Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

Maurey pulled the king and rummied. “Sam didn’t come instantly or anything, but he kept grinding down there without going in.”

Lydia blew a column of smoke at her. “Your mom and you have little chats like this?”

“My mother thinks I’m still a child, sweet thirteen and never been kissed. She won’t even let me use hair spray. If I ever said sex in front of her I swear she’d faint.”

“Then why are you comfortable talking premature ejaculations in front of me?” Maurey and I stayed quiet. I don’t think either of us knew what ejaculation meant.

“Oh, Lydia, give the kids a break,” Delores said. “I wish I could have asked my mother questions back then. I’d never have married Ray if I’d known the first thing about doing it.”

Maurey looked Lydia in the eye—made me nervous. Neither one of those two were women to be trifled with and I could feel their little bitch-alarm systems kicking into high wail. “Sam told me that you two have great communication and trust because you don’t treat him like a kid and he doesn’t treat you like a mom.”

Lydia stared her right back. “He doesn’t stand a chance, does he?”

“Not that I can see.”

No one said much, so I shuffled. Then Lydia smiled real big. “I imagine at his age fucking you is worth what he’s bound to lose later.”

“I like to think so,” Maurey said.

I had no idea in hell what had just happened, but whatever it was was over. Something had been decided and Lydia and Maurey both seemed happy with the results.

Delores pointed the codeine bottle at Maurey. “Were you well lubricated?”

“Lubricated?”

“Wet,” Lydia said. “Did you get excited and was it nice and wet down there?”

Maurey thought awhile, but I didn’t need to. “She was dry as the blanket. Should we have used water?”

Delores snorted. “Water don’t make it. The wet comes from within the woman.”

“Is that what put out means?”

“More like ooze out.”

“Where does it come from?”

Delores looked at Lydia who gave her an eyebrow shrug. I was to learn quickly that even people who have regular sex don’t usually know what’s going on. Lydia spoke. “When the girl gets excited, this dampness just shows up, then the guy can go in.”

Delores said, “Dampness, my ass. When I’m ready you could wring me out like a washrag.”

“Don’t be crude,” Lydia said. “We’re teaching the children a beautiful and precious act and it shouldn’t be connected to crude ideas.”

“My ass,” Delores snorted.

“How does the woman get excited?” Maurey asked.

Delores leaned back so her skirt rode up again. “I just think about doing it and I start leaking.”

“But I’ve never done it before so I don’t know what to think about.”

“I use gin,” Lydia said.

Delores considered. “I’ll use Vaseline if that’s what it takes.”

Concepts were flying across the room too fast for me to hold on. “You pour gin up the tunnel?”

“God, no, you drink the gin and get drunk and horny and men think they’re taking advantage of you.” Lydia lit another Montclair off the butt of the first one. She leaned over and dropped the used butt into the sink. I hated it when she did that.

“The Vaseline goes up there.” Delores pointed to what I thought was roughly her navel area.

Lydia finished her Dr Pepper and tossed the empty bottle at the trash can by the back door. It rimmed once and bounced in. “Foreplay is the only romantic way to excite a woman.”

“Kissing,” I said. “I told her we had to kiss because they always do in the books but Maurey said it could be done without romance.”

“It can be done without romance, only it’s not that much fun.”

Delores said, “I can have a ball with somebody I can’t stand.”

Lydia looked at Maurey’s chest. “You haven’t hit puberty yet?”

She shook her head. “Both Smith twins have and they’re treating me like a child.”

I thought puberty was when you could do it and before puberty was when you couldn’t, so none of this made any sense.

“I guess it’s safe then.” Lydia stood up. “If you’re going to play this game, you might as well play it right. Scoot your chair back.”

Maurey looked concerned. “Do I have to undress?”

“That’d be too much even for me. I am his mother, after all.”

“Sometimes I forget,” I said.

Lydia gave me a gruesome look, then she walked to the food cabinet and opened a package of premade taco shells that’d been up there since we moved in. She held it so the slot ran up and down. “Looked like this, right?” she asked me.

“Hairier.”

Delores hiccuped. “I can’t wait to write this conversation in my diary.”

Lydia went over and put the taco shell vertically between Maurey’s legs. “Look at this, Sam. Pay attention.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She ignored the ma’am. “Down here is where you go in. One of you has to grab it and angle it right. It’ll be years before it just slides itself in.”

Maurey nodded, taking in every detail.

Lydia pointed to the bridge at the top of the taco shell. “Right here is a little lump called the pleasure dome.”

“Pleasure dome,” I said.

“Now, don’t go poking right at it, you run your fingers or your tongue lightly around and around the dome and the girl gets wet.”

“Tongue. I thought the girl used her mouth, not the guy.”

“That’s a nasty rumor started by men.”

Delores oohed . “Makes me wet just thinking about your young tongue down there.”

I looked at her. “It does?”

Lydia pointed the taco shell at Delores. “Don’t even think of giving lessons.”

“But…”

“This is for the kids.”

“You gonna teach him how to make her come?”

Her come? Jesus, would the revelations never cease. Girls squirted too?

Lydia shook her head. “Sam’s bright. He’ll figure that one out soon enough. The ability to give orgasms every time is too powerful a weapon for a thirteen-year-old to deal with.”

Maurey’s eyes hadn’t left the taco shell. “Why didn’t Jo talk about this in Little Women .”

“Two things,” Lydia said. “First, any sign that Maurey is a woman and you stop the game. Got that?” Lydia glared at us. Maurey nodded.

“What’s the first sign she’s a woman?” I asked. No one told me.

“The other is a matter of form. You don’t talk like this in front of grown-ups. At your age, sex is something you sneak around and hide.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Society would fall apart if people were honest about fucking.”

I considered that philosophical stance for a moment, but the idea of a secret weapon that I could use to get girls whether they wanted to get got or not was almost too much. Imagine—high school girls, college girls, baton twirlers, car hops at drive-ins, girl models in the nightie section of the Sears catalogue, girls on TV. I could get Hayley Mills from the Disney movies. I could make Hayley Mills come and, while I was at it, see her tits.

“You want to go in my room and read comic books?” I asked Maurey.

She seemed hypnotized by the taco shell. “Sure, comic books sound like fun.”

Delores picked the cards off the table. “I love crazy 8s. You play crazy 8s?”

Lydia threw the taco shell in the trash, then turned to me. “I always thought you were a little boy. Guess I should pay more attention.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Who?”

“Thanks, Lydia.”

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

As I held her hand and led her away to my bed, Maurey said, “Go get ’em, honey bunny.”

So, while my mom Lydia and her new friend Delores sat at the kitchen table playing crazy 8s, Maurey and I exchanged lost virginities. Afterward, we all went down to the White Deck for ice cream, Delores’s treat.