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Show 8. Since the time when Ross Jaeger called me Rastus, and I hated him, he grew a dark beard, lied about his age and at fifteen joined the National Guard. At sixteen, passing through Denver to summer maneuvers, he made it into a whorehouse, once almost made it with a married woman, now made it plenty with girls our age-everyone's memory of the high school stud. My own virginal memory recorded with ineradicable clarity that spring night when Ross left Arcadia with Buck's sister Loretta in Ross's car bought with his own . earned pumping gas, a 1928 Dodge with a rumble seat, and drove at her suggestion up onto the Hogback to the cemetery and an abandoned caretaker's shack, Loretta singing along the way, singing "Oh, little playmate, come out and play with me," singing that popular song while she placed her hand between Ross's legs and gripped him with such excruciating intimacy that I felt myself touched in Ross's proud telling. Told me how they had lain so exuberantly upon the dusty floor of that shack, how she had bucked under him, and I burned. So when I wanted to lose my virginity of course I consulted Ross. He knew what a burden virginity can be to a healthy boy of sixteen and so he offered to lend his car and his moral support, he named good places to park and several girls to try, he offered to buy the rubbers and even to make the proposition. Some of the girls were from respectable middle class families and I was intrigued, so I named off other girls I was curious about. I thought them all chaste but Ross was skeptical: he believed chastity is more honored in the breach. I was amazed. "Liz Brown?" I said, holding my breath. "Sure." |