THE S CLUB

“You’d think I’d miss anything as good as this,” yelled Chris scrambling out of the thatched hut. Madge tumbled out behind like a grubby little lost boy from Nederland.

“Little god damn squirts,” barked Neil,” you should be in school.”

“Fuck off,” said my little sister. With an amarillo’s gleam, she refused to be condescended to. “What are you doing here, Edmund?” she said turning to me.

I laughed embarrassed and superciliously. “I decided to come along for the ride.”

“Oh God,” she exploded, “I hate it when you make those half-assed sophisticated remarks,” she scowled.

“Hey little no tits,” Neil declared. “I invited him.”

“Why?” questioned Chris.

“Gracious,” said Neil, “the man is in eighth grade and he needs a little S Club type of education.” Neil put his hand on my shoulder and handed me a beer.

Ronnie had coerced Neil into taking a bottle of Kahula. By the time, we were out at the huts, she was slurring her words. “I think I am only happy when I am wasted.” She laughed. She looked around. “Tell these kids to get out. I don’t fuck for children for Christ’s sake.”

“You want the fifty dollars, don’t you?” said Neil.

“Well how desperate do you think I am?”

Neil shrugged. That was only a question that Ronnie could answer.

“You know I have college boyfriends,” she sprayed. “A whole fraternity of them. They invited me to Pagan Week last spring. And they know how to treat a girl. They serve nice drinks. This punch of gin and Hawaiian Punch and it was just so gooood. Really put you on your ass.” The memory filled her eyes and she started talking in some eerie and involuntary voice.

“We started fooling around and before I knew it. I had no clothes on, and there was this one cute football player, someone, I never would have met anyway. He took off his clothes. He held me in his arms and I closed my eyes and I forgot my ugly face. I forgot about the shit pile of life and then they spread me out on the bar. And I was scared and then I...” she stopped. She looked around, she realized what she was saying, ”I went with it. Nothing mattered. I hated it yet I loved being... loved. I must have loved it because I let them do it to me. I felt like shit the next day. But they said they would invite me back next year.”

She had laid it out there for everyone to see. It was as if no one had ever been nice to her. It was as if she was never held when she was baby. As if she were the other Skinner twin.

“And I am going to go back next year,” she boasted. She rallied in her inverted false pride.

She was more pathetic than sexy.

She was just so pitiful. I wanted to avoid the entire situation. If Neil wants to fuck garbage, that is his problem. I decided to leave.

“O.K. Ronnie, show and tell time.”

I decided to stay.

Outside of the hut Neil set up Farley’s battery operated record player that only played forty-fives. Gingerly Neil spun the disc, placed the needle in the groove and “Sally Go Around the Roses” squawked out of the tin speakers. We gathered around in a semi-circle. Ronnie took a huge swig of Kahlua. Her shoulders moved to the music, a infectious little smile swelled on her lips. She shut her eyes and she forgot her ugly face, the shit pile of her life. Her hips slowly moved like a pendulum. Cautiously she unbuttoned her blouse. Sally Go Round the Roses. She turned and her shirt eased off her back like sand methodically falling in an hourglass. She swung around toward us. Her bra was yellow and resigned to the task of holding up her vitamin deficient chest. Her arms tucked behind her back like chicken wings as she unfastened her bra. Sally Go Round the Roses. She turned, the bra popped off and there her tits hung white and forlorn. A true S Club first.

“I like. I like. I like.” chanted Neil.

Madge checked her own chest and Chris massaged his groin. Neil unbuttoned his shirt in a Monkey See-Monkey Do trance.

“Let’s dance,” beckoned Neil.

“More skin, more skin,” clamored Chris.

Ronnie basked luxuriously in this attention. With a flick of a wrist, Ronnie undid a button and unzipped the side of her skirt. The shirt fell to her ankles and her legs stood stark and white. Rising up like toothpicks, nicked from compulsive and inexperienced shaving.

Neil grabbed her panties and slid his hand there in. Impulsively they kissed like adults in movies do. They heads rotated around the axis of their tongues. It looked incongruent to see ninth graders act like adults full of adult angst, desperation, presumption and loneliness.

Gingerly Neil unzipped his pants and his pale penis emerged unashamed. Neil murmured. He pushed her to the ground, pulled off her panties, spread her legs, and pulled his pants to his knees. Slowly, he lowered himself in to her.

“You are not in,” she said.

Neil maneuvered and then she gasped and wound her legs tighter around his calves. They kissed like beasts. Chris, Madge and I did not exist there. We were dumbfounded. The needle was hitting the record label but we didn’t hear that any more. Neil’s ass rose and lowered like the waves in the ocean. Her head stretched back and her eyes were joyous slits, her hands gripped his back, saliva dribbled out of her mouth. “Wonderful, wonderful,” she wailed. It was witnessing some kind of miracle.

“Kennedy’s been shot. Kennedy’s been shot,” bellowed Farley running with tears in her eyes across the field. “Kids,” she yelled, “It’s on the TV.” Her face was over wrought. A gush of tears sprang out of her brown almond eyes. “What’s going to happen to poor Caroline?” She then stopped short and saw what was going on.

“You nosey little bitch,” growled Neil. Immediately he pulled out of Ronnie and pushed up his pants.

“You are disgusting,” screamed Farley, ”fucking when the President has been shot dead.” She looked silently around at all of us and then she saw the record player. “And I didn’t give you permission to borrow my record player.”

“I’ll get you,” Neil said running toward Farley. Farley started to run. Her legs flapping up from the ground. Neil’s strides were swift and direct. Like a tiger attacking an antelope, Neil tackled her and pelted her hard on the back. The ground shook. “Now, don’t tell Mommy what you saw!” He put her arm in an arm-lock and twisted it. “Promise!” he shouted.

“You, bastard, you are breaking my arm!” she yelped.

“Promise,” he said.

“I promise,” she ached.

“Promise what?”

“Not to tell Mommy,” she cried.

“Good,” he said. He got up and kicked her.

Farley picked herself up, her face bloodied and muddy. Her dress torn. The assault was too much. She cried one long howl. Her arm dangled from her side. Neil nearly wrenched it out of its socket. She ran to the edge of the field. She turned around and from the top of her lungs, she screamed. “I am telling! Fuck you all. I am telling Mommy.”

We knew then we all were sunk.