When the sun went down, I got the big plastic glass out of the cupboard. It was a big yellow plastic glass and probably could hold forty ounces. I got the big plastic yellow glass out of the cupboard and I put ice in it. I filled it up with ice from the ice maker in the freezer. After I filled the big yellow plastic glass with ice from the ice maker, I got out the bottle of Jack Daniels. I always had a bottle of Jack Daniels, then. I always made sure I had enough Jack Daniels. When the bottle got low every few days or so I'd stop on the way home from work and buy another. I bought the Jack Daniels from two different stores, alternately, so they wouldn't think I was an alcoholic. I'd pour the Jack Daniels into the big yellow plastic glass about halfway up. Then I'd call the dog.
"Hey, Klondike, wanna go for a walk?" I'd say.
It got so Klondike would show up when he heard the ice going into the big plastic yellow glass.
I would get Klondike's leash and snap it onto his collar. Then I would go out the door and across the street, to where the side street T'd into the street my parents’ house was on.
Here's how the streets were around my parents’ house. My parents’ house was in a development. Their street was called Brookside Drive, and there really was a brook, almost, more like a trickle, really, back behind my parents’ house. Brookside Drive came off the main road and was the only way into the development. Brookside Drive went straight for about an eighth of a mile and then you had to turn right onto Carol Road. Carol Road was really short, only two houses on the inside side and then you had to turn right again onto Florence Road. Florence road went parallel to Brookside Drive but stopped before it hit the main road. Florence Road T'd into Charlotte Road and if you turned right you would see my parents house straight ahead, as you drove up to Brookside, where you could turn left to get to the main highway or right to go back around again. If you turned left on Charlotte Road from Florence, you would end up not on Charlotte Road but in Geary Circle, which was just a big round paved area where you had to turn around and go back to Charlotte if you didn't live in any of the houses in there. My parents’ house was the second house in from the main road on Brookside Drive. The development was not all built, yet. There were still empty lots, like the whole inside side of Florence. The side that was inside the loop of the streets. On Florence, that side didn't have any houses, just trees and brush.
I would leave the house with Klondike and my big yellow plastic glass of Jack Daniels and go straight across the street to Charlotte to walk the dog. That way Klondike could do his business in the empty lots on the inside side of Florence. That way it wouldn't seem like I was going where I was going.
Where I was going was around the block. Where I was going was crazy. Where I was going I couldn't stop myself. Where I was going was straight to hell.
When Klondike and I and my big yellow plastic glass of ice and Jack Daniels got to the corner of Florence and Carol, two things would happen. First thing was Klondike and I would hear dogs barking. Sundance and Ivan barking. Those two dogs inside the house across the street from the corner of Florence and Carol on Carol would start barking their fool heads off, and Klondike and I would stop there and I would take a sip of Jack Daniels. Another sip, I mean. Second thing was the front door of that house across the street on Carol would open up and those dogs would come out on leashes held by two young women. Susan and DiDi. Sisters. Teenagers.
Straight to Hell was where I was going.
Susan and DiDi were not what you would call your typical High School sweethearts. Susan and DiDi were not what you would call dainty. Susan and DiDi were not what you would call cheerleader types. Susan and DiDi were not what you would call popular. What they were, that's a harder thing to say.
Susan and DiDi and Sundance and Ivan would come across the street to where I was standing. Sundance and Ivan and Klondike would jump all over each other a little. Then we would walk the rest of the way around the block. When Susan and DiDi were out of sight of their house and my parents’ house, I would offer them the big yellow plastic glass full of ice and Jack Daniels and they would sip from it. We would walk around the block two or three more times. We never talked about anything. If we did say anything, it usually went something like this.
"I see that dumb Mrs. Gertzer put new plaster rabbits on her lawn." Susan said.
"That bitch called the cops on us 'cause Sundance pooped in her yard." DiDi said.
When DiDi said yard she said it like this: Yahd. Susan said Yahd, too. It's that New England accent.
"I hear the Forsters are gettin' a divorce." Susan said.
"She was out in her yard one night, screaming bloody murder. The cops came." DiDi said.
"There's a big party goin' on over to the Montgomery's." Susan said. "All teenagers. No chaperones."
"Oh, yeah?" I said.
"I'm not going," DiDi said, "It's one of those parties where ya get drunk, ya get laid."
"Yes, that's what I've heard," said Susan.
I never said much. I just nodded and said "Oh yeah?" or "Really?" or "You betcha." and passed the big yellow plastic glass around.
After two or three times around the block, they'd drop their dogs off at their house and then next time we got up around my parents’ house I'd drop off Klondike and fill the big yellow plastic cup up with more ice and Jack Daniels. Then we'd walk around the block a bunch more times. Walking around the block in the twilight getting darker with the stars maybe coming out and that special summer scent in the evening air like adventure and travel and mystery. That scent of mystery that comes in the summer night air.
Sometimes we'd end up stretched out on a little hill over by Geary Circle. Sometimes one of them or the other would lay with her head on my chest and pretend I was her boyfriend. I would put my arm around whichever one it was and pretend she was my girlfriend. None of us ever acknowledged to any of the others that it was actually happening. Just that everyone sort of just happened to end up in those positions. Most nights that summer went like that.
* * *
I got a pup tent one day, and set it up in the back yard. I wanted to try sleeping outdoors. I felt stifled in the house, sometimes, at night.
Susan and DiDi had a tent in their yard, too. But I didn't like going in it. It was too big. It was too close to their house.
Just before Susan turned eighteen, she went on a diet. Susan lost a bunch of weight that was hanging around on her waist and butt and thighs, and started wearing less. After Susan turned eighteen she came out to walk the dogs one night in a yellow terry shorts and tank top outfit that really showed off her new body. I couldn't keep my eyes off her new body.
After Susan turned eighteen, things began to happen. First thing was when Susan's parents went out of town for a long weekend. They had a pool in their back yard. We decided to go skinny dipping. I don't know whose idea it was, but it seemed like a good one at the time. I had to take my glasses off, though, so I didn't really get to see them naked. I wanted to see them naked. We chased each other around in the pool, playing tag, but Susan kept letting me catch her. DiDi got out for some reason or other and Susan let me catch her and she bumped her soft rear end against my groin a few times and then my penis got up there and got caught between her thighs. She moved her legs a little and I came in the pool.
I think it was the next week when we finally really did it. The particular night. The night in question. That night we walked the dogs and put them away and got our second big yellow plastic glass of Jack Daniels and we were in my tent. DiDi and Susan and me in my little pup tent in the back yard and DiDi was passed out and Susan was letting me rub her crotch through her shorts and I was hard. We weren't acting like we were going to have sex. I was just sort of casually resting my hand on Susan where my knuckles could rub against her crotch and she had just sort of casually spread her legs so that I could. I wanted to have sex. I didn't want to just go inside after they went home and jerk off thinking about how close it had been. I wanted to get naked and get Susan naked and what the hell get DiDi naked, too but I knew that was not a good idea. None of it was a good idea, I guess, but that idea, that particular idea of getting DiDi naked and having sex with both of them, that was a particularly bad idea. I decided that DiDi had to go. I reached over and shook her.
"DiDi!" I said.
DiDi didn't answer. DiDi was snoring. I leaned over her and shook her shoulder and spoke right into her ear.
"DiDi!" I said, "You have to wake up!"
"Wha..." DiDi said, her eyes opening for a moment.
"You have to wake up and go home."
"Why?" DiDi said.
"You're all passed out, you have to go home, now." I said.
Susan didn't say anything.
Finally DiDi got up. She was mad and she stumbled out of the tent and into the dark. I zipped the tent up behind her. Susan didn't say anything. I tried to remember where we'd been.
My head was on Susan's leg, I think, and one hand had been casually resting on her crotch. Casually, as if it just happened to be there and neither of us had noticed it. That's the way it always had been, up to this night. This night, this particular night, was going to be different. I lay my head back down on Susan's leg. Susan didn't say anything. I casually let my hand fall back so that the knuckles rested on Susan's crotch. She had her legs bent at the knee and one was at like a ninety degree angle to the ground. Her pubic area bulged in her tight terry cloth shorts and I could feel heat rising from her there. I remembered the first time I had ever felt that heat rising from a woman. It always surprises me, feeling that heat, like maybe there is something in a woman's body that is as much a slave to it's own desire as a man's penis is. That heat rising, like a little furnace down there heating up the rest of the body house. It always surprises me, that heat. I don't know why.
I slipped my finger under the cloth of Susan's shorts and panties. Susan was wet under there. Susan didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. Susan just lay there and let me explore with my fingers, as if pretending that nothing was happening. As if that would mean she wasn't responsible in some way. This was how it had been up to this night. This particular night. The night in question. This particular night she was eighteen, we were drunk and alone in a tent and I wanted sex and so did she.
When I reached to pull her shorts off, she lifted her hips slightly to help. I licked the soft hair and skin of her lips plump and radiating heat, until she was very wet. I don't know if she enjoyed it. She made no moves, no sounds, she just lay there pretending to be uninvolved. I was used to clues. Clues that I was doing what the woman liked. Susan gave me no clues, except her heat and wetness, her acquiescence, her compliance. I reached down and undid my own pants. My penis was straining out of my underwear. I got up on my hands and knees over her. Her breasts and ribs inside her terry cloth top rose and fell, rose and fell, just barely visible in the darkness of the tent.
"I don't suppose you're on the pill, are you?" I said, ready to stay outside of her. Ready to just rub up against the warm soft wetness of her. Ready to come outside of her.
"Yes," she said, so quiet I almost missed it.
"You are?" I said. I couldn't keep my voice neutral, my heart was thunking around so I wasn't sure I heard her right.
"What, do you think I'm stupid?" she said.
* * *
I heard my daughter say that the other day. Our daughter. I'd asked her something about whether she put on clean underwear everyday.
"What, do you think I'm stupid?" she said, just the exactly same way Susan had said it that night twelve years and nine months before when I asked her if she was on the pill.
The pill that didn't work.
* * *
Here's what my parents did every night. My dad would come home from work and my mom would serve us dinner. My father, my brother, my mother and me. We would eat. My dad would then go down to the family room where he would drink three or four Gibsons or Scotch and waters, lie on the couch and fall asleep with the TV going. He would fall asleep about 7:30 every night. My mother would put the dishes in the dishwasher, turn it on, turn out all the lights and then go to her room where she would fall asleep with the TV going. She would fall asleep about 8:30 every night. My brother, who was thirteen then, and just as nerdy as I was at thirteen, would go to his room and read and watch his own TV until he fell asleep. He would fall asleep about 9:30 every night.
I would fill a big yellow plastic glass full of ice and Jack Daniels and walk the dog for three or four hours every night. After Susan turned eighteen, a lot of those nights ended in meaningless drunken sex. We never kissed. She was not a girlfriend. The words, 'romantically involved' did not apply. She was a silent and compliant partner. She would turn the way I urged her to turn. She would roll over or lie back at the pressure of my hands. Sometimes we could climb into the back of my pickup truck, inside the cap cover, shut the gate and have sex in there. You couldn't call it making love. I didn't call it making love. Love had nothing to do with it. Without any feedback from her, there were times when I had trouble coming. One night I guess I was particularly drunk and particularly uninspired and particularly unable to come but I couldn't stop, I couldn't let it go. I had to keep trying. I rolled her this way. I rolled her that way. I turned her over and got her up on her knees. I put her on her back and moved up to place myself in her mouth, which she accepted as compliantly and as unresponsively as anything else. Finally I faked it. I faked an orgasm. I still don't know who I was faking it for. I'm sure she didn't care one way or another.
A month or so later I moved to California and three months after that she wrote to say she was pregnant.
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