I’ve heard it said the sexual revolution ended with the Viet Nam war but I disagree. I don’t believe the sexual revolution ever ended. Driven by the media, it evolved. It does not end – it cannot. Only the revolutionaries change from generation to generation. It is very easy to understand really. With little money and less to do, we act and we experiment out of sheer boredom.
-
The seventh grade came and went. Grade eight was a blur and grade nine was little different – only by then we were at the top of the food chain again. The routine kept us going. The dull, endless stream of classes and commitments led from one day into the next, one week into the next, weeks into months, until the whole school year could be gauged by the slow degradation of the dust covers on our text books. We became drones to the routine, preparing ourselves for our adult lives. I did often think – if this was all there was to life, what is the point?
In the angst of our teenaged ears, we live only in the winter. The seasons never changed for us. If they did, each was merely a harbinger of the next until winter came ‘round again. Life itself seemed a struggle, but not a struggle to live. It was a struggle to be accepted, to be cool and to fit in. For the boys, it was a struggle to score the hottest chick, the best car – all with as little effort as possible. No parent can ever understand what his child is going through. It is so easy to forget how difficult it was. I suppose in retrospect all of this was trivial compared with the fight to put a roof over our heads and food on the table while at the same time insuring our kids are wearing the plain, white T-shirt with the Calvin Klein label in the collar instead of the just the plain, white T-shirt or the running shoes with the air pump instead of those old-fashioned regular soled shoes because they will be ostracized by their peers and will be subsequently destined for a life of celibacy and rejection. Thus, it is winter for the teenager – even when the sun shines brightly and the grass is the same shade of green as the crayon claims.
But grade nine was different. Spring came in grade nine as the school year wound down. A great weight was lifted off us. A sense of relief washed over us, like the opening of a window in a dark and stuffy room. Of course, we no longer deluded ourselves into thinking we just had to make it to the end of high school and then we were free. We knew the truth now. We knew we were never going to be free. I suppose that is why that summer is likely to be the one everyone remembers as the happiest. I remember it for a very different reason. But I’m getting to that.
-
Carrie Hicks blossomed over the winter. As the sun returned and the heavy coats were put away, she stepped out and spread her wings. Always the tomboy, Carrie lamented having breasts and she would wear T-shirts a size too small to help keep them in place. I don’t know whether or not she was aware of the effect it created. She played baseball in a league of almost all boys and none of her team-mates complained – although I imagine a few of the parents may have had something to say about her choice of attire.
She was still with Freddy – which is where this interlude is headed. By now it was somewhat more serious than merely ‘going together’. When they were just ‘going together’ they kissed on occasion and held hands when no one was looking. We were all still friends but now when Freddy was with her, he didn’t want me around quite as often. I am pretty sure Carrie never noticed my absence nearly as much as I would have liked or hoped. Despite all her tomboyish tendencies Carrie was still a teenage girl and she loved his attention, the attention of her boyfriend.
Freddy knew this and I recall his agenda. He wanted to be her first. He wanted to physically possess her and he cared very little about the emotional aspect of it. I don’t think he actually understood that part. To him Carrie was something of an asset, something to be used. Freddy and I discussed this on several occasions but on the morning prior to this incident I actually grew angry with him. I might sooner have influenced the four winds.
He honestly did not see anything wrong with his way of thinking. He could not understand how the rest of us could be so obsessed with our feelings and with some unwritten guide book to morality. Unlike those of us who trod down the lower road and knew full well ours is not the right way, Freddy did not. He could not. He assigned value to people as if they were collectable stamps. He could not think of people beyond the sum of their parts. He saw no soul, no mind – just flesh. Even as his own mind could wander and roam.
Some people he treated with disdain. Some he loathed outright – even among his circle of friends. Others like Carrie and her mother he placed high on his list. John was different. Freddy respected his father although he never much showed it. But he never actually liked John Cartwright.
As for me – well, I’m the only person who has ever really known him and gotten close enough to see how he works. I knew his thoughts and I knew what feelings he did have as well as I knew my own. There has never been very much I didn’t know or that he didn’t tell me – except maybe how he truly felt about me. He never tried to kill me back then. At times I’m sure he wanted to. But at last I know why he didn’t.
It was with all this in mind he told me what happened after school that day – the last day of grade nine. I was not there. As the school bell rang for the last time, I sensed a certain kind of energy between him and Carrie. I made myself scarce and it was after midnight before I returned to him. Freddy, his face battered and bruised but triumphant, told me everything as we sat on the back porch smoking cigarettes lifted from his mother’s pack. He left nothing out. He never did. I recall so perfectly that I might as well have been there myself.
-
Snow still lay in patches in the deep shade; hard-crusted, blackened, stinking lumps of ice clinging to life in the shelter of northern exposures and deep beneath the canopies of evergreens and fresh-smelling copses of poplar and birch. This was normal enough back then as it still is – although sometimes it seems the seasons have changed a little. Nor is it uncommon to receive a final dump of snow in late May or even mid-June as winter shrugs the last of its death throes.
But on this day winter seemed to be finished. Spring – as brief as it is in southern Alberta – was rapidly giving way to a glorious summer. The sun was bright and the air warm. The street cleaners were busy making their rounds. I recall hearing them over on Campbell Avenue, working their way across town in slow, nonsensical loops. Certainly Freddy and Carrie could hear them as well if they cared to listen. Recall, I was gone by this time. I was stationed a block or two away with a library paperback on the benches in front of Hansen’s Laundromat.
Carrie was wearing a pair of army-surplus cast-offs hanging low on her hips, old canvas-backed Converse sneakers and one of her too-tight T-shirts which almost but not quite showed a bit of bare abdomen. This look, which young nubiles such as Brittany Spears and the Spice girls would make en vogue in the coming years, was chosen by Carrie for comfort rather than style – much to her mother’s dismay. Carrie knew the boys looked at her and she knew why but she didn’t care. She was with Freddy. Maybe she figured it out on her own. I know she wasn’t completely naïve. Then again Freddy could have enlightened her – possibly to foster in her a heightened sense of curiosity and an acceptance that may otherwise have taken years more to develop. Either way it was her curiosity and Freddy’s inherent charm with her which led them down into the Cartwright basement that afternoon.
But I get ahead of myself.
Freddy and Carrie walked in silence. They held hands. This had long since become acceptable. They were fourteen – nearly fifteen – and to hold hands was no longer a big deal. Around them their fellow students hurried passed, off to whatever adventures were planned for their first afternoon of freedom. The scents of old lunches, unwashed gym socks and chalk dust lingered in the air and would for a week or more until everyone came to grips with that freedom. Soon dust, mold and sweat would be replaced by late night TV, buttered popcorn and sunscreen at the lake.
“What are you thinking – about high school I mean?” Carrie asked him
suddenly. Around them the streets were rapidly emptying. This was June – still mid-June – and yet she was thinking of the fall. Her mind was in September, as though that first tolling of the school bell had already come and gone.
Freddy stopped in his tracks and cast an appraising eye her way. He was not really thinking about school at all. Lately he had come to realize how much she had matured – seemingly overnight. Her braces were gone and her ball cap and all-purpose ponytail were replaced by a straight, short cut that for her was simple to maintain. But for him it managed to draw his eye to the supple curve of her neck. The faint scatter of freckles across her nose had not completely faded but the pleasing curve of her slender waist and the swell of her breasts straining at her T-shirt contrasted nicely with her still childish face.
She was fourteen and stepping out of the shadow of her childhood. Carrie was always pretty – or cute rather. Even while the girls around her filled out and she was left with gangly knees and the ruler-straight line of her boy-hips, she was pretty. Her filling out was just taking a bit longer. But as it happened, it happened perfectly. Now instead of being cute or pretty she was just damned beautiful. It was more than just her body – although that was all that Freddy saw or spoke of – but I think it was because of her body. It was actually in her face, in her eyes – the way she looked at you. At the time I couldn’t quite place it but today it is no surprise. The look was confidence, something she never possessed before.
Freddy just thought she looked damned good and that was enough for him. Of late her face had replaced the stony faces of the models in his small collection of magazines carefully hidden in the hollow beneath the bottom drawer of his dresser. Likely this is why he was not contemplating school when she asked. He was in fact contemplating how to fit a question of his own into the conversation.
“High school is months away,” he said finally. “It’s probably no different than junior high.”
Carrie clucked her tongue and smiled. That smile only strengthened Freddy’s resolve. “It can’t be,” she started, “How could it? We’ve just gotten used to being at the top of the food chain and suddenly we’re back at the bottom again. Don’t you think that’s scary?”
Freddy shrugged. “Death is scary, but it happens to everybody. So why get scared about it? Don’t worry about it until it’s about to happen. It’s like high school; high school is about as close as being dead.”
Carrie smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand. “Why do you think about stuff like that?”
Freddy smirked and smacked her back. He dropped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Why are you thinking about next year when you haven’t even gotten home from the last day of this year?”
Carrie opened her mouth to retort but stopped.
“Keep it up and people will think you’re obsessive or something.” Freddy spun her so they were facing. “Do you lock the door five times before you leave the house – just to make sure?”
Carrie replied by sticking her tongue out at him. I’m certain as her eyes closed a dark smile played across Freddy’s face. This was what he was waiting for. A born chess player, Freddy was always five moves ahead. He knew Carrie would give him the ol’ raspberry and as her tongue came out, he was already on the move. Freddy’s hand snapped up, thumb and forefinger clamping down over the soft, pink flesh poking out between her lips. He squeezed – but not too hard.
“Ah!” She spat. “Few-ey, we’oh!”
Freddy held on just for a moment longer, his smile never reaching his thoughtful eyes. When he did let go, he jumped back a step to put himself out of the reach of her vengeance. His thin smile split into a wide grin.
“That hurt!” Carrie exclaimed. She pouted but all too soon she was smiling as well. I guess she could not help it.
“Want me to kiss it better?” Freddy asked without missing a beat.
They had kissed often. But it was hardly ever more than just a peck and never open-mouthed. Carrie considered him her boyfriend and he was. She had her fantasies about marriage and a home together. They were much older in these whimsical daydreams of all young girls and she treasured them as much as Freddy treasured his. Yet I wonder if hers would remain if she knew what Freddy fantasized about.
Freddy kissed her because he wanted to. All the while the visions he had of her mother were beginning to merge with thoughts of Carrie in her Hanes - Her Way cotton panties and sports bras he sometimes glimpsed on her bedroom floor before she could kick them under the bed. He kissed her because that was STEP 1. STEP 2 was copping a feel – which he managed to do that past Christmas while they were wrestling around down in John’s rumpus room. She said nothing despite the blatant grab he made for her left breast. She did give him a warning look however. It said: That’s enough – for now! Since then he could touch them when they kissed but only when no one was around and never for long. She had never let it go any further.
STEP 3 was a bit of a leap. This was where the question came in. He just needed the right time to pose it. Freddy was always quite organized. He had goals and he developed plans to reach them. He had a goal now and he was working on the plan. The goal was simple: To get laid.
-
“Want me to kiss it better?” Freddy asked her with a big, foolish grin on his face.
The expression on Carrie’s face was far more serious. Self-consciously she glanced around before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around his neck. Because Freddy was taller than her – taller than most fourteen-year-olds, we both were – she stood on her toes and lifted her face to his.
Freddy let her kiss him, feeling the warmth of her body against his and the moistness of her lips. Her tongue tentatively poked into his mouth and flicked over the tip of his own tongue before retreating. She tasted like Juicy-Fruit and there was a raw energy about her, like the air before a summer storm. The kiss was hardly just a peck. It lasted a full twenty seconds and ended only when the brunt of Freddy’s passion pressed into the firm wall of her stomach.
Carrie gasped and pulled away. Her open palms lingered on his chest and she treated him with a curious smile. She blushed, her eyes flicking down below his waistline before returning to meet his gaze. “I’ve never actually seen one,” she said mildly with only a moment’s hesitation. “Can I see yours?”
I know Freddy did not expect this. He balked for a moment, hunting for words. Still he managed to reply without sounding too foolish. “Here? Now?” He reached for his belt.
She stopped him with a little laugh, a nervous laugh. “Your place. My mom would never leave us alone.”
For a moment Freddy wondered if Nancy would want to see it as well. He nodded, his smile feeling bolted in place. Already he could see the game reaching check in just a few moves. He spent long evenings contemplating how he would broach the subject with her. STEP 3 was a leap in more ways than one. The leap was a distance covered in their relationship. It was supposed to be symbolic of the feelings they shared and how close they had grown. But for Freddy it was more a leap of faith. He was sure she would never speak to him again if the question was posed wrongly or at an inappropriate time. He was consumed with the idea, the remote possibility that he could possibly do ‘it’ with this girl with whom he was as familiar with as a sibling, with whom he had grown up and to whose house he had enjoyed no-knock access for the last four years. All he could think of was sleeping with her.
But maybe that wasn’t much different than most teenage boys or a fair number of grown men for that matter. At that time – or at any time I should guess – it seemed all our friends ever thought about was sex. Sex consumed our lives since before our first orgasms to the point when it became just another thing to try and do on a Friday night – if the movie let out before ten-thirty.
-
In 1991 most of us had yet to lose our virginity but those that had or those that had convinced us of their success kept us enthralled with their tales. There seemed to be a couple of classes of boys in my teenage years.
The first were those who somehow managed to score before the end of the ninth grade. These junior Casanovas were often the first to sprout facial hair or they were the hardcore jock types who would come to expect such treatment as their birthright for somehow being born superior to anyone with a G.P.A. above 2.5 or suffering from an inferior jump shot. They would be the first ones to get their driver’s licenses and would have beefed-up 4x4’s or old muscle cars jacked so high in the back as to resemble jungle cats ready to pounce.
The second class – quite literally – was the stragglers. We got what was left once the vanguard had swept through. Most of us would perform the deed during high school or if all else failed on the night of our graduation. For others college would teach them the true secrets of manhood. Alas, a sad few would hold out even longer. Freddy did not like this second class but his time was all but up. Technically this summer was still part of grade nine. But summer vacations the world over have a tendency to slip away at an alarming rate.
He wanted to have sex most simply because he had not had sex yet. He chose Carrie because she seemed to be the most likely candidate. Despite his fantasies, Freddy was not so completely deluded as to think he was ready to try wooing her mother. His feelings for Carrie – what feelings he had – were not genuine. I’m quite sure of that. His feelings for most people were not genuine for that matter. He could hate and he did in spades. He could rage as I knew full well. In the years to come I would come to understand how well he could rage. Love was a different matter – Freddy doubted himself capable of that emotion. I doubt he was capable of feeling any benevolent emotion at all back then. At times when his control slipped, when he was at his most vulnerable, his rage growing, I would ask myself if this was as human as he got.
Guilt and regret never crossed paths with him either. He would perform the most heinous acts without a moment’s hesitation. I suppose he did have regrets but they were not the kind of regrets any normal person would have. Freddy was cold but he could hide it behind a façade as genuine in appearance as any of those around him. His act was complete and, aside from me and the break room speculation of his teachers, no one was the wiser. Carrie certainly didn’t know and I really only had notions of what he was at the time. We would both find out soon enough.
After The Flesh Page 4