The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (7 page)

“Isn’t everything perfect?” Jamie said.

“Huh?” Tammy tossed some carob almonds in her mouth.

Debbie turned the page of her magazine.

“Everything’s perfect,” Jamie said. “I mean, we’re young, there’s nothing wrong with any of us—you know, no deformities or anything, no acne, we’re smart enough—no one’s failing school—we’re super-tan, I mean, we’re like as tan as you can be without passing into a different race—”

“I’m darker than Lupe,” Tammy said.

“She is,” Debbie said. “Lupe was, like, scrubbing the top of the stove yesterday and Tammy came in and was standing beside her and their arms were side by side and I swear, Tammy was darker than Lupe.”

“And I’m blond,” Tammy said. “How many people are as dark as a Mexican but are blond?”

“Mexicans who dye their hair,” Jamie said.

“Mexicans don’t dye their hair,” Debbie said.

“Wait, let me say why our lives are so perfect.”

“Okay, so we’re tan,” Debbie said.

“And we don’t really have to do anything, I mean, we’re not like those kids who have to work in factories sewing on buttons, or like Lupe’s daughter who helps Lupe out at Tammy’s house all the time. . . . I mean, really, we just have to show up for dinner every now and then.”

“I have to go to church,” Tammy said. She paddled the raft, with her one free hand, toward the edge of the pool where Jamie and Debbie lay.

“But you love church,” Debbie said.

“It’s not that I love it,” Tammy said, “it’s just that I think it’s good to go. I think my parents are right in making us go. 
I mean, God wants me there, so how can I say no?”

“And then there’s Flip,” Jamie went on as if Tammy hadn’t spoken, “I mean, like, I love him. He’s so dang cute and he said he loves me and that’s like the best feeling in the world, like better than thinking that God loves you or your parents love you or your sister loves you. . . . It’s just better than everything.”

“I need a boyfriend,” Tammy said.

“Me too,” Debbie said.

“And I need darker lips,” Tammy said, rubbing her bottom lip with her index finger. “I hate how pale my lips are.”

“Put on lip gloss,” Debbie said.

“Yeah, but it, like, comes off when I go swimming. I want to come out of the ocean, and, like, walk toward everyone on the beach and have my lips perfectly rose-colored. You know, like yours.” Tammy turned her head toward Debbie.

“My coloring is French,” Debbie said. “All French women have these really dark lips.”

“Get waterproof lipstick,” Jamie said.

“Lipstick is for old ladies,” Tammy said. “And they don’t make waterproof gloss. You know, it really upsets me some
times. I, like, come up from a wave and my hair might be scooped back just so and I’ll have on the best suit, like that white one with ties on the sides, but then I know that I look all washed-out because my lips are so pale!”

“Okay, so with the exception of pale lips, your life is perfect,” Jamie said.

“No,” Tammy said, “I need a boyfriend.”

“Go for Brett,” Jamie said. “Flip said he’s so in love with you that he’s intimidated. If you wanted him, he could be your boyfriend tomorrow.”

“When did Flip say that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did, I told you last night.”

“I don’t remember you telling me anything last night.”

“Maybe I just meant to tell you but forgot.”

“Go for it,” Debbie said.

“Brett’s hot,” Tammy said. “I thought he didn’t like me.”

“He loves you,” Jamie said. “You just have to let him know you’re interested.”

“I think I love Jimmy,” Debbie said. She had gone on three dates with him and it seemed to be developing into something.

“You should love Jimmy, he’s, like, the nicest guy I’ve ever met,” Jamie said. And she meant it. Jimmy asked questions when you talked to him; he didn’t just make jokes or quips. Jimmy opened doors. Jimmy helped Betty clear the counter. Jimmy actually went to La Cumbre Plaza with his mother and retarded twenty-eight-year-old brother (who drooled and held Jimmy’s hand) and wasn’t embarrassed to run into friends. Jimmy’s eyes were so huge and brown you’d think you could dip a finger into them and taste them.

“I bet Jimmy’s a Christian,” Tammy said. “He reminds me 
of the boys at church except he’s got white sun streaks in his hair and he doesn’t have acne and he surfs.”

“Jimmy Golden?” Debbie said. “Isn’t Golden Jewish or something?”

They both looked at Jamie.

“I don’t know,” she said. “My dad’s the only Jewish person I know.”

Tammy put the glass canister on the tile, then dove off the raft and swam underwater. Debbie stood, tied her suit in the back, and dove in. Jamie was too sun-drunk to stand, so she rolled, as if she were rolling down a grass hill, across the tile until she tumbled into the pool. When she came up, Tammy and Debbie were laughing.

It didn’t take long for Debbie and Jimmy to become an official couple. And once Tammy turned her full attention to Brett, they were a couple, too (a consortium that allowed Tammy the guiltless freedom to pause and then quickly advance from each of the stations of sexual exploit). And so Flip’s gang of many became a gang of three as Flip, Brett, and Jimmy passed the summer days with Jamie, Tammy, and Debbie.

Jamie had a romantic fantasy that had persisted since she was eight years old and had watched a teenage couple make out on the Pinocchio boat ride at Disneyland. She wanted to go to Disneyland with a boyfriend; she wanted to sit cozy, pressed against his lap on the Jungle Cruise, hold his hand, and maybe even sing along on Small World, or kiss in the darkness of the General Electric Theater. When Jamie 
learned that Debbie had a similar fantasy, they were both astounded. When she heard that Flip, Brett, and Jimmy were enthusiastic about the idea of a day at Disneyland, Jamie felt that her already lovely life was becoming so painfully good that guilt for her sister’s chaste life slipped under her skin like splinters you’d need a magnifying glass to find.

Brett’s father gave him the mobile home for the trip to Disneyland—he even filled it with gas. Brett went to the driver’s cushy, loungelike seat. Tammy sat right beside him in her cushy, loungelike seat. Jamie looked at them and imagined Tammy thirty five years old, the mother of two clean, towheaded kids, wife of someone less like Brett and more like Brett’s big-bellied, Ken-doll-haired father. Flip slouched into the booth seat at the table, picked up the brick-sized, beige remote control, and clicked on the TV.

“Reception’s no good here,” Brett’s dad said, leaning into the doorway. “Wait till you get on the San Diego Freeway and you’ll be able to pick up channel eleven in L.A.”

“Met-ro, me-dia, television,” Jamie and Debbie sang the theme song for channel 11, “eleven, eleven, eleven . . .” The girls fell into each other, giggling, then Debbie broke away and went to examine the kitchen cupboards.

Brett’s mother was leaning in the doorway, her head tucked under Brett’s father’s arm. Her eyes looked wild and mousy as she watched Debbie.

“The stove’s not hooked up, dear,” Brett’s mother said.

“But the fridge is working.”

“Darn!” Debbie said. “I brought brownie mix and everything.”

“You know the Electric Parade isn’t running,” Brett’s dad said. “They’ve got some special parade instead.” No one seemed interested except Jamie.

“But I love the Electric Parade!” she said.

“They’ve got America Parade, or something like that,” Brett’s dad said. “You know people wearing those giant head costumes, playing out scenes from United States history.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dad,” Brett said, “the whole bicentennial thing—I saw the ads for it on TV.”

“God, I’m so bummed there’s no Electric Parade,” Jamie said.

When they pulled onto the freeway, Tammy picked up the CB radio, held it like a microphone against her mouth, and said, “This is Pink Panties, anyone else out there headed to Disneyland?”

A grumbling voice broke in over the CB, “Where you at now Pink Panties? Let’s convoy to Disneyland!” They each bought the Adult Magic Kingdom Pass for $5.75. The pass gave you entrance to the park and eleven tickets that could be used on any ride—even the E ticket rides, which, really, were the only ones Jamie and her friends were interested in going on.

As they hustled from one ride to the next, Jamie began to feel like they were simply checking events off a list. From the Jungle Cruise they ran to get in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean. When the pirate ride was over they hauled off the boats and dashed around the flocks of families to get in line for the Haunted Mansion. In the capsule-shaped car of the Haunted Mansion Flip talked into Jamie’s ear, pointing out what looked fake, what seemed lame, and what just bored him. And then 
he didn’t want to go on the Pinocchio ride, the ride that was, to Jamie, the purpose of their trip. How could they make out on the Pinocchio ride if Flip refused to ride?

“It’s a C ride,” Flip said. “We can’t waste our pass on a C.”

“But we have seven tickets left,” Jamie said. “There’s no way we’re going to go on seven more E rides.”

“We should use our time wisely,” Flip said, “like, on E 
rides, get it?”

The bantering continued for a while, a fact that made Jamie feel proudly mature—as if she were a wife who had to mollify her cranky, overworked husband.

Eventually Jamie agreed that instead of going on a C or E 
ride they could sneak off to the mobile home for a couple hours alone. Making out in the parking lot of Disneyland seemed like a reasonable compromise to her fantasy. She’d probably be disappointed, Jamie thought, if they made out on a ride and it wasn’t exactly as she had imagined it would be after having witnessed the kissing teens so many years earlier.

There were two beds in the back of the mobile home.

One was a double bed and the other was a single bunk bed perched above it. Flip turned down the covers of the double bed, peeled off his shirt and shorts so that he was naked, and got in without pulling the covers up. It was the first time Jamie had witnessed his nakedness in open daylight.

“C’mon,” he said, patting the mattress.

Jamie stared at his penis—the neat packaging of his balls, the even color throughout.

“Well?” Flip asked.

Jamie took off her flip-flops, shorts, and T-shirt and lay beside Flip in her white cotton bra and panties. She was 
awkward, self-contained with her knees up and arms by her side as she stared down at Flip’s genitals.

“I totally think it’s time we move on,” Flip said, “move ahead, you know.”

Jamie’s stomach lurched. She had been so drunk with love for Flip that the idea that he’d ever break up with her, that they’d ever move on and not be together, had never even flitted into her mind.

“Why?” Jamie shut her eyes and prayed that he wasn’t trying to break up with her.

“I don’t know. I just think that sex is an amazing thing, and . . . well, we’ve been making out, you’ve felt my dick a little, I’ve been feeling your . . . bosoms—”

“Bosoms?” Jamie laughed, relieved.

“I thought it was a respectful word,” Flip said. “I was gonna say tits.”

“But isn’t it just bosom, without the s?”

“Well if you’re looking at one it’s a bosom. But when you’ve got two in front of you, they’re bosoms.”

“Bosoms.”

“Yeah, so I was thinking we need to do some exploring. 
Like, I’d like to introduce my dick to your mouth.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Jamie said, looking down at Flip’s dick, which was now pointing up at her, punching out of its skin.

“And I’d like to meet your Virginia.”

“Virginia? Like the state?”

“That’s what I called it when I was a little kid ’cause I thought vagina and Virginia were the same thing.”

“So you thought one of the fifty states was Vagina?” Jamie laughed.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Flip grinned. “So anyway, can everyone meet now?”

And with that, Flip bent down and slipped off Jamie’s underpants. Jamie started laughing, although she wasn’t sure why. There was something absurd about this naked moment, like when she and her sister, when they still felt they were twins, would jump naked on their parents’ bed after a bath.

“What?” Flip said.

“Nothing.” Jamie remembered her mother laughing like this—
a hiccupping twitter instead of her usual bray—at the funeral of the old woman from the corner of their street. It was a laugh that didn’t feel right, like getting tickled by someone you don’t trust.

Flip stared at Jamie until her laugh petered out like a car running out of gas.

“So what are we doing first?” Jamie asked.

“I guess I should finger bang you,” Flip said, and he hunched over Jamie and stuck his index finger in her vagina.

“Huh.” Jamie looked down at Flip’s finger moving in and out. She remembered the first time they kissed and how it felt scary and thrilling, like the Matterhorn ride. And now, here they were at Disneyland with the Matterhorn just a short walk away and their sex was, well, less exciting than an A ticket ride, less thrilling then the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln ride where you sat in a small velvety theater and watched a robot Abe Lincoln deliver a speech.

“Does it feel good?”

“I guess. It doesn’t really feel like anything.”

“Well, why don’t you try me.” Flip pulled his finger out.

“Should I give you a hand job?”

“You’ve done that,” Flip said. “I think we need to have oral sex.”

“Uh, okay.” Jamie looked down at his penis and decided 
it wasn’t anything like Leon’s penis or her father’s penis or any other penis she had seen wagging around her backyard.

This one looked pinker, newer. The thought of putting it in her mouth seemed strange but not repugnant. Jamie scooted down on her hands and knees and placed her face near Flip’s crotch.

“Just pretend you’re licking a Popsicle.” Flip laid his palm on her head and nudged it toward his penis. Jamie licked.

“Now pretend the Popsicle’s melted down a little,” he said, 
“and so you stick the whole thing in your mouth, you know, sucking it down to the stick so it doesn’t drip on you.” Jamie followed his instructions while thinking about Taffy Longue, who had a reputation for being someone who loved to suck dicks. All the boys flirted with her, hoping she would suck them; all the girls snubbed her, claiming she was so slutty she’d suck Mr. Vandekamp, the pockmarked, potato-nosed eighth grade math teacher, if he’d let her.