Semi-Tough

  "Now then," she said, "if somebody will hold my drink, I will attempt to unbutton my shirt. Thank you, Miss Volcano. That was a kind gesture on your part."

  Barbara Jane started unbuttoning her shirt while Cissy held her drink.

  Barb got her shirt unbuttoned and turned her back to everybody and slipped it off, and then turned back around holding her shirt up in front of her chest like the Indian princess did with her suede deal.

  Then she pitched her shirt down to Shake.

  Elroy Blunt strummed a chorus of "Flip Top Heart" and a number of people applauded. Barb's lungs, not Elroy's song.

  Barbara Jane took her drink back from Cissy and reached down and captured a fresh cigarette from Shake, a straight Winston. She drew on it and sipped her drink, and then just stood there with her arms at her sides, holding the drink by the rim of the glass, and displaying her major league lungs. And looking casual.

  If I hadn't known Barb and didn't understand the humor she was attaching to the whole thing, I would have thought she was being about half-brazen.

  I suppose I should say that Barbara Jane's lungs are not exactly gigantic but are closer to what most men might think of as being semi-perfect.

  They are certainly very large, but they are also firm and nicely shaped, and they have the good nips. Which is to say that Barb's nips are not big and dark but sort of rose-tinted and they perfectly set off her plenty large, nicely shaped lungs like a gold money clip can set off a roll of green whip-out.

  I think most everybody who ever got to see them would agree with me that if there are any lungs to be found that you would classify as ideal, they would be Barbara Jane's.

  After she had stood there smoking and drinking for a minute or two, she said:

  "This isn't all the show, folks."

  She said, "I would venture a guess that if there's anything all of us hate in this world — -all of us humans, I mean — it's to come upon a pair of really great tits like these and not have a really nifty cunt to go along with them. Right?"

  Elroy Blunt shouted something that sounded like whooo-ha.

  And there was assorted applause from all around, of course.

  Shake looked up at Barbara Jane and said, "You'll surely never find me around one without the other."

  "Precisely," said Barb. Then she added:

  "As luck would have it, it just so happens that I believe I've got one of those with me here tonight."

  She started to wriggle out of her faded Levi's.

  "It might not be the best you've ever seen," she said. "But, well. Some people say it smells better than a soft new Italian loafer. And some people say it tastes better than strawberry shortcake. That's what some people say."

  Barb then started balancing on one foot, struggling with her Levi's, and giggling, with her cigarette between her teeth.

  "What her wool actually is," said Shake to the crowd, "is semi-tough."

  "Oh, it's a worker, all right," Barb laughed, kind of loud. "What the hell do you expect from Miss Earthquake? A can of Campbell's Chunky Beef?"

  Barbara Jane balanced on one foot and got one leg out of her Levi's, and then she stood on the other foot and got the other leg out, holding her cigarette between her teeth, with her streaked butterscotch hair tossed all around, partly covering her face, flowing and dangling.

  "Get on after it," she said to herself, finishing up.

  And there she was in all of her smooth, curvy, tanned, elegant and total naked glory, seeing as how she had a habit of not wearing any underpanties, anyhow.

  "Did it!" she said.

  Everybody hollered and clapped and whistled.

  Elroy stared at Barb and then leaned quietly over to Shake Tiller and stuck out his hand. "Son," he said. "Tell the truth. It ain't better than fried chicken, is it?"

  Shake looked solemnly at Elroy, clasping his hand, and said:

  "I got to be dead honest, Roy."

  And Elroy said yeah, lay it on him.

  Shake said slowly, "For a Lesbian who gave up the only real love she ever knew — Sister Francis at Our Lady of Victory — and for a person who can't make it any more with nothing but an electric toothbrush, she's the finest I've ever had."

  Elroy whooo-haaad again, and looked back at Barbara Jane.

  She was doing some fashion model poses, and the photographer was taking so many flashbulb pictures of her, you would have thought Barbara Jane was raising the flag on Iwo fuckin' Jima or something.

  Guys in the crowd, which was getting bigger, started hollering some of the predictable things, like, "When's that old ground gonna crack open there, Miss Earthquake," and, "Make mine a double-dip banana nut," and "Show us your lava flow."

  Barbara Jane stopped posing presently and proceeded to turn Cissy Walford around and begin unfastening whatever it was that held up Cissy's jeweled apron. "Let's get with it, Miss Volcano," said Barb.

  The apron came off and Cissy kind of blush-giggled and hid her lungs with her arms. She said to Barb, "Your body is just so incredible, I feel actually silly even standing here."

  Barb then took Cissy's scarf off her head, letting Cissy's long yellow hair tumble down on her shoulders and her back where it belonged.

  Barb then unsnapped something at Cissy's hips and began to yank down her pants, or whatever was supposed to be the rest of her outfit. Cissy was wearing white lace underpanties, bikini types, and Barbara started peeling those down.

  Barb brought them down past Cissy's dark golden wool — it's about the color of a game ball, I'd say — and then started pulling them over Cissy's rawhide boots.

  Barbara Jane stopped for a minute and burst out laughing and looked over at me and Shake.

  "Jesus," she said. "I'm getting horny."

  Pretty soon, Cissy was as bare as Barbara Jane, except for the rawhide boots, which stayed on. That seemed to be O.K. with everyone. And her big dark glasses, which was O.K., too, I presume.

  So there was Miss Volcano in all of her own physical glory, which is pretty damn glorious, as I've said before.

  While everybody was whistling and clapping and hollering again, and while the photographer was flashing away and sweating like a middle guard, Elroy jumped out and got between our two women folk and put his arms around their high waists. Way around and upward, I noticed, so he could catch a feel of a delectable lung resting on each of his forearms. One of Barb's and one of Cissy's.

  Elroy had one of those homemade cigarettes in his mouth and his big old floppy-brimmed suede hat on.

  "Goddamned if this ain't the jacket on my next album," Elroy said.

  "I'm gonna write me some songs about the lungs and wool of some little old society girlies, and how it's just the nicest thing in the world, and how it's really what the niggers have been after all along," he said.

  Right about here, the scene sort of began to deteriorate and lose some impact because a lot of other girls suddenly turned up naked.

  They were Elroy's hostesses who had taken off their T-shirts and pitched them up in the air in such abundance it looked to me like a bunch of Annapolis cadets had thrown their white caps in the sky because Navy had fuckin' scored on Army.

  One of the rock bands came over and whipped it up, so a lot of people started dancing on the lawn, naked and otherwise.

  A couple of fags danced with Barbara Jane and Cissy, and kept looking off into the night, or studying their own moves, instead of looking at Barb and Cissy, where they should have been looking. Fags are fags, I guess.

  For quite a while it was a sight that can only be described as quadruple unreal, with all of that naked wool moving around in the night to some fairly good spook music.

  I felt like a couple of other fags got the wrong idea about the whole thing because they slipped out of their duds, too. And somehow I didn't get the notion that too many people at the party gave a fuck about seeing naked fags who weren't built any better than a first-down chain.

  Besides that, they looked in their faces like they were dying of some
thing awful.

  Shake and me and Elroy just sat there on the lawn and tried to watch all of it and pick out who we might want to invite to some future all-skate. Little old Linda the Stew was certainly a must, we decided, after she had danced by and stopped and had another brief chat with us.

  "Groovy party," she said to Elroy as she stood there naked with her tough little old white body and her big blue eyes. She was puffing on a joint.

  "Hey, I want to ask all of you something," she said. "What's your favorite audible?"

  "In a game or in bed?" Shake said.

  Linda the Stew said, "In bed of course. You know. Like when you're really jivin'. Heard any good audibles lately?"

  We all thought about it for a minute or so.

  Elroy said, "I think I heard, 'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,' not so long ago."

  "Me, too," I nodded, seriously.

  Linda the Stew said, "Oh, you hear that all the time. That's no good. 'I want all your come,' isn't bad. I heard that about a week ago from my roommate Kathy when we were doing a couple of pros from the LA Open."

  I suppose we all thought about that for a while. I know I did.

  Shake said, "How about, 'I know you won't believe this but I got a cramp in my leg'?"

  Linda the Stew laughed appreciatively.

  She said, "The really best ones are the really slimy ones, I think. Like, 'Oh, God, my God, put two fingers in each.' Or, 'Let me taste my own.' Those are neat."

  "You've got some good audibles," I said.

  Linda the Stew said, "Want to hear my all-time favorite?"

  We didn't have to take a vote on it.

  Linda the Stew said, "My all-time favorite is my own, and I just sort of said it not too long ago right after I'd caught a really neat load. I looked up at this guy and I said, 'I wonder who found out first that getting a mouth full of this was really fun?' "

  Elroy got up right after that and went off with Linda the Stew toward the house, and Shake and me made it a definite point to memorize that five four two, eight six three one, for a future reference.

  And we discussed a few more audibles.

  We decided that some of the funnier ones were:

  "Is Martha Nell Burch a real person or what?"

  And —

  "Where did you say you skied?"

  And —

  "Well, what'll we do after I do that?"

  I think it was about right then, while Shake and me were still sitting there on the lawn, and Barbara Jane and Cissy were still up dancing naked with the fags, that we heard this familiar noise which cut right through the spook music.

  It was T.J. Lambert who had slipped up on our blind side and cut one that would have even made Donna Lou stagger, even though she's used to it. He cut one that surely must have been the color of a Hawaiian sunset.

  And I've got to say that even though the young Scotch and the anti-God cigarettes had me on third-and-long, I was utterly shocked — shocked all to shit — at who T.J. had with him.

  T.J. had with him none other than Dreamer Tatum and Boyce Cayce of the dog-ass Jets.

  "Lookie here at a couple of tootie fruities I done found me," said T.J. pointing at Dreamer and Boyce.

  "I found 'em over at Tommy's puttin' some cheeseburgers in their bellies after they been to a movie," T.J. said. "I told 'em I thought I knew where they could lick theyselves some wool, so here we are. By God, there's some here, too, ain't they?"

  T.J. had already put away about forty-five beers, I estimated.

  Me and Shake stood up and shook hands with Dreamer and Boyce and exchanged hidys.

  Dreamer was wearing a leather and velvet suit and high-heeled, candy-striped shoes, and a ruffled shirt with a stand-up collar on it that came halfway up the back of his head.

  Dreamer has a big old thick head of spook hair, a mustache, a thin beard that goes all the way around his face. And he was wearing dark glasses.

  Dreamer was also wearing a joint in his hand, and he was semi-stoned.

  "I like your style, Billy," said Dreamer, soft and cool. "This here's some kind of mess, baby."

  Then he looked around the yard and said to himself, "Tell this nigger somethin' about it."

  I didn't think Boyce Cayce was drunk or stoned either one. In fact, he was drinking a Coke in a bottle, and he looked sort of unimpressed with the party as he stood there in his knit shirt and his pants which had cuffs on them. Well, that's what I thought at first, until I realized that Boyce Cayce's bottle of Coke also had a good deal of Jack Daniels in it.

  Boyce Cayce was just so drunk he couldn't say much. He's from Georgia, anyhow.

  There wasn't much we could chat about, except the fact that we sure hoped Commissioner Cameron wasn't at the party somewhere to see us all together.

  Commissioner Cameron doesn't care so much about what we do as long as nobody can see it.

  It's sort of against the rules for studs from opposing teams to get together the evening before a ball game. The theory behind the rule is that studs might get together and decide what the score of the game ought to be. And then somebody will call up a fellow like Uncle Kenneth, let's say, and bet four or five large on it, and then the game will happen to turn out like the studs talked about it beforehand.

  At least Commissioner Cameron says this is what people in public will think if they see some studs together in a public place before a game.

  But what people think is not so accurate. I want to go on record as saying that I have never known of a fixed game, although I have heard rumors.

  For instance Boyce Cayce is supposed to have set a record of going half a season once without completing a screen pass, but I think that's when he had a sore shoulder. With the Rams.

  And I can remember hearing about all the heat Boyce received when he was with the Oilers that time they made the playoffs and got beat in sudden death by the Chiefs.

  Boyce got criticized for electing to kick rather than receive after he won the coin flip. It's who scores first in sudden death, of course. And then he got even more blame for missing three straight open receivers when it would have moved the Oilers into field goal range.

  And even though a sports writer on the sideline claimed he overheard Boyce say something incriminating after the loss, that's just the writer's word against Boyce's, as far as I'm concerned. The writer claimed he heard Boyce say, "Hey, ho, who won the dough, eh, gang?"

  You can just take all this for whatever you think gossip is worth. Personally, I've never known a ball player to lay down unless he was tired. I look at it this way, anyhow. If eight out of every ten NFL games are honest, that's a hell of a lot better percentage than you can get in that pro fucking basketball.

  Who I worry about, mainly, in pro football are the zebras. The officials. They do a good job, by and large, but they could call holding on any play, and occasionally they sure choose some funny times. Once last season, for example, we had defensive holding strapped on us after Dallas missed a field goal. How can you defensive hold on a field goal?

  They called it on T.J. Lambert and he turned so hot he almost got himself banned from the sport for life. He picked up the official who threw the flag, dangled him by his ankles, and said, "I'm gonna shake this fuckin' zebra til the fix money comes out his wop neck."

  Well, anyhow. There we all were at Elroy's party, sort of embarrassed to be in each other's company.

  Barbara Jane and Cissy noticed we had some strange company, so they quit dancing and came over and put their clothes on quickly and sat down on the grass.

  Barb recognized Dreamer and Boyce immediately and straightened up somewhat. It was a little awkward, however, when I introduced them to Cissy Walford and she said, "Aren't you the dog-asses?"

  Dreamer couldn't talk much for gazing around at several of Elroy's hostesses who were still dancing naked. Neither could Boyce Cayce.

  T.J. cut one again that was absolute thunder, and in fact, it put him to sleep, sprawled out on the lawn, it was such a good one.

&nb
sp; Boyce Cayce said, "He don't do that when he's rushin' the passer, does he?"

  Shake and Dreamer, after a while, did a little playful sparring with each other about the game.

  "You gonna play the wide field, Dreamer?" Shake asked him. "Even when old Eighty-eight's into the side line?"

  Dreamer smiled and said, "I think I'll just be right around the football, baby. Wherever that is."

  Shake said, "I'm feelin' fast, Dreamer. Feelin' fast."

  And Dreamer said, "Runnin' fast ain't catchin' nothin', is it, baby?"

  Shake said, "Catching a ball is where I'm at, though."

  Dreamer said, "Catchin' a ball is who catches it first. Ain't that right now, baby?"

  They laughed together, sort of. And Barbara Jane changed the conversation.

  She said, "Dreamer, why don't you scoop up one of these little dandies around here and take her out to Disneyland and show her some of the rides?"

  I said there was one called Linda he might be interested in. I said she was probably busy right now, but she seemed like the type who never particularly got tired, and she surely did think highly of athletes.

  Boyce Cayce wiped his mouth off and said:

  "I see one over there playin' a zone but I think I can hit her in the seams."

  I frankly don't want to say much about what happened next.

  All I will reveal is that Elroy and Linda came back outdoors and Elroy brought one of his footballs he had stuffed with dope. At first, we all just pitched it back and forth, sitting there on the lawn.

  Then it was that crazy Elroy who got the brilliant idea that we ought to divide up sides and play a game of two-below touch.

  Since T.J. Lambert was asleep from his All-Pro fart, Elroy said the sides could be perfectly even. Me and Shake on one team, he said, and Dreamer and Boyce on the other. Giants against the Jets. Barbara Jane and Cissy on our side, and Linda the Stew along with some little old nameless debutante on the other. Two fags on our side. Two fags on their side. Elroy on our side, since he was a Giant fan. And Nancy the Nurse on their side.

  Nancy the Nurse had reappeared from somewhere and she agreed to take part in the game if we would promise to wake up T.J. later so he could go up to that marble bathtub with her.