I looked up at the connection rod of the boxed swing and determined that it had a solid link to the frame. The base of the swing set frame itself, however, was not as sturdy and it began to lift out of the ground with each consecutive arc, causing the entire structure to rock back and forth. I stood up and held onto the central pole of the box swing, causing the contraption to increasingly gain momentum. A few moments later, the box swing inverted and dumped Heidi out onto the ground. She first cracked her head on the compacted dirt and then got rammed in the face by the swing as it came down from its arc, splitting open her lip.
I quickly jumped off the contraption and stopped the box swing from making another pass at Heidi’s head. “Are you okay?” I asked, after I stabilized the moving object.
“I think so,” she replied, sucking in her bottom lip that had begun to bleed. Heidi then touched the back of her head, rubbing the sore spot.
“Sorry,” I uttered indifferently.
“It’s okay. It’s my fault.”
“Yeah, probably,” I agreed.
Heidi looked at me with a sad expression and continued to suck on her bottom lip in attempts to stop the bleeding. The ruined romantic moment quickly grew more strained. I knew that my time was limited, as I had already spent a good forty-five minutes at Heidi’s house exploring her bedroom and the swing set outside. Although I felt primarily responsible for Heidi’s injury, I was more concerned with the cuticle integrity of my own ass if my parents’ learned of me violating their prohibitions. Thus, even though she was hurt and looking for comfort, the time had come for me to abandon Heidi in her moment of need and return home.
“I have to get going,” I said. “Um… I’ll see you later.”
“Uh, okay,” Heidi replied, continually touching her lip with her fingers and pulling them away from her face to see the amount of blood that she was leaking.
“Alright, bye.” I made a short jog toward the fence in Heidi’s backyard, slipped out the gate, and was quickly on my way down the road to my parents’ house. I did not make it one block before I spotted my older brother, Bobby Boop, riding up the road toward me on his bicycle. My mother had sent him out looking for me. Son of a bitch, I thought to myself.
As my brother neared me while wearing an agitating grin on his face (because he knew that I was in a quagmire of shit once I got home), my mind raced for an explanation regarding my lateness.
“Mom wants you home right now,” Bobby Boop announced, pulling up his bicycle in front of me.
I immediately forced myself to cry.
“Ha-Ha, you’re in trouble,” my brother said. “Dad’s going to be mad at you too.”
“I… didn’t do… anything,” I sniffled, purposely emphasizing and spacing out my words in between the whimpers.
“You did so! Mom told you not to go over to that girl’s house anymore.”
“I didn’t… go over… to her… house,” I cried. “I got beat up.”
“What?”
“There’s an… eighth-grader… down that way,” I pouted, pointing up the road. “He was… with some friends… and they were on bikes… and they took my… compass,” I stated in between the exaggerated whimpers and cries.
Bobby Boop’s face morphed from an agitating grin to an angry scowl. He assumed a protective stance over me, which was quite ironic, given the fact that I could easily beat the hell out of him and had done so on several prior occasions.
“How many of them were there?” my brother asked.
“About… thr-eeeee,” I cried.
“I’m gonna go get them!” he announced. “Go home and I’ll be back.” Bobby Boop pedaled away up the street as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him, searching for my phantom attackers.
“What a dumb ass,” I stated to myself while watching my brother pedal up the road in a fury. “He’s gonna go pick a fight with someone and get trashed.” I chuckled softly, knowing that my brother would have a hard time beating up Heidi, let alone several eight-graders.
As I resumed walking home that afternoon, I realized that this entire affair could have been avoided had it not been for Heidi’s lascivious desire of my body. I learned from this initial experience that the wanton ways of women was a powerful force indeed. But the source of their desire was still a mystery to me. Was it something about me that drew female attention so? I wondered. Some special anatomical feature maybe? Or was it just the fact that some girls were more sluttish than others. As my experiences unfurled over the years, I came to realize the true nature of skanks.
JAMIE
There were two qualities about my high school friend, Kmart Cowboy, that I genuinely appreciated. First and foremost, he had vehicle. At a time in my life when riding bicycles became increasingly uncool, having a buddy with a truck was more important than wearing clean underwear. Secondly, Kmart Cowboy had game. Out of all my associates at the time, my roper boot-wearing chum had more girlfriends, sexual partners, and concubines than I could possibly keep track of. These two qualities provided enough incentive for me to spend a considerable amount of time with the wannabe wrangler, even though I viewed his cowboy hat-wearing ass as completely anathema to my modest character.
During one late spring afternoon while I was riding with Kmart Cowboy inside his dune buggy, speeding around the red-rocked hills of southern Utah, my hussy-hustling crony boasted to me about his recent sexual exploits. “You wouldn’t believe how much ass I’m getting these days,” Kmart Cowboy blatantly stated. “I have so many girls calling me, I can’t keep up with screwing all of them. I should give some over to you so you can keep their pussies warm for me.”
“Be my guest,” I replied. “I don’t get down with any sloppy seconds, though. And I don’t like fat bitches either. I know how you like women a little on the heifer side.”
“Dude, that’s not it at all,” Kmart Cowboy claimed, while navigating the buggy through a sharp turn in the dirt road upon which we traveled. “I just don’t have time to keep up with all these chicks. I can’t even call them back half the time, let alone make time to fuck ‘em!”
I gripped the side bars of the buggy as Kmart Cowboy downshifted the vehicle for a crawl up a steep hill. “You must got something really good to be turning down extra ass,” I stated over the noise of the rear-mounted motor. “What’s her name?”
Kmart Cowboy contorted his face into a shit-eating grin. “Camille,” he replied, bringing the buggy to the top of the hill.
“I don’t know any girl around our school by that name.”
“That’s because she don’t go here,” Kmart Cowboy said, steering the buggy down the opposite side of the incline. “She goes up north. She’s got a friend too… she’s pretty hot. Wanna meet her?”
Bouncing around inside the small seat of the modified vehicle, I fell inward as Kmart Cowboy conducted a power slide into a patch of soft dirt, bringing the dune buggy to a complete stop. “Sure,” I replied, brushing the rust-colored dust from off my clothes. “When we going?”
The following Friday, Kmart Cowboy and I skipped the last period of class together. We got inside his partially primer-coated truck and drove to a rival high school that was located in the northern part of the county, some twenty minutes away from our town. As the final bell rang, letting out school for the day, the self-proclaimed buckaroo and I were found standing in the hallway of our adversary’s school, waiting by a row of lockers. Within a few minutes, Camille