Tietam Brown by Mick Foley Read Free Book Online Page B

ride?”
    â€œYeah, Dad, that would be great.”
    He swallowed hard, put his elbow on the table, and rested his chin on his hand as if he were Rodin’s
The Thinker.
    â€œAndy,” he said.
    â€œYeah, Dad.”
    â€œMaybe you can have the car for the night.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œSure, I’ve got some work to do anyway. Besides, this is a big night, but hey, no drinking, all right?”
    Man, this was pretty cool. Real interest in my life, real honest-to-goodness parental concern, and the keys to the car for eight hours of Terri. So what if I’d never danced. I could always learn, right?
    Then Tietam spoke, and as was becoming his custom, he was right there to seize the special moment with just the perfect sentiment. “You might want to get her to polish your knob while you’re driving, kid. No feeling like it in the world.”
    Sometimes I kind of envied the little world my father seemed to live in. A world where making a scarecrow was a bigger sin than nailing the next-door neighbor’s wife and where drinking behind the wheel was no good, but a one-handed kid with no license, spasming wildly while trying to drive along unlit back roads, was okay. I thanked him for the suggestion and told him maybe I’d try, and he slid me the keys and wished me good luck.
    I put the keys in my pocket and headed up the stairs, where I turned on the shower. I stepped in and replayed the day in my mind, smiling a big goofy smile as the room turned to fog and the water beat down on my neck.
    I thought about Hanrahan’s class, and how not even his Neanderthal ways or his football cronies could ruin the day. I thought about Terri, and how she’d stayed so calm and strong on the outside even while boiling within. Then I thought about that wonderful smile, while she laughed and chased me with her breasts, and all of a sudden the thought of her holding her breasts while chasing me didn’t seem so gentle or innocent. No indeed, it seemed pretty damn sexy, and I closed my eyes and imagined that same scene, except in this scene she was naked, and I wasn’t running away. No, I was running right toward her, running hard. Literally.
    I looked down and something about me had changed physically. Had changed quite a bit. I assessed the situation a moment longer, and, with the help of a handful of my dad’s pale blue Head & Shoulders, participated in the ritual that so many millions of teenage boys before me have performed, and that so many million have likely performed since. But unlike those horny teenagers, who were just obeying their hormones, I was accomplishing a whole lot more. I was practicing. Practicing and building up endurance, getting ready for the day when I wouldn’t be the only one involved in my sexual encounters. And when that time came, I knew I’d be ready. And that I’d be good.
    The nuns at the Petersburg Home for Boys had referred to it as “touching oneself in an impure way.” One, Sister Fahey, had even tried to explain nocturnal emissions by likening our equipment to a kettle that just occasionally “boils over” as we sleep. I was thirteen at the time, and honestly had yet to touch myself in an impure way. To me, this boiling-over process sounded a little scary, and so I instantly concocted a solution that made a whole lot more sense, not to mention would ruin a whole lot less undies.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said, “but if we know that our kettle is going to boil over, wouldn’t it make sense for us to pour some water out ourselves before we go to sleep?”
    The class roared with laughter, and I received a rap on the palm with a ruler and a lesson about “the sin of Onan” from the nun. But my hand didn’t hurt because she had smacked the dead one, and to tell the truth I had loved the laughter from the class, as it was usually the only gesture of acceptance that I received. So a moment later I raised my