TAPE TWO										6/28/85

	Maybe you think I was some kind of sexual prodigy, but that's not true. When I was a little kid no one ever said anything to me about sex. Hell, my father hardly talked, anyway. If you think I was quiet, I was a regular blabbermouth compared to him. Anyway, he died when I was eleven, like I said.
	I remember some little girl and I showed each other our stuff when I was four or five, but that was curiosity more than anything else. Sometime after my father died, my mother - all serious - sat me at the kitchen table and gave me a very clinical description of activities I couldn't image any human doing, especially my parents. I kept my mouth shut, because she looked like she was in pain, and I told her I understood it all when she finished. I couldn't take any clarification of that stuff. I guess I was a little dense, because I should have figured out from that and from the stupid jokes kids were starting to tell by fifth grade that something was going on, but I didn't.
	Hell, even the dog tried to help. I came home one afternoon to find the neighbor's stupid dog in our yard humping hell out of our dog. Now I understand that she was in heat, and he, driven nuts by the aroma - or whatever it is - had opened a hole in the fence to get to her. The only thing I could think of then was rabies. Someone had been telling me how dogs could go progressively crazy if they got bitten by another animal with rabies, and what this mutt was doing was about the craziest thing I'd ever seen.
	Very cautiously I edged around them to a rake that was leaning against the garage. The neighbor's dog seemed nervous, following me with his eyes, but that didn't stop him. As I moved toward him, rake well in front of me, he began a weird howling that sounded more like an old man's whining. Finally, he disconnected and faced me, snarling. My neck was prickling, and I was scared, but I charged the rake into his nose. He gave out a yelp and beat it back through his hole in the fence. But when I returned to our dog, expecting the usual licks and tail wagging, she only slinked back to her favorite place by the garage with a definite air of deception.
	I remember that from the time I was eleven or twelve I would get this urge now and then to take my clothes off - not just in my room, but in strange places, exciting places. I don't mean like on the bus or in the school auditorium, but I was drawn to places like garden corners or open fields of tall grass. Some mornings my pajamas were all sticky, and I began to feel guilty that I was peeing myself at night.
	To show you what a sex whiz I was, I was almost thirteen before I figured out how to beat off. It was a lucky thing I finally did, too. Sooner or later I'd probably have gotten arrested for indecent exposure or have woken up some morning permanently glued to my sheets. I remember it was a little upsetting when a part of my body I thought I understood pretty well started doing something totally different like that, but I guess, after some time, I accommodated the whole thing pretty well. I mean, I wouldn't say I exercised the new function every day. I wouldn't say that because I don't want to sound like some pervert, but it's probably pretty close to the truth. I did stop looking for weird places to take my clothes off.
	I guess I should tell you a little more about my running, because it is important to all this. By the time I first talked to Marlene I'd only run cross country about a month, and yet, even in that short time, I’d become a quiet fanatic, although my reasons for getting into running were all wrong, athletically speaking.
	First, Al was really into track by ninth grade, and, not to be left out, I tagged along. He was what people call a natural athlete. He could do almost all the events except distance, which he really hated. That turned out to be about the only thing I could do. I definitely wasn't a sprinter.  I was sort of long and loose rather than tight and springy, so I didn't work very well at the jumps, either. If any of them involved poles or bars, it was a real disaster.
	My second reason for getting into running was that there was little hope of becoming really popular if you weren't out for some sport. Not that running was any great guarantee of popularity; football was best for that, with baseball and basketball about tied for second. I don't know what it was between me and team sports. I wasn't the greatest, but I was OK at most of them. It was something about the regimentation and drilling and taking orders.  Anyway, a guy could get pretty famous if he was really a hero at one of the track events, that is, one of the events like the sprints or jumps.
	The problem with cross country was that no one ever watched because meets were never held at our school and because after the start you couldn't tell there was a race because everyone was lost chasing their tails around the hills.  Another drawback to distance running was the guys who were on the team. I mean, I don't like to set myself apart or anything, but some of those guys were definitely weird, and I wasn't at all sure that it would benefit my reputation to be associated with them. If I'd thought about it much, though, I should have seen that you really had to be a little strange to run distances, because if you're doing it right, it involves pain over a pretty long period of time. And anyone who deliberately puts himself into pain for a long period of time has to be strange.
	The thing was, I was in pain a lot of the time, anyway. It wasn't the kind of pain you could name or touch. In those days I wouldn't even have said it was pain, but a sort of waiting that never stopped. At least when I was running I knew where the pain was. It was almost better to have sore legs and shin splints and stitches in my side and crotch rot than to keep slipping through the aimless days.
	There was another side to running, though, and I guess it was the real reason I stuck with it: if there was pain in running, there was also a natural anesthetic, and that anesthetic wiped out more than physical pain. Soz used to talk to the kids all the time about "running through the pain. That is, as you ran, pain was all around you, and you just had to keep pushing through it. He used to talk about little tricks you could teach yourself to use so that the pain didn't bother you so much. It really was so much Sozian bullshit, but we listened, and a lot believed.
	I listened, but I saw it differently than he explained it. To me running through the pain was like jumping through a hoop - you know - one of those fiery hoops guys like to jump through on motorcycles or horses. I thought of pain like that. As you ran, it built up and built up as you got closer to the hoop until you could feel the fire really licking at you and bubbling your skin and singeing off your hair, and then suddenly you were through it, and it was like running on over clouds in slow motion and in complete silence. Well, it wasn't really exactly like that, because if you didn't pay attention to where you were running, you'd get mixed up in a bunch of sticker bushes or fall off a cliff, or something. But if you worked at it you could really detach your mind, sort of like sending it up in a balloon while the rest of you churned along underneath.
	There were two secrets to it. First was the breathing. As you ran along, the breathing became hypnotic. After your body finally figured out what your brain was making it do, it settled into a certain rhythm: in-one-two-three, out-one-two-three, in-one-two-three, out-one-two-three. If you really ran hard it might be: in-one-two, out-one-two. Or if you were really struggling up a hill it would turn to: in-one, out-one. But the secret was to really concentrate on the rhythm, and eventually part of your mind drifted off.
	The other thing was to concentrate your vision. You had to stare hard at the ground - at the lines in the pavement, or the little bits of gravel in the asphalt, or the blades of grass, or the mixed-up stuff in the dirt.  Once your mind was locked into the breathing rhythm and your vision was tied up with the endless patterns, you had to just shut down your thoughts. Any time a thought got recognizable you had to stop thinking about it and concentrate on the rhythms and the patterns. It didn't happen all the time. The races were the times when it hardly happened at all because you had to think about your pacing and your position and the other assholes who were trying to push you off the hill.
	But during practices, I could sometimes get myself into a blank state, and, if the place I was running was fairly long and safe, I could run for fifteen or twenty minutes without even remembering afterward where I'd gone. It was really even more than that, though, because time seemed to slow down when I was like that, and it seemed more like an hour. I'd be really wiped out afterward, but I'd recover pretty fast and then feel relaxed and calm for a long time.
	Like most everything else I did around that time, I gave this a mystical name , too. I called it "white-light running." I called it that because when I really got my mind blank, even though I could still see everything around me, it seemed like I was running all surrounded by some white glow that pulled me on and protected me. The one bad thing about it was I sometimes thought that if I kept it up long enough everything else might disappear, and I might just be left there in the bright glow forever. I took care never to push it too far.
	Actually, there was another little problem with running like that. It had to do with the visions or feelings I mentioned before. I've always had a tendency to have them, but I've always kept it under pretty good control. But when I cleaned out my head for white-light running I also gave up some of that control, and there were some times when I was running when feelings came up very unexpectedly and strong. It really had more to do with place than time, and I gradually learned where those places were and stayed away from them. I won't go into what came into my head in those places; it really isn't very good to think about at all.
	Anyway, I got into talking about all this because in a way it was running that changed things between Marlene and me. Well, it really wasn't running as much as falling. It happened at our first season meet.
	The cross country course that we used was not at our school, but at Verdugo Park, about five miles away. First you had to run the length of the park, then cut over a street that suddenly went straight up into the hills behind the park. Part way up the hill the asphalt ended, and there was a low chain across the road to keep cars out of the dirt part of the road which quickly narrowed down into just a footpath. This path circled around a small canyon, then went almost ninety degrees up a hillside. On the other side of the hill you circled back until you were at the chain again, and then it was just down the street and back across the park to the finish line. The whole thing was a little over two miles.
	At that particular meet I was doing pretty well, although that was probably because the other team was pretty shitty. Coach Soz always scheduled that particular team, Webster School - a private academy - at the beginning of the season to give us a good start with a win. That was almost guaranteed, they were so bad. I don't know why they even continued to send teams each year. Anyway, as we neared the chain coming down the hill, I was feeling pretty cocky in third or fourth place. I let my mind drift out a little for some relief, and that was when I didn't lift my foot enough as I jumped over the chain. Of course, it wouldn't happen going up when I'd just fall on my face. Oh, no! It had to happen going down so I could have the fun of rolling ass over teakettle down an asphalt street. And I rolled almost all the way to the bottom. And, of course, the assholes on my own team had only asshole comments to make as they ran by. And, of course, no one helped.
	Finally, I did manage to get myself up and across the park to the finish. It was a little impressive at least: "Raw Hamburger Crosses Line - Gives All for Team." I wasn't even last, Webster was that shitty.
	But not all bad came out of that fall. In the first place there was the coach. He seemed more impressed that I had finished the race all beat up than if I had won. He'd never paid much attention to me - I mean special attention - but that day he took me back to school in his own car and made sure I had medication on all the cuts after I showered. The attention made me feel a little better, but, of course, none of the jerks on the team waited for me to get out, and so, bruises and all, I ended up walking home. But then that led to the second  thing. You could say it changed my life.
	By habit I took the route by Marlene's house, although since our last meeting there I'd hardly seen her at all. It seemed like she was never in the halls at school, and when I saw her at lunch she was never sitting alone, almost as though she was making a point of it. Finally, I got pissed and even stopped walking by her house. Now, while I was still two blocks away, I could see her sitting on the flagstone steps of the front porch. I knew she saw me and figured she would probably go inside, but she just sat there until I was in front of her walkway.
	Like the time before, she wore a sweatshirt, dark blue shorts and white tennis shoes. This time her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and she had a little make-up on. Slowly, with a little limp for effect, I turned into the front walk and stood before her. She took in the scrapes on my left arm. 
	"What's wrong with you?" 
	"Oh, nothing at all. I just fell over a damn chain, creamed my leg and lost the meet this afternoon." 
	"I didn't know you were out for sports." 
	"Cross country.” 
	"That's a lot of work. Why'd you pick that?" 
	"Oh, you know, it's so neat rolling down hills."
	Her eyes appeared darker than before. I can still see them. I'd thought they were green, but in the late afternoon sun they seemed almost dark brown. She was even more beautiful than before. For some stupid reason I felt a little - a lot - like crying, which was strange, because I hardly did that. Something seemed to come over her, too, but I don't think it had to do with crying.
	"Would you like something to drink?," she asked, her tone a little strange .
	"Yeah, I guess.
	She stood. I followed her through the wide oak doorway into the house. The house was a surprise. Although it had almost modern proportions outside, I still guessed it was probably built in the 1920's. But the interior was either recently remodeled or was the work of a very good architect. The lines were long and contemporary. The paneling was rich and warm. The floor was covered in places by terra cotta tiles and in others by thick rugs. I doubted that the Barzanis had had time to fix it up like that, but even the furniture was very tasteful and well-suited to the architecture.
	Marlene led me into a modern kitchen and produced a soft drink. Not knowing what to say, I studied the cabinets, which were a little strange. They had no doors but were full of expensive-looking dishes. We sat for a while as I drank. She didn't join me, but watched me carefully, examining everything, yet not staring. I was aware of her interest after so much deliberate ignoring, but I wasn't uncomfortable. She seemed especially interested in the raw spots on my arm.
	"You need to put something on that," she said.
	"Coach already did. He said it's best to leave it uncovered."
	"It must hurt a lot."
	"Naw. What does smart is the one on my leg. I've got to get home and get these Levis off. They rub hell out of it."
	For a while she seemed to be considering that, as if it were something important. Finally, I got up and took my empty soda bottle to the sink. I stood there for a few minutes looking at the fixtures and appliances. They were all solid brass or stainless steel and of the best quality. I was about to go toward the entrance hall again when she said,
	"You seem to like the house. Would you like to see the rest of it?"
	"Sure"	
	We left the kitchen by another door that led into a den.  We went through that room and into a large dining room. Beyond that was the living room. While the house was the usual rectangle outside, inside the effect was of length and curves, unexpected views and quiet warmth. It seemed to be a larger space than was actually enclosed.
	When we reached the front entrance again I noticed a staircase I hadn't seen the first time through. Marlene motioned me to go up.  At the second floor landing we stopped a minute, or I did, looking back down the curve of the staircase, admiring the carved and polished edges of the steps where they weren't covered by thick carpet. The stairs were set in a huge curved window that showed a corner of the yard with several orange and apricot trees surrounding a flagstone terrace where lawn chairs were set around a modernistic marble fountain. Honeysuckle and ivy covered the lower parts of the window and climbed almost to the roof on the left side.
	The house really fascinated me. I'd never imagined that so much invention could be put into a place to live. It was more like a public building, a great library or a theater. Every-thing seemed so thought over and well planned. Each place you stopped there was something to catch your eye, to entertain or make you think. I was hardly aware that Marlene had led me into a room that opened to the right of the top landing. As I wandered in I guessed that it was Marlene's room. The color was a kind of burned rose which was repeated with variations in the furniture, bedding, rugs and curtains. It was feminine, but not really teenage. There was none of the usual stuff like pictures, dolls, and perky things that I'd noticed on the rare occasions when I'd seen girls' bedrooms.
	Then, without realizing where I was going, I bumped into Marlene. She'd stopped in the center of the room. I started to say something when she put her hands up, took my face, pulled it to hers and gave me a kiss. We were in her bedroom, of course, but I'd been so entertained, like on a museum tour, that I'd made no connection.
	Regardless of old men's wet dreams, this is not necessarily a situation that turns a fifteen-year-old on. My mind flashed an image of Al and Suzie Kinsler. He told me that the summer before he was working in his yard one day when Suzie happened to walk down the alley behind their house. He only had on gym shorts because of the heat. Right away she started up a conversation, and before he knew it, she had her hand down his shorts feeling him out. He wasted no time getting the hell out of there, though, because everyone knew Suzie had more crabs than the Seal Beach mud flats at low tide. Now my feet wanted to do the same as Al's.
	I was panicked, but I was also angry - angry at myself for letting down my guard when I was with a tough girl. If my feet were trying to beat it for the door, though, the rest of me couldn't move. It was held there by something very hard to describe: her kiss.
	It's pretty hard to tell about a kiss. I mean the point of kissing is kissing, not talking about it. But Marlene's kiss was something I've never experienced since. She didn't like to kiss a lot; at least she didn't kiss me on a lot of occasions, but I wish she had. Her kiss was soft and cool, yet very electric. There was no particular pressure to it; the contact was everything. Somehow it touched all my body and left it aching for more. My panic was buried by the flood of impulses racing through me. I went lightheaded and knew that I was in the presence of something I'd never imagined.
	Somehow we ended up on the bed, sitting on the edge of it. I don't think that the kiss had been broken, but we must have moved ten feet across the room. Her hands were moving over my body, feeling my chest, my arms, my back. I winced when she touched the scrape and again when she moved her hand over my groin.
	I understood what I was supposed to do; I'd at least learned that much. And yet one thing really had me worried: how to get out of my pants. If you start dressing yourself by the time you're three, when you're fifteen you must’ve taken off pants about five thousand times. Yet now the only thing I could think of was how I was going to get out of them. I don't recall worrying about how anything else would function.
	Marlene sat back from me. Slowly she slipped off the sweatshirt. I can still see the contrast between the white brassiere and her gold-tan skin. I was fascinated by the sight and would probably have sat for an hour watching, but suddenly the brassiere was gone, and I found it hard to breathe. Her breasts were very definitely breasts. I see them now as beautiful, like the rest of her, but the sight of them then was so new to me that again it almost sent me running from the room. But I didn't run. She kicked off her tennies, neatly dropped her shorts and sat again next to me with only her panties on.
	I was feeling overdressed in the circumstances, so I began to unbutton my shirt. She took over and peeled it back. She ran her hands over my shoulders and chest and kissed me there. Her hands found the button and zipper of my Levis, and suddenly I remembered how to get out of my pants. I jumped up, ripped off my loafers and socks, dropped my pants and jockeys in one blinding movement, and stood there all flushed, showing off the one thing I'd managed to do right during the whole ritual.
	She took my hand and pulled me down to the bed, and we rolled to the center. For a while I guess we kissed, and I figured that I was supposed to take off her panties, which I managed, although I almost ripped them. Finally she pulled me on top of her, reached down and put my cock where it should go, and with maybe ten pushes it was over.
	Afterwards, we rolled apart and lay quietly. It had felt good, alright, but I remember thinking it wasn't quite the thrill you always heard. 
	I guess I felt that this little experience might bring us closer, but Marlene lay in silence, and I couldn't think of what to do or say. It finally became clear to me that she was waiting for me to leave. She turned her face to the window. I felt I should at least say something like, "Thanks a lot."  Fortunately, I didn't.
	There was a bathroom off the bedroom. I crossed the wide room and went into it. Again the decoration - I guess for that house the correct term is decor - the decor of this small bathroom was impressive. The fittings appeared to be gold. The color, like the bedroom was sort of pink with touches of tan and burgundy. I don't remember all of the small details, but they all seemed so correct, so precisely chosen.
	If it seems strange that I remember all of this now it's because it was so different to me at the time. Our house was never like that. I felt that I'd entered a world that had always been there but that only the privileged or very lucky could see.
	As I entered the bathroom I was surprised to see it suddenly get larger and was more surprised to be faced by a tall kid with no clothes on. The whole wall opposite the door was covered with mirror. The only place I'd seen full-view mirrors was in clothing stores and then never with all my clothes off.
	For a time I studied my body. The scrapes on my right side were still raw, but they didn't look bad in that warm light. Something was trying to make itself known to me, but things'd happened so fast and the place was so strange to me that I couldn't get oriented. Then, suddenly, it all came clear to me. This was what all the talking, the jokes, the warnings were about. This was what most kids my age only snickered about, and I'd done it. I had really done it. Well, maybe not I. But it had been done - not well, perhaps - but done. They said this was what made you a man.
	I studied the figure in the mirror to see if any manly changes had happened. The legs were long and becoming muscular. The running had done that; they didn't look much like kids's legs. My upper body and arms weren't so well defined, and there wasn't any hair on my chest. Maybe now it'd start growing. I wondered if kids would see differences and know what I'd done.
	My face didn't look harder or older, but that day it seemed a little Indian. Maybe it was the light in that room, but I guess it came from my father. Maybe there was some Indian in his family, although he never had talked about who his people were. Some kids thought I might be part Mexican, and when we took Spanish in eighth grade some of them started calling me Tomás, the Spanish form of my last name. I wasn't crazy about it, but I didn't mind much.
	I used the toilet and watched my partner do the same. It almost made me laugh to see his piss arching into the bowl, and I began to feel very sexy being naked in that luxurious place. I felt myself getting hard watching myself, as if I were really spying on another person. But then I remembered that I wasn't alone. Marlene hadn't made a sound or come to see where I was, but her presence was suddenly very strong. I realized that I'd have to cross the bedroom again to get to my clothes, so I finished and wrapped one of the very plushy soft burgundy towels around me and went back.
	She'd covered herself, and her back was to me. I guessed I was expected to let myself out, so I picked up my things to go back to the bathroom. I felt like at least I had to say good-bye, but as I looked at her back and long hair fanned over the pillow I became certain that she was crying.
	My first thought was that, having gotten into a thing I knew nothing about, I'd done something really bad, maybe even maimed her for life. But that was pretty egotistical, considering I wasn't all that hung, and I'd probably set some sort of speed record, anyway. I couldn't think of what to say, so I sat on the edge of the bed and reached across and touched her shoulder.
	Apparently she hadn't heard me enter the room and turned quickly, maybe thinking I was someone else. She didn't seem to recognize me. Her eyes were dry, but still I was certain that she was in some deep misery. I searched her face for a sign of pain or fear, but it went blank, emotionless. Frustrated by my inability to say anything, I bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then her arms came up around my neck, and she drew me down, kissing me with that soft, cool, burning kiss. A tent began to form under the burgundy towel.
	What happened then really surprised me. Her gentle hold on my neck became a vise. She pulled me to her hard, holding me like she was a scared child who'd just found her father. There was almost a panic in the way she ran her hands over my body. On the one hand, it felt damn good, especially the kisses that went with it. Her body was amazing - warm and soft, yet solid - and the touch of it along mine felt great. On the other hand, there was something too intense, too driven about her need. It didn't fit the situation, but, I thought, maybe that's the way sex is. It was what Grandpa used to call a push-pull. I was being drawn into her delirium and what it promised, but it scared me a lot.
	She must have felt my confusion. She released me. Then, in one of her infuriating changes - almost sarcastically - she grabbed my ears and forced my face between her breasts. The way she did it should have pissed me off, but the result was great. How could you imagine a sensation like that? Her smell was wonderful, like she'd just bathed and used lots of talcum, all fresh and soft and babylike. And the feel of that enveloping softness against my face almost set me off again. I stopped any resistance and tried to sink deeper into that beauty, but she didn't give me the chance. Roughly, she pulled off my towel and pulled me onto her, and this time, without her help, I found my way in.
	I knew it would all be over again too soon. I tried to move slowly, backing off, going in more, feeling us touch, then backing again. I lifted myself to see what it all looked like in operation, but that just about set me off, too. Leaning on my arms, eyes closed, I stopped and let the sensations wash over me. It was like feeling a connection to something known before - a plug into a secret world that had been part of me, but long forgotten. I wanted to know it more, to think about it, to dream.
	Marlene seemed pissed again. She put her hands on my butt and forced me back in. She ran them roughly over my hips, and it stung fiercely when she touched the burned places. That did it; I shot it all.
	It wasn't anything mind-shaking. The load just rolled over the edge. At first Marlene wasn't even aware that it happened.
	"Did you...finish?" she finally asked.
	"Yeah, I guess."
	"You stopped, but I didn't feel when you...
	She didn't say more, but lay back and stared at the ceiling. The nastiness was gone, but her frustration was easy to feel. She sort of reminded me of the dog, but I didn't like that comparison much. I was still hard and still in and didn't really want to go anywhere, so I stayed put, moving lightly in and out. Gradually she realized what I was doing. She looked up at me, and I guess I looked a little sheepish. She began to respond. She pulled me down, then lifted her right knee and rolled us over. Then she straddled me, kneeling.
	At this point, to tell you the truth, I really didn't know what was going on. I mean, I knew what we were doing, but I didn't know why. I guessed she was after the same thing I was, but took longer to get there.
	If that was it, she got pretty intense as she went on, bearing down on me, breathing hard and making some strong sounds. Her breasts moved heavily above my face. I noticed that the door to the hall was still open, and that worried me some.
	Whether she got where she wanted, I don't know, but then, I was totally ignorant about that stuff. To tell the truth, though, that's something I've never been too sure of with women, despite what they say; I mean, it's a little hard to prove, one way or the other. If she did, it was nothing explosive. She just slowed and then lay over me. I can't remember if I came again, but there probably wasn’t  much left, anyway.
	Finally we rolled apart. The silence returned. But this time it was a more natural silence, like when the communicating had been done right. I lay for a long time watching the colors of the room slowly change in the declining sunlight. I watched Marlene watching me, then watching nothing. I watched the leaves outside the large window shifting silently back and forth as if for a better view of us. I watched that strange fall day come to an end.