You should read chapters 1 and 2 before proceeding, things will make more sense.
Monday back in school, I noticed how differently I was feeling. Part of it was distraction, thinking of what Rose and I had been doing and the fact that Harland would return on Tuesday, but mostly I simply felt out of place.
The other boys at school suddenly seemed like inexperienced rubes. Our conversations between classes and during gym were beneath me. Even Ed appeared to me more like some dumb kid brother than my best friend, surely not my equal.
And the girls! The ones I used to get all hot and bothered over couldn't shine the shoes of my Rose, I knew. Sure, their bodies looked good, especially the ones who wore their uniform skirts higher up the leg than others, but these former goddesses were now so uninteresting. How could I have ever felt intimidated by the idea of asking one out on a date? Me, the boy (man?) who had showered with a fully formed, desirable woman, had felt her body in almost every way a man could, had enjoyed orgasms with her?
Such a boy could care less about going to the drive-in with some shallow young female after that, even if he had access to a car.
It hit me that I might have fallen in love with Rose. But how could that be so? Rose was older, knew so much more than me. She was involved with a real man, one who ran a construction crew of god knows how many workers. Rose was so experienced at sex, she took in stride everything, all the positions, that to me amounted to heart-stopping fantasies, with barely a hint of wonder.
I stood next to her as a lowly student would stand next to Socrates. Certainly I couldn't love someone so far above me, so detached. And, there was no doubt that such a person could never love me.
So, it must be infatuation, I reasoned. I'd read about that, of course -- English Lit was full of prime examples. Also, it was common knowledge that plenty of schoolgirls thought they were in love with their male teachers, so why not a misplaced emotion on my part toward Rose? I pushed such nonsense away.
Ed had the new Playboy in his gym locker, cribbed from his dad's bureau. Normally I'd have killed to get a look at it, but that day I shrugged at his suggestion that we check it out in the locker room during our next free period, when Coach and his assistant had study hall monitoring assignments.
Maybe I was too distracted thinking about ways I could sneak out of the house tonight and visit Rose again, one more time before Tuesday. Maybe I was tired of magazines that didn't show it all. Or, perhaps I suddenly realized that if Ed and I didn't have some Stag or Adam or Men Only to check out, or some fantasy to share about what we'd like to do with girls, then maybe we had no other common interests.
Anyway, we ended up checking out the magazine after all, but it was in the back of the bus on the way home after school. This was no mean feat, by the way, ogling nekkid wimmen pictures on the Eagle Eye bus.
Eagle Eye Warren (I've forgotten his given name) was a veteran, hunched-over driver who had seen it all, and was especially suspicious of any clutch of whispering and grinning boys huddled in the back of his transport. He had a huge rear view mirror, I swear it seemed twice the size of other bus mirrors, and little escaped his probing eyes. It wasn't easy keeping him from pulling over and making a big deal investigation out of everything.
So, Ed and I sat in the middle right, instead of the back this time. It was Ed's idea. Even though there were girls and some boys younger than us right nearby, kids who could see what we were doing, Ed apparently reasoned that Warren would pay little heed to anything such children might say, if they indeed dared to utter a word. The bus driver would be looking for seniors in the back misbehaving, Ed believed, and he was correct.
Ed unfurled the centerfold proudly to share with me, practically daring anyone looking over our shoulders to rat us out. She was a comely blonde with shoulder-length curls, I remember. Not the centerfold model, but the girl behind me to the right who sucked in her breath as the heavy-breasted Playboy model bared all (except for the parts I wanted to see most). I think her name may have been Linda. I could hear her unnatural breathing right next to my ear.
At the time I figured she was thinking what pigs boys are, but looking back now I wonder if it wasn't merely the times in which we lived, with the sexual taboo of seeing nudity in public with mixed company causing a short, sharp bit of arousal. Are you out there, young lady? Please answer for yourself.
This was Ed's big daring moment. He was aiming for immortality in the school's folklore, as The Boy Who Opened a Playboy on the School Bus. This gesture was no doubt meant to impress me, the friend he must have realized was drifting away from him. None of that went through my mind at the time, naturally, with my being not so introspective as I find myself today; instead, here's what I was finding of interest right then: that the shapely, full breasts of the pictorial model, with their lovely pink perky nipples and their finely-lined delineation of aureolae, along with the novel, highly- sexualized situation I was in on that bus, were not seeming to me the least bit arousing, or even particularly dangerous.
All I knew as I pedaled my way at 11 PM that night toward the house where Rose lived was: it was time for me to go all the way. Behind me were my parents, who might discover that I had sneaked out of the house without a word. I could only hope that at least one of them would understand I was eighteen and an individual, not someone related to Wally Cleaver. Before me was a full-blooded woman who might care only for me in an abstract, instructional, mentor way of thinking, but at the same time had definitely responded to me sexually.
Would we fuck tonight? Should we? Would she even let me in? Could I kiss her? Would I have to wear a condom?
That brought me up short. I actually stopped the bike and flushed with embarrassment in the warm evening air, mortified that I hadn't even thought to acquire a rubber. In a flash I went over the possibilities of finding such an item this late at night, and quickly ruled it out. If Harland wasn't accustomed to stashing any in the nightstand drawer, that might be that.
It's either a testament to the power of Desire or to the protective properties of Denial that I continued on my way. I pushed from my mind the ideas that Rose might find a late-night visit objectionable, might not be in the mood to be clumsily pawed by a skinny adolescent, or may have any objections to completing my education. In their place were my pure, inexperienced imaginings of what her warm cunt might feel like wrapped around my cock.
