The Dark Side of Darla
There’s women out there who’ve got a black side to them, a mean side that doesn’t show ‘til it comes to sex. It was Darla Hollister who first showed me the light. She was in the ninth grade, only two years older than the rest of us, but it turned out she had a real knack for it. Her brother, Benny-Carl, would have traded his big sister for a Pop-tart; what he actually got was George Briarwood’s Kingston Trio album. I never understood what Darla got out of the deal until about twenty years later. By that time I’d learned to watch my ass as far as women were concerned, but on Friday night, October 12, 1962, it was Darla Hollister who ran the introductory class.
“Okay,” was all she’d said. “But all of you are dead if you tell.”
Not counting Darla there were three of us, though if you bothered to count there were five heads and ten legs. You had to add Benny-Carl and Lazarus together to make a mo-ron, and Sinclair didn’t count at all, at least not in that department. Just the same, you’d think that we would have had enough brainpower between us to save ourselves. But we were young, and there was the adventure of it.
Adventure, mystery, and sex in the bargain as best we could imagine. None of us but Lazarus knew entirely what sex was, of course, and after the crazy half-brain shit he’d told us the night before we weren’t sure he did, either. Ain’t nobody would believe that. We’d already pitched the tent in the woods back of Sinclair’s house, though, and as Darla led the way into the dark we were sure as hell ready to learn whatever it was she had to teach.
Darla wasn’t no ordinary cookie, either. Lazarus might have been full of shit, but we were pretty sure that old Darla knew her tricks. She’d put on some spectacular shorts that night, the kind that leave enough ass hanging out the bottom to make you dream about the top. And so help me God she was wearing these black crisscrossy stockings that ran up two miles of leg and into those shorts like some kind of French hubba hubba girl.
Benny-Carl didn’t give a shit that we were following his sister into the woods, slobbering all the way, but I already told you he didn’t have more than half a brain. We follow Darla into that tent like cows to the slaughter, and he comes right in with us.
“So,” she says, “what now?”
Well, hell, that’s what we have her there to show us. It occurs to me that Lazarus might actually know what he was talking about, and if he does now would be a good time to cut out. Sinclair picks his nose and pretends he didn’t, but the rest of us idiots just stand there.
Fortunately, Darla is a take-charge kind of girl.
“Take off your socks,” she says. “All of you.”
We do it. Like I said, we don’t know any better, and we don’t know why not to. Darla sits down the way Indians are supposed to do, you know, with those black, crisscrossy legs folded up beneath her. She puts her hands on her knees and presses down, getting them damn near to the ground. The inside of her thighs run up into those shorts like black roads to sin. None of us know exactly what meaning this new posture is supposed to convey, but all of us are pretty damn sure that it’s significant. We stand in front of her, holding our socks like idiots. I stuff mine in my back pocket.
“Put your hands in them,” she says.
I already told you we were idiots. I pull my socks back out and stick my hands in them like the others, nervous as hell because she keeps looking at me the whole time. Whatever happens next is going to happen to me first, I realize. Shit. Why doesn’t she pick on Lazarus, for Christ’s sake? He’s the one who’s supposed to know the score. He’d never said a damn thing about no Goddamn socks, though.
“Kneel before me, Sammy,” Darla says.
“Your mother’s ass,” I say back.
“We’re going to do things the way I like to do them,” she says. “Or we don’t do nothing at all.”
Lazarus shoves me from behind, and all I see when I look back up is George staring between Darla’s legs, all glassy-eyed like he can see something there the rest of us can’t. Darla unbends the suckers as if to prove him right, then sticks them straight out like a “V” in front of me. I’m on my knees between them, but damned if I know how I got there.
She reaches out, grabs my socked hand, and puts it on her thigh. High up, you know, like actually under the leg of her shorts. “Move it higher,” she says.
I do.
“Not that high,” she says.
I nearly yank it back out.
“Slower,” she says. “Now back in again. Not too far. Back out, now. Slow. Yes, like that. Just like that.”
For a moment I think I must look like a mo-ron, kneeling there stroking her thigh like that, but nobody’s looking at anything but the little moving lump of my hand under her shorts.
“You feel anything, Sammy?” she asks, whispering like. “Down there, I mean?” She’s looking straight at my crotch, and I can damn sure feel what she’s looking at.
“Unzip and pull it out,” she says.
“Your mother’s ass,” I say back.
“Pull it out, Sammy,” says Lazarus. He sounds like a goddamn drill sergeant, except that he’s kind of panting between the words. He couldn’t get certified as even half a mo-ron, and he’s telling me what to do. Any other time I would have chucked him one.
“Pull it out, Sammy,” says George.
Not a quorum, but enough. By now it’s getting crowded down there anyway. It’s a little tricky, but I pull it out. Darla just looks at it. Her eyes blink once, kind of slow, and she opens her mouth a little, but that’s it.
“Christ,” I say. “Now what?”
Darla doesn’t answer, but looks up at the others instead. “Now the rest of you,” she says. “And keep your socks on.”
A minute later all five of us are on our knees, between and around her legs, feeling up her shorts with our socks. Mo-ron city, I’m thinking, but we do what she says. Darla gives her orders quietly now, sure and in charge, and pretty soon she’s got all of us unzipped and sticking out.
“That’s enough,” she says.
We look at each other like she’s crazy, which I think she’s got to be, but she’s already trained us to obedience and she knows it. Every hand freezes where it is.
“Now I want all of you get behind the tent, back in the woods, and strip down. I don’t want you back in here until you’re butt-naked.”
“Your mother’s ass,” I say.
She pulls out this red paisley kerchief and ties it around her eyes. “It’s the way I like it,” she says. “When you come back, come in together. I can’t see you, but I can feel you, and I want all of you at the same time. Now hurry.”
Goddamn did we hurry. George tripped over me as we tumbled out of the tent and ran for the spot in the woods behind it. In less than two minutes we headed back, still erect, five naked mo-rons in the moonlight.
But Darla had skipped.
Like I said, that was Friday night. Monday I saw Darla at school, walking down the ninth grade wing. She didn’t recognize me, which was damn odd since about a dozen ninth grade girls I never knew before suddenly seemed to know me by sight. I could tell by the way they would look at me and sort of laugh, secret-like, between them.
You know, like girls do when they know you’re a mo-ron.
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R. A.
Shockley
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