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“See you at the house,” I said.

The girl turned to the older woman. “Leave us alone for a few minutes. I'll call you when he's ready.”

Gussie shrugged her shoulders. “OK,” she said, walking to the front.

“I'll get it hard,” Jody said, smiling seductively. She tossed her long dark hair back over her head dramatically. “Do what I say and relax. It'll work. Always does. And stand still.”

Although her skin was hairless, her hands with the long, red nails seemed big for a girl.

She sat down on the yellow plastic chair facing my standing body. “Stand still and close your eyes,” she said softly.

As soon as I did, I felt her unbuttoning the top button on my jeans. When she unzipped them, she slid the jeans and my shorts down to my ankles. Still with my eyes closed—I was too scared to open them—I felt one of her hands lightly cup my balls and begin caressing them gently.

“Um, does it feels good?” she purred in a throaty voice, still fondling the family jewels.

“Yeah,” I muttered, starting to get in the mood.

Seconds later she proved that she must've paid strict attention to her blowjob instructor in junior high. She gripped the
middle of my dick with her other hand while slowly licking the tip as sexy as Buckskin demonstrated for us with his ice cream cone a few days ago.

About ten slurps later I had a throbbing hard-on!

“Ready!” Jody called out to the old lady who hurried in.

I handed Jody the marking pen. “K-U-R-T,” I said again between short breaths.

She held the knob, stretching out my dick with one hand and printed my name clearly with the other hand.

“Flash the picture!” I said to Gussie. “Hurry!”

“First hold me,” Jody purred.

“Yeah, hold her,” grandma piped up, snickering.

I put my right arm around Jody's bony shoulders. “Snap the picture now. Please,” I said to Gussie.

“Wait!” Jody cried out. “I'm not ready.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a tube of bright red lipstick. Expertly, without a mirror, she applied it thickly to her lips before rubbing her lips together. Then she bent down on one knee and looked up at the woman with the camera. “Don't take it until I kiss it.”

“OK,” I pleaded desperately. “But do it fast.”

Jody planted a big kiss right under the letters before the flash went off. Quickly, I pulled up my clothes. Like with the other pictures, the buzzing and whizzing hummed in the camera until the picture slowly eased out. A few minutes later the photo was almost fully developed. Again, the quality was terrific.

I showed it to both people and they agreed. I slid the photo into my back pocket and got the camera back, putting the strap over my head and turned around.

“Zip up your pants, kid,” the tattoo woman called out laughing, “or you'll be arrested for indecent exposure before you hit the street.”

“I got a souvenir for your memory,” Jody said sweetly.

Before I could answer, she turned her back to me and slid her jeans and torn purple panties down to her knees, mooning me. Then she twirled around, facing me again with a big smile on her bright, red lips and flashed a hard-on nearly as long as a
Louisville Slugger!

Felix read 9:56 as I raced out of there and out onto the pier where the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd shoved and banged in me in every direction.

Running for my life, I twisted and turned through the crowd, zig-zagged and side-stepped around people, moving as fast as possible which was still barely a crawl. Up ahead I could see the yellow Ryder truck parked across the street from the pier. The back door was closed! The headlights suddenly clicked on and that motherfucking, cocksucking truck took off down the street leaving me pinned in the middle of this human mass!

I
THRUST MY WAY THROUGH THE CROWD,
ricocheting off one body after another, until I broke free from the herd and sprinted toward the street. Some unleashed Doberman picked up my scent at the sidewalk, growling like I was supposed to be his dinner before he scrambled after me. I panicked, desperately searching for a cab or a bus or even a bike to steal. Anything to get back to the house before the truck arrived! Precious seconds were ticking away!

Still dodging people and bicyclists, and with that goddamn dog chasing me, I gasped for air racing across the grass on Ocean Avenue when I spotted some runt jump-starting his bright yellow motorcycle across the street half a block away. I sprinted there with my heart pumping like a jet engine starting up.

“Give you sixty bucks,” I blurted out breathlessly just as that fucking dog caught up with me and growled at my ankles like a loud rattlesnake, “for a ride to Navy and Pacific.” I froze, probably reeking with fear, as the dog started sniffing my knees before he jabbed my pant leg with his nose. “It's real close,” I pleaded with this Hell's Angel reject as the dog's mouth opened like he was ready for a dentist's filling. “Only about a mile away. Please,” I begged.

The guy raised the black plastic shield on the front of his black helmet and looked at me suspiciously. “You running from the cops?”

“No,” I said choking, still twisting and spinning away from this lethal dog that was now playing cat-and-mouse with my ankles. “Super Shuttle is coming to take me and my mother to LAX. Can't be late or we'll miss the plane to Chicago. My father's dying in the hospital there.”

“Sorry. Don't have another helmet. Passengers got to wear one too. It's the law.”

Then, fortunately, the dog started sniffing this bastard's knees, forcing him to take a few small steps backward, pressing him against the bike.

“Look man,” I said, sounding like I had a mouth full of sand, “I got two joints in my wallet. You can have those too. That's all I got.”

He didn't answer, bending and twisting away from the goddamn Doberman whose growl was getting longer and deeper before it nudged its nose on my pant leg again.

“And a forty dollar bonus if I get to the house before the Super Shuttle arrives.”

Pot, the great American legal tender, never fails. And getting the hell away from the dog didn't hurt either.

“OK, man,” he said, taking the cash and the pot from me in his right hand. “Get on.”

He jammed the money and one joint in the front pocket of his black leather jacket and stuck the other joint in his mouth, quickly lighting it with a yellow Bic. As a good-bye present, he kicked the fucking dog in the face so angering the mutt that it immediately lunged at me with his walrus-size teeth.

I dodged the Jaws-like attempt to make me an amputee and jumped on the fucking bike, barely grabbing hold of the strap on the seat before the bike flew down Ocean Avenue like an exploding rocket going sideways out of control.

Slow trucks, slow cars, slow bikes, a woman wheeling a baby buggy, red lights, pedestrians in the crosswalk. Nothing meant shit to this daredevil; he ran through everybody! He was
all over the road; in every lane, in the median and even on the sidewalk, dodging one obstacle after another. After a U-turn that sanded off most of the side of my right shoe on the street like a grinder, he almost hit some old fart making a left turn out of Chez Jay's before he cut across the street, swerving around the semi-circular entrance at the Loew's Hotel where he nearly nailed some asshole that opened her VW door in our path as we skidded on oil before he finally righted the bike.

My first motorcycle ride and I nearly got killed before we went two blocks!

I closed my eyes, sucked in the great pot smell that came flying my way, and gripped the seat strap even tighter. For the first time since my Confirmation, I actually thought of saying a Hail Mary. This fucker scared the shit out of me; even more than the giant with the knife at the sex motel or Dirty Harriet. Unless this character had a death wish, he was showing off trying to kill me.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, flashing red lights and a screeching siren were racing towards us from behind, about two blocks away! Maybe I could convince the cops that I was a kidnap victim and if they didn't bother to check me for warrants I'd be OK. But they probably would. Fuck!

I pounded the driver's right shoulder and yelled into the ear hole of his helmet, “Another forty if you ditch them!”

His right fist gave me the thumbs-up sign as another great cloud of pot waffled toward my nose.

He turned corners at angles that defied gravity, almost hitting a fire hydrant before he veered onto the sidewalk to get around a couple of cars whose drivers cowardly stopped for the red light. Then he turned another corner and zipped this guided missile through alleys and unfenced yards, zigzagging around lampposts like he was following the shape of a corkscrew.

But the cops were still within sight, with sirens wailing and spotlights zeroing-in on us! The goddamn helicopter would probably hover over us in another minute and we'd be dead.

“Watch this!” he screamed over his shoulder. “And hang on
tight!”

He swerved down a side street, then across lawns while scrambling between trees, probably thinking that grass was nothing but a wide, extension of the street. Somehow he found a pathway so narrow that no car could drive through it as he bolted toward the ocean, not turning until he hit the bike path, instantly clearing it of the late-night joggers, muggers and bike riders. The thin ribbon of cement parting the sand was like a private road as the bike's high-pitched engine screamed through the night air.

I smacked his right arm as we neared Navy. “Next street turn left!” I yelled.

He slowed, probably to ninety, turning the corner almost parallel to the street and kept this rocket-ride going for another minute before I pounded his back.

“Stop!” I screamed at the end of the cul-de-sac. “We're here!”

After braking and skidding and spinning doing do-nuts, he finally stopped the bike by bouncing the front tire against the curb, snapping my head back with a jerk.

Finally my brain unscrambled a little to see that the Ryder truck wasn't here yet!

“Like the ride?” the guy asked, smiling like a tour guide.

I nodded. “Wonderful. My grandmother would love it too.”

“This is good shit,” this daredevil said between hits.

I gripped the two twenties in my trembling right hand and gave it to him. “Thanks. I'll call you when I want to commit suicide.”

I slid off the motorcycle but my rubbery legs wouldn't support me and I tumbled onto the street seconds before puking up my guts in the gutter. I was still gagging and heaving and choking and coughing as the motorcycle sped away, hopefully to lead the cops on a chase in another direction.

But I had the autograph and I could prove it!

Seconds later, the headlights from the big, yellow truck turned the corner and flashed its high beams on me while I lay on my back in the gutter, raising both tightly-clenched fists, each with my middle finger sticking up as stiff as Jody's hard-on!

_____

11:15
P.M.

“We're playing Show & Tell,” Bones announced brightly as we were lined up side-by-side facing the usual battery of boozed-up actives in the dining room.

“Everybody hold up your photographs!” Bones ordered.

Each guy who had a picture held it up. The actives walked up and down the line looking at each photo, laughing like hell. For obvious reasons, mine was the favorite.

“Where was that taken?” Eddie Angelo asked between hits on a joint.

“Ladies' toilet in some restaurant.”

“Man, she's an ugly twat,” he mumbled, taking the photo from me and staring at it a little closer. “Don't look much like a girl though.”

I didn't answer.

“What about you, Froggy?” Bookie yelled out. “And you No-Wood? Where's your pictures?”

Froggy squirmed around a little. Tiny beads of sweat covered most of his forehead and under his nose. “Batman and me separated. I lost him. Couldn't do anything.”

“Same with me and Vysell,” No-Wood answered, licking his lips continually. “It's too humiliating. I only asked one girl and she ran away and she said she's calling the cops. I was scared to ask anybody else.”

“So what're we going to do?” Bones called out dramatically to the actives standing behind him. “Let these pledges defy us?”

Before the mob could answer, Christianson snapped at Lyman, “What about you, Hymen?”

The little creep was shaking, looking scared to death. “A girl did it,” he squeaked. “But Stafford threw the picture over the pier.”

All eyes were on me. “Bullshit.”

“I got autographed,” Lyman mumbled defensively.

“Then let's see your dick,” Reece demanded.

Lyman pulled it out and everybody crowded around him, checking the fancy artwork.

“How do we know he didn't do it himself?” I asked innocently.

Lyman's eyes flamed at me, flashing a lifetime of hatred. “You fucking bastard.”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked at him blandly.

“Stafford's right,” Bones said to the actives, nodding his dumb head up and down. Then he looked at Lyman. “How do we know you didn't do it yourself?”

“I can prove it.” Quickly Lyman unbuttoned his tan Diesel shirt, dropping it to the floor before he pulled his T-shirt over his head, tossing the white shirt on top of the tan one. He turned around so his back faced everybody. “Read what she wrote. Same girl's handwriting.”

Everybody, including me, examined his back that passed for an artists' canvas. On it were the words, written in the same unmistakable artistic handwriting that was on his dick: KURT THREW PHOTO IN OCEAN.

“Same writing, all right,” Christianson mumbled, staring me down. He looked back at Lyman. “You're OK Hymen.”