Roman and his family have moved to a new town, Rob & Mora have joined a commune... of sorts... several different unrelated folks living under the same roof... it's an social experiment... for the whole family and Roman is beginning a new chapter in his life, he's finally managed to get a handle on his dyslexia and has started to blend in, he's starting over at a new school... into a new social circle of Jr. High in the seventh grade of a tough inner city school... a new set of obstacles for him to overcome is headed straight down the pike... puberty, teenage hormones and facial reconstruction is just the start.
Roman and his family have moved to a new town, Rob & Mora have joined a commune... of sorts... several different unrelated folks living under the same roof... it's an social experiment... for the whole family and Roman is beginning a new chapter in his life, he's finally managed to get a handle on his dyslexia and has started to blend in, he's starting over at a new school... into a new social circle of Jr. High in the seventh grade of a tough inner city school... a new set of obstacles for him to overcome is headed straight down the pike... puberty, teenage hormones and facial reconstruction is just the start.
The phone hanging on the kitchen wall rang over and over… “will somebody PLEASE get the phone yelled my sister, Erin Rose, two years older than me and practicing a run of complicated notes on her French horn, she was always too busy to get the phone, the door… or anything else, as far as I could remember.
“ROMAN! Get the phone! You’re soooo lazy…” Erin Rose yells at me as I lounge on the sofa in front of the tv watching what else? I Dream of Jeannie! What red blooded American boy on the verge of his thirteenth birthday wasn’t watching the sexy Barbara Eden swirl and dance around Astronaut Captain Tony Nelson’s life scantily clad wearing that revealing outfit practically soft porn in those days of tv programming.
“Alright, alright…! I shouted back as I grudgingly slid off the sofa and slogged over the bright yellow phone vibrating off the wall under the calendar which declared that tomorrows date, April 17th 1976 was circled in red marker as Roman’s 13th birthday. That made me smile as I picked up the receiver cradled to my ear and shoulder and pulling on the cord, stretching its length of twenty feet taught to the point of breaking, slogged back to the den and Jeannie… she was bent over the kitchen counter, exposing her voluptuous cleavage to Captain Nelson… my teenage eyes glued to the tube.
“Yeah….” I answered the phone.
“I’m telling Mom… you’re not answering the phone right!.” Erin Rose stares at me.
One of the million rules of our house was answering the phone, with proper dictation. “Hello, this is the Bailey residence…” or something along those lines. “Yeah, or what?” were definitely not acceptable, but neither Mora, Mom nor Rev. Rob, Dad were home plus my pubescent brain was preoccupied with more important matters.
“Roman you wanna go see a movie tonight? Clint Eastwood’s new one is out, The Outlaw Josey Wales! It’s supposed to be badass.” The words came fast, strung together like a train rolling along the tracks… through the speaker cradled on my ear… it’s Georgie, my new best friend since the first day of Junior High, we were both in the 7th grade, and lived one block away from each other.
Roman’s mind snapped back to what Georgie was saying, no longer mesmerized by Barbara Eden’s breast, because the one thing he loved more than girls… were outlaws.
“Hell yeah!” I yelled into the receiver, ignoring Erin Rose’s disapproving look at my deplorable phone etiquette.
“What time?” I asked.
“You wanna come over for dinner, then we’ll go about seven o’clock…?” Georgie replied.
Georgie and I were practically inseparable friends… well now, that is. It didn’t start off that way. My very first day of Jr. High was somewhat of a conspicuous start, half my face was scarred from road rash and half of my front teeth were missing from a terrible motorcycle crash I had suffered just a few days prior. I had been trying to impress a girl who lived around the corner, with my motorcycling skills and after much pleading and begging, got her to climb on my little Yamaha 90 with me. The only caveat was I had to also take her two little brothers as well, her name was Lisa Nguyen, her Vietnamese family kept a tight rein on their children and hardly ever let Lisa, my age, out of their sight… and certainly wouldn’t allow her to ride off alone with some white boy on his motorcycle.
She was in front of me with her black hair in my face… God, it smelled so good I remember… her little brother who was about four or five years old was riding in front of her on the handlebars with his feet on the pegs of the front tire… and another brother rode behind me standing up over the back tire with his hands on my shoulders. Yeah, I know. What the hell was I thinking? Exactly what I was doing at that precise moment… burying my face into her wonderful smelling hair as she sat between my legs. I throttled up and took the first corner too fast, the front tire slipped out from underneath me on some loose gravel and I struck the telephone pole with my head knocking me out cold.
The rest of the story would be filled in by Lisa’s account of what happened next. Her youngest brother in front flew off and smacked the pavement hard enough to warrant six stitches on his chin, but other than that just a few scrapes and bruises… her other brother evidently just jumped off the back end just in time and was unharmed, and Lisa… miraculously enough got off with a few scratches to her hands and arms.
I evidently slid across the street on one side of my face with my foot caught in the back wheel and my bike on top of me, then came to a stop on this old woman’s front yard, screamed out the I was burning, as the exhaust seared my leg. I somehow managed to kick the motorcycle off of me and laid there until the old woman who lived there came out and brought me inside her kitchen, where she cleaned my wounds and was patting my face lightly with a cold, wet towel as I came back into consciousness, all the while talking about some sort of nonsense as a dozen little faces crowded around her screened back door staring at me. I made some lame excuse, brushed her off of my face and ran out the door to my house.
I ate more dinners at Georgie’s house than my own, not that Mora didn’t cook, let’s just say she had too much imagination when it came to preparing meals… and it didn’t always come out as planned. Also, our table setting was more varied than most every other family I knew, at the very least there was just me sitting at the table for dinner, eating a covered dish Mora had made earlier and left in the fridge or oven for me to warm up while she worked an extra shift as a nurse at the hospital. Erin often skipped dinner to study or play music in her room, she was a straight A honor roll student, musical prodigy, genius IQ, blah, blah, blah… and did little else but read, study and play her French horn. On other evenings, the dinner table could get quite crowded. Reverend Rob, my Dad… we’ll go into why we call him Reverend Rob later, Mora, my mother, Erin Rose, my sister, and then there’s…. Jim and Susie, married for 30 years, both professors at the University of Indiana, Susie suffered from polio and used walking canes to get around, her husband Jim, a slight man, with a white man’s afro-permed hair style getting popular in the seventies, wore tinted glasses and spoke softly w/ just a hint of his Germanic upbringing. Then there’s George, a twenty-something bachelor grad student working on his doctorate in who knows… as far as I could tell it was in trying to sleep with every girl he met. We always set the table for one extra setting cause you never knew who George might bring to dinner, but rest assured, she would be young, pretty and dressed like a sex kitten.
Our dining room table had seating for twelve, but normally only eight seats were occupied and that number fluctuated like Mora’s moods.
At my friend’s Georgie’s house it was more traditional setting, by that I mean complete and utter chaos. He was number 3 out of 6 kids, a big Irish catholic family and they had a big round table that could fit up to 12, in any way they could squeeze in or find something to sit on, whether it be a stool, chair from another room, lawn chair or step ladder… anything went at that table. It was akin to eating while watching a hockey game hanging on the rail. Georgie’s mom would just put out these big bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans cooked down with bacon and pork fat, chops or meatloaf, corn and dinner rolls, and always dessert…. Her brownies were legendary throughout the neighborhood, they were always the first to sell out at any fund raising bake sale.
As Georgie and I walked out of the movie theatre with Clint Eastwood’s character, Josey Wales fresh in our minds, we recalled all of our favorite scenes and re-enacted them on our way home.
I was at the age where western outlaws, old time era gangsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger were plastered all over my bedroom walls. I had Al Capone’s mug shot next to the band “Styx” poster over my bed, and Clint Eastwood next to a KISS concert poster with Gene Simmons’s sticking his tongue out at an old photograph of Bonnie & Clyde standing in front of their getaway car holding two machine guns. For my last birthday, I begged Mora to take me to the John Dillinger Museum in nearby Crown Point, Indiana until she ran out of excuses why I couldn’t go. I mean, seriously… probably not an appropriate birthday present for a twelve year old but I could be relentless.
On our way home we walked through the park that was down a block and across the street from my house, it was dark now and the lamp posts along the walkway through the park cast eerie shadows where older teenagers smoked weed and made out in the bushes or park benches…. I could smell the pot coming from some nearby trees and thought I saw Erin Rose but it was hard to tell in the darkness. Georgie pulled out a pack of Marlboros and shook one out for me, which I took. We stopped to light our smokes and grinned at one another as we imagined ourselves as a couple of gunslingers riding along with Josey Wales, or conspiring to rob a bank with John Dillinger… smoking, and whispering on how we’d do it.
I flicked the cigarette into the street as I crossed over Washington Ave. towards my house, waving a goodbye to Georgie and headed around to the back of our house, when I heard someone call my name.
“Slow down Rocket Man… what’s the rush?” said Barbie Sanderson. She lived next door and was in the same grade as me, and her bedroom faced mine… on more than one occasion they had been busted playing Doctor by Erin Rose behind the garage.
Roman turned around and looked at Barbie. She already had a body that rivaled any junior in high school… for the past several weeks their fumbling’s of sexual exploration had been limited to touching, kissing and a couple of R-rated voyeurism escapades late at night.
“Where are you coming from?” Barbie inquired… “It’s late to be out on a school night isn’t it?” Her tone, I knew well. She wanted to make out.
We talked as we walked over by the far side of the garage, out of sight from peering eyes, I lit a cigarette and she took it from my hand, took one drag and flicked it away. When I turned to her to protest she wrapped me up and kissed me full on the mouth, which tasted of cigarette and peppermint. Barbie pressed herself against me and I was hard immediately. My hand soon found her breast and when I touched her nipple she let out a soft moan in my ear, “I want you… tonight.”
Before I could form words and respond, she had twirled around and just as quickly disappeared as she had come. I stood there with my hard on and wondered what the hell she meant by tonight? Her folks were home, at least her father’s Lincoln was in the driveway, Mora was home, and Jim & Susie by looking at the cars in ours… what did that mean… tonight? As soon as my hard on went away, I went inside.
“How was the movie?” Mora asked. She was watching tv by herself in the den, in a old, worn out recliner, her feet up on the ottoman stool, a towel wrapped around her head, her hair must still be wet from the shower, an old bathrobe covered with flowers tied around her that I remembered giving her as a Mother’s Day gift years ago…. a gin and tonic in one hand, a cigarette in the other… I went over to give her a kiss on the cheek as was expected. Her eyes were mellowed from the alcohol and maybe something more…? I knew from previous scouting trips in their bedroom that Mora hid a bottle of valium in her underwear drawer. Mommy’s little helper.
“It was awesome” I replied, “Clint shot like, a hundred people!” and headed into the kitchen to get a snack. As I stood in front of the fridge with the door wide open taking inventory of its contents trying to decide on what I wanted to eat… “Stop standing there with the fridge wide open!” Mora’s voice said with exasperation. I shut the door unable to make up my mind and grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the counter and bounded up the stairs to my bedroom. “Don’t forget your homework assignment is due tomorrow!” Mora yelled at me as I closed my door. “I already did it” I yelled back… I was lying of course. I went to my desk and put on “Thin Lizzy – the boys are back” vinyl on my turntable, plugged in my headphones and laid on my bed staring up at a poster depicting Bud Man the cartoon spokesperson for Budweiser holding a big joint… Red Bud and Bud Man – the perfect combination. It was one of a series of spoof posters about the Bud man cartoon getting high. Though I smoked cigarettes from time to time, mostly just to act cool… picking up the habit recently not from Mora, but Georgie’s older brother, Denny. I had never smoked any weed, and was genuinely surprised to of perhaps caught my sister partaking… look at her trying to be all cool and shit. A small smile appeared on my face as I imagined E.R. puffing on a doobie. What a nerd.
As I lay in bed my mind kept coming back to what Barbie had said earlier… tonight… like some kind of a riddle… what the heck did she mean? I wondered.
It wasn’t quite eleven o’clock, I’d been listening to music and smoking a cigarette sitting next to my open window… when Barbie’s bedroom light comes on. I could easily see her. Our windows were only the length of a driveway width between our two houses, where her father parked his Lincoln Continental with its Landau top.
I continued to smoke while watching her in the process of undressing… her curtains were opened half way and my view was unrestricted. She looked over her shoulder directly at me. I quickly averted my eyes and flipped the cigarette out the window and turned away. Maybe I should try and tackle my homework paper on the American Revolution one more time.
I turned to look back towards her window to see if she had closed the curtains… she hadn’t. That’s interesting, I thought. I was at least six feet from my window with just the backlight of the desk lamp on to illuminate my bedroom. I saw Barbie just continued to stand right where I could watch her undress… and so I did.
Barbie knew exactly what she was doing and what Roman wanted, she didn’t mind… she liked the attention she started getting from the boys… she knew her blossoming body was the only reason they wanted to talk to her, that was fine with her. She was just beginning to realize the power she wielded over the opposite sex and she was having fun playing with it. Especially with Roman, her next door neighbor who she’d caught watching her more than once in her bedroom while she changed clothes, or came from a shower… of course it didn’t hurt that she purposely left the light on and stood where he might have the best view. Once last week, she could have sworn she saw him touching himself. He was at his desk so it was hard to tell, but in her mind he was. She was surprised how much that had aroused her… she’d been thinking of a repeat performance ever since.
She knows I’m watching her, and she doesn’t care… I thought and that made me smile. It also made me hard. I could see that every so often she looked in his direction to see if he was still by the window… they were in it now – Roman was thinking, two actors on a stage both playing their parts.
As Barbie modeled different bras, different panties in her mirror she could see Roman by his window, he had pulled his curtains all the way open… it looked like he had moved his bed so he could look straight at her, he was in his bed under the covers and from what it looked like he was doing under his blanket. Her face flushed red, the heat radiated all over her young body… she felt herself become wet with excitement… he was touching himself while he was watching her and she desperately wanted to feel his hands on her body, she wanted to feel him inside her. Tonight she went further then she’d ever dared to go before… she slowly removed her bra and let it fall to the floor. She cupped her firm perky breast in both hands and squeezed them pretending they were Roman’s… she closed her eyes and arched her back giving him an unprecedented view of her topless body as she massaged her breast for his pleasure.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Barbie just took off her bra and was literally showing off her breasts… just for him. I was amazed… grateful, happy and ecstatic but still… amazed.
This made Roman even more aroused than before… he wanted her to know what she was doing to him. He pulled back the blanket that he was discreetly covering his lower body and held his penis so she could see it. She froze, he could tell she had noticed.
His mind was full of white noise… a locomotive was running through his head… his brain had whipped itself up into a teenage hormonal tsunami. He looked at her, and she at him… her wide eyes looked more terrified than lustful… that’s alittle strange he thought as his body was tingling all over… she was so beautiful… her face had this odd look of surprise on it that wasn’t there a split second ago.
“Roman Caral Bayley! Oh my god… I’m so sorry…” Mora had opened his bedroom door without so much as a thought to knock, and walked right in on her son doing what all teenage boys do alone in their rooms watching pretty girls disrobe. The blood drained from his face… and elsewhere as well. “MOM! Goddamnit… seriously!” I screamed mortified. Mora did an immediate about-face and left his room… but the psychological damage had already been done.
I jumped up and closed the curtains, put back on my shorts and moved my bed back against the wall where it usually was. Then I sat down in front of my desk and put my face in my hands… Oh my God, Oh my God… I can’t believe that… THAT just happened! I howled silently to myself. While I sat there trying to figure out how I could ever look at Mora again… Shit, tomorrow I’d see Barbie at the bus stop! How can he recover from such a public embarrassment? He pulled open the desk drawer looking for a cigarette… he was craving a smoke at that moment just as a soft knock at his door interrupted his thoughts.
“Go Away!” Roman yelled.
“Dear… I just want to talk with you… I’m not upset. Please open the door.” Mora’s voice was soft and motherly. “No, absolutely not. I don’t want to talk!” He yelled at the door, which didn’t have the effect that Roman had hoped as he heard the door open slowly. “Christ on the cross! Will I ever learn to lock my fucking door?” I kicked myself mentally, again.
Mora walked in and sat on the bed to face him, the bed where just moments earlier was burning with the heated passion of a young man’s lust… Roman groaned. No God, noooo… this can’t be happening. “its okay, honey…” Mora starts off delicately as if she’s coaxing a scared rabbit. “It’s completely normal for boys your age to… explore their bodies… I know it’s a very confusing time in your life right now.” She continued as Roman began to curl up into a fetal position within his head and pray for death to come mercifully and quickly. I just want you to know it’s nothing to be embarrassed about… well, except for having your curtains open… that might have been embarrassing for you.” Mora was starting to lose her train of thought and could sense that Roman was retreating from her so she patted him on his shoulder, “You’ll survive sweetheart… what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.” Mora walked out of his room and gently closed the door behind her. Well, I certainly feel better about the whole thing now… thanks Mom, you didn’t make that weird at all. Roman said under his breath. I turned off my lamp and crawled into bed… all I wanted was to put this day behind me, go to sleep and wake up tomorrow with a clean slate.
The smell of bacon cooking on the stove wasn’t even enough to draw me from the privacy of my room, as the aroma of breakfast wafted up the stairs I stayed in bed. I was calling in sick today… I couldn’t bear the thought of having to face Barbie at the bus stop, I wouldn’t be able to carry my weight of idle banter… the volleying back and forth of witty retorts to her innocent inquiries on how Mora was coping with the graphical image of her son’s penis forever itched into her minds eye… nope… sorry everybody – not today.
Mora stood outside his door. “Get dressed and downstairs in two minutes, young man… you’re not staying home today. No sir, not happening… come on, I’ve got your favorite… blueberry pancakes.” Mora said with a lilt in her voice. What was he being rewarded for? Spanking the monkey, choking the chicken, wrestling the one-eyed swamp monster…? Damn it, why couldn’t she just leave him alone? “No… I don’t feel good… I think I’ve got a fever.” Roman whined from under the covers. “I don’t care, you’re not staying home… get downstairs now!” Mora was relentless.
The act of breakfast was a symphony of voices… noises… and hectic activity, spilt coffee, ruined homework and a flurry of people going and coming. At any given time, if all the house mates, as Rob liked to call them… were present, there would be eight souls around the table. Maybe more if “friends” had spent the night.
I usually didn’t mind having so many people in the house, most of the time I used it to my advantage, a buffer if you will… but days like today I wished they lived like they used to, two or three people in the kitchen… no one talking. Not anymore, now there was Jim and Susie… Mom and Dad… Erin Rose… George & insert female friends here… oh yeah. It could get a little crazy, and when the number one topic of conversation would undoubtedly be how, Roman, was caught red-handed choking the pope the previous night well… not even blueberry pancakes could make up for the breakfast conversation on everyone’s tongue that morning.
The sound of the front doorbell ringing insistently finally cut through the wall of noise everyone had been making and Erin Rose went to see who it was. “Mom… its Mr. Sanderson… from next door.” My mind went straight to full on panic. It was Barbie’s father… shit, shit, shit… this is bad. I glanced at the back door, I could make a run for it… then what? Too late, Mom and Mr. Sanderson were talking… “Roman, could you please come here?” Mora asked too politely. I got up and walked towards the guillotine, my stomach had turned over and I felt blueberry pancakes rising.
“Are you smoking? Have you been flicking cigarette butts out of your bedroom window?” Mora demanded, looking at him sternly with her… Don’t you dare lie to me look. I almost gushed, “yes, yes… that’s right!” I was so glad it didn’t have anything to do with last night’s escapades that I would have copped to just about anything.
I looked straight in her eyes, “Yes… I’m so sorry, I was smoking, but I didn’t know that the butts were landing on top of Mr. Sanderson’s car…” I turned to Barbie’s father, “I’m so sorry, Sir.” I offered my apologies to a very angry father who I could only imagine would be atomic had he known what his sweet, innocent daughter and I had been doing just a few hours earlier. I had to pay for the damage to the cars landau top… worked all summer, had to mow every yard in the neighborhood to afford it, but I didn’t mind.