“Met-ro, me-dia, television,” Jamie and Debbie sang the theme song for channel 11, “eleven, eleven, eleven . . .” The girls fell into each other, giggling, then Debbie broke away and went to examine the kitchen cupboards.
Brett’s mother was leaning in the doorway, her head tucked under Brett’s father’s arm. Her eyes looked wild and mousy as she watched Debbie.
“The stove’s not hooked up, dear,” Brett’s mother said.
“But the fridge is working.”
“Darn!” Debbie said. “I brought brownie mix and everything.”
“You know the Electric Parade isn’t running,” Brett’s dad said. “They’ve got some special parade instead.” No one seemed interested except Jamie.
“But I love the Electric Parade!” she said.
“They’ve got America Parade, or something like that,” Brett’s dad said. “You know people wearing those giant head costumes, playing out scenes from United States history.”
“Yeah, yeah, Dad,” Brett said, “the whole bicentennial thing—I saw the ads for it on TV.”
“God, I’m so bummed there’s no Electric Parade,” Jamie said.
When they pulled onto the freeway, Tammy picked up the CB radio, held it like a microphone against her mouth, and said, “This is Pink Panties, anyone else out there headed to Disneyland?”
A grumbling voice broke in over the CB, “Where you at now Pink Panties? Let’s convoy to Disneyland!” They each bought the Adult Magic Kingdom Pass for $5.75. The pass gave you entrance to the park and eleven tickets that could be used on any ride—even the E ticket rides, which, really, were the only ones Jamie and her friends were interested in going on.
As they hustled from one ride to the next, Jamie began to feel like they were simply checking events off a list. From the Jungle Cruise they ran to get in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean. When the pirate ride was over they hauled off the boats and dashed around the flocks of families to get in line for the Haunted Mansion. In the capsule-shaped car of the Haunted Mansion Flip talked into Jamie’s ear, pointing out what looked fake, what seemed lame, and what just bored him. And then he didn’t want to go on the Pinocchio ride, the ride that was, to Jamie, the purpose of their trip. How could they make out on the Pinocchio ride if Flip refused to ride?
“It’s a C ride,” Flip said. “We can’t waste our pass on a C.”
“But we have seven tickets left,” Jamie said. “There’s no way we’re going to go on seven more E rides.”
“We should use our time wisely,” Flip said, “like, on E rides, get it?”
The bantering continued for a while, a fact that made Jamie feel proudly mature—as if she were a wife who had to mollify her cranky, overworked husband.
Eventually Jamie agreed that instead of going on a C or E ride they could sneak off to the mobile home for a couple hours alone. Making out in the parking lot of Disneyland seemed like a reasonable compromise to her fantasy. She’d probably be disappointed, Jamie thought, if they made out on a ride and it wasn’t exactly as she had imagined it would be after having witnessed the kissing teens so many years earlier.
There were two beds in the back of the mobile home.
One was a double bed and the other was a single bunk bed perched above it. Flip turned down the covers of the double bed, peeled off his shirt and shorts so that he was naked, and got in without pulling the covers up. It was the first time Jamie had witnessed his nakedness in open daylight.
“C’mon,” he said, patting the mattress.
Jamie stared at his penis—the neat packaging of his balls, the even color throughout.
“Well?” Flip asked.
Jamie took off her flip-flops, shorts, and T-shirt and lay beside Flip in her white cotton bra and panties. She was awkward, self-contained with her knees up and arms by her side as she stared down at Flip’s genitals.
“I totally think it’s time we move on,” Flip said, “move ahead, you know.”
Jamie’s stomach lurched. She had been so drunk with love for Flip that the idea that he’d ever break up with her, that they’d ever move on and not be together, had never even flitted into her mind.
“Why?” Jamie shut her eyes and prayed that he wasn’t trying to break up with her.
“I don’t know. I just think that sex is an amazing thing, and . . . well, we’ve been making out, you’ve felt my dick a little, I’ve been feeling your . . . bosoms—”
“Bosoms?” Jamie laughed, relieved.
“I thought it was a respectful word,” Flip said. “I was gonna say tits.”
“But isn’t it just bosom, without the s?”
“Well if you’re looking at one it’s a bosom. But when you’ve got two in front of you, they’re bosoms.”
“Bosoms.”
“Yeah, so I was thinking we need to do some exploring. Like, I’d like to introduce my dick to your mouth.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Jamie said, looking down at Flip’s dick, which was now pointing up at her, punching out of its skin.
“And I’d like to meet your Virginia.”
“Virginia? Like the state?”
“That’s what I called it when I was a little kid ’cause I thought vagina and Virginia were the same thing.”
“So you thought one of the fifty states was Vagina?” Jamie laughed.
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Flip grinned. “So anyway, can everyone meet now?”
And with that, Flip bent down and slipped off Jamie’s underpants. Jamie started laughing, although she wasn’t sure why. There was something absurd about this naked moment, like when she and her sister, when they still felt they were twins, would jump naked on their parents’ bed after a bath.
“What?” Flip said.
“Nothing.” Jamie remembered her mother laughing like this—a hiccupping twitter instead of her usual bray—at the funeral of the old woman from the corner of their street. It was a laugh that didn’t feel right, like getting tickled by someone you don’t trust.
Flip stared at Jamie until her laugh petered out like a car running out of gas.
“So what are we doing first?” Jamie asked.
“I guess I should finger bang you,” Flip said, and he hunched over Jamie and stuck his index finger in her vagina.
“Huh.” Jamie looked down at Flip’s finger moving in and out. She remembered the first time they kissed and how it felt scary and thrilling, like the Matterhorn ride. And now, here they were at Disneyland with the Matterhorn just a short walk away and their sex was, well, less exciting than an A ticket ride, less thrilling then the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln ride where you sat in a small velvety theater and watched a robot Abe Lincoln deliver a speech.
“Does it feel good?”
“I guess. It doesn’t really feel like anything.”
“Well, why don’t you try me.” Flip pulled his finger out.
“Should I give you a hand job?”
“You’ve done that,” Flip said. “I think we need to have oral sex.”
“Uh, okay.” Jamie looked down at his penis and decided it wasn’t anything like Leon’s penis or her father’s penis or any other penis she had seen wagging around her backyard.
This one looked pinker, newer. The thought of putting it in her mouth seemed strange but not repugnant. Jamie scooted down on her hands and knees and placed her face near Flip’s crotch.
“Just pretend you’re licking a Popsicle.” Flip laid his palm on her head and nudged it toward his penis. Jamie licked.
“Now pretend the Popsicle’s melted down a little,” he said, “and so you stick the whole thing in your mouth, you know, sucking it down to the stick so it doesn’t drip on you.” Jamie followed his instructions while thinking about Taffy Longue, who had a reputation for being someone who loved to suck dicks. All the boys flirted with her, hoping she would suck them; all the girls snubbed her, claiming she was so slutty she’d suck Mr. Vandekamp, the pockmarked, potato-nosed eighth grade math teacher, if he’d let her.
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After several seconds Jamie rested with her mouth open. Then Flip put his hands on the back of her head and thumped up into her face until he released a shocking burst of semen that Jamie swallowed without thinking. Was this what Taffy had been doing? Jamie wondered. Holding her jaw slack while boys blasted semen into her mouth? Jamie’s throat spasmed as she wondered what the difference was now between herself and Taffy Longue. Was it simply the number they had each taken in?
“That was totally great.” Flip pulled up Jamie and kissed her, his tongue flitting in and out of her mouth. “Now flip back.”
“Huh?” Jamie was feeling nauseous and dreamy, as if she were floating away from the current reality.
“Flip back,” he giggled. “Get it, flip back.”
“Oh, yeah, like you, Flip.”
“Yeah! You’re going to flip back for Flip!” Jamie lay back and put her knees up, grasshopper style.
Flip planted his shoulders at her feet.
“Relax,” he said, before ducking into her crotch. Flip lapped at Jamie like a poodle at sweaty toes, with ineffectual little licks.
Jamie stared at the beige, vinyl swirl-patterned wallpaper.
She wondered if Brett’s mother had chosen the wallpaper or if it just came with the mobile home. She wondered if Brett’s parents had ever had oral sex in the mobile home.
She wondered if Taffy Longue let the boys do this to her or if she just “ate and ran.” Then she worried about what she would say to Flip—surely he would want to know if she was enjoying this. Could she tell him that taking a shower with a strong nozzle felt better than this? Could she tell him she would rather be sitting in the Abe Lincoln theater on Main Street in Disneyland? Could she tell him that just because she now did the things that Taffy Longue did she really wasn’t anything like Taffy? Jamie would never wear a tube top to school, for example, or a terry-cloth shorts jumpsuit with the shorts no bigger than a pair of underpants. And Jamie would never write on the third stall of the C quad bathroom, “My Mother is a fucking Bitch and my father is a fucking Prick and they’re fucking each other because they fucking deserve each other. Fuck them, Taffy.” Jamie thought that graffiti was as destructive to a society as littering and all her friends could vouch for the fact that Jamie never littered!
“Feel good?” Flip mumbled into Jamie’s crotch.
“Yup.” Jamie looked at the door to the bathroom—it was so narrow! She wondered how obese people who owned mobile homes managed the doorway. Did they make special doors? Or did they just take the door off and squeeze into the bathroom bare butt first? And what about oral sex? Would an obese man’s stomach obscure his penis so as to make oral sex impossible? Would a man performing oral sex an obese woman just lift her stomach, rest it on his head, and carry on?
“Think you’re gonna come yet?” Flip asked. “ ’Cause my jaw’s getting, like, totally tired.”
“Yeah, any second.” Tammy and Debbie had talked about coming. They talked about orgasms that made their toes shiver. Jamie shut her eyes and internally focused on her toes. Nothing was happening. And then she felt a stirring near Flip’s mouth and she wondered if it was an orgasm peering out from deep inside somewhere, or if it was just that she had to pee. The urge became stronger and Jamie was convinced that if Flip went on much longer she might begin urinating right then, on his face, an act that would surely end their relationship and put her in the oral history books with the likes of Kenny Marino, who was caught masturbating against a tree in his backyard when a group of kids were cutting through his yard to a lemon orchard.
“I’m done!” Jamie put her hands on Flip’s ears and lifted him like an urn.
Flip pushed up to Jamie’s face and kissed her. He smelled chalky and slightly sour and Jamie couldn’t help but think how odd it was that their genitals were now meeting through their mouths, each imbued with the other’s juice.
“I gotta pee,” Jamie said, and she went to the narrow door of the bathroom, opened it, and entered. Once inside she sat on the toilet and stared at her face in the mirror mounted over the sink. The urge to pee vanished.
“Don’t be disappointed,” she whispered to herself in the mirror. Then she looked at the stripes on the wallpaper and began to count them as if she were trying to lull herself to sleep, right there, on the toilet.
When Jamie returned to Flip he was sleeping, body spread limply across the sheets, one arm bent up by his head, the other sticking out as if he were pointing to the bathroom. Jamie put on her clothes, went to the kitchen, sat at the table, and turned on the TV. The Munsters was on channel 11. She watched, silent and still, wishing her head was as hollow and clanking as Herman Munster’s so she could stop thinking about the ways in which her body would never be the same.
5
Jamie hoped Flip wouldn’t be able to come to her parents’ aura-reading party as there was a good chance it would eventually turn into a swim party. Lately, Jamie had come to realize that every moment with Flip was not perfect.
The boredom of an isolated surfing beach with no friends wasn’t perfect; the discomfort of Flip licking her in search of her orgasm, until she was as raw and swollen as a diaper-rashed baby, wasn’t perfect; the idea of being with Flip while her parents frolicked naked wasn’t perfect. But Flip called on the night of the event and said he could come, of course, as he had no more obligations that summer than Jamie did. Betty had slipped him the invitation one afternoon while Jamie was in the bathroom. Jamie said nothing to her mother about her discomfort with Flip’s attending as Betty’s and Allen’s usual reaction to anything that caused their daughters embarrassment or shame was to boldly continue the embarrassing or shameful act in the hope that their daughters would become desensitized to it.
“There’s really nothing to do,” Betty told Flip, who showed up an hour early, offering to help out. Betty was standing in the kitchen wearing bell-bottom jeans and a maroon silk blouse, untucked, flowing.
“Mom hired caterers,” Jamie said.
“Chumash,” Betty said.
“Chumash?” Flip said. “That is totally gnarly. I didn’t know Chumash catered.”
“Chumash are beautiful people,” Betty said.
“Chumash believe in four celestial gods,” Jamie said.
Allen walked in. “Chumash are ripping me off,” he said.
“No way,” Flip said. “Chumash wouldn’t rip anyone off.”
“It costs a fortune to have Chumash. I don’t know why your mother wants Chumash.” Allen looked at Jamie as if she could explain. “Since when are Chumash known for their culinary skills?”
“Allen,” Flip said, “it’s way cool to hire Chumash. I mean, man, we owe them.”
Allen looked over at Flip and contorted his mouth as if he’d just bitten into an orange seed.
“Thank god Renee’s not here,” Jamie said.
“Why don’t you want your sister here?” Allen asked. “Your sister’s a wonderful person.”
“She thinks aura readings are fake,” Jamie said. “Remember when you went to that aura reading at the Gants’ house?”
“How could you fake an aura reading?” Betty said. “It’s right there. You can see it.”
“Does your sister have blond hair?” Flip asked. “I think I maybe remember seeing her at school.”
“Black hair,” Jamie said. Unlike her friends’ homes, where framed photos of the family covered grand pianos and corner tables whose only apparent purpose was to hold frames, there were no pictures of Jamie and Renee displayed in the house. Jamie often felt that photos of herself and Renee might be a good thing—something to remind her parents that they had two people in their charge, two people to keep track of, to come home for, to lock and unlock doors for.
“You know how you fake an aura reading?!” Allen said.
“The same way you fake being a Chumash. If you say it, everyone believes it.”
“I believe in the Chumash celestial gods,” Jamie said, although she had never really thought about whethe
r she believed in them or not.
A knock sounded from the kitchen door. Betty gave hush-up eyes to everyone and went to let the caterers in.
Betty was overly friendly, as if she were making up for some past wrongdoing, as she showed the sturdy, thick woman and toreador-looking man around the kitchen.
Allen, Flip, and Jamie watched.
“Well,” Betty said, “let’s let them do their stuff.” The lights were off and the living room was lit with candles perched on every flat surface: the grand piano, the windowsills, the coffee table, the hearth. Jamie had always found the living room a little ominous with its worn Persian rugs, black leather chairs, and massive unframed paintings.
That night, lit only by candlelight, she thought it could have been a room in a haunted house. There were fifteen people, including Jamie and Flip, gathered in the room. The aura reader was blond, thin, German; she looked college-age but spoke with the authority of an old woman.
“I hope everyone remembered to wear a bathing suit—the only way to truly see the aura, is to see it reflected off bare skin.” The aura reader slowly enunciated each word as if she were translating from German.
Lois went first. She stood in the center of the room wearing a baggy yellow bikini. Jamie thought she looked like a woman waiting for the doctor in an exam room. She was followed by a fat woman in a leotard, whose skin folded out at the arm and leg holes and looked as soft as under-baked dough. Then it was Betty’s turn. She stood and removed her clothes until she was completely naked.
Jamie listened to Flip’s breathing beside her; she felt his body growing tense. The aura reader walked slowly around Betty, bouncing her hands Marcel Marceau–style against an invisible contour.
“Beautiful,” she said. “You have a beautiful deep orange aura.” Betty opened her mouth and smiled. She looked peaceful, so relaxed that one could almost forget she was naked. And Jamie did forget she was naked, until Flip took her hand and pushed it onto his crotch so she could feel his solid erection.
The Summer of Naked Swim Parties Page 6