OCR Text |
Show we are home alone. We watch TV, Karen, Jeff, and I, and then Karen says she wants to go to bed. I leave Jeff sitting on the couch, blue tones bouncing off his shiny cheeks and forehead. Karen falls asleep quickly, and I sneak back into the family room. Jeff, it seems, has been waiting for me. He is lying on the couch, and pats the space in front of him. I slide my body next to his. MASH is on, ten o'clock, Klinger wanders Korea with a pink stole flapping to his knees, but we are not watching. Without a word, he begins tracing the shape of my bare legs, legs I have only recently been shaving. His touch is gentle, quiet; my heart beats madly beneath my shirt. Still no words, but his hand moves higher, now circling my thigh, sometimes retreating down to the lower parts of my leg only to return and move even higher. I shift, move my legs, and he stops, then begins again, ankle, to calf, to knee, to thigh. When he gets to the top of my thigh, he moves his hand slowly under my shorts. His fingers flirt with the elastic of my underwear, push gently underneath. I shift again, he begins again, only this time starting at my thigh. When his hand moves beneath my underwear, I jump up and run from the room to Karen's bed. My breath comes quickly, a thrilling energy running through my body, shame chasing close behind, and I am careful not to wake Karen as I slide beneath the sheets. If Jeff and his adolescent goosing confuses, Mr. Grunawalt horrifies. My father works for him at CINCPAC, and on the weekends they SCUBA dive together, dumping mesh goody bags full of half-dead shells on the sand for us to peruse like a catalog. Often 160 |