| Lois and her family was the only white neighbors we had and she lived in the house
right next door to me. The next closest neighbor Lois and I had was 19 miles away if
you counted going straight across the river instead of around the road. That kind of
isolation was okay by me since I was mostly Lamanite any way and enjoyed their company. Two more boys admitted to having sex with Lois before the month was out. I knew right then that I could never make it with girls because there I was living right next door to her and couldn't even get close.
Even though Lois became more and more sexually active over the years and the whispers behind her back became loud snorts of indignation, I gave up all the dreams of conquest I had. My advances had all been rejected with a stinging slap. The girl that anyone could get, rejected me with blazing eyes and a face that looked like she was about to throw up. Where did that put me? At the bottom of the barrel. The real cross for me was when some boy would ask if Lois and I had fun every night. I would have to hang my head in shame and admit I'd never made the grade. Their snickers of contempt were hard to bear. "You mean you can't even make it with a cheap slut?" Well, what could I say? It was true. Still, I don't believe Lois hated me completely. On those days too many kids on the bus got to calling her a cheap slut, Lois would come back to sit among the Lamanites with me, not close to me, but there among us. Then a Baptist minister invited Lois to church, and even came to get her every Sunday. She invited me to her baptism. She looked so radiantly happy there in the water that it didn't matter to her I was the only one who had come to be there. The glow about her face lasted only a few weeks, and then she went no more riding with the minister of a Sunday morn. The talk that had died down came back upon her head with a vengeance. In all the time that I knew her, Lois never went on a date with anyone. Not one boy came to her door. I never saw her stay in the bus seat when a boy sat down beside her. Then she moved and I moved and that was the last I saw of her. Indignant words reached me often from those she had moved among. "Lois, Lois, Lois, Slut of the Burning Sands." They said there wasn't anything she wouldn't do. It hurt to realize I was probably the only boy on earth she wouldn't do anything with. No wonder the other girls turned me down! I wasn't even good enough for Lois. Just before I went into the Army I met Alfred -- the boy who had made that first score. He had just joined up in the Marines ready to ship out proud in his brand new uniform. I wiggled him away from the admiring gaze of his friends and asked him point blank, "Did you ever have sex with Lois?" Alfred broke into a grin. "Yeah." I was astonied. There it was, right out in the open, positive proof that I was less than the scum of the earth where girls were concerned. "You really did?" "Yeah," he confirmed proudly. "We french kissed and that's the same thing as having sex." I've often wondered how shocked he must have looked when he got to basic and his Marine buddies wised him up to what he was missing. Occasionally I wonder too if Lois ever lost the bad reputation he gave her. |
