Skipped Parts

She ignored the ma’am. “Down here is where you go in. One of you has to grab it and angle it right. It’ll be years before it just slides itself in.”

Maurey nodded, taking in every detail.

Lydia pointed to the bridge at the top of the taco shell. “Right here is a little lump called the pleasure dome.”

“Pleasure dome,” I said.

“Now, don’t go poking right at it, you run your fingers or your tongue lightly around and around the dome and the girl gets wet.”

“Tongue. I thought the girl used her mouth, not the guy.”

“That’s a nasty rumor started by men.”

Delores oohed. “Makes me wet just thinking about your young tongue down there.”

I looked at her. “It does?”

Lydia pointed the taco shell at Delores. “Don’t even think of giving lessons.”

“But…”

“This is for the kids.”

“You gonna teach him how to make her come?”

Her come? Jesus, would the revelations never cease. Girls squirted too?

Lydia shook her head. “Sam’s bright. He’ll figure that one out soon enough. The ability to give orgasms every time is too powerful a weapon for a thirteen-year-old to deal with.”

Maurey’s eyes hadn’t left the taco shell. “Why didn’t Jo talk about this in Little Women.”

“Two things,” Lydia said. “First, any sign that Maurey is a woman and you stop the game. Got that?” Lydia glared at us. Maurey nodded.

“What’s the first sign she’s a woman?” I asked. No one told me.

“The other is a matter of form. You don’t talk like this in front of grown-ups. At your age, sex is something you sneak around and hide.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Society would fall apart if people were honest about fucking.”

I considered that philosophical stance for a moment, but the idea of a secret weapon that I could use to get girls whether they wanted to get got or not was almost too much. Imagine—high school girls, college girls, baton twirlers, car hops at drive-ins, girl models in the nightie section of the Sears catalogue, girls on TV. I could get Hayley Mills from the Disney movies. I could make Hayley Mills come and, while I was at it, see her tits.

“You want to go in my room and read comic books?” I asked Maurey.

She seemed hypnotized by the taco shell. “Sure, comic books sound like fun.”

Delores picked the cards off the table. “I love crazy 8s. You play crazy 8s?”

Lydia threw the taco shell in the trash, then turned to me. “I always thought you were a little boy. Guess I should pay more attention.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Who?”

“Thanks, Lydia.”

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

As I held her hand and led her away to my bed, Maurey said, “Go get ’em, honey bunny.”

***

So, while my mom Lydia and her new friend Delores sat at the kitchen table playing crazy 8s, Maurey and I exchanged lost virginities. Afterward, we all went down to the White Deck for ice cream, Delores’s treat.

9

This wasn’t the Hayley Mills from Pollyanna. This was the older, more aloof Hayley from The Parent Trap. In fact, both The Parent Trap twins—the long-haired cultured Boston Hayley and the short-haired, perky California Hayley—sat in the spacious backseat of a limousine parked at the Tastee Freeze.

Sam Callahan walked right up to their Rolls-Royce and leaned in the back window. “Where’d you guys go to school?” he asked.

The Boston Hayley put on her sunglasses. “We never talk to common people.”

“Want to see a magic trick?” Sam asked.

“How juvenile,” said the California Hayley.

Then, before they could roll up the window, Sam performed his trick.

The Boston Hayley took off her sunglasses. “What can be your pleasure today?”

“Show me your breasts.”

The girls did as they were told. With their shirts off and their glamorous breasts facing Sam Callahan, they asked, “What may we do next to help you feel like the king you are?”

Sam touched the left nipple on each girl. “Do you know where Maureen O’Hara lives?”

***

“I haven’t gotten laid in four months.” Lydia blew smoke across the table. “My own kid is getting lucky and I can’t.”

“There is a problem we can fix,” Hank Elkrunner said. He was sitting next to Lydia, across from Maurey and me. Maurey and I were playing a game called hangman where you fill in blanks with letters before the other guy draws a hung stick figure. Maurey was in a good mood because she’d aced a test in citizenship that I made a C on. She put a lot more stock in grades than I did.

“You complain of your dry season,” Hank said, “but no one feels sympathy. Each man in this room would volunteer to give you cause to stop complaining.” I liked Hank. He spoke slowly and looked at his fingers when he talked. He hadn’t been at the table five minutes before he told us he didn’t smoke or drink alcohol, just the kind of guy Lydia needed. They seemed real relaxed with each other.

Lydia looked around the White Deck, surveying possible volunteers. Most of the eight or nine guys were dude wranglers on welfare, holing up for winter and waiting for tourist season to kick in. A couple worked for the national park. “I’d rather complain than fool around with these peckerheads. Every one of this rabble is afraid of women.”

Hank had this low, growl-like laugh. You couldn’t really tell he was laughing except his shoulders moved up and down. “They are not afraid of women. They are afraid of you.”

“No challenge in that. Not a man here, this table excluded, that Maurey couldn’t have shaking in his Tony Lama’s in five minutes.”

Maurey looked across at Lydia and smiled. In the last four days since our training session they’d gotten real buddy-buddy. Made me nervous.

Hank picked up his iced tea. “I bet Oly could make you walk the ceiling.”

“Oly is dead, only around here dead people go on drinking coffee for six days. It’s like growing toenails anywhere else.”

This four-months-of-no-sex thing came as kind of a surprise. With Lydia, whenever she leaves the house everyone just figures she’s up to something immoral.

“Dusty Springfield,” Maurey said.

“Heck.” She’d guessed my hangman words. I’d been trying to touch her thigh under the table, and she let me for a minute. Then she picked up my hand and put it on my lap and said, “Keep yourself warm.” She smiled so I figured it was okay to try again pretty soon.

Maurey drew the spaces and the two-line gallows. It felt comfortable, sitting with her and Hank and Lydia in