“I hate to break it to you, but you don’t have to show any signs to pass on an STI. You might very well have passed it on right after you contracted it,” Becky explained.
Then the two trainers turned and stared at me.
“I was a good boy,” I said, raising my hands to ward them off of me.
“Drop your shorts,” Jill said to me in a stern voice.
They wouldn’t believe me, so I did. I made sure Becky had on new gloves before she examined me. While she did that, Jill took Wolf aside, and they discussed who all might be involved. Becky sent me back to PE to lift. When I got out of my shower, Mr. Hasting was in the locker room talking to Coach Diamond. It was a relief that for once I wasn’t in the middle of it.
◊◊◊
By lunchtime, everyone involved in Clare’s train was missing, as were Stacy, April, and Piper. I was relieved to see Tracy. The rumors flew, but none of them had guessed what was going on. Of course, everyone was certain I knew what had happened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the boys were all the ones who’d gone with me on recruiting trips. What confounded everyone was why Stacy, April, and Piper were missing too. Better yet, why was I still here.
I assumed they had all been taken to be tested and treated. I doubted anyone would figure out that that was what had happened.
Then I thought about the three girls. Alan had survived hickey-gate. I doubted Stacy would be as forgiving if he gave her an STI. I wondered if they called your parents for something like this. I was in my test-prep class when my mom stormed in. That answered my question. I just got up and followed her out of the school. When Mom had me in the car, she started in.
“I received an interesting call.”
“I hope they told you I wasn’t involved,” I said.
“They did, but I thought we might just get you tested anyways.”
Then she lectured me the rest of the way to my appointment with my family doctor. You would think that a seventeen-year-old would be able to see his doctor without his mom. Guess again! It seemed they wanted to play a little game called ‘Scared Straight,’ because they showed me a series of pictures of the possible effects of unprotected sex. I think my nuts actually crawled up into my body when I saw what might happen.
Thankfully, the nurse walked my sample down to the lab, and they tested it while Mr. Happy vowed to never want to spend time with another woman. Bad things happened! If he wasn’t a believer, I was. Then my test results came back, and I was given a clean bill of health.
On the way back to school, I found out what my punishment would be for my fun with Brook the past weekend.
“Your father and I will go on all your recruiting trips from now on. You are also not going with anyone else. It sounds like you’ve all been irresponsible. All it would take is for something like this to get out, and you might do serious damage to your career as both a model and actor. I understand that most universities don’t want troublemakers on their teams, either.”
“What about Brandon? He organizes everything for me.”
“Brandon was supposed to be the responsible one who was to watch out for you. I talked to Tom, and Brandon was let go. I didn’t think I needed to be on your trips, but apparently, I was mistaken. You’ve made significant strides towards growing up, but it’s clear you’re not there yet. You brought this on yourself, so I don’t want to hear any complaints. Is that clear?” she asked.
“But I didn’t do anything,” I complained.
When would I learn to shut up?
“David Allen Dawson, do you want me to dig into what happened on all your recruiting trips?”
That would not only be ‘no’ but ‘HELL NO!’ I could foresee a long stint locked in my room if she found out about swinger parties and hookers. Believe me, if my mom decided to find out, she would. All she’d have to do was get Alan alone, and she would have him broken in five minutes. If Mom wanted to be cruel, all she had to do was put Tami on the case. She would get me to admit to everything. I now had the proper motivation to shut up.
“I love you,” I tried.
Mom accepted my offer of surrender.
◊◊◊
Before football practice, my friends about died. Coach Hope had the team meet in shorts and t-shirts in the film room.
“Everyone, settle down,” he began.
Coach had a duffle bag on the podium, and he reached inside and pulled out a lifelike representation of a penis. Of course, any roomful of boys would laugh if they saw their football coach pull a dildo out of his bag. There were some funny comments. The one that made me laugh was along the lines of you shouldn’t drop your soap in the shower with Coach around. That one got us all a look that had us a little nervous. I think we all realized we were dealing with a Marine.
He then pulled out a condom.
“I’ve been told that we need to have a talk about sex education, specifically the importance of using a condom during sex. I’m going to assume you’re all brain-damaged hormonal teens who don’t remember your talk in middle school.
“First, this is your penis,” he said as he held up the dildo. “This is a condom. Your penis does not go into a vagina without a condom. The proper technique is to actually open the condom wrapper. I’m sure some of you will forget this step, so let me repeat it: open the damned wrapper.”
Coach tore open the foil pack and held up the condom so we could all see it.
“Then you roll the condom over the shaft of your penis like this. Be sure to leave space at the tip for, oh, hell, just do what I say,” Coach finished.
Yuri raised his hand. Coach was surprised but pointed at him.
“Two questions: where do we get condoms, and where are the women who will allow us to use one on them?” Yuri asked.
“Ask David,” Coach said and stormed out.
All the little dumbasses looked at me. I just flipped them off.
◊◊◊
Brook and I skipped the dojo and drove to our local airport where we were supposed to meet someone from Range Sports. We found him in the building where we’d taken the skydiving classes.
“You must be Brook and David. I’m Don Maier. Range Sports has asked me to make sure you’re safe on your shoot on Saturday. Did you bring your jump logs?” he asked.
Don reviewed everything and seemed to be satisfied. Then he ruined our day.
“Neither one of you has enough experience to use a wingsuit. There are too many dangers for skydivers of your limited experience for Range Sports to sign off on it. Neither our insurance carrier nor I would allow it, even with a waiver.”
“What would we have to worry about if we were to wear a wingsuit?” Brook asked.
“When you first exit the plane, you have to be aware that a wingsuit is very different than regular skydiving. It’s more like gliding, in that you can get some lift. If that happens when you exit the plane, it could result in a tail strike.”
I winced at the thought of hitting the plane. My guess was that might be fatal.
“Then there’s the chance of a flat spin, or uncontrollable spinning. If you haven’t trained on how to stop that, you’ll have a problem deploying your parachute. There’s another issue called a burble, a vortex in the parachute deployment area; and twists, a spinning parachute. If your parachute malfunctions, you have to deal with all that extra material you’ll have from both the parachute and your wingsuit. Finally, you have to depressurize the wings prior to parachute deployment. Part of doing that is slowing down. Wingsuit jumps can hit speeds in the 220-mile-per-hour zone. If you’re going that fast, you very well might rip your parachute. You seem like great kids, and I would hate to see you hurt, so I can’t allow you to try the wingsuits,” Don said.
What Don didn’t realize was that to Brook and me, what he just described made us want to do it even more. I heard we could fly through the air at 220 miles per hour. Maybe I’d get a suit with a Superman logo on my chest. I’d also seen the videos of BASE jumps with wingsuits. I got a little hard at the thought of screaming just over the trees as I flew down the side of a mountain. I think if we had any mountains nearby, Brook and I would have hurtled off one by now.