440
PARTISAN REVIEW
clean as that automobile, I'd rest content." She missed the point. That
car was
me.
Nobody stayed in their rooms; at least we felt like nobody
but losers did. I was so revved I needed a room on wheels.
If
I didn't
have a girl down to her panties on those red seat covers, I had the White
Knight jammed with guys. Back then people had friends . I don't know
what's the matter with Buster. I ask him, "Don't you have any friends ,
where're your friends? " All I get's a slammed door.
Back then we'd order ten Big Boys at Shoney's and wheel out with
the waitress chasing us, her tray spilling cokes. We 'd flash a few moons
in the parking lot at Crabtree mall. We'd shoot the bulbs off the
marquee of Guess Road Evangelist Tabernacle. We burned our share of
rubber and I guess we raised some hell. But it was harmless. It wasn't
the weird sort of stuff. Hating America never crossed my mind. Buster
says to me, "How can you like this crummy world?" I say it's the only
one I've got. Besides maybe there weren't so many things wrong with it
back in my day. He says no, my friends and I just didn 't notice. I tell
him, damn it Buster, you can't say, "Well, the world's not perfect so I
guess I'll give it a pass." It's there, like it or not. Maybe it sounds gung
ho or whatever you want to call it, but we liked the world, me and my
friends.
The worst thing we ever did was get a little gross and loud, and a
little too revved with the cars and the guns. And we took Mandy
Kotchkiss out to the golf course one Saturday after the basketball game
and made her do oral sex on us all. I guess that sounds a little rough,
but she got in the car of her own free will. I don 't suppose she thought
we were taking her over there to playa few rounds of golf at midnight.
I remember she said, "Look here y'all can just forget it, you bunch of
damn goons , what do you think I am, a harlot from Charlotte?" And
Dickey Moore said, "You said it, honey pie, and I'm a phallus from
Dallas. " Because everybody in the world knew Mandy'd been going all
the way since the ninth grade and she'd already done it with her mouth
for Watts Kirkland the night of the Junior Talent Show . So she let us
strip her and she did Dickey first.
Back then a sight like her big tits shot up through you like a rocket
at Cape Canaveral. So many things did. Your motor was racing and
you knew you were alive. And you'd landed in the best country in the
world, and lived in Hope Valley! My engine turned over a dozen times
a day. To me a girl's body was the best thing God ever made. Feeling
the shapes under the tingly sweaters, touching that soft special skin, I
was wild from pleasure.
It's not that I was a sex fiend or something; it wasn't just girls that
gave me the feeling. I could watch the jets and the wheat fi elds on the
TV sign-off and get a thrill that nearly choked me. The same for
