Wonderful Guy

Wonderful Guy

            It was unusually cold on this particular night in January.  I was in my bedroom putting the final touches on my first audition for the Spring Follies, an annual talent showcase at my school.  The song was “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis, but I was having a hard time hitting all the notes.  Before my nuts dropped, I was a soaring soprano.  Now, it sounded like someone was swinging a bag of cats.  A knock at my door interrupted the bridge.

            “WHAT?” I shouted over the music.

            It was my mother.

            “You’ve got a phone call.”

            I hardly ever got phone calls, and when I did, they were from kids in my class asking when homework was due.  I stormed out of my room and down the hall, furious at the interruption.  I impatiently picked up the phone.

            “HELLO?!”

            “Hey you.  You sound pissed off.”

            Jesus Christ!  It was Steve Avery!  The last time I was alone with him was before Christmas at Liz’s house.  He promised to take me riding around over the Christmas break.  Since my parents were too cheap to buy an answering machine, I made sure someone was at our house the entire two weeks of Christmas vacation.  I waited by the phone each night but got no calls from Steve.  But now.  Here he was.  A senior.  Calling an eighth grader.  I managed to stammer out a “Hey.”

            “I haven’t seen you around school since we got back,” he said.

            And that was true.  For a school with only three hallways, it was relatively easy to get lost in.  After I fell asleep on him at Liz’s and he left without waking me, I was sure that I drooled on him in my sleep or worse—I must have farted.  So I avoided him at all costs during our first two weeks back in the new year.  I knew his schedule so I planned my hallway routes accordingly.  Since he was in mostly remedial classes for football players, it was easy to navigate around him.

            “Um, yeah.  I’ve been busy,” I clumsily replied.

            “I’m really sorry about not taking you on that ride over the break.  I’m not sure if you heard, but my grandmother died right before Christmas.  So we were kinda busy with all that.”

            Death always comes at the most inconvenient times.

“Oh.  I’m real sorry.”

“But I had a lot of fun with you at Liz’s last month.  How was your Christmas?”

“It was good,” I lied.

            Christmas sucked.  It was the first year I didn’t get anything fun.  I got clothes, the one Swatch watch I didn’t want, and a bulky instant camera that was recalled two weeks later.

            “I told you that night I’d like to take you riding around sometime.  How about tonight?” he asked.

            I almost keeled over. 

            “I’ll have to ask my mother.”

            FUCK!  Why’d I say that?  He suggested I tell her that I was invited to a party at one of the football player’s houses so it wouldn’t look suspicious.  Little did he know that me getting invited to anything remotely cool looked suspicious.  I instructed Steve to hold the line, and I bounded toward the living room.

            “Mom, that’s Steve Avery on the phone reminding me about a party for the football team tonight at Kevin Johnson’s house.  He offered to give me a lift, so can I—“

            “Of course you can go!”

            Mom was tickled that I was invited to go somewhere.  Doubly so that it involved boys.  She thought I spent too much time with Liz playing with her jewelry.  I’m sure she figured that the football players would be a better influence on me than Liz and her sparkly CZ’s.  And since Steve Avery was known all over town, Mom had an extra spring in her step.  She didn’t need to know I was blowing him.

            I arranged for Steve to pick me up within the hour and immediately started primping and arguing with my mother.  She wanted to cook something.  I yelled at her to stop making a fuss.  She wanted to drive me.  I told her to shut up.  She suggested that I wear my Lee jeans.  But my Guess jeans made my ass look fuller.  So I told her to mind her business.  I stood in front of the mirror and practiced my smile until Mom forced me to sit down and eat a hamburger.  I scarfed it down, then sprayed on too much Obsession and walked out the door to wait on the porch.  It was bitterly cold, but I didn’t care.  This was going to be my first date, and I was going out with the star of the football team. The best looking guy in school.  Every girl would have killed to be in my position.  They would have gotten to wear heels and makeup, but I didn’t care.

            After about twenty minutes, Steve’s car wheeled around the corner and pulled up to my driveway.  He honked, and I sprinted across the yard, the frozen blades of grass snapping under the weight of my prance.  His car was some kind of early-80’s Grand Prix model.  It was black with pleather upholstery and thick shag carpet.  The seats were huge, and the interior smelled like the football locker room and Polo cologne.  It was warm.  I got in, and he looked around to see if anyone was watching out the windows.  He gave me a kiss on the mouth, and I grinned.  He then opened the car door and spit violently.

            “You taste like onions!”

            OH GOD!  I forgot to brush my teeth after dinner.  In a nervous high-pitched yelp, I promised I’d be right back.

            “I just ate a hamburger!”

            He laughed and pulled a bottle of mouthwash out of his glove compartment.  Oh, he was smooth.

            “Rinse,” he instructed.  “I can’t kiss on an onion all night.” 

            We stopped at the Jr. Food Mart, and Steve bought a six-pack of beer with his fake I.D.  I smirked.  While the other kids were at home watching “The Golden Girls” and “Facts of Life”, I was riding around with an eighteen-year old, sipping cans of Budweiser.  We drove around in the country for awhile, and he even pulled me over so I was sitting in the middle.  Right next to him. We talked about everything from school to home life to his future plans. We pulled up at the end of Sally’s Hill Road which was haunted by Sally herself, a victim of decapitation in a horrible horse-drawn buggy accident over one hundred years before.  More importantly, it was a deserted dirt road that was popular among teenagers who liked to drink, smoke, and make out. 

            “You don’t think anyone will see us?” I asked.

            “Naw.  I’ll pull into this clearing.  Nobody ever comes back here.”

            He pulled off the dirt road and into a clearing in the woods.  My science teacher had just warned about the perils of making out in a parked car with the engine running.  Apparently teenage pregnancy wasn’t as pressing an issue as dying from carbon monoxide poisoning while sucking face in the backseat of a Volkswagon Jetta.  At any rate I asked if we could crack the windows.

            “You’re too funny,” he grinned.  Then, seriously, he added, “You won’t tell anybody about all this, will you?”

            “Hell no!” I exclaimed.  “I don’t want anybody to find out either.  Everybody will make fun of us.”        

            “I know.   People around here are so fucking stupid.”

            “Speaking of stupid, are you still dating that slut?”  I asked.  Steve had gone out with our head cheerleader, Patti.  Who was a slut.

            “Nope.  Never again.  Fucking her was like fucking a glass of water.  She couldn’t carry on a conversation.  And she couldn’t suck dick to save her life.  Not like you.”

            Then, there it was.  His tongue coming straight for my mouth.  SHIT!  I always heard about French kissing, but I never knew that two guys could do it.  What was I supposed to do with his tongue?!  What if it tasted bad?!  What if I got AIDS?!  He kissed me…for thirty minutes.  Only stopping to swig Budweiser.  I didn’t get AIDS, it didn’t taste bad, and I figured out with a quickness what to do with it.  I never knew this kind of intensity before.  It scared the absolute hell out of me, but I was exhilarated.

            “You have the softest lips,” he whispered.  “Do you know what a blow job feels like?”

            “Um, no.”

            “Let’s go back here, and I’ll show you.”

            We moved to the backseat, but for this I was ready.  I had been practicing with my pillow how to embrace a guy and where to position my arms while lying on my back.  And he soon showed me just what a blow job felt like.  After all those months of blowing him, he never once offered to reciprocate.  Until now.  I felt like my whole body was about to explode.  If this was what a blow job felt like, no wonder he couldn’t keep his cock away from my mouth.  After several more minutes of this wondrous thing called fellatio, we were sitting in the front seat again, drinking a beer and sharing a cigarette.  We sat there holding hands, taking turns dragging off a Salem Menthol, and looking straight ahead.  Finally, he spoke.

            “That was fucking great.  Wanna do it again next--?”

            “YEP!”  I couldn’t contain my excitement.

            “It’s late.  I better get you home,” he said.

            “Okay.  Call me next week,” I whispered, channeling my best Marilyn Monroe.

            Fifteen minutes later, he kissed me good night.  He drove away and left me standing at my driveway in the freezing cold, pondering life, romance, and why my mother puts onions in everything.