Free Kinflicks by Lisa Alther Page A

gynecologist performing a breast check. His hand trembled from the strain of holding up his wrist weight.
    By the time baseball season arrived, anything above the waist was fair ball, so to speak. The evenings were so abbreviated, what with Joe Bob’s having to be in bed by ten, alone, that we didn’t waste any time. We would drive directly to our parking spot, which by now had been appropriated by the rest of the Hullsport High football, basketball, and baseball teams and was littered with used condoms and empty beer cans. We would take up where we had left off the previous evening, which by this time involved some hasty and perfunctory kissing and squeezing and nibbling. Then Joe Bob would dutifully knead my breasts through my uniform jacket and padded bra, as though he were a housewife poking plums to determine their ripeness. Then he would efficiently unstrap his wrist weights and lay them side by side on his dashboard. Next, he would unbutton and remove my jacket, and, amid much stroking and sighing, manage adroitly to unhook my Never-Tell and remove it.
    There we would sit in Sparkplug, me undressed to my waist, but with my lap covered and my hands folded neatly and my back straight and my knees primly together, like a patient awaiting a pelvic exam. Joe Bob would suck away at my nipples while I tried to decide what to do with my hands to indicate my continuing involvement in the project. Sometimes I would run one hand over his lowered scrub brush head or caress his stove-in neck, while running the other hand up and down the muscular ridges of his back. Other times, I’d grab one of his thighs midway up and squeeze it, to transmit restrained passion without signaling any willingness to yield further favors. After all, we were only dating. It wasn’t as though we were steadies. I had my reputation to think of.
    One particular night during baseball season, Joe Bob had just hit a home run — in the last of the ninth with the bases filled and two men out, naturally — to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I had ascended to new heights in the realm of flag swinging, having successfully executed the nearly impossible feat of tossing the flag high into the air in end-over-end swirls and then catching it, without the flag’s becoming wrapped around its staff. No other Hullsport High flag swinger, to my knowledge, had ever performed this routine for public consumption.
    When we reached our parking spot, Joe Bob turned to me in the dark and said softly, “Ginny, will you wear my class ring?”
    Would I wear his ring? Would Elizabeth Taylor wear the Hope diamond? “Oh yes, Joe Bob, yes!”
    He handed it to me. It was huge — gilded shanks and setting, with a black onyx in the middle. Inside, etched in the shank, were his initials — J.B.S. I put the ring on my thumb, but there was still room for another finger or two. Joe Bob took out his Juicy Fruit and stuck it on the dashboard, and enfolded me in his bulging arms. Hullsport High tradition required that each new material commitment between a couple signal a new array of carnal privileges. We both knew, by the instinct that tells birds when to migrate and where, that the unexplored territories below the waist were now up for grabs. In the dim light of the quarter moon, I could see a tear squeezing out from under one of Joe Bob’s closed eyelids.
    â€œI’m so happy, Joe Bob,” I whispered.
    â€œDo whut?”
    â€œHappy,” I repeated loudly. “I’m happy.”
    â€œOh, yeah, me too.”
    That out of the way, he whipped off his button-down-collar Gant shirt. There they were — the furry deltoids of the body beautiful of Hullsport High. And they were mine now, to do with as I willed. He unstrapped his wrist weights and laid them on the dashboard alongside his Juicy Fruit. Then he unbuttoned the twelve gold embossed buttons of my jacket and helped me out of it, unhooked my bra, and tossed