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.
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?”
