[Work in progress, not fully edited]
Entering a six-year high school as an underage, undersized brainiac, I lost my magic touch with girls. I had relied on them seeking me out. With a larger pool of potential beaux, an endless selection of older guys now on the make, they ignored me. I kept my head down, blending in with the fading green paint covering the walls of our campus. Wearing braces for those six years and joining the Book-of-The-Month Club didn’t seem to help.
I sought solace during summer on the Indian Hill Club’s swim team. Even there, the best I could do was stare longingly at the blossoming girls learning how to expose themselves demurely in their Speedo racing suits. I hadn’t learned how to do enough to even start a conversation, much less differentiate myself from all the bigger, older boys around them.
At age 15, I finagled myself onto the lesser of the city’s two AAU swim teams, sponsored by Coca-Cola. My world expanded beyond the local club swim meets to out-of-town competitions, requiring long car rides to Columbus, Dayton, and other venues. On one such trip, coming home after dark, the father driving us asked if anyone volunteered to rest in the back of the station. Seeing a chance to maybe sleep a bit during the two hour ride, I said, “Sure,” and hopped in via the tailgate.
I rested my head on my gym bag, and covered myself with a large beach towel, double wide for the multiple times we needed to dry off after heats during the meet. Before everyone else was distributed through the front and rear seats, I started to doze off. In the background, I heard vague rustlings and murmurings as the other kids arranged themselves. There were seven of us, plus the driver, so I was not surprised when another body flopped over the rear seat into my lair. A few swim bags and towels came flying back as well. I realised this might not have been the most comfortable choice.
Through my blurry, myopic vision (I had my glasses off by then), I saw a short body topped by ginger hair winnow its way under the nest I had built. After the car started up, the interior lights flicked off, and the back became cave-like in its gloom. The rear seat in front of me hid the other giggling kids from my sight. I could hear Tom C. and Bruce D. talking softly, comparing the ribbons they had won. Each had made the finals, Tom for backstroke in the 13-14 age group, and Bruce, a bruiser, for butterfly, also 13-14. Two “older” (15) girls sat up front, and two younger (10 y/o) swimmers shared the back with our stars.
As I leafed through the passengers in my mind, I realised that Tom’s 12 year-old sister Judy had drawn the short straw to ride back with me. Or maybe, she had finagled her way there. Soon, I felt a hand searching for my neck, my cheek, pulling me towards her. She kept questioning with her fingers, exploring as best she could under cover of the darkness and the beach towel. Her hands asked what I was made of, sought to find out what this mysterious older boy was like. We ended up snuggling and kissing most of the way home. All the while, I worried the driver could see us in the rear-view mirror, turn on the light and ask what was going on back there.
To my surprise, that never happened. To my further surprise, Judy kept exploring while I wondered, “Why me?” I concluded I was available, closed my eyes, and accepted her curiosity.