1990, Indiana

By Scott Siders

Tommy never had a problem with girls.

It was junior year of high school. He was on the swim team. I was on the sit around alone and play sad songs team. I don’t remember a single week of high school in which Tommy didn’t have at least one girl with him — or waiting to be. My interaction with girls resembled that of a talking horse — it looked like I was saying something, but really I was just trying to get the peanut butter from the top of my mouth.

It was October, the evening after I bought my first car — a blue 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Classic. My father found me sitting on the hood playing my guitar.

“There are things you’ll be able to do now, certain freedoms, now that you have your own car,” he said.

He opened the passenger door and climbed in, motioning for me to join him. He took a stick of gum from a pack in his pocket.

“You want a piece,” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Look,” he said. “You know your mother and I don’t allow you to have girls in your room. Well, there’s no way I can stop you from taking a girl out to the middle of some cornfield somewhere.”

My stomach was bouncing around like a drunken monkey. I kept shouting to myself, “Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God. This is the talk. I can’t believe this is the talk.”

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

I nodded. I was tearing skin from the edge of my middle fingernail.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want you to feel comfortable coming to me to get protection — if you need it. I’d much rather give you protection, than see you, you know, get somebody pregnant just because you didn’t have the money, or because you weren’t prepared or something.”

He paused a moment, looking away from me for the first time — focusing on a large shovel dangling from a hook on the front wall of the garage. He was chewing gum like it was an Olympic event, the sound of his smacking mouth echoing in the damp garage.

“Could you give me a hand digging the last post holes for the fence this weekend? We need to get that thing built before the first snow. You know how your mother is.”

I nodded. There were a few moments of silence.

“Yeah,” I said. OK. Well, I need to finish….”

“Wait,” he said, interrupting. “One more thing.”

He dug into his right hip pocket and pulled out a small blue packet.

“I’m going to go ahead and leave this condom in the glove compartment. If you need more, I’ll take care of it — no questions asked.”

My finger was bleeding. I said nothing. He sort of half-smiled, half-frowned, his mouth stuck in thought, like a man breaking up with a woman might look. He got out and headed for the house. I turned out the light and played a hard one.

Weeks went by. Tommy must have moved through six different girls. I’d learned that many songs. He had 5th period off, so he began a ritual of moving my car from one end of the lot to the other. We’d discovered that the ignition didn’t actually need a key to start it — any straight and strong object would do the trick — and my locks didn’t work. He took advantage of it. Sometimes after school, while he was at swim team practice, I’d spend an hour looking for the car.

It was about this time that my father seemed particularly interested in landing me a girlfriend. At dinner he’d be complaining about Jim so-and-so at work and then, out of nowhere, he’d look at me and say something like, “You know, if you ever want to have somebody over for dinner — your mother and I would love to have her.”

Then he’d go back to Jim so-and-so. I’d always nod and say nothing. My mother would look at me like I’d taken her first-born.

A month went by. Fall became winter. One afternoon, arriving at Tommy’s, I opened his bedroom door to find him making a balloon out of a condom. I laughed and asked him where he’d gotten it.

“Your car,” he said, pinching the air of the oblong balloon.

“What?” I said. “You must be kidding.”

“Nope. There’s been a new one in the glovebox every day.”

The latex exploded from the end of his fingers, falling into a small heap on his bed.

“I thought you had extra,” he said, “and when you didn’t say anything….”

He interrupted himself.

“How many girls have you slept with this year?” he asked.

He was genuinely curious and jealous — even incredulous. He looked down at the broken condom.

“Look,” he said. “I was a man in need. You know how that chick Trisha is. If it’s a question of money, don’t worry about it. You ever need one — just ask.”

Scott Siders resides in Huntington Beach, California, and has published two books of poetry: “This Side of Oblivion” (2001) and “The Armpit of Desire” (2005). Siders has also been published in several literary journals, including “The Mississippi Review,” “Sniper Logic,” and “Strategic Confusion.”

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, October 30th, 2006 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 12:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.