MARIE (11 of 13)
FRIAR DAVE
MARIE
(copyright, the author)
(MARIE11.STY)
CHAPTER 11
I spent most of the rest of the summer getting even with Dana and
Irene and -- most of all -- Dan...in my mind. I fucked everyone I
could and with the figure I had, I could get just about anyone I
wanted. And I wanted a lot. Just before Labor Day, I hitched a ride
out to Perrysburg with three Mexicans. I was so dark and swarthy that
they assumed I was Mexican and were surprised that I didn't understand
their Spanish. Only one of them spoke English, and he wasn't very good
with it. None of them was more than 18. I was wearing a bandeau under
a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts and this goofy straw hat. It was
really hot -- about 90 degrees, and there was no breeze. They were
riding in an old junker of a Rambler that didn't have a good muffler
in it.
The one who spoke English asked me how old I was. When I told him I
was 14 -- lying by two years -- and he translated, there was some
muttering from the others.
"We are unhappy. We believed you to have more years." He seemed
genuinely sad.
Well, I could understand the mistake. I measured 29-19-26 and would
have worn a C cup if there'd been such a thing in a bra that size. I
was taut and smooth and with my hair long and tousled, I could easily
pass for older. So I said that was no reason to be sad, and he said,
Yes, it was, because they had thought I might like to have some fun,
but I was too young.
Now, I'd always heard stories and bad jokes -- What's a 10-year-old
Mexican virgin? A girl who can outrun her brothers -- and politely
tried to explain I'd thought 14 was not too young for a girl to have
fun, if she was Mexican.
They were unhappy at that. Every one of them had brothers and sisters
my "age" and younger and they were very proud that their sibs --
[Siblings. Am I going too fast for you?
[Yeah, I know. I'm just feeling kind of bitchy and edgy. Ready?]
Well, they were proud that their little brothers and sisters were pure
and went to church regularly.
I turned and looked at the two in the back and then again at the one
in the front and said, I like to have fun, I have been having fun for
a long time, and would they like have some fun with me?
We want to an old maintenance shanty near the rail yards. They'd
adopted it and fixed it up as best they could with no money and had
turned it into a kind of club house. It was clearly bachelor --
covered with pinups from Playboy -- but it was neat and clean, and
they were polite and solicitous.
I didn't get to Perrysburg. I stayed there with them for about five
hours. They were young, they were horny, and they were incredibly
virile. I had each of them three or four times. One of them -- the
oldest -- wanted to try me in the ass, but as soon as I told him it
was hurting, he stopped, apologized and withdrew. Oddly, though they
were fascinated by nearly hairless pussy, none of them would eat me.
Which was okay, as it turned out, because they had a good-natured
contest of seeing who could make me cum the most often just by
fucking.
[I forget. No -- wait: I won.]
They took turns, and the only time anyone was at all rough was when
they touched my tits. Even then, it wasn't that they were mauling me;
all three worked as day laborers and had very rough and calloused
hands.
One of the pinups on the wall was Gwen Wong, this Playmate with huge
tits and long nipples and a very young face. One of the guys said that
if my eyes were slanted, I could look a lot like her. The other two
protested that I was prettier. And we fucked some more.
I was sore for three days but never regretted it.
Then school started, my freshman year, and it was inevitable that I'd
be invited to try out for cheerleader. I had no interest in that,
though, and my refusal caused some resentment. The only
extracurriculars -- official extracurriculars, that is -- I wanted
anything to do with were gymnastics (which wouldn't have me because my
figure was too pronounced for exhibition in a leotard) and the school
paper.
The school paper was a joke. We couldn't print anything the school
didn't like or anything unpleasant. It was more of a pep sheet than
anything else. We did personality profiles on the administration's
favorites, the good examples -- never on the interesting students or
activities. Still, it was fun to have official permission to go up to
strangers and ask nosy questions.
I wasn't seeing George anymore, of course, as he'd told me about
meeting his distant cousin, and they were mad for each other, and that
was that. We remained friends. But I didn't have a steady and
satisfying boyfriend, not like George, and I was still trying to work
the summer's non-events with Dan out of my head. So I was trolling.
The problem was that in such a strictly supervised environment, I had
to be very careful with my schoolmates. Since the town was already
starting to split over the Vietnam War protests, the cops were
enforcing the old curfew laws on kids under 16, so I couldn't just go
and hang out much, either.
Then the campaigns started for class presidents. I did a couple of
interviews and heard the usual crap from all the candidates. Even the
one who was being drafted. He didn't really want the job or the
nonsense that went with it, but time and again he'd been the one to
come up with innovative ideas for persistent problems, and twice he'd
successfully mediated disputes -- once, over an antiwar protest and
once over race.
But after the interview was over, he said something that really got my
interest.
"One thing I'd suggest would be giving class credit for volunteer
work."
I took out my notebook, but he stopped me. His name was Tyrell
Hamilton, he was six feet tall and handsome and well-spoken and about
the shade of Mom's coffee after she added a tablespoon of milk.
"Don't bother," he said. "They'll never let you print it. And they'll
never go along with it when I suggest it."
I kept the notebook out. I was taking Gregg Shorthand and doing real
well with it.
[Yes. And I brought it. See? And these are verbatim notes.]
"Why do you think it's important?"
He laughed softly. "Because -- Look around you. Eight hundred
students. About three dozen aren't white. Maybe a hundred don't come
from middle- or upper-class homes. All Catholic. We are so much alike
here that we have no idea how the rest of Toledo lives."
"You think we need more integration, is that it?" I was a little
suspicious.
"Not racial integration," he said. "Social integration. The only
reason there aren't more Afro-Americans here is there aren't more
Afro-Americans who have the money and the academic qualifications. The
nuns and the other students here generally don't give a damn about
that."
"There're exceptions."
"There're always exceptions." We were walking slowly down the first
floor corridor toward the parking lot. The place was almost empty.
From far, far away I could hear the echoes of cheerleading practice,
and someone was dribbling a basketball. "But even there, we're too
much alike. The real world has poor people and rich people. It has
Protestants and Jews and atheists. It has Birchers and antiwar
activists. It has bigots. It has thieves and muggers and bums and
saints."
"We'll meet them soon enough."
He held the door for me. "That's my point. We get out of school here,
and about half go to college, and some go into the Army, and some move
away, but we all meet the real world -- and we don't have the faintest
idea how to deal with it. We meet people who are fundamentally
different, and it scares us, and we get uptight, and we don't react
well. And they don't react well to us."
"So it feeds on itself."
We were in the middle of the nearly empty parking lot. He spun, his
eyes bright and his face animated. "Yes! And the hatred and suspicion
and fear takes charge -- and all because we're inexperienced: We have
no education in people!"
"And you think encouraging supervised volunteer work would help us get
some experience with different people in different situations."
"Within the context of a goal-oriented guidance system and with the
benefit -- "
" -- of more experienced leaders who can teach us how to evaluate and
respond -- "
" -- to unfamiliar and sometimes frightening circumstances! Yes!"
"And then, when we go into the real world, we understand a little
more, because we've already tested ourselves in strange waters -- "
" -- and found that we can swim, because we learned to do it -- "
" -- in a school?"
I groaned at the pun.
"Sounds fishy?" he asked innocently.
"Holy mackerel."
"No, it's 'Holy mackerel dere, Kingfish.'"
"I guess I just don't have any soul."
"But you're still one smart filly."
I frowned.
"Filly of soul?" he suggested.
I groaned again.
We both started laughing. Tyrell offered to drive me home. I didn't
think twice. We talked more on the way. We really hit it off, instant
chemistry, and it had started from the neck up, for a change.
He let me out in front of my house, and I waved good-bye. Inside,
Jeanne was home, and Mom. Jeanne immediately pulled me into our room.
"Marie, did you -- you know?"
I stared at her. "What?"
"Who was that?"
I told her, and she said, "Well, does he really have a big one? They
say all of them have huge -- " The look on my face stunned her.
"Jeanne, I interviewed him for the paper, and he gave me a ride home."
"You didn't do it with him?"
"No -- though now that you mention it, it's not such a bad idea, I
mean, he is awful good-looking and ..."
"Marie! He's a nigger!"
I was the one who was stunned this time. How had we grown up together
and been so close -- so very close -- without me knowing this about
her? Because we never encountered anyone who was really different.
"Jeanne, he's a man who's a little darker than me. A smart, polite,
good-looking man. I think he and I might get to be friends. And don't
you ever use that word in front of me again."
She seemed a little shocked by that, and I suppose I was, too.
Socially conscious Marie -- as of about 40 minutes before. But it was
true. Something had happened to me during the time after the interview
with Tyrell Hamilton. Something burned inside him, and the flames had
caught me, too. My main concerns had been getting laid, passing my
class, getting laid, wondering when they were going to have a sale at
Penney's, getting laid and getting even with Dana and Irene. Suddenly,
I was thinking about things that were in the far distant future,
beyond the great dividing line of Graduation, beyond 1971, which was a
date lost in tomorrow. Suddenly, I was thinking about things like
responsibility and understanding and harmony.
And I was spending a lot of time thinking about Tyrell. Well, was it
true what they say?
[Yes, I saw Blazing Saddles. Okay?]
I started spending more and more time with the juniors and seniors
than I already was -- which was a lot, since I found most of the kids
who were my age were kind of backward. I started hanging out with the
crowd Tyrell spent time with. And pretty soon, I was fairly regularly
sitting next to him at our basketball games -- and thus having him
drive me home.
After the fifth game -- against Penta; we lost -- I got impatient.
"Ty, aren't you ever going to ask me out?"
We were at a grade-crossing, waiting for an endless freight to pass,
down by East Broadway. He waiting about a three-count and turned his
face toward me. "You have to be kidding."
"Why?"
"You're white, and I'm not, and you're not even 13 yet!"
"So?"
"Are you nuts? I'm almost 18!"
"So? I want you, Ty."
"So? That's statutory rape and considering that I'm not white, the
police will probably fire five or six warning shots -- into the back
of my little burr head!"
"Ty! You know me! We're friends, for crying out loud."
"And that's fine -- but that's it, girl." He watched me. "What the
hell are you doing?"
What I was doing, for the benefit of those who weren't there, was
pulling my sweater off and unbuttoning my blouse.
"Guess."
"Marie!"
The blouse was off and I was reaching back and under for the hooks on
my ill-fitting bra. A moment later and it was gone, too, and not only
did it feel good to have the constriction of my tits, it made me feel
somehow wild and free to be sitting there with my boobs bare in his
car so anyone could look in -- even in the dark -- and see me.
"Tyrell Leroy Hamilton, you will not be my first, and you probably
won't be my last and if you don't promise to make love with me I am
going to jump out of this car and yell, `Help! This nigger's trying to
rape me!'"
"Marie, I want you."
His words, so calm and easy and serious, froze me.
"But you're trying to take charge of me, and I won't have that. Be my
friend, and we may become lovers, some day -- but I won't have an
owner for a friend or a lover."
I hadn't thought of it that way. I started pulling my blouse back on.
The caboose of the endless freight rumbled slowly by. Behind us, car
engines were starting. I felt like a shit.
"I'm sorry."
He was shaking his head as the crossing gates came up, and we started
across the tracks.
We drove across the tracks in silence. We drove down to East Broadway
in silence. As we pulled up onto the road that would take us back to
my house, I finally said, "Dammit, Ty, say something?"
"You have truly amazing breasts. I didn't know they were so big or
lovely."
"I'd really like you to get more acquainted with them. And more."
"Doesn't sound all bad. By the way ..."
"Yes?"
"Do you know where we were parked when you threatened to get out and
yell for help?"
I thought about it -- and then it hit me.
"Uh-huh," he said. "Niggerville. Jigaboo Town. You could have
precipitated a race riot back there."
I was glad for the night, so he wouldn't see me blushing in
embarrassment. Then I noticed he'd driven right past the street where
I lived. "Where?"
"I want to show you something."
I started to get my hopes up, but then I remembered what he was like
and calmed down, fast. And with cause.
Ty drove us down past the Anderson grain elevators and parked. It was
dark there. He got out and a moment later I did, too. We were looking
across the Maumee River and had a really lovely view of the water and
downtown Toledo.
"It's awfully pretty," I said.
"Until you get there," he said. "Until you get down on Washington and
Jefferson. Go by the Valentine or the Blade or to one of the Purple
Cows. Then it's just as ugly."
We were standing close. I pulled his arm around me. It felt good.
"People can be like that, too. Beautiful and impressive till you get
up close, and then you see them for what they are and see all the ugly
things in them."
I moved till I stood in front of him and pulled his other arm around
me. I covered his hands with mine and held them across my breasts.
"I've been close to you, Ty. I am close to you. I don't see ugly."
"I -- I've done bad things."
I kept my mouth shut.
"I hurt someone. Hurt bad. Someone who shouldn't have been hurt."
I held his hands tight over my tits. And listened. It had happened
when he was 14 and hanging out with other kids his age. All of them
were black, kids he knew in Niggerville. One of them knew this girl
who was just asking for it. She was lithe and lean and tight and had a
great ass, and the way she talked and acted, they knew she was just
asking for it, and they knew that if someone gave her some wine, she'd
do them all.
So someone gave her some wine. And she did them all. Many times. Long
past the end of the wine. Long past her willingness.
"I'd never been with anyone before, and even when she was crying and
asking us to stop, we kept doing it."
Except him. He'd persuaded the others to stop and let her go.
"That sounds like good to me, not bad," I said.
"It was -- but it wasn't the end."
A few months later, she came by his house when he was home alone.
She'd been drinking wine. She'd gone into that phase when a girl just
suddenly blossoms. She wasn't a skinny kid with a great ass, not any
more. She was a young siren, blooming. And she wanted to thank him.
"I should've made her go away."
But he hadn't. They'd spent the entire afternoon, before his parents
or siblings came home, fucking wildly. He figured he must have cum in
her four or five times. Whenever he got limp, she did things --
"With her mouth."
-- to make him ready again...and at 14-almost-15 he could get ready a
lot.
"That's not hurting someone," I told him.
"Yes, it was. I wanted to do it more with her, and when she wanted
more wine, I let her have it from Momma's closet so I could do it
more."
The problem came a couple of months later.
"One of the guys said she was dead."
I went cold all over when he said that. "Dead?"
She'd gotten pregnant and gone to the only abortionist a poor 13-year-
old girl -- black or white -- in Toledo could find in those moral,
enlightened days. That night, she'd begun hemorrhaging. She was DOA at
St. Charles.
"I killed her."
I turned to him. His arms dropped away as soon as I released his
hands. "That's not true."
He was nodding, tear-stained cheeks glimmering in the night. "Me. I
got her pregnant and -- and -- "
"And you were the only guy she ever fucked?"
He blinked.
"Yeah -- *fucked*." I said it hard.
"Well, no, of course not, but -- "
"You figure you're the only guy who fucked her that month?"
He tried to turn away. I grabbed him, my arms around his waist.
"Well?"
"I -- I -- "
"You know you weren't. Hell, she was probably fucking another guy that
day -- the same one who gave her the wine before she got to your
house."
"But what I did was wrong -- "
"She wanted it, didn't she? She went out of her way to ask for it? She
wanted to keep doing it? And you figure it's your fault?"
"She was just a kid!"
"So were you."
"So are you."
"I'm young, but I haven't been a kid since ... " I almost told him,
but I couldn't. "Well, I'm no kid." I pulled his arms around me.
"Hold me."
And that's what he did -- just held me, close and strong and scared
and sobbing and trying to fight it all back, trying to be the tough
young buck, figuring this so-called white girl --
[Cause it's true. Put my hand down on a piece of paper -- here. See?
Do I look "white" now? Right. You do it -- see? Kind of off-beige.
What gets called "black" isn't really black. When was the last time
you saw someone dark enough to even try to qualify for "black"?
[Yeah, I thought so. So you think about this: Those aren't colors or
races or hues, they're just the fucking labels we use so we can
generalize or categorize and excuse ourself from thinking any farther
than the label.
[Okay?
[Your goddam right I'm hot about it! Want to find out why? Listen.]
-- this so-called white girl wouldn't figure him out, but I did,
because when you're that close, there's no color, no race, just
holding and being held, and I have a news flash for all the racial
purity folks: We're all the same. The reason I know is that holding
Ty, I could see through him just like anyone else. He was just looking
to stop hurting, same as me and you and anyone else. Hurting doesn't
have a race, unless the race is Human.
Well, one thing led to another, and before long I was doing more than
holding. His was the first uncircumcised cock I'd ever held or sucked
or fucked, and when he came, he groaned and he cried, and I understood
that. He was crying cause there was nothing left in him that he hadn't
shared, so I held him till the sun came up, and we never talked about
that -- but something had been established, a bond, you know? We never
did anything sexual again.
I sneaked into the house and -- Miracle of miracles -- no one caught
me. I took that as a Sign.
I lay awake for a long time, thinking that this was amazing -- knowing
even then we weren't going to be lovers again -- that this afro senior
and me were that close that we'd used fucking and sucking and loving
to seal our bond, and it felt right. Damn, but it felt good and close
and tight.
But no way that was going to be left alone. No way. The weeks passed
and about 10 days before the class elections, I went over to room 128,
which was the room Ty's backers had drawn from the pool as a campaign
headquarters. I went over there pretty much every day, and it was more
and more crowded, which was a good sign.
When I walked in, the place went quiet. Everyone was looking at me. I
said Hello to a few people and looked around, but Ty wasn't in sight,
and when I asked Chuck -- who had sort of fallen into managing the
campaign -- where Ty was, he just shrugged and said he had to go. The
same thing happened with the next four people I asked.
Pretty soon, I was alone in that room. It felt like a mortuary.
I called his house, and they told me he wasn't home yet, so I left my
name and number. When he hadn't called back, I called again at 9:30,
and they told me he'd gone to bed early because he wasn't feeling
well.
I didn't see him around school the next day, a Thursday, but I did
notice that some of his mimeographed campaign posters were missing. I
knew he worked after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I knew
where, so I hitched a ride out to the shopping center to the discount
store where he was a stock clerk. When I saw his battered old junker
in the parking lot, I felt better -- whatever was going on, Ty was not
too sick or hurt to go to work.
I found him in the back of the store, unloading boxes of toasters from
the back of a truck pulled right up to the loading dock. There were
two other guys working with him. One of them noticed me and said
something and the other turned and muttered something to Ty. The two
other guys were staring at my tits; I was wearing a tank top, but they
were still too big to hide. Ty saw me, took a deep breath and told the
other guys he was going to take a short break.
I followed him off the loading dock, and we went back to stand near
the trees that lined the truck road behind the store.
"What's going on, Ty? I went to 128 to find you and -- "
"I'm withdrawing from the election."
"What? Why?"
"And we can't be together any more."
"What the hell -- "
"That's all there is to it." He started to walk away, but I grabbed
his arm and jerked him back toward me.
"Like hell it is. You tell me what's going on and you tell me now!"
"It doesn't matter -- "
"It does to me!"
So then he took an envelope from his pocket, and from the envelope he
took the photographs and held them out to me. I recognized the top
two; they'd been missing from George's basement workshop. I didn't
recognize the others, because I'd never seen them. But I knew when
they were taken. There I was laying on my back, sucking a huge cock
with a dripping, open pussy right over my face.
I was stunned but managed to say, "I don't get it."
"If I run in the election, I'll win. If I win, these photos -- and
some films, I was told -- start making the rounds. You'll be ruined.
Your family will be ruined."
"Who -- "
"I don't know. There was a letter with the pictures. No return
address, no signature. It just said quote that if a nigger won the
school election, his white cunt was going to be the most famous
underaged piece of ass in the state of Ohio unquote."
"They're bluffing."
He snorted. "I don't think so. And I don't know how they found out
what we did unless someone -- like you -- told them."
"I didn't tell a soul! And who told all the people in 128 it was my
fault?"
He handed me the envelope. It was addressed to Chuck.
I felt my guts go icy, and I thought for a minute I was going to be
sick. Ty was right. They weren't bluffing. And I knew who they were,
too. And he was right about us not being together again.
"I'm so sorry, Ty. I'm so -- " I couldn't say anything else, so I just
shook my head and ran away from him, crying.
I walked all the way home, about six miles, and didn't get there till
past dark. Mom was pissed off, but by the time I got home, she wasn't
nearly as pissed off as I was, and when I told her that this wasn't
the time to start with me, she got the message and turned into
superMom, wanting to know if I wanted to talk about it. I told her I
had to work it out for myself.
And that's what I did. I figured it out for myself. Ed Sautter had
stolen the photos from George's workshop, and he had sent the hate
mail and blackmail threat. It didn't seem likely that he'd done it
alone, either. That kind of racist is a coward and can never do
anything alone. They always have to have a half-dozen or so people
helping them, usually hiding their faces.
I called Roger the next day and told him what had happened. I asked
him if Ed couldn't get in trouble with the law for having that stuff
in his house. He explained about search warrants and said he'd ask a
buddy on the State Police. When he called me back, he said Sautter
could make a stink and drag a lot of stuff out in court -- if it got
to court. But, he said, his pal had told him there was someone else
who'd be interested, and if I wanted, Roger would take care of it.
He wouldn't tell me anything else. He told me I'd have to trust him. I
finally agreed to let him take care of it. I didn't hear anything else
for about three days, during which time the Ty-less election came and
went.
The Toledo Blade story reported that the coroner had ruled it an
accident. Sautter had apparently been taking drugs and stumbled into
the pool, striking his head on the edge as he fell. His roommate found
him floating, in the morning. He hadn't heard Sautter return from his
business meeting with three men in a black Lincoln. The roommate
thought Sautter had sold much of his photography equipment to the men,
because Sautter and two of the men had pretty well cleaned out his
darkroom. The police said more than two thousand in cash had been
found in Sautter's pocket, so they gave the story credence.
The roommate and Sautter's girlfriend were so shaken by the tragedy,
said the newspaper, that they were going to leave the area and try to
start their lives over. Their exact destinations were undecided.
Years later, of course, I figured out who Roger had called and why
they'd been so persuasive. After all, Ed was cutting into their
territory by making porno films. And he was jeopardizing their whole
business because citizens tend to get outraged at all porno films when
something involving minors get into distribution, even willing minors.
At the time, though, the only thing that puzzled me was who had let on
to what Ty and me had done that long, weeping night. I was mooning
around the house, all morose and sad because of how good I'd imagined
we could be together -- a luxury I could indulge because we hadn't
been together long enough for all the normal hassles and irritations
to mar the dream -- and I'd sort of fixated on figuring out who had
spilled the beans. Maybe Ty had told one of his friends and he'd said
something? That didn't seem like Ty. Or had we been seen? Who?
I found out by an accidental, chance remark. Jeanne was a year behind
me and still going to the Prison School. Her eighth-grade class had
been treated to a one-day photography workshop run by guess-which-
guest-teacher. You got it. He noticed the similarity in names, asked
her after the class, pumped her for information about me and tried --
and failed -- to talk her into posing for him.
"When I told him you were always with Ty, he got all red in the face,
but he said he was okay, so I didn't think anything about it."
But he had. And it had led to his death, to Ty's not running in a
school election he would surely have won -- and all the good things
that might have come of that -- and, not incidentally, to breaking my
heart. She hadn't had the least idea the damage she was doing. Hell, I
would have told him as much, myself. But very innocently and openly,
she'd done something that caused me to hurt like I'd only hurt once
before.
[I promise. I'll tell you...later.]
I sort of withdrew from everything after that. I quit the school paper
and really buckled down to the books. I didn't have a social life,
except for one weekend I stayed out with Darlene (and actually spent
most of the time naked, with Roger). My grades soared, and I
discovered the library and then I discovered Jane Austin and Emily
Bronte and, finally, Colette. I turned into a bookworm. Mom was
ecstatic. Jeanne was puzzled. Dad was...well, he was Dad. Even Alexis
the Pure was impressed. I started writing letters to my phantom
stepbrother, some of which I even mailed, and he wrote back. Then I
joined Pen Pal and started writing to kids around the world.
It passed the time. The endless Toledo gray winter came and went, and
then it was spring, and I took to reading in the park, when I could. I
found myself spending most of what little social time I had with
freaks -- so-called, because in those days, you were either a Freak or
a Straight -- who were the only ones (besides nerds) who read books
for pleasure.
In May of '68 I met Terrence Molonari and his twin, older brothers,
while I was hitching to Navarre Park for a -- don't laugh -- poetry
reading.
I never got to the poetry reading.
===============================================================
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MHBBS (212-683-1448). Feel free to repost it as is, without
editing or changing anything in it, including this tag. For
information about The Abbey, a spam-free place for writers and
readers of adult material to gather, email Friar...@mhbbs.com.
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I will not email "missed" pieces. This whole thing will be reposted
in about six months. If you can't wait, write for info on access to
The Abbey. -- fd
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
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MHBBS (212-683-1448). For email replies, remove the "*" before MHBBS.COM.