“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
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.
