diamonds. “Dad’s okay. He’s wilder than he looks, he just works all the time.”

Delores’s legs moved and I know she was way aware of me. “Buddy’s more than okay, hon. I’d be kissing cousins with that man any old day of the week.”

Lydia smiled at me. “What’ve you kids been up to all afternoon?”

“Gin rummy. I owe Maurey three dollars and twenty-five cents.”

“No, we weren’t,” Maurey said. “We were trying to have sex, only we couldn’t do it.”

I had two kings, two aces, and a possible five-card straight in my hand. The straight was all hearts. I could fill it by picking up a six way high in the pile, but that meant possibly eating about ten cards, and Maurey only held three, one step away from rummy. It constituted a tough decision.

“Why were you trying to have sex?” Lydia asked.

“So we won’t be dopes later when we’re old enough to do it for real. I wanted to know what it feels like before I hit puberty, and I figured Sam would be more popular and get more dates if he could please girls. He hasn’t been all that popular so far.”

“How about yourself?”

“I don’t have to please boys to get dates.”

Delores sat up and leaned her elbows on her knees, nipping off my panty shot. “What seemed to be the problem, honey. Wouldn’t the little weinie stand up?”

I decided to pick up the pile. Not much to lose at that point.

Maurey wasn’t paying attention anyway. “It stood up, but we couldn’t figure where he should go in from, then he squirted.”

Delores
tsked
with her tongue. “Prematures, I bet. I hate the prematures. Ray used to have them the worst I ever saw. He came in a movie house once when the wind blew up Marilyn Monroe’s skirt.”

As I discarded one of the kings, I made it a point not to look at Lydia. “Your turn.”

Maurey pulled the king and rummied. “Sam didn’t come instantly or anything, but he kept grinding down there without going in.”

Lydia blew a column of smoke at her. “Your mom and you have little chats like this?”

“My mother thinks I’m still a child, sweet thirteen and never been kissed. She won’t even let me use hair spray. If I ever said
sex
in front of her I swear she’d faint.”

“Then why are you comfortable talking premature ejaculations in front of me?” Maurey and I stayed quiet. I don’t think either of us knew what ejaculation meant.

“Oh, Lydia, give the kids a break,” Delores said. “I wish I could have asked my mother questions back then. I’d never have married Ray if I’d known the first thing about doing it.”

Maurey looked Lydia in the eye—made me nervous. Neither one of those two were women to be trifled with and I could feel their little bitch-alarm systems kicking into high wail. “Sam told me that you two have great communication and trust because you don’t treat him like a kid and he doesn’t treat you like a mom.”

Lydia stared her right back. “He doesn’t stand a chance, does he?”

“Not that I can see.”

No one said much, so I shuffled. Then Lydia smiled real big. “I imagine at his age fucking you is worth what he’s bound to lose later.”

“I like to think so,” Maurey said.

I had no idea in hell what had just happened, but whatever it was was over. Something had been decided and Lydia and Maurey both seemed happy with the results.

Delores pointed the codeine bottle at Maurey. “Were you well lubricated?”

“Lubricated?”

“Wet,” Lydia said. “Did you get excited and was it nice and wet down there?”

Maurey thought awhile, but I didn’t need to. “She was dry as the blanket. Should we have used water?”

Delores snorted. “Water don’t make it. The wet comes from within the woman.”

“Is that what put out means?”

“More like ooze out.”

“Where does it come from?”

Delores looked at Lydia who gave her an eyebrow shrug. I was to learn quickly that even people who have regular sex don’t usually know what’s going on. Lydia spoke. “When the girl gets excited, this dampness just shows up, then the guy can go in.”

Delores said, “Dampness, my ass. When I’m ready you could wring me out like a washrag.”

“Don’t be crude,” Lydia said. “We’re teaching the children a beautiful and precious act and it shouldn’t be connected to crude ideas.”

“My ass,” Delores snorted.

“How does the woman get excited?” Maurey asked.

Delores leaned back so her skirt rode up again. “I just think about doing it and I start leaking.”

“But I’ve never done it before so I don’t know what to think about.”

“I use gin,” Lydia said.

Delores considered. “I’ll use Vaseline if that’s what it takes.”

Concepts were flying across the room too fast for me to hold on. “You pour gin up the tunnel?”

“God, no, you drink the gin and get drunk and horny and men think they’re taking advantage of you.” Lydia lit another Montclair off the butt of the first one. She leaned over and dropped the used butt into the sink. I hated it when she did that.

“The Vaseline goes up there.” Delores pointed to what I thought was roughly her navel area.

Lydia finished her Dr Pepper and tossed the empty bottle at the trash can by the back door. It rimmed once and bounced in. “Foreplay is the only romantic way to excite a woman.”

“Kissing,” I said. “I told her we had to kiss because they always do in the books but Maurey said it could be done without romance.”

“It can be done without romance, only it’s not that much fun.”

Delores said, “I can have a ball with somebody I can’t stand.”