It was 1981. I had Tina Turner hair and a body designed for sin. I caught every boy’s eye, but still saw myself as loose dirt covering a sinkhole. I was destined for a fall. Been told that since I was five. Reckless, impulsive, never listened, yadda, yadda, same old song. I picked out dried Final Net chips from my hair. The music in the gym swelled louder—Believe It or Not by Joey Scarbury, pure Velveeta Cheese—sappy, and hard to swallow. Baptists didn’t know how to have any fun.
The youth group church lockdown was a complete drag. All the kids, but me, were cityslickers. I hailed from Bumfuck, Nebraska, a town so tiny it was called a hamlet. Only five hundred people, but it consumed more booze per capita than any town in Nebraska. Suck on that, Omaha!
I didn’t know a single soul there. All the kids were preps. The guys wore those stupid shirts with the alligator, playing hacky sack nonstop. And the girls had shiny lips, feathered hair, and sticks up their butts that made walking difficult.
Nobody said a word to me except some guy with parachute pants and a perm. He told me I’d be a lot cuter if I grew my hair out.
“Well, thank you,” I said, plastering on a big fake smile. “I’ll start right away.”
He grinned, totally oblivious. “Yeah, I might even go out with you.”
I forced a laugh and stepped away, my skin crawling. I was genetically and religiously programmed to smile at the failings of assholes. Romans 15:1.
The youth group pastor called us to sit on the floor. He was single, twenty-four, and wearing two polos with both collars popped. He looked like those jock bullies from every coming-of-age movie.
When he said let us pray, I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s because this stupid cafe in Bumfuck served chef salads on Sundays, and I always said “lettuce pray” whenever Mom and I ate there after church. Dad was usually home, nursing a Jim Beam headache—the usual souvenir from his malt-liquor-fueled social life.
A prissy girl with mushroom hair turned around and shushed me. If I was anything like Karla Decamp from school, I would have flipped her the bird and spit in her face. But since I’m a coward, I stared down at my Keds.
Pastor Sperry Topsider was a total fox, but his personality was yuck. If Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell had a baby, it would be this guy. Stern, goofy, pompous, weepy, he didn’t know who or what he was. His eyes leaked and he shouted.
“Sexual sins are the most dire of all. You’re sinning against your own body, Jesus’s own home. And all the while the Devil applauds wildly. And I say this specifically to the ladies; don’t fall for smooth talk. A guy will go as far as you let him. And after you let him, he’ll look at you like you’re twice-chewed gum. Christ wants a pure church and every husband wants a pure wife. So ladies, if some backseat Romeo puts the moves on you, pull your shoulders back and shout, ‘Gag me with a spoon, Satan. Get your hands off me.’”
I couldn’t decide if the dude was a pastor or a valley girl. But his words stuck in my craw. Was I twice-chewed gum? Technically, I was still pure, and Jeff, the cute boy from the next town over, was elusive. Like trying to catch melted butter. But oh, did I love him and his impersonations of Steve Martin’s “wild and crazy guy” or SCTV’s John Candy as a homicidal Beaver Cleaver. We tumbled barely clothed into his backseat, concealed by a grove of oak trees, doing everything but the deed, virgins by mere inches.
We talked on the phone once a week. Conversations were brief. Our respective towns were only eight miles apart, but each call cost ten cents a minute. My parents would have had a cow if I ran up their phone bill.
I thought about him nonstop. I hoped he did the same and that I inspired him to write poems about how my eyes were a forest of pines or that my boobs were billowy, soft clouds. Maybe slip his class ring on my finger and ask me to go steady. Instead, he never told me anything other than “pick you up at seven.” What if he didn’t even like me? What if his friends thought I was such a loser that they double-dared him to go out with me? And he laughed his ass off telling his friends the stupid things I said. What if… a sudden, hot panic welled up in my throat, stinging my eyes, and before I could choke it down, tears spilled over. My shoulders shook. I was an idiot. I was a total joke to the guy and parachute pants guy was the best I’d ever do.
Pastor Sperry Topsider locked eyes with me. I was a mess: red-faced and a snotty nose. He noticed. The other kids lifted their hands to some dumb praise song. More followed. Total sheep, all of them. But they probably stayed on the narrow path, not veering off like I had. No, no, no! He pushed through the throng of wannabes until he reached me.
“Hey, are you alright? What’s going on?”
No one had ever asked me that question. “Are you alright?” because most of the time I wasn’t. My parents were gone 90% of the time—Mom chasing sales awards on the road, Dad nursing mistakes at home. Something rattled loose inside of me—all these labels I kept stashed away inside an iron vault. Sometimes I’d pry off the lock and let them slither and slide all over me. Stupid, unlovable, crazy, hopeless, and the worst of all, twice-chewed gum.
I collapsed into his arms and the words came tumbling out raw and honest. I told him everything. What Jeff and I did in my bed when my folks were gone, what we did in his car, and what we planned to do under a blanket at the lake until two old goats in a pickup truck parked next to us.
“I don’t know what to do?”
He looked at me for a long, slow minute, eyes a ticker tape of judgment, pursed his lips, and shouted, “Knock it off!” And with that bit of sage wisdom, he turned and walked away, stretching his hands to the ceiling to sing, “Seek Ye First.”
I ran to the bathroom and threw up, not giving a shit that half of it splattered on the linoleum.
Sara, the mushroom-hair girl from earlier, burst through the door, scanning me from head to toe. I imagined myself squaring up and chest-bumping her, sneering, “What’s your problem?” Instead, I scuffled out of the bathroom like a rat and hid behind a Coke machine, adding more words to the vault… slut, whore, easy.
That lockdown was the longest two days of my life. Pastor Sperry Topsider and I avoided each other like Reagan and Gorbachev. The Parachute Pants guy ended up being pretty cool after all. I really liked him… like a brother, and told him that point blank to avoid all confusion. When we said goodbye, he gave me a completed Rubik’s Cube saying, “It took me ten minutes to figure it out, but I want you to have it. And if anybody acts like you’re dumb, wave it in their face and say, ‘Now who’s the dummy, bitch?’”
Jeff surprised me by picking me up. Mom was in Texas, exceeding quotas and shattering glass ceilings. As for Dad, he was probably in bed, clutching his head and popping aspirin, his ulcer bleeding nonstop.
Jeff quoted movie lines the whole way home. Cycling through Airplane! and The Blues Brothers like a human jukebox. This time I didn’t crack up. I never actually found it funny. It was sad that he never had his own words, and if I was being completely honest with myself, that was precisely why I picked him. The honest boys, the ones who didn’t run from their emotions but dared to share them, scared me to death. I wasn’t used to that kind of exposure. A boy spewing John Belushi for two hours was safe. He’d never ask me to strip off my armor, or show the wounds hidden beneath.
He walked me to the porch, clutching a bouquet of carnations wrapped in red cellophane, playing the role of gallant hero in every trite rom-com.
I felt the sharp edges of the solved plastic corners of Parachute Pants’ Rubik’s Cube in my jacket pocket, letting them dig into my palm until it hurt, leaving a temporary mark on my skin. I realized something about Jeff as he stood there in the harsh afternoon light, two collars popped on his Izod shirt. He was the okayest boy in the world. I didn’t want okay because I wasn’t okay.
Jill Williams is a writer from Georgia. Her work often explores the intersection of the profane and holy. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in BULL, EXPAT PRESS, DON’T SUBMIT, SOME WORDS, LITERARY GARAGE, CITYWIDE LUNCH, DEFENESTRATION, REVOLUTION JOHN and elsewhere.
Urban Pigs Press 
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