After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

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  The NEP was over. The recession was in full swing when Freddy met Carrie, dressed as he was in his K-mart best, his backpack mended with duct tape and his shoes growing inexorably tighter at the toes. Those families in Alberta not affected by the National Energy Program – and there weren’t many – hid their good fortune as best they could. But word got around. John Cartwright had his job. It was union. The wages were not great back then but they were wages. A good number of small towns in our stretch of the prairies became virtual ghost towns. Many have not recovered to this day.

  Not a lot of folks were in John’s position. He had a job and a good one at that. He did most of his drinking at home because it was cheaper. But he also drank at home to avoid the resentment of those barflies put on a strict two beer limit by their wives. Still on more than one occasion he came home in a foul temper after an argument with someone. Once I recall seeing blood on his collar and something of a shiner haloing his left eye.

  Nancy Hicks went through the mid-eighties without a hiccup to her seemingly perfect life. She drove a new car every three years and had her hair and nails done every few weeks. She hired a landscaping crew to mow the lawn and shovel the snow and she rarely let Kraft dinner or Hamburger Helper grace her dinner table. Her clothing bore ‘dry-clean only’ labels and her perfume came by the ounce rather than the quart. It smelled far too good to be a knock-off.

  One may ask how a twenty-something, stay at home, single mother could afford such a lifestyle in a time when the most popular window treatments to be seen were boards, when many considered a dinner at McDonald’s a night out. Some women grumbled – and their men fantasized – that Nancy spent her evenings on her back entertaining anyone with the funds required to part her smooth, tanned thighs.

  I don’t think so. I don’t think any man did in fact. Nancy was never seen out with a man on a date or otherwise. This led those same women to grumble – and their men to fantasize – that she was actually a lesbian and had inherited her wealth from some dead, rich uncle or some such thing.

  The truth was somewhat less exciting. Nancy did work from home, in a bedroom in fact, but a bedroom converted into an office. And despite being able to wear sweatpants or nothing at all, Nancy enjoyed dressing up for work. She once told Freddy it helped motivate her to stay away from the television. From the little spare room between hers and Carrie’s, Nancy ran a mail-order business. She sold everything from pocket knives to magazine subscriptions, specialty wood-working tools to farm machinery. This all started before the internet or even the affordable personal computer.

  And about the whole lesbian thing – nothing ever came of it. Mind you, aside from Carrie, I saw no evidence she had ever been with a man either. I guess the debate stayed open on that one. She lived for her daughter and even into her teens they were best of friends and would have ‘girl nights’ once every week or so. No boys – but they could talk about them. I suppose actually Carrie did most of the talking, all things considered. Nancy was a beautiful, young woman who was pregnant far too early in life. She didn’t just live for her daughter – Carrie was her life. It seemed to most onlookers that there was no room for anything else.

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  But she let Freddy see. It only cost him skinned palms and a sore ass. As the years passed and puberty laid its none-too-gentle claws on us, Freddy came to learn what she hid beneath the thin barrier of her lace triangle. He solved the enigma which so enthralled him. However, once he did, he was even more enthralled.

  Chris Jenkins smuggled one of his father’s Hustler magazines out to a sleepover early in the sixth grade. This was only weeks before Carrie made her first transition toward womanhood and the timing could not have been worse. Freddy had been contemplating how to ask her if he could just see it, see what it was she hid from the world. It would be a child’s version of course – no different than the child’s version of a penis he carried, just then beginning to sprout the fur of a man. He could think of no way to ask except to ask. But he knew doing so would be a mistake. He would be a tiger pouncing before his prey was safely unaware and in range. He waited, playing over in his mind a vision of lace slipping easily down tanned thighs. The vision could never go any further. His mind did not know how to complete it. It was not until the sleepover. In the feeble circle of light created by a battery-powered lamp, Freddy laid his eyes on his treasure for the first time.

  I can’t recall the model’s name but I’m sure Freddy could tell you. Her hair was dyed a shade of blonde very near to Nancy’s. Her cheeks were rouged and her lips were moist and red, full and pouting. The other boys didn’t care about all that – only that she began fully dressed and did not stay that way for long. Chris flipped the pages slowly, almost reverently, as each frame revealed more bare flesh. Her blouse came off, demurely covering her heaving chest in a silken lump. Her skirt, so much like Nancy’s on that autumn morning, quickly followed. She wore white stockings and a garter belt of white lace. Her panties were white as well. They were startlingly bright against her deeply tanned skin. Her bra came off and her breasts were full and round, hanging like overripe fruit against the smooth skin of her upper abdomen. Her stomach was flat and shapely, the fluid column of an hourglass trailing down into the graceful curves of her voluptuous hips.

  But she teased, removing her stockings one at a time. Briefly she drew down the waist band of her panties to display the upper fringe of her dark pubic mound. Freddy’s frustration was growing. I could sense it as clearly as the musk of adolescent arousal flooding the room. He wanted to tear the book out of Chris’ hands and skim ahead to the end. He needed to know what lay beneath. He forced himself to stay cool, to chill as our generation says. She drew her panties down across her hips, her back arched, the inverted heart of her buttocks poised for the camera. Deep shadow hid the cleft of her backside and the crumpled mound of lace hid everything below. An artist’s shot of her ankles followed, her panties hanging loosely over a pair of stiletto heels. I thought it was the most alluring image in the set, speaking volumes more than a spread-eagled tart ever would. But the other boys groaned. A barely audible hiss escaped Freddy’s lips and, despite my own arousal, I felt a slight chill. Even before he ever drew blood, he made me nervous. But the picture of this woman’s perfectly shaped ankles soothed me. I saw an exquisite balance between the hard angles of bone and the soft curves of flesh. I could look at it forever. Chris turned the page before I could ever be satisfied.

  It was there on the last page the tension rushed out of Freddy. There, on the last page, she was laid bare to the world. She lay on her back languidly amid rumpled sheets of satin. On her lovely face was a wanton look of fantasies fulfilled. Her knees were drawn high, spread to either side. There, finally, at long last, the secret of secrets was revealed, a holy grail brimming bearing nectar far sweeter than anything Arthur ever hoped to taste. Freddy did not hide his erection from the others, nor did they from him. They giggled, their tiny trouser tents not waning as Chris passed the magazine around. Other women revealed themselves in those pages. All were beautiful, but none would compare with the first – at least not to Freddy.

  Later that night as the soft snores of the other boys drifted around the room Freddy told me again what he planned. He told me about the valium and again he described Nancy’s triangle of shimmering, white lace. He told me that vision was a promise to him, a promise of so much more. Once he was able to come …. He left it hanging, his thoughts unfinished as he rubbed his still erect penis through the thin cotton of his pajama bottoms. He was close. For half a year now, he had been growing pubic hair and he was beginning to sport quite the crop of chest hair as well. Everything else was sure to follow soon. It was from the heat of his loins, so unfamiliar yet so natural, he knew he was close. His fantasy floated on the edge of consciousness, easing its way throughout his brain until it became as perfect as a memory to him.

  His first orgasm came only short weeks later. It came the very day Carrie received her period for th
e first time. Freddy was walking home from school that afternoon. Carrie was understandably absent. Two blocks from his house he came across a tiny sparrow, barely the size of a plum, stunned, sitting on the sidewalk. It was completely helpless, waiting to die. Already a fat calico was stalking it, waiting for Freddy to move on before pouncing. Freddy eyed the bird and the cat and smiled coldly. I knew what he was going to do even before he broke stride. He trod on it hard, his heel twisting slightly. I heard not a squawk of pain or terror or even bones breaking – only the wet ripping sound a lemon makes when juiced.

  Freddy paused and glanced around. His smile faltered. He dropped a hand to his crotch. The heat had returned with an intensity that shocked him. At school he learned all about masturbating. He knew roughly how it was accomplished. He imagined stripping Nancy‘s panties off. He imagined sliding them down her legs, parting her knees. He imagined doing ‘it’ with her. The sound their parts made as he put himself into her would be very much like the sound of the bird under his heel.

  Freddy rushed home, nursing his erection the whole way. To a passer-by he may have looked as though he needed to pee but he didn’t care. He reached his house and went into the washroom. The next five minutes were the most exhilarating five minutes he had thus far experienced in his short life. His first orgasm was powerful, frightening and all-consuming. In his mind he did not need to drug Nancy. He fed on the fake memories created by his fantasies. At some level he convinced himself he had already done ‘it’ with Nancy and she had loved him for it.

  Carrie was next.

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  Beauty is the scent of a woman’s hair, the tinkling of her laughter and the glimmer in her eyes. Beauty is the way she walks and the confidence or the shyness in her speech. But beauty is more than just these things and it is far more than just the reflection in a mirror, the image in a photograph. The bare essentials of what we find attractive surely are pleasing to the senses and there is nothing wrong with that. If you believe Darwin, you have to accept this as being natural. Physical beauty is what has brought us to this point in our existence. But now we have evolved beyond the mere senses. Such things are fleeting anyway.

  I think it is sad, really, that we often allow beauty and love to lie as bedfellows. With so little in common, such bedfellows rarely last. They may part well or not so well. One may consume or destroy the other and we can only blame innocence for the transgression. This is how I see both love and beauty. They are pure. But purity in any form is so easily corrupted.

  To his credit, Freddy believed this as well. He always was the ultimate innocent. He understood no one’s pain but his own. Only in times of great passion or greater rage could he be made to see otherwise. His mind was distant and separate from his physical existence in every way it could be. He felt nothing inside for what he displayed outside. It was merely window dressing. You see, to Freddy pain and pleasure were equally beautiful but they are only of the flesh. And with the pleasures that flesh may bring, Freddy always wanted it. Even when he was too young to know what that pleasure was, he could sense the excitement, the tension and later, the sense of release it generated in those around him. Pain – just like pleasure – could be sensed. It brought on the same emotional states in others as pleasure – or so he believed. Perhaps he could actually sense the endorphins in someone’s sweat or on their breath. How he did it, he knew it instinctively. Freddy craved pain nearly as much as pleasure. He thought they were like hot and cold. They were opposites that could be equally fulfilling if the conditions were right. In his naiveté, Freddy thought everyone else felt the same.

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  Freddy went to school just like any other kid. He made decent grades. He played soccer and baseball in the spring and summer, football in the fall and hockey in the winter. John was adamant about the sports and never balked at the cost. Even so, most of his equipment came from the Sportswap over on Eleventh Avenue. Only his mouth guards and jockstraps were guaranteed to be new.

  When it came to his grades, I don’t think John cared – so long as he passed. Consequently, aside from their break room observations over coffee and cigarettes, his teachers never really had much to say about him. He was quiet, he did his homework and he rarely got into trouble. Some would say he was lacking discipline. I knew if he tried harder, he could be an honor student, but he only did what was asked of him. Only in social studies did he ever bring his full attention to bear. He was not dumb or lazy – any lazier that the average kid. Teachers and guidance counselors had their buzz words to describe kids like Freddy. I’m sure they said many of the same things about me. He was a dreamer and a woolgatherer or, more harshly, a slacker. He did not apply himself, he lacked motivation, etcetera, etcetera. My personal favorite was coined by our eighth grade English teacher: Freddy was in training for a future career as a wallflower.

  Freddy blended into the adolescent masses nearly perfectly. For the most part the teachers overlooked him. He was just another kid. Mind you, aside from the rare and exceptional kind, any teacher would tell you the only students recalled years later are the unnaturally brilliant or the unwittingly hopeless. Freddy rode high on the bell’s back and he saw no reason to do otherwise.

  Because he was not all-consumed by his scholastic pursuits, Freddy was free to think and to daydream. He liked that. They say an idle mind is the devil’s playground. This could not have been truer in Freddy’s case. Idle time gave him the opportunity to indulge in his fantasies, so much so that on occasion – particularly during the confusion of puberty – the line between fantasy and reality ceased to be completely defined. Such was the affair with Nancy Hicks.

  I say this mildly, but in truth it used to frighten me. While I was preoccupied with Hemingway or one of the Bronte sisters, he was getting to second base with Ms. Barret, our seventh-grade math teacher. She stood aloof, wore very little make-up, dressed conservatively and still managed to give every last one of us a hard-on for forty-three minutes each day. To hear Freddy talk about her was disturbing to say the least. According to him, she got wet just thinking about him.

  This was not juvenile bravado. To him it was true. He believed it and I was not about to argue with him. He told me one afternoon while we were sitting in his bedroom about feeling her up in the back seat of her car. He told me how her breasts felt. He told me that she liked it when he bit her earlobe. He even told me she was going to let him go down on her – only they were interrupted by the principal.

  When he got like that, recalling his daydreams in the past tense as though they really did happen, Freddy genuinely terrified me. Hell, he scared me half to death. In recollection, I was probably scared half to death almost three quarters of the time. Maybe that is why I am destined to live only three-eighths as long as I should. I don’t know. Math was never my subject.

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  Life passed in Prince William Falls as it did anywhere else. We left elementary school behind with fears and hopes for the future. That summer passed with a black cloud of dread on the horizon. Few of us could recall the terror of the first grade – leaving home, being away from our mothers for the first time. But we knew the sixth grade was special. In the sixth grade we were kings of the playground. We ruled with impunity. Leaving elementary behind and stepping up into junior high was like starting all over again. Once more we were at the bottom of the pecking order.

  We discovered quickly that it was not so bad after all. Once the first few weeks were over, the worst of the challenges were behind us. The seventh grade turned out to be not much different than the sixth – save for the lockers, having to travel from class to class and giving up recess for what was simply called ‘lunch’. That summer was the threshold. By entering junior high, we left childhood behind and stepped into the first waxing light of our adult lives, our electric blue pre-dawn. Around us the world had changed. It seemed larger. It seemed closer. Maybe it was only our view of it that was changing, adapting to fit the new freedoms we received as we grew.

  The G.I. Joes were put
away with the Barbies. Sand boxes and tree houses were abandoned in favor of convenience store parking lots and console video games. It was no longer deemed cool to be seen in the company of a parent and strangely it was better to be seen on public transit than in the passenger seat of the family car. It became awkward for friends of opposite sexes to still be friends and if you were too close to a friend of the same sex you were suddenly very gay. The label in our clothing somehow became more valuable than the garment itself – despite not always being able to see it – and the lines of right and wrong were blurred in with the concepts of cool and lame.

  The eighties wound down with an invasion of new, more powerful icons like the Mario Brothers and Bart Simpson. Surround Sound replaced Hi-Fi, Bill Gates and his 640k was proven woefully inadequate and Paula Abdul was apparently sleeping with a cartoon cat. This Caroll-esque escape from reality was the beginning of a new era spawning virtual reality, virtual desktops, tolerable sex and violence on television and C.G.I. graphics in the movies.

  Amid the onslaught of advertising, big money movies and general techno-geek afterbirth, we entered our teenaged years very aroused and extremely confused. The boys were sprouting new hair and new angles, strutting around with engorged muscles and unreliable baritones that would always fail us at the most inopportune moments. The girls were developing curves and shapes and learning to deal with the cumbersome beauty of being women. To us they became something both frightening and exhilarating. More to the point, with the snap of the first training bra the gap between the sexes – fissured already – was split wide. Everyone began to notice each other in new, hormone-driven ways. I don’t know what it was like for the girls but for the boys at least that vast and unattainable world opening before us closed quickly to little more than the space two feet directly in front of the penis.