other idea. Real quickly, I put my clammy palm against her tan stomach and ran my hand straight down until it was in her pants.
For the slightest fraction of a second, I realized what this was all about. Mr. Lawrence picked up, stiffening against my briefs. I realized I didn’t give a fuck about Mary Lou. It was the senses I felt. Everything in that one breath. I tasted the inside of her mouth, smelled the oil on her skin, felt the thin cloth of her underwear on the back of my hand and that moist warmth on my palm. I wanted to do a lot more. I wanted to rip her pants off. I didn’t care where the hell we were. She pulled away, jumping back, and I could tell by the way she was looking at me she was really mad.
Hell, I would’ve been mad too. How many times had Mary Lou felt that predatory stiffening? How many times had her essence completely ceased to exist leaving her to become nothing more than a body? How many more times would she feel it? And how did she feel being able to use that as her only tool, her only asset? Had she went down on Johnny Listo willingly or had his stiffness become so completely overpowering she didn’t have a choice?
She reached out and snatched the sucker out of my hand. I was too nervous and shaky and full-feeling to tell her that a deal was a deal and she didn’t let me use my tongue. If she’d just let me use my tongue then maybe it would’ve stopped there and I wouldn’t be standing on the playground feeling so guilty.
She started yelling at me, bouncing that sucker toward me in the air, the way Pearlbottom sometimes did with the yardstick.
“ You are a molester, Wally Black. Yer almost an adult, you said so yourself, and my momma says that older men ain’t supposed to be touching me. Especially there . Yer not just a molester, yer a big fat rapist. I never asked you to touch me, you stupid freak. I could have you locked up for this, just like Mom did Stephen. And I asked him to touch me.”
I got even more nervous and scared when she said that, but my guilt virtually vanished. “You got the sucker.”
“ Damn right I got the sucker. That’s why I ain’t gonna tell Miss Pearlbottom bout this but choo better watch out cause I’m tellin Bucky all about it.”
That made me even more nervous and scared. My Swarth-free year was about ready to come to an end. Before trotting over to Swarth, Mary Lou leaned toward me and said, “If you’da played yer cards right, Wally Black, I woulda showed you my tits for this here sucker.”
Now, whether the sucker was watermelon or lime or sour apple, I would never know. The only thing I’d got out of the deal was a cheap feel of a crotch that I’m certain was diseased, if only by a low-grade form of crabs. And, even worse, it was a feel I’d felt guilty about.
Chapter Three
The Year of Swarth
Mary Lou stalked up to Bucky Swarth. I stayed over by the fence, bracing myself. I could have run but the playground was very small, so there really wasn’t any place to go, and I probably would have fallen down anyway. I had never really run away from the bullies. At first, I’d tried to fight back. Then I learned to just accept the beatings. Usually, if a teacher happened to come along while I was taking a good beating and not even fighting back, the bully would get in worse trouble than I would.
Bucky stood in the middle of the playground, his gang of five surrounding him. They stood there like they belonged, puffing away at their cigarettes. Some of them hadn’t grown to their full height yet, but I was certain that they all weighed over 200 pounds. Bucky was the biggest, naturally—the leader. It looked like he wore a new pair of pants every day, they were so stiff and blue-looking. He always had the bottoms of them cuffed-up and I knew he probably shopped in the husky section, his mother telling him that he was just big for his age. But he was a fatass. Weren’t fat people supposed to be made fun of? The bottom of his stomach
Oliver Sacks, Оливер Сакс