ORANGE MESSIAHS by Scott A. Sonders (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

I went to an arts & crafts fair at the Pan Pacific auditorium with Mama and Gabby this afternoon. Pretty boring, but I didn’t have anything else to do. Vicki’s been in bed since Friday with some god-awful flu bug that she thinks she got from “one of those two-bit Romeos that was breathing all over us as the party.”

Well, she may be half right. Or a quarter right. Even though I’m used to her sarcasm, I still thought some of those guys were really hunky. And, besides, not nearly as many of them were “breathing all over me” as were breathing all over Vicki. I’m sorry Vicki isn’t feeling well, but I have to confess that I’m feeling just as sorry for myself, now that I’ve got nothing to do. Vicki is such a blast. I love being with her, just hanging out, even when there are no guys around. Sometimes, even, I think I like it especially when there are no guys around. When it’s just me and her. We make a good pair.

I finished my homework on Saturday day, but on Saturday night, I had no date. There’s a Psych final paper due this Wednesday which I’ve finished twice over. It was such a cinch. The class is geared for morons – or to people who’ve never read anything, yet alone psychology. Prof. Wernicke assigned us a measly four page paper, a book report on a really skinny, maybe 70-page book by Sigmund Freud called, “On Dreams.”

He gave us three weeks to read the book and write the paper. I read the book in about three hours and wrote the paper in another five. And that’s from first to final, edited draft. I’d better not tempt fate, though, by even talking about this, otherwise I’ll incur the evil eye and all my classes next semester will be something like one hundred times harder than this one.
So now you know, dear diary, that I, Ramona Batista, had NO DATE on a Saturday night! I’m not exactly a sex-fiend like Vicki, who, from the way she talks sounds like she wants it all the time, and gets it all the time. But I am getting horny. I haven’t had a date in six weeks, and only four guys have asked me out at school since the beginning of the semester in September. Two of those were brave but reaching, so I had to turn them down gently with something like, “I think I’m taking my dog to get spayed that evening.”

Just kidding! Sort of. Of the other two, one had less than zero chemistry with me, and the other had enough chemistry to at least sleep with, if... But he was such a pea-brain that I couldn’t talk to him long enough to get excited enough to take him home and do the deed.

So, I haven’t had my feathers ruffled in quite awhile. Sometimes I think I must be a real loser. I’ve only had three boyfriends since I lost my virginity at sixteen. Well, I don’t count getting raped as losing my virginity. When I say “losing my virginity,” I mean with my choice and consent.

The first guy I ever slept with was inept. I think he lied about being “older” to impress me, but was probably a few months younger than me. Probably just got his driver’s license. Borrowed his older brother’s ‘66 Dodge Charger. The kind of car that guys think is a “babe magnet” because it’s monstrously fast and has a fastback design that lets you fold down the rear seats and poke your legs through to the trunk. Well, it’s not a babe magnet; but that is what we did — fold the back seat down, that is.

We went to this high school dance of his, Chaminade, a ritzy Catholic school in the Valley. We got high on some ridiculously fine weed, then parked on Mulholland Drive on this secluded spot just past the bend of Woodrow Wilson that has a fantastic view of the city lights. We downed a mickey of Southern Comfort, smoked some more reefer, listened to Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, and petted for awhile.

I wanted him to do it to me. I wanted to get even with the guy that raped me. To feel desirable. It went by pretty quickly. He felt me up for maybe thirty minutes, under my bra and panties. Then we lay down, in the back of the Dodge, covered from our waists down by the trunk of the car, and he just sort of spread-eagled me and pushed his dick into me without even taking my panties off. He’d being feeling how wet I was so I guess he just pulled the crotch of my panties aside and did it.

I remember what album was playing on the eight-track because he penetrated me about halfway through the cut, Parachute Woman. I think guys like to listen to that kind of sexual sounding music when they make love so they can grind their hips to the rhythm of the music. I think they think that that’s sexy. That it will turn us on. I remember Mick Jagger singing, “Parachute woman, won’t you land on me tonight...” and the bass guitar going bump-a-dump-a-dump-a-dump. And the deed was over before the song was over.

I hardly felt it. He was up and down in less than a minute. He called me afterwards to say his family was “moving” to San Francisco. I know he lied. I know now that he just wanted some girl that would make him feel like a god. One that would scream his name, and come, and tell him that he was the best. Guys want to think they’re the best even if they’re the first. It’s not logical. It just is.

Mama says that guys marry the first woman who makes them feel the most special. It’s not about how we look, or how we think, or even how we are. It’s just about how they think we think, whether we’re actually thinking that or not. I’m not too sure about this because then it seems that really good actresses would have really good marriages with really good guys. And everyone knows that’s about the opposite of what’s really so.

My second boyfriend was better. Actually he was my first real boyfriend. The first guy was someone who got his rocks off with me and never called back. This guy called back. His name was Frank, and he was... frank, that is. He was what I imagine most of us would think of as characteristic of this Age of Aquarius. Very hip. Very hippie. He was ultra-intelligent and into sensitivity and “connecting with our inner feelings.”

He was already thirty-five years old when I was seventeen. Funny, I never thought of him as being my mother’s peer, being her age and all. But Frank was okay. And he used to make me feel okay about being naked with him. He’d do it to me even when I had my period. Even though I think that’s a pretty gross thing, he never made me feel dirty or ashamed. He was very patient. It lasted about four months. He was in love with me. The first one, I think. Maybe some other guys have been in love from afar, but I don’t think that counts. I only think it counts if some of the feeling is reciprocal. If it’s in a relationship.

Frank wanted to marry me. Mama thought he was really a great guy, but reasoned that I was too young to know better and he was too old not to. I didn’t think I was too young. I just didn’t think I loved him in return. He was, well, just Frank. He didn’t feel like my idea of what a M-A-N is supposed to feel like. He did all the right things but that wasn’t enough. He would lick my vagina like he was professionally trained, if there is such a thing, but that wasn’t enough either. He didn’t get me really hot. He didn’t make me crazy. He didn’t make me unable to think about anyone or anything but him.

I’m probably too selfish. Maybe I should’ve responded to Frank better. He gave me a huge diamond engagement ring that probably cost him three months salary and that would make other girls faint. Even though I’m certain that this gift was in every way well-intentioned, it still felt somehow like a bribe to me. Like it would make me obligated. I gave it back. I want nice things. But not in that way.

I think I broke Frank’s heart. Later, Frank told me that he had joined one of those lonely hearts dating clubs where white guys meet Filipina girls that want to get their greencards. He even brought her around once for me to meet her, to get my approval. She was cute and petite and intelligent, but something was definitely missing. Frank told me that she made a lot of noise when he fucked her. He liked that. It made him feel special. Like I said, Frank was always very frank with me. He told me everything, including things that I’d rather not have known. He invited me to their wedding. I felt embarrassed for her. I didn’t go.

The third guy I made it became my second boyfriend. He was the best so far. His name was Ernesto. Maybe I’m starting a pattern. Ernesto en español sounds like it would mean “earnest,” even though it doesn’t. And of course “earnest” is what “frank” means. Okay, it’s a dumb “flight of ideas” as my therapist calls these thoughts of mine. Anyway, Ernesto was the first Mexican guy I’ve ever been on a date with.

My brother thinks I’m a bigot, “a pretentious white-chick wannabe.” He teases me a lot about a lot of things, but that’s just his way. I know he doesn’t really believe it. I’d just never dated a Mexican guy simply as a matter of coincidence. None of the guys in my neighborhood really ever appealed to me. None of the guys in school, either. And our high school was about 50/50. About half white kids, who lived west of Vermont Avenue, and about half Mexican kids who lived in our area. So I had my pick but never picked any. And it’s just a coincidence that the guy who raped me was a Mexican guy. Had I been west of Vermont it could’ve been a white guy, and if I’d been south of Manchester, it could’ve been a black guy.

But Ernesto was definitely muy suave y muy guapo. He had the looks, all right. And he was smooth. That boy talked like a natural born politician. Well, he was, actually. His father was on the L.A. City Council and Ernesto was already student body vice-president at Valley College. Damn, but that boy could walk as good as he could talk.

Now he made me crazy. I really can’t say it was because he was a great lover. He wasn’t. Sappy old Frank knew techniques that Ernesto never heard of. I can’t really say that it was because he was so smart, either. Because he was.

Ernesto had one of those IQs that put him in the 99.9th percentile of our planet’s civilization. His smarts helped. I’m v-e-r-y attracted to smart men. They feel so in control. But his smarts and his looks and his bedroom acrobatics still weren’t the only things that made me totally crazy for the guy. It was a combination of those and other things that I simply can’t put a handle on.