“Yes it is, Oogie.”
I didn’t correct June. Bojangles Robinson was black, and the song might have a different meaning to her than it did to me. I’ve learned long ago that a song that people laugh at, like Blue Swede’s ”Hooked on a Feeling,” could also be seen as romantic, the way my lovely blonde Goddess would always think of that song.
June expressed her happiness in my choice of song by kissing me very long and intimately.
After we broke from that kiss, I looked up at the clock in the room, and saw that there was less than five minutes left in the period. I moved June off my lap and told her to get dressed. I noticed that she went without bra or panties. “You nasty girl!” I teased.
“People are already talking about us, Jim. I feel so nasty and so proud. A lot of girls don’t believe it. I think that they are jealous of me.”
“I know,” I said. “Sherry seemed to know the gossip in first period.”
“Gossip travels fast!”
I nodded. “I’m pretty sure who started it. Jackie’s boyfriend, Steve.”
“Jackie and Steve broke up after they left the villa,” June told me. “Jackie confided to me that she wanted to do it at the villa but wanted to avoid a nasty and public confrontation.”
I understood Jackie’s motives. Avoiding confrontation was why I also declined to do anything about Steve’s obvious dismissal of Kristen’s hard rule of “no liquor” at the villa.
Kristen had made that rule out of respect for me, knowing how I felt about my father, and had offered all of our friends a free weekend at a wonderful villa with only that one string attached. The fact that Steve so heartlessly ignored that one request told me a lot about his character.
“Jackie told me that he’s an asshole,” I observed. “I agree with her.”
“Can you do me a favor?” June asked.
“Anything.”
“Hold my hand and walk me to my next class.”
I laughed. “You nasty, nasty girl!”
The class bell rang, and as June and I walked the hallway, it was obvious that we received an unusual amount of stares. We pretended not to notice, but I could actually smell the sweet aroma of June’s arousal as I deposited her at her classroom.
To further dispel all doubts, I gave June a totally unnecessary good-bye kiss in front of the open door to her classroom.
As I walked to gym class, I noticed that a lot of girls were checking me out, seeing me as maybe being a bit more available than I was when I was seen as exclusively Kristen’s. I hadn’t expected that particular response, actually.
In the locker room, I received a lot of ribbing from my class mates. “Way to go, Stud!” said one friend.
“You better watch out for Tiny,” warned another. “I hear he wants your balls on a skewer!”
I winced at that description, but I knew for a fact that this wasn’t true.
There were only a couple of teases that bothered me. They all stemmed from the fact that June was Negro and I was a Caucasian. My response to that was a serious glare at the offending parties, who decided to keep their racist thoughts to themselves.
Although blacks were no small minority in Chicago at that time during the 1970s, the suburban community where I lived was still predominantly white. Interracial dating was extremely rare, and I guess that despite the fact that Archie Bunker was on the air for a while showing bigotry to be the silly idiotic thing it really is, some people never learned anything.
I didn’t think of myself as “Crusader Whitey” who would be responsible for wiping out prejudice in our community, and to tell you the truth, I really hadn’t thought through the racial angle. I mean, when I first held June in my arms, the fact that she was black made her seem more exotic. But that was just a very small part of what made her special to me. She didn’t taste or smell any different. Her skin beaded water differently than mine in the shower, but I knew white girls for whom that was true as well. What I loved about June was that little girl I discovered who I wanted to get to know a lot better.
I noticed that some of the dumber white people no longer liked me now. That didn’t bother me, actually. I never really identified with those assholes, anyway.
However, some of the black kids also seemed to glare at me as well, as if I was reducing the amount of pussy available to them. I mean, I bet those guys didn’t treat Tiny the same way when he made it clear that June’s dance card was full. I truly couldn’t understand their anger.
I found myself shunned by those two groups in gym class. I felt a bit confused about this. Then a black student threw a basketball at me (not to me) during a game. The fact that he knocked me down and he was supposed to be on my own team surprised me, as well as the gym teacher.
That was enough! I left the gym class, ignoring the protests of my coach. I quickly got dressed and walked back to the music room.
Mr. Proilet was teaching his Theory class. He saw me come into the room, and he interrupted his class. “More practice, Jim?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled.
On automatic, I entered the same practice room that June and I shared earlier. Nobody was inside, so I closed the door and started playing the piano.
I started with the Moonlight Sonata, a song that usually calms me down. For the first time that I could recall, it didn’t work.
Next, I picked a random song: an oldie called ”You’re Sixteen,” and a random key: D-flat.
It was one of those songs with only about four chords, so it worked. I started shouting the lyrics and noticed that the song consisted of a very limited vocal range.
The song and key signature suddenly sounded familiar. It was an oldie, but there was a remake of it that was on the radio occasionally. Ringo Starr sang it; it was his range and I believe that this was the key he used in the song. If I remember correctly, Paul McCartney and Harry Nilsson sang backup on the song, and one of them even played a kazoo solo.
I sighed, thinking of the Beatles, and switched before the song ended to Day Tripper, a song that was most definitely not designed for piano. I wasn’t going for easy, I wanted hard. I even managed to pull off one of George Harrison’s sitar songs from Sgt. Pepper.
I ended up doing a complete Beatles medley, playing bits and pieces of songs, and at one point, I was trying to remember the order of the songs on side two of Abbey Road.
I switched from Beatles to Three Dog Night, and when I started playing a song I realized was ”Black and White“ I slammed the keyboard cover down hard and put my head in my hands and started to cry.
“Jim,” my music teacher said, softly. “We need to talk.”
I don’t know how long he was in the room, but he was there long enough.
I hadn’t noticed the time. I spent most of fifth period through eighth in the practice room. School was over, and apparently, many people were looking for me. Mr. Proilet was the first person that people checked, and, of course, he knew where I was.
As I exited the practice room, I still felt tears running down my face. Imagine my surprise when I saw Sherry, Kristen, Camille, Patty, June, Archy, Lynette, and everybody I considered to be my friend looking at me, very concerned.
“Coach Dillard told me what happened in gym,” Mr. Proilet said.
“I’m a fucking asshole,” I said, totally sick at everybody and everything.
Mr. Proilet shook his head. “Kristen, take him home. Keep him there for a few days. He’s got a lot on his mind.”
Kristen nodded, and I walked off with my Goddess.