Rosenjack *** Chapters 9

Chapters 9 - 16 *** Rose Grows

...smile relieves a heart that grieves, remember what I said, I'm not waiting on a lady, I'm just waiting on a friend ... Waiting On A Friend (The Rolling Stones)

Summer ended, and so I lost my time with Rose during the weekdays while she was in class. For Rose, school was school. Nothing special, just boring classes and crappy lunches. She was naturally good at English and hated math, same as me. I tried to tutor her on math the best I could, and we struggled through the homework together. Many nights Marjorie had to work late, but Rose didn't mind, because it gave her the opportunity to tap my brain. We sat there together on the couch, sometimes side by side, our legs almost touching as I breathed in the heady atmosphere of her presence, sometimes curled up on opposite ends of the couch with our feet together, engaging in the occasional foot fight and trying to tickle each other with our toes. In school she had made a few acquaintances, girls with names like Brittany and Callista and Jalisha, but they were all a year or two older than Rose, and she confided to me that she couldn't really consider any of them to be friends, especially since she knew that next year, they'd all make the move up to junior high, leaving Rose to flounder by herself for a year. Still, they provided fodder for her stories and quips. I've wondered countless times since then, if she hadn't had me as her first close friend, whether it would have turned out differently, whether she would have made better friends with kids at school.

Rose came bouncing in one brisk September evening with even more sparkle than usual, to tell me that her mom had just bought a desktop computer and signed up with the complex's Internet provider. It was an older computer that Marjorie had found at Goodwill, cheap but servicable. Rose was so happy at the thought of what that represented, to her anyway; a commitment by her mom to stay in one place, not move out in another couple of months. She said she'd love to have me come over sometime to surf the web with her, and I made a noncommittal noise. I was somehow uneasy with the thought of visiting her in her apartment, and it just felt right to keep my distance, from that place anyway. I was afraid of the dynamics of the situation, of being in close quarters with both Rose and her mom. Rose kept after me, until I finally relented and came over one October night, maybe a couple of weeks before Hallowe'en. Marjorie greeted me at the door, putting a glass of wine in my hand and gripping my elbow, gesturing to the corner of the living room where Rose was perched at the card table where the computer had been set up. I pulled up a chair to sit beside her, watching as she showed me a couple of cutesy little girly games (her words), Hallowe'en screensavers, dancing animals, and a LOT of video on Youtube. Every once in a while, she'd hit a site that was blocked. Marjorie had apparently been given some free software as a bonus for signing up, and not knowing what any of it was for, just installed all of it. One of those items was a site blocker, protection that was supposed to allow parents let their children have free reign on the web without having to worry about inappropriate content. The first few times we hit that block, Rose just shrugged it off and went on. But before the night was over, she was getting more and more annoyed with the censorship. At one point, she looked around to make sure Marjorie was out of earshot, then pulled me close to whisper urgently, her lips almost brushing the surface of my ear, "Do you think you can figure out how to get this block thing turned off?" I shared her sideways glance at Marjorie, then slowly shook my head. 'I don't know', I mouthed, 'but I'll see what I can do.' Mentally, I took note of a few of the blocked site names (prettyposy.com, pots-n-shox.com, stuffermaker.com, letsdoanotherone.com, 3 or 4 others) making a silent promise to somehow research their content before giving in to such a request. I scribbled down and stashed the name of the site blocking product, figuring I could use a machine at the library to try to do the research, logging onto their network using the serial number on my library card to gain access. Surprise. Even though the library didn't use that site blocker, they used some different product that did the same thing, so I couldn't check any of the sites Rose had been blocked from; except one, slideitin.com. I was mildly surprised to see that the library's blocker allowed through a site that had been blocked on Rose's machine, and this was how I first realized what big differences there can be in software products. The one other thing I was interested in, wasn't blocked; it was the online owner's manual for the site blocker on Rose's computer. The vendors had been nice enough to include profuse illustrations showing exactly how to manipulate their product, including selectively allowing certain sites through at will. The only stitch in the deal was that the whole process was guarded by a password; but knowing something about Marjorie and her state of mind most of the time, I knew it was a pretty safe bet she'd never changed the password from the default that was staring at me from the pages of the onscreen user's manual. Just for giggles, I tried to access the online manual for the product that was in use on the library computer. Surprise again; the site was blocked. When I logged off, the site blocker included a little slap in the face for good measure; a popup window thanked me, addressing me by name (Brent) and library card serial number, and displayed how many restricted websites I'd tried to visit (27) in a 15.3 minute session. Actually made me shiver a little, to think how much information had been collected on me just then.

...put your tiny hand in mine, I will be your preacher, teacher... ... Father Figure (George Michael)

Rose kept me young. She was always cracking jokes and she really knew how to make me laugh until my sides hurt. She listened to a lot of music I'd never heard before. I bought her a Y-connector for her MP3 player so we could both listen to her tunes, artists with names like Pink, Evanescence, Staind, Creed, Hoobastank, and I played my cassettes and CDs for her, exposing her to classics like the Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin, Springsteen and so on. Even though she had a Pink Floyd shirt, she'd never heard their music before, and turning her onto "Dark Side of the Moon" was especially gratifying. Because it was all new to her, it became like new to me also. I was hearing it through her ears, and it was sweet to rediscover newness in music I had listened to for so long. Rose dropped by my room every day, often just popping in unannounced, flopping down on the floor and hooking her legs up over my cot, and launching into an account of her day at school or whatever else came into her head. In my turn, I discovered I always had a little bit more of my life to share, my insights and disappointments, whatever seemed germane to the conversation, and she drank it all in, never so much as batting an eye. She was my precious. She was my ray of sunshine. She was My Rose.

From time to time, Rose asked if I had ever found a way around the website blocker. This was the first and only deliberate lie I spoke to her; I told her no, I hadn't solved it yet, and that I would keep trying. 'Only a little longer,' I told myself, 'just hold her off until she's 13, you can do that, can't you old man, help her hold onto her innocence for as long as you can?'

Life went on. Rose was growing up before my eyes, and it was the day before her 11th birthday when I first realized what a struggle it was becoming, not to think about her "like that". I'd been having trouble coming up with a birthday gift for her, and when I caught myself looking seriously at bikinis, I got scared, really scared, to realize how much pleasure it gave me to picture Rose in one. Pervert, I bitterly denounced myself, filthy monster. Reality kicked in, I took a step back and forced myself to remember she was still just a little girl; I bought her a huge teddy bear instead. As it turned out, Marjorie gave her a bikini anyway, a flimsy white thing with red roses on the crotch and bra, with a cut identical to Marjorie's own flag bikini (a blue bra with a white star in the center of each cup and tied together with spaghetti strings, and a red and white vertically striped panty that rode up so high on the hip that top to bottom, you could clearly see some part of her entire body). Ye gods.

I could see more clearly all the time the woman Rose was becoming. The growth of her breasts was gradual; I'd sometimes look back at the Rose in my memory and realize the Rose in front of me was subtly bigger. Her butt was swelling magnificently as her hips expanded. 'Nuff said. I was still too nervous to approach any of the women I saw around the complex, and they all seemed to be married or dating anyway. Marjorie and I talked a few times, but nothing ever came of it. Several times when she came down to watch Rose swim, or occasionally get in the pool herself, she�d sit and chat with me, drink in hand. I caught on quickly and started keeping a bottle of Bacardi close by, just in case. I was getting distinct impressions that she was flirting with me. After these chats, I'd realized I'd probably been flirting back. It was probably only the second or third time we'd chatted before she started punctuating her remarks with a hand on my arm or shoulder, lingering just a little bit longer each time. It took me a little longer, although I did finally get the nerve to start touching her the same way. I realized as I leaned over to touch her for the first time that I could see through the open spaces in her clothes, the gaps where her shirt parted, to see her chest, her ample round breasts, and even inside her bra, I could just pick out the darker red of her areola resting against the white of the cup. Yeah, I was ashamed of myself for looking, but that didn't stop me. It got to where I was finally comfortable enough around her that I thought I could ask her out, but the only vehicle I had access to was the complex's rickety old pickup, and I would have felt an utter fool borrowing her car to take her out; so we just slid by each other like two ships that pass from a safe distance.

I still hadn't given up my habit of using stroke books; I always kept one magazine around at any given time, but the sense of shame was as strong as ever, and I knew that I had to take even more care to keep it secret. Simply stashing it in my underwear drawer wasn't safe enough anymore, so I made a false bottom for that drawer from a scrap piece of plywood. Honestly, it was pretty effective; the plywood was a close enough match to the inside of the drawer that even I wouldn't have suspected anything if I hadn't known. This was a secret that I absolutely HAD to keep hidden; there was no way I wanted Rose to know I looked at porn, and I sure as hell didn't want anybody who knew about our friendship to know, either.

My relationship with Rose and my porn habit were the two ways I kept my loneliness at bay, and I tried to keep those two sides of my life carefully segregated. Any time I found myself straying, accidentally thinking about Rose the wrong way, I managed to pull myself back on course, and was proud of my effort at correcting the slow drift. Thankfully, the sight of Marjorie in a bikini was a blessedly welcome distraction to keep my thoughts away from Rose.

In December, I was caught completely off-guard when Rose told me she'd gotten her first period. She was very shy about it, but also bursting to tell me; "You'll never ever ever guess what I got today as a late birthday present..." spoken with her head down to the floor but her eyes rolled up to see me. I was pouring a cup of coffee at the time. When I professed ignorance, she told me, almost too quietly to hear,"...my period," and the pot slipped in my hand and I scalded myself, although I kept Rose from seeing it. She told me she'd discussed it with Marjorie, who had sat down with her for a belated discussion of the facts of life that proved frustrating and unsatisfying for Rose. She could tell her mother was not very engaged in the conversation, and she still had more questions than answers. All she'd really gotten from the talk was how important it was to keep herself clean, and how to use tampons and pads. My hands were actively shaking by this point, and it was as I tried to cover my nerves by taking a drink of coffee, that I learned Marjorie had demonstrated, and then watched as Rose tried it herself to make sure she got it right, how to insert a tampon. Yeah, I know. No man in his right mind could have avoided feeling the way I did on hearing that, none of them would have been able to get that image out of his head either. I was gratified that Rose chose to ask me to help her fill in the gaps, but I was achingly nervous as to how to word it. We talked about getting pregnant, and as delicately as I could, I described the mechanics by which sperm is introduced to egg, and the fact that there are only a few days each month when that could happen, before the egg gets washed away by blood. I left out the part about the man's penis getting stiff and the woman's vagina getting wet. I was too scared to discuss the concept of sexual desire, although I did use the word 'cum' and then immediately blanched inwardly at the explicitly sexual images it conjured for me. It didn't seem to occur to Rose to wonder how a limp penis could be inserted into a vagina, but then again, I don't think she knew to think in terms of limp or stiff. I don't know, maybe I'm fooling myself. But I do feel sure that she wouldn't have thought to get that information from the Internet; to her, the primary purpose of the web was entertainment. And her period was such an intensely personal and specific experience for her that I don't think it occurred to her she could find that information in such a general place as the web. At any rate, I thought I had dodged a bullet insofar as that Rose didn't ask me for more information on the male anatomy. I don't know how I would have answered her if she had; or at least, I didn't know at the time.

Love. God-damned love. I knew, I KNEW, God damn it, I KNEW, yet somehow prevented myself from knowing that I knew, that I was in full-fledged, card-carrying, romantic, spiritual, ecstatic, physical, mental, sexual, rapturous Love with her. What piecework is the possesor of one X and one Y, how fractured in reason, how separated in faculties, in form and moving how depressingly deluded, in action how like an idiot, in apprehension how like a moron.

How long had I been skirting the realization? How many mornings had I woken, remembering that I had dreamed of her the night before, yet been writing off my erections as normal morning occurrences that had nothing to do with her? But a feeling like this, a life-defining emotion like this, could only be hidden, even from myself, for so long, It was only a matter of time, really, before I was forced to confront it, to realize it existed. It only needed a catalyst, I suppose.

...once the words are spoken, something may be broken... ... What Can You Lose (by Stephen Sondheim)

The common room of the clubhouse had a console TV that had seen better years. The manager kept putting off replacing it, although he did finally spring for a DVD player to supplement the VHS job. The cabinet in the corner was stuffed with VHS tapes; the complex had started with a modest library, and with every tenant who moved out and left tapes behind, the collection grew. Many was the afternoon or evening when Rose and I would pull up the overstuffed couch and watch movies from that collection, or DVDs that I had checked out from the library, or rented (or traded for tapes that we had duplicates of), or that she'd borrowed from schoolmates. We both liked our popcorn plain and our soda cold and stolen. We went through phases where we'd zero in on a particular category; '70's comedies, Jamie Lee Curtis films, Hammer horror, Tim Burton movies, and so on. She was royally bemused by my confession that there were two movie scenes that made me cry every time; the very end of "The Wizard of Oz" and the airport scene in "Casablanca". Rose wanted to put it to the test, and I obliged her, both by watching the films and by shedding a few tears, as I knew I would, when the aforementioned scenes came on.

So it hit me as a fiercely unnerving epiphany one Saturday night in January when we watched "Dick Tracy" (as a segue from a Warren Beatty retrospective to films that had been made from comics); midway through the picture, there's this scene where Mandy Patinkin is singing a duet with Madonna, "What Can You Lose?" Now, I challenge you to come up with a more perfect anthem for unrequited love than that song. Anyway, Rose and I were sitting fairly close together like we always did, our legs almost but not quite touching, her hand carelessly draped in the space between our legs, actually touching my leg through my sweats, and as the lyrics to this song played out, I felt like I'd been slugged in the face with a shovel. The song was reaching into my chest and ripping out the ribcage. There it was, right in front of me, breathing in my face, my dilemma all wrapped up in a perfect package, telling me that I loved her. Not only that I loved her, but also that I needed to tell her of my love, and in the same breath forbidding me to do it, partly because I might scare her or confuse her into retreating, but mostly because she was just a baby and I was well into middle age, and it was WRONG, just dead WRONG. In those few seconds, the weight of the years, the agony and emptiness and sheer need, overwhelmed me, because the answer to it all was sitting right beside me, yet we might as well have been on different planets. Before I knew what was happening, I was bawling like a baby and struggling mightily to prevent Rose from seeing my tears. Of course, that failed utterly. Rose was startled to see me weeping so profusely, and she wanted to stop the film. I told her no, I was fine, I just wanted to finish watching, but she kept a close eye on me for the rest of the night. When we parted, Rose gave me the first hug she'd ever trusted herself to give; shy and fiercely protective at the same time, she squeezed me tight around the middle and laid her head on my chest, telling me that she could hear my heart beating, and what a wonderful sound it was. Up close like that, I was able to take her in as a whole; filling up my arms, my eyes, my nose. The aroma, the simple sheer redolence of her skin, a smell uniquely human and uniquely her. Her breasts, little mounds of firm flesh, smashed up against me, boring into me, drilling through me, demanding recognition, and I was sure I could feel the firmness of her nipples against my stomach as she gripped me. As I looked down, she turned her face up to gaze earnestly into mine, and as we stood there, swaying imperceptibly in a nonexistent breeze, her lips were close, so close, too close, and I really have no idea how I kept myself from smothering her mouth with kisses right there and then. If I learned every language on earth, I still wouldn't be able to describe my feelings at that moment. Sweet, sweet, unbearably sweet, Hellishly sweet torture, to go so far and no further. But at least for now, I had part of her. There were more hugs to come; just a few, here and there; enough to look forward to with hungry anticipation. But it was that night, when we watched "Dick Tracy", that I finally admitted to myself just how deeply in I'd gotten. I no longer had the crutch of self-imposed ignorance. Bare before the all-seeing eye of desire and regret, pinned in place like a creature being vivisected by it's own need to give and receive love, and it HURT, worse than any pain I'd ever felt before, physical or otherwise.

...This is the end, my only friend, the end... I'll never look into your eyes again... can you picture what will be, so limitless and free, desperately in need of some stranger's hand... The End (James Douglas Morrison)

There came a sullen, gray day in February when the world seemed to be standing still; the sky was a leaden blanket of ice clouds that shut out any hint of light or warmth, indifferently dropping ice pellets on both the just and the unjust, on the lonely and unloved. It was on this day that Rose learned her father was dead. At around 5:30 in the afternoon I started to worry about her, since I usually saw her before that time of day. She didn't show up at the clubhouse until later, almost 8 o'clock in the evening, and when she did show up, I learned immediately what had happened. Her eyes were streaming before she even got the words out, and she threw herself into my arms and hugged me tight to her with a fierceness that told me she was afraid of losing me too, as she choked out the details. Her mother had picked her up after school; an unusual occurrence in itself, that tipped Rose right away to the fact that something was wrong. (Marjorie's shift had her working until 5:30 or 6 most evenings, so Monday through Thursday Rose walked the mile and a half home; I made sure that my once-a-week errands using the complex's pickup coincided with school letting out on Friday afternoon, so I could give Rose a ride home.) This afternoon, though, Marjorie had been waiting for her. As they sat there, parked across the street from the school, she informed Rose that her father had been killed in an accident, a stupid hit and run as he was trying to cross a street. Marjorie had only found out that day, even though the accident had happened a couple of months before. I knew Marjorie must have been deeply affected by the news, maybe even devastated. Although she seemed to be getting by just fine without Stan in her life, in the little bit I'd heard her talk about him, I'd caught glimpses of a much deeper story I knew I'd get to the bottom of someday. For now, though, I was getting a picture of mother and daughter sitting there in the car, Marjorie holding Rose tenderly and Rose in mortal agony.

Rose was doubly inconsolable in that she had not only lost her father, but hadn't even found out in time to be able to go to his funeral or say goodbye. Not that she would have been able to travel to where the funeral was anyway, but the thought of not even having the chance, of having the illusion of choice snatched from her, made it so much worse. Between great heaving convulsions and trembling spasms, she said it was like having all the air sucked out of the room before she'd even had a chance to take a deep breath. She sobbed and shuddered for the rest of the evening, and her grief was so great that it became my grief too, my pain, and I joined her in crying and aching. We just sat there on the floor of my room, with her in my lap like a frightened, lonely child, her soft girl arms around me, choking the breath from me, a heavenly pressure. We held each other while I stroked her hair and tried to soothe her the best I could, hoping the feeling of being held close eased her as much as it satisfied me. I was heartbroken for her, and furious with fate for having delivered such a careless backhand to such a precious one, but the majority of my emotion was reserved for a nauseous shame at the erection that had erupted in my lap, and the twists and writhings I had to carefully manage, so as to prevent Rose from learning firsthand of my wretched desire. If she felt my hardness as she straddled me, she gave no indication of it, just kept squeezing me tight, as if she meant to absorb me into her, to have our chests melt together so that our hearts could touch. "Oh God, oh G-God," she wailed, "don't you l-l-leave me t-too, Jack," she sobbed, "don't you d-d-dare ever leave me, promise me you won't go, Jack, p-promise! S-s-swear it, Jack, swear you'll never go away!" And I had to swear, even though I knew we had no control over the gutwrenchings Fate likes to deliver. I certainly had no plans to go, but then neither had Stan... The one thing I had over him, I reflected, was that I had Rose. That was more than enough inducement for me to fight for every last second here.

...sometimes love can be mistaken for a crime... Father Figure (George Michael)

Rose had been eagerly anticipating my Mayday birthday, and on that day, she presented me with a little bottle of Old Spice. Something in what she said when she gave it to me made me think she chose it because she'd remembered Stan having worn it. I was just grateful for the thought. With the cologne, she also presented me with a chocolate cake she'd baked herself, white frosting with a huge blue 39 written in icing. We spent the rest of the night eating cake and playing Gin Rummy. I remember it so vividly; I can close my eyes at any moment and replay the whole thing in perfect detail... we were sitting on the floor of the common area, on either side of the coffee table, the subdued lighting from the corner lamps softening the entire room, the smell of Old Spice that I had applied drifing through the evening, the radio gently flooding the room with jazz from the university station. Jokingly, I thanked Rose for putting the big blue 39 on the cake, for rubbing my face in it, and in retaliation she reached over and pushed the piece of cake in my hand into my face, rubbing frosting on my cheek. She reached up to wipe the gob of frosting from my face with her thumb and then stuck that thumb in her mouth to slowly slurp the white goo off, grinning like an imp, a demon, as she did so, and giving me a minor heart attack in the process.

That was the night I finally let myself go over the edge; after she had gone home and I was laying there in my room, alone in the dark, slowly stroking, I deliberately chose to invite Rose into my private fantasies. Please don't mistake this action. There was nothing raunchy or unredeemably sexual in those thoughts, although not from lack of trying on the part of my libido. Every time the little head tried to make me picture a penetration, the big head forced it back to something suitably R-rated. A visualization of her jumping into the pool only to lose her bikini in the water and have to exit the pool naked, while I waited with a towel to dry her off. A scene of her in my room, standing over my cot, posing innocently in the nude and asking which feature I thought was her best. That night was the first time I consciously chose to visualize her, to acknowledge to myself that the feelings I had were not only romantic, but sensual, sexual, physical. I tried to avoid thinking about her any more after that night, but it was too late. I had opened the bottle, and the genie wouldn't go back in. Rose came to occupy the center of my fantasies, although we never progressed in my head even as far as heavy petting, only a tender kiss here and there. Lancelot complex even in my flippin' private fantasies, for crying out loud, lust for the lady but respect her, never touch her, until she makes a move, until she comes to you begging for it...

I knew the word for what I was, but I couldn't make it stick, couldn't make myself believe that I had become that. Pedophile. Child-lover. Pervert. Filth. It couldn't be true, but it had to be. I was attracted to Rose, sexually attracted. I wanted to see her naked, wanted to touch her nakedness, hold her close in the dark. Did it matter that there was more to it? That it was the whole person I wanted, her mind and her spirit, her humor, her pain, her gentle trust, her heart, and not just her body? But I wanted her body as well, and I just couldn't get past that. Why did I want so badly to feel her skin against mine, her lips on mine, her breath in my ear? Why did I want to just have her near me, laying with me, holding her close and stroking her hair, her limbs, her tummy, her hips, her thighs, the creamy flesh between her legs... God! God! Stop it, stop tormenting me, stop pushing me, stop the burning, for God's sake, PLEASE!

Life's like a road that you travel on, one day here and the next day gone... Life is a Highway (Tom Cochrane)

It wasn't too long after, that I bought Rose a bike. It was a display model at Toy Barn, a little beat up from the constant parade of kids who had tried it out, but they let me have it for 25 bucks. Rose didn't mind the wear and tear, she was thrilled just to have it. She had lost her last bike (that she was too big for anyway) two or three moves ago, and the restoration of wheels meant we could ride places together. I instructed her to lie to her mother and tell her I had found the bike abandoned in a storage shed; I was worried Marjorie might object to my having bought it for Rose without the convenient excuse of a birthday or holiday as justification. It worked out beautifully. We rode together everywhere that spring, but our favorite places to go were Dannan Park (where we rode the swings and watched little kids playing in the sandbox), the overlook on Griffin Ridge that commanded a view of the tree-choked valley floor next to the river, and the Goodwill shop on Maynard Avenue where we spent happy hours rooting around for treasure in other people's castoffs. Idyllic.

Believe it or not, I had never ridden "look Ma no hands" before. With Rose's encouragement, I gradually came to an understanding of gravity and balance that allowed me to match her in riding with my hands at my sides, steering with careful shifts of my weight. We had contests to see who could go the longest without grabbing the handlebars, and I actually won three or four times (although I think Rose let me win half of those because she felt sorry for me). Whenever we raced to the Petro4Less in the Sangreal Plaza, she always won, but when the race was to the Audi dealership at the top of Parkway Lane, I always won; I think it was because I was able to put more power into that last steep uphill part after we got through the intersection. Not that it ever really mattered, I don't think either of us really gave a damn who won, the actual pleasure was in just being together.

We used the truck a handful of times. The first few outings were nothing but fun. I have particularly fond memories of an overcast Saturday afternoon in May when we went to the flea market over in Peace Landing, the one that sets up every weekend in the parking garage of the abandoned Holiday Inn. We oohed and ahhed over a vast array of junk and gewgaws, and traded little idiocies that us both breathless with laughter. On the ride home, after stopping at the Dairy Suite for a couple of butterscotch malts, she dozed off in the cab, slumped against my side, and for 20 heavenly miles or so, with my arm draped over the back of the seat, I had the blessing of feeling her warmth as she nestled against my shoulder, her soft snoring providing a delicious counterpoint to the bluegrass and Celtic ballads provided by the university's radio station. Then there was the Sunday that I took her to the Rerun Cinema, that little space in the Goldenview Mall that had housed several small businesses over the years, until somebody converted it into a kind of art theater whose bill of fare was confined to "the classics". That was where we saw a retrospective of Fleischer Inkwell cartoons; Koko and Bimbo and Betty Boop. Needless to say, she spent the better part of the next month talking like Betty Boop every time she saw me, cooing "Boop a doop a doop, ooh!", twisting her hair and tossing her head back with a wicked roll of her eyes. The nutcase.

The last time we used the truck that summer, an oppressively muggy night near the middle of August, was when we went to the drive-in just off of County 616. That outing was a long night's journey into Hell. I had thrown a bunch of blankets in the bed of the pickup, and when we got there I backed into our stall, then we sat down together in the bed with our backs against a couch cushion I had propped against the cab, to watch all three Matrix films shown as a triple-feature; a jumbo-sized bag of popcorn between us and a six-pack of birch beer on the wheel well. I still hadn't quite gotten over the shock of Marjorie saying yes to this little outing, after Rose asked a mere three times. Once again, Marjorie assured me (over a six of Molson's) that her trust in me was absolute, and she knew Rose would be safe with me. Gratitude or guilt. Probably a fiercely unhealthy mix of both. Rose was beside herself with joy at the prospect of staying up past 3 am on a Friday night. At a drive-in, for God's sake. I had seen the first film in it's original run, and worried a little over the intense level of violence, but thought the climactic scene, with the full-blown Snow White ending where the hero is brought back to life by True Love's Kiss, was appropriately gooey enough that Rose and I could both enjoy it on the same level without too much danger. I hadn't seen the second or third films before, hadn't even read reviews. Thrice-Damned Idiot. The second film sent me on a roller coaster ride through the flames of damnation, a savage spectacle plunging me into the abyss and searing me many times over before emergence on the far side. I was pinned in place, skewered, when barely half an hour into that film, there was a fully nude sex scene, complete with climax. Actually, one sex scene intercut with several explitly suggestive near-sex scenes, underscored by an unrelenting, driving, raw, percussive bass line that left nothing to the imagination, a throbbing, insistent, primal urge with no escape possible save the one you knew and wanted so badly you could taste the blood at the back of your throat. I had seen much raunchier, many times before, this one didn't even show genitals; but watching it with Rose beside me was a rocketsled ride through the firey pit. Onscreen, Trinity clutched Neo to her as if they were on a journey through a galaxy of their own, and only by holding onto him with all her strength could she be assured of safe passage; and when Neo climaxed, I shivered in sympathy and knew I was lost. It wasn't just sexual, it was sensual; not sex, but lovemaking. As I watched from the corner of my eye for her reaction, I found my breathing labored and tense, and the heat rising in my pants was a foreign presence that could not be shut down. She never even looked over at me, just kept staring at the screen, and I tore myself up trying to decide whether that was good or bad, trying to get some clue from her reaction. Was she breathing hard? I couldn't tell, my own breathing drowned everything out. Gradually, I became aware that, just beyond the edge of the truck, past Rose, I could see into the back seat of the rocking car parked next to us. Turned my head hellishly slow, knowing what I would see on the other side. And I did; not immediately beside us, one space over, but suggestively recognizable through the back windows, a coupling. Bosch himself couldn't have painted me into a worse Hell. Still Rose stared straight ahead, and the need to know overwhelmed everything as I watched her chest intently to see that, yes, she was breathing deeper and harder than normal. After the scene was over, the only thing that seemed to change between us was when Rose nudged off her sandals and put the bottoms of her feet against my bared calf, leaving them there for most of the rest of the second film. Thankfully, the third film was a return to old-school violent mayhem, and even provided a tearjerker ending as a cherry on top.

For weeks afterward, those films were a sigificant spur to our conversations. Although we never discussed the sex scenes, there were moments, maddening, tantalizing, hint-from-the-heart-of-Hell moments, when she started to say something, then drew up short and changed it to something else. Did she know what she was doing? Did she know the effect she was having on me? It was like having a burning curtain between us. I knew the curtain was on fire, and I was certain she was aware of it too. Neither of us acknowledged it verbally, but too many sideways looks that seemed to linger just a little too long were darts of fire that pierced my spine.

Did she know I was having to hug my pillow to my chest at night, just to have something to touch, to pretend it was her I held? I couldn't tell what was worse, the slow burn of loneliness I had known before I knew Rose, the loneliness that tore me down day after day after endless day, or the rapid burn that was torching my heart now, burning it to a blazing cinder every night, only to be revived the next day by her first Hello.

...you don't really want to know just how far its gone, just leave well enough alone... Dirty Laundry (Don Henley)

The grass in the complex seemed especially fertile that summer, pushing up out of the earth at what felt like a ridiculous rate. I was mowing some part of the grounds almost every other day, pausing once in a while as Rose brought me ice water or lemonade. Part of the time I saw her watching me mow, keeping her eye on my shirtless circuit of the grounds, but there were long chunks of time when she was off by herself. It didn't take me long to learn she had been going to my room to listen to my music. On an especially humid evening a couple of weeks before school started, she showed me what she had been doing all that time she was alone with my tapes; she had been organizing them for me, cleaning up and matching cassettes to cases, re-labeling the dubbed ones and cataloging everything. She had created a mix tape, and she used both the tape and a tennis racket to put on an air guitar show. I sat on the common room couch and watched her prance and caress the "guitar" through a set that consisted of the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" (crackling with tension), Cheap Trick's Budokan version of "I Want You To Want Me" (necessarily calling to mind thousands of preteen Japanese girls who were all dying (dying, dying, dying) to rush the stage in a wave), Jerry Lee Lewis doing "Great Balls of Fire" (for which song she temporarily put down the "guitar" and pulled up a chair to use the coffee table as an air piano; at the point in the song where Jerry Lee jumps up and knocks his piano bench flying, Rose jumped up and kicked the chair back with such violence that it made me jump in my seat), and Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry". My God. Her performance of "Dirty Laundry" was the single most erotic thing I have ever seen. In my entire life. I mean that quite literally, I have never seen any performance, by any other person, before or since, that was more charged with sexual energy. When the song reached the first guitar solo, I actually stopped breathing for a moment at the wonder of it all. As the solo started, Rose was swinging her hips from side to side with the "guitar" slung low between her legs, her fingers moving in an amazing show of dexterity that I could almost believe would produce the sounds I was hearing if she actually had a guitar in her hands. Then she shifted to pumping her hips front to back, still stroking the neck, making love to the damn thing. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and suspected I was hallucinating it; she was openly humping the body of the "guitar", and her fingers seemed to have given up on imitating fret positions, choosing instead to stroke the neck as if she were gripping a phallus. As the solo rolled on, she did a strange little mincing dance step from right to left, then whirled and moved back from left to right in a duckwalk that was a perfect imitation of Chuck Berry; it was touching and hilarious and savagely sexy all at once, and it was all being done for me, a private audience of one. As the solo rolled to a close, she ran forward and dropped down, sliding the last few inches on her knees and holding the "guitar" upright between her legs as if it were something she were worshipping. That performance is acidly etched in my head, and I can recall any moment of it any time I want to simply by closing my eyes; and of course, whenever that song comes on the radio now, I have to turn away, lest I get too distracted to continue whatever it is I'm doing. When the set was over, sweat was pouring from every part of her body, and she came over to collapse on the couch.

"My God," I murmured, "that was unbelievable! You look like you're dying, let me get you a drink." As she took the cold root beer from my hand, deliberately touching my fingers to do so, she looked up at me without moving her head.

"Yeah, I've never done four songs in a row before," she grinned, "guess I need to build up a little more stamina." I plopped down next to her, wiping her face with a towel I'd brought over, and fanning her with it. "I'm so hot and sweaty," she panted, "you must think I look like some gross pig." No, I answered, your steaming hot sweaty body makes me think of things, but pigs aren't one of them. Then aloud, I said, "It's summer, you goof, you're supposed to be hot and sweaty. Trust me, you're beautiful."

"So you liked it?" Her grin told me she knew she didn't need to ask.

"Yeah, but Rose, I'm a little worried about contamination. I mean, I don't want to take you away from the kind of music kids your age listen to. I don't want you to grow up older than you should be." She sat forward at that and put her hands on her hips.

"Waitaminute. When these songs first came out, kids my age listened to them then, didn't they?" she demanded. I had to nod my head. "Well, this music was okay for kids then, so it must be okay now, right?" As I started to protest, she held up a hand. "Besides, it goes both ways. You listen to my music, right?" Again, all I could do was nod my head. "Well then, trust me. 'They say that a hero can save us, I'm not gonna stand here and wait'..." she sang with a gentle drawing out motion of her hands as encouragement to me, and I picked it up, "I'll hold on to the wings of the eagles," and then we finished together, "Watch as we all fly away." She reached over and grabbed hold of my shirt sleeve, and for a vertiginous few seconds, I was forcibly reminded of the first time Lilly had grabbed my shirt; and then she was climbing onto my lap, straddling my leg and leaning right down into my face in her earnestness. "And get this," she insisted, laying a hand on my chest, "even though you hate a lot of Disney's recent slop, we both liked 'The Goofy Movie', right? Right. And I know we both liked that Powerline song ('Tevin Campbell' I corrected silently), I-2-I, for the same reason. C'mon, you know what it is, say it." Rolling my eyes theatrically, I muttered something about the bass line. "That's it!" she beamed, "that fat, phat bass line." With a slowly dawning sense of recognition, I realized that I had heard it that time; the difference between fat and phat. My slowly spreading foolish grin told her she had won this round.

...strange what desire will make foolish people do... Wicked Game (Chris Isaak)

A year had come and gone, more than a year, really, more like 14 months. Rose was in sixth grade. Apart from the impending transition to junior high, she didn't find it to be much different that fifth grade, except perhaps a little... not really lonelier, she said, scrunching up her face (adorably) and trying to think of a better way to put it, finally setting for 'more isolated', because Brittany and her posse were gone. She said she didn't miss them, but the wistful way she said it made me think that wasn't quite entirely accurate.

We were in my room at the time, with the door ajar. I was trying to avoid any appearance of impropriety, and trying to keep myself honest with myself. The door to my room was at the end of the hallway, about three feet past the entrances to the locker rooms, and I knew if anyone were to overshoot those by even a couple of steps, they would see right into my room.

Rose was perched on the cot, her shorts displaying her gorgeous legs from the top of the thigh down, and her blouse carelessly open at the top button, so that every time she leaned forward, I was able to see the faintest shadow of the cleavage that would soon be there in earnest. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning back on my hands, waiting for the guts to ask my next question. I think I might have been more nervous than I ever had before in my life, when I finally screwed up the courage to come out and say it. "What about boys? Are there any that look interesting to you?" The responsible adult in me, the part that owned my conscience and guilt and repression, the part that obeyed the law and saw to it that I did the right thing by those less able to look out for themselves, was anxiously hoping to hear that she had discovered some stupid bohunk that took her breath away. The starry-eyed adolescent in me, the part that owned my sense of romance and love, my heart and soul and, yes, my aching manhood, cringed at the thought that I might hear the answer the adult was demanding. The two halves were waging a savage battle inside, kicking and gouging in the mud and the blood and the tears, fighting so hard that my ears were buzzing and my lungs were unable to completely fill. Rose, knowing nothing of this death struggle, thought I was teasing her, and she was just a shade put out as she told me that she had no more prospect or interest in snagging a boyfriend now than she had when they first arrived. Then, as the resentment gave way to her usual impish good humor, she slipped down to the floor and wrapped her arm around mine and hugged it tight to her as she grinned, "Anyway, Jack, you know you're the only man for me!" Holy God. My mixed emotions at this display were as divided as oil and water, and the play of of those emotions on my face didn't escape Rose's notice, because she asked if I was feeling all right. "I'm fine," I managed to choke out, "I'm just a little tired, I guess." Or a lot tired, of fighting with myself and playing with myself and, and, and... Goddamnit. "Well, that won't do," she chuckled, "you'd better lay down and rest for a bit." And she pushed on my chest until I gave in and laid back on the floor, turning to face her as she lay down next to me, her head propped up on her hand. She grew just a little more solemn as she reached over to brush the hair out of my eyes, and she said, "You know how much you mean to me, don't you, Jack? You're the best friend I could ever hope for. You look out for me and you take care of me and you make me laugh and, and... oh, Jack, I, I, I just, I just love you. You know that, don't you?" She was blushing, but only slightly, and I must have been blushing myself as I reached over to stroke the side of her face. "Yes, I know," I said, and taking a huge mental breath, pushed myself to say, "and I love you, too, Rose, with all my heart. You know that, don't you?" She flashed her usual pixie grin and and said, "What's not to love?" I had to laugh out loud at that, "You minx!"

I don't think I'll ever know which one of us moved then, or whether we both moved at the same time. All I know for sure is that the next thing I knew, we were wrapped up in each other's arms, holding each other tight, her face nestled into my neck, her gentle breath tickling my skin, her aroma filling my nose. I must have been acting on sheer instinct when I gently kissed the top of her head, my hand caressing and rubbing her back. The feel of her soft lips on my neck sent a delicious shiver down my spine, a lovely sensation that I never wanted to end; not quite a kiss, but damn near. I don't know how long we lay locked together like that; it might have been ten seconds, or a lifetime. What I do know is that I suddenly became aware of my erection surging, bulging in my pants, pressing into her thigh with an insistence I couldn't deny. We lay together like that for five or more minutes, the worry over what she would think of the erection being overwhelmed by the sheer joy of holding her close, feeling the mop of her hair filling my face. I knew this could only end in one of two ways, and I had to make it be the right way, for both of us. Pulling away from her was like pulling the flesh off my body, an agony that I forced myself to endure because to do anything else would have been a violation of her youth and her understanding of our friendship.

We chatted for probably twenty more minutes after that, and after a glance at the clock, I told her I needed to get started on shutting the pool down for the night. She nodded, her usual happy headbob letting me know everything was okay between us as she bounced out the door for home.

It was perhaps two or three weeks later when it happened. The night. The night that changed everything. The night that finally, firmly, irrevocably started us down this path. That night had been particularly slow. Rose had gone home at 7:00 to dinner and homework (an English paper that she was looking forward to writing on the computer, a review of Lewis Carroll's two Alice books), the last swimmer had left the pool at 9:30, and as the clock slowly crawled around to 10:00, I decided nobody else would be coming that night, so I went to the men's locker room to take a shower and get ready for bed. I took out my contact lenses and stashed them in the locker I had reserved for myself, the one closest to the shower. The entrance to the men's shower area, on the far side of the locker room from the entrance just outside my room, wasn't actually a doorway, really more of a large opening, probably ten feet wide. The shower area itself was a large open tiled room with eight shower heads around the walls, half of which could be seen from any angle in the men's locker room. I went to my favorite showerhead, the one with the softest spray, twisted the knobs, and waited for a few seconds until the water was nice and warm, then cranked it up as hot as I could stand it. As I stood there in the spray from the showerhead, I was thinking, as usual, about Rose. Once again, I forced myself to remember I shouldn't be thinking like that, and I tried to think about Marjorie instead, but it didn't work; Marjorie just evaporated as soon as I tried, and I was left with Rose by default. I had a full erection by now as I washed my body, and I slowly started to play with myself, picturing Rose in my mind and stroking and fondling myself with my right hand. In one of my dreams from the night before, we had been in the wave pool at some waterpark, the waves knocking us back, forcing her into me, and she had been laughing as she turned to face me and allowed the waves to force her deep between my legs, our crotches pressed tightly together. That was where the dream ended, and as hot water pounded down on my head, I chose to revisit that scene as a daydream to see where it took me. Not surprisingly, my erection (in the vision) emerged from my swimsuit, and as it ground into the panty of Rose's bikini, she looked a little shocked at first, then smiled her biggest, warmest smile and wrapped her arms around me, pressing up against me and straddling my leg, trapping my hardness between our thighs and grinding her little pussy up against it. I was breathing a little harder now, slightly shocked at my audacity in letting my imagination go this far, and quite unwilling to stop it. As the vision continued, I noticed that even though the wave pool was crowded, everyone else was too involved in their own struggles to stay afloat to pay any attention to us. I slipped my thumb under the material of her panty and pulled it aside. Her reaction was one of open-mouthed wonder, and then she bit her lip and after nodding vigorously to tell me to keep going, hugged herself close to me, her chin resting on my shoulder, her chest pressed up tight to mine. In one smooth motion, I slid my cock deep into her, all the way to the base, and her cry was one of wonder and surprise, with no pain whatsoever. It was as if her hymen had already been broken, there was no need to push through. We continued to bob along together, letting the ebb and flow of the waves gently push us together every time we started to slide apart. In the shower, I soaped up my hand again, then used the feeling of stroking my cock with my soap-slimed hand as a stand-in for Rose's little love tunnel wrapped around me. I squeezed harder and harder, massaging the head with my fingertips, and the familiar tingle started to make itself known. In the daydream, Rose had wrapped her legs around my waist, hugging me tight between her thighs and forcing herself onto me, to make sure I stayed buried deep inside her. I could tell it wouldn't be long now before I was shooting my load. As I turned around to feel the water on my back, I thought I saw a blur of color by the outer door of the men's locker room. I squinted, trying to make it out; without my contacts or glasses, it was a struggle. My first thought was that it was a towel that some tenant had left hanging on the hook by the door, but something about that explanation didn't seem quite right. Still I gripped my hardness, slowly stroking, and as I squinted toward the door, I thought I saw the blur move a little. I stepped out of the shower's spray and reached into the locker to get my glasses, but by the time I had them on and looked back at the door, there was nothing there. "Hello," I called uncertainly, holding a towel around my waist and sneaking over to the door to look out, "is someone there?" The hallway was empty, but I was sure for a fleeting instant I'd seen something or someone there, and I was scared that I had been caught jacking off. Nothing ever seemed to come from it, though, and I let it slip out of my mind.

When Rose seemed to pull away from me a little over the next few days, it literally never occurred to me to wonder if she had been the blur. After all, it was the men's locker room, I knew she wouldn't have come in there. As things seemed to cool down between us, I attributed it to nothing in particular. Maybe she was upset about something; if so, surely she would tell me sooner or later. We were pals, after all.