“An adult with a fastidious interest in those considerably younger than him or herself can not be completely sincere or even rational,” he writes onp. 424, Chapter 22, “The Allure of Children.” “Such a preoccupation often hides something very dark.”
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
I’d been in thick with the Bluebloods three, maybe four weeks, when Jade invaded, Sherman-style, my nonexistent sex life.
Not that I took her assault too seriously. When it came down to the nitty-gritty, I knew I’d probably flee without warning, like Hannibal’s elephants during the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C. (I was twelve when Dad wordlessly presented me with various tomes to read and reflect upon, including C. Allen’s Shame Culture and the Shadow World [1993], Somewhere Between Puritans and Braziclass="underline" How to Have a Healthy Sexuality [Mier, 1990], also Paul D. Russell’s terrifying What You Don’t Know About White Slavery [1996].)
“You’ve never gotten laid, have you, Retch?” Jade accused one night, deliberately ashing her cigarette in the cracked blue vahze next to her like some movie psychiatrist with switchblade fingernails, her eyes narrowed, as if hoping I’d confess to violent crime.
The question hung in the air like a national flag with no wind. It was obvious the Bluebloods, including Nigel and Lu, approached sex as if it were cute little towns they had to whizz through in order to make good time on their way to Somewhere (and I wasn’t so sure they knew their final destination). Immediately, Andreo Verduga flashed into my head (shirtless, trimming shrubs) and I wondered if I could speedily make up a steamy experience involving the bed of his pickup truck (propped up against mulch, rolling onto tulip bulbs, hair snagging the lawnmower) but prudently decided against it. “Virgins advertise their stunning lack of insight and expertise with the subtlety and panache of Bible salesmen,” wrote British comic Brinkly Starnes in A Harlequin Romance (1989).
Jade nodded knowingly at my silence. “We’ll have to do something about it then,” she said, sighing.
After this painful revelation, on Friday nights, after I got clearance from Dad to spend the night at her house (“And this Jade individual — she’s one of your Joycean aficionados?”), Jade, Leulah and I, decked out in Jefferson’s Studio 54 prom getup, drove an hour to a roadside bar in Redville, just over the South Carolina border.
It was called the Blind Horse Saloon (or lin ors loon, as the sign whispered in dying pink neon), a grouchy place Jade claimed the five of them had been frequenting for “years,” which, from the outside looked like a burnt loaf of pound cake (rectangular, black, no windows) stranded in an expanse of stale-cookie pavement. Armed with farcically fake IDs (I was brown-eyed Roxanne Kaye Loomis, twenty-two, five-feet-seven, a Virgo organ donor; I attended Clemson with a major in Chemical Engineering; “Always say you’re seriously into engineering,” Jade instructed. “People don’t know what it is and they won’t ask because it sounds mind-numbing.”), we edged past the bouncer, a large black man who stared at us as if we were cast members of Disney on Ice who’d forgotten to remove our costumes. Inside, the place was stuffed with country music and middle-aged men in plaid shirts clutching their beers like handrails. Most of them stared openmouthed at four televisions suspended from the ceiling broadcasting some baseball game or local news. Women, standing in tight circles, fiddled with their hair as they talked, as if putting finishing touches on a sagging flower arrangement. They always glared at us, particularly Jade (see “Snarling Coon Dogs,” Appalachian Living, Hester, 1974, p. 32).
“Now we find Blue’s lucky man,” Jade announced, her eyes creeping all over the room, past the linebacker jukebox, the bartender pouring shots with a strange brawny energy, as if he were a GI who’d just arrived in Saigon, and the wooden benches along the far wall where girls waited with foreheads so hot and oily you could fry eggs on them.
“I don’t see any melted Milk Duds,” I said.
“Maybe you should hold out for true love,” Leulah said. “Or Milton.”
It was a running joke between Jade and Lu that I “had it bad for Black,” that I desperately wanted to be “Black and Blue,” make “the beast with two Blacks,” and so on — allegations I refused to admit to (even though they were true).
“Haven’t you heard the expression ‘Don’t shit where you eat?’” Jade said. “God, you people have no faith. There. The cute one at the end of the bar talking to that malaria mosquito. He’s wearing tortoiseshell glasses. Know what tortoiseshell glasses mean?”
“No,” I said.
“Stop pulling down your dress, it makes you look five. It means he’s intellectual. You can never be too far in the backwoods if someone at the bar’s wearing tortoiseshell glasses. He’s perfect for you. I’m parched.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I’ll go,” said Leulah. “What do you want?”
“We didn’t drive all the way to this shantytown to purchase our own beverages,” said Jade. “Blue? My cigarettes please.”
I took them out of my purse and handed them to her.
Jade’s pack of Marlboro Lights was the instrument (boleadoras) she used to ambush unsuspecting men (cimarron). (Jade’s best subject — the only one at which she excelled — was Spanish.) She began by roaming the bar (estancias), singling out an attractive, beefy guy standing a little apart from everyone else (vaca perdida, or lost cow). She approached him slowly and with no sudden jerks of the head or hands, tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
“Got a light, hombre?”
There were two inevitable scenarios this opening evoked:
1. He eagerly obliged.
2. If he didn’t have a light, he started a frantic quest to find one.
“Steve, got a light? Arnie, you? Henshaw? A light. Matches okay too. McMundy, you? Cig — know if Marcie has one? Go ask — right. Does Jeff? No? I’ll go ask the bartender.”
Unfortunately, if the outcome was #2, by the time the cimarron returned with fire, Jade was already on the lookout for more lost cattle. He’d stand motionlessly at her back for a minute, sometimes up to five or ten minutes, not doing anything but chewing his lower lip and staring straight ahead, occasionally mooing a dreary “Excuse me?” at her back or shoulder.
Eventually, she acknowledged him.
“Hmm? Oh, gracias, chiquito.”
If she was feeling at home on the range, she tossed him two questions:
1. Where do you see yourself in, say, twenty years, cavron?
2. What’s your favorite position?
Most of the time he was unable to answer either off the top of his head, but even if he answered #2 without hesitation, if he said, “Assistant Manager of Sales and Marketing at Axel Corp, where I work and I’m months away from a promotion,” Jade had no choice but to butcher him and cook him immediately over an open fire (the asado).