WE ALL HAD A CRUSH
‘If he was chocolate, he’d eat hisself.’ That’s what Susie used to say, and she’d sneer when she said it and spit in the dirt like a boy, and we’d all nod and say, ‘Fuck, she’s right’.
The way Jamie was always tending his hair and he kept a metal comb in his back pocket and he drew it forth like he was pulling a gun on you, and he’d run that comb through his hair, even when the wind was blowing and there ain’t no sense in that. And he was always looking at hisself in the windows of shops or the shiny hubcaps of cars. And he had a way of standing that was real posed, as if he’d rehearsed it in front of a mirror at home.
‘Ain’t no use loving a boy like that, cos he’s your biggest competition and he never loses.’
But we did love him in spite of Susie’s warnings. All of us loved him and we took that love home with us and slept with it and held our pillows like we was holding Jamie and pillows don’t ever hold you back so it was something the same.
Even Susie, and she touched herself beneath her nightdress sometimes, making believe it was him, and I knows that cos I slept over one night and, when she was all breathless and moaning in the dark, I asked her if she was ok and she cried and she called Jamie a bastard and she explained what she’d been about. I had to promise first, not to tell no-one.
Pa said as how he’d come to a bad end, Jamie would. He said he was too pretty by half not to. He was right, too. There was boys and men who cussed in his shadow for the way girls looked at him. And Mrs Brewster, she cussed too, but that was on account of something else, something they’d done together in her backroom, Mrs Brewster and Jamie. And Mr Brewster had caught ‘em together and he put a bullet in the air above the bed and said as how the next’d be right in Jamie’s middle if ever he was about the place again.
I swear there was a swagger to Jamie’s step after that, not seeing the wrong that he done, just thinking he was more man than boy. Still we loved him and Pam got a picture of him sitting up against a car outside Marty’s bar and he had a cigarette hanging from his lip and not a hair out of place and he was wearing that shirt with the blue paisley pattern, and in that picture he looked so chocolatey I’d have eaten him.
He’s married now. Years have passed. Got two kids in school and a job shoveling sand. He’s thicker about the middle and he’s losing his hair. He don’t smile like he used to and that’s cos Jamie the man’s got fewer teeth than Jamie the boy, and that’s cos he’s always getting beat up when he’s a drink in him and the men of the town they feel a lot better now he ain’t so pretty.
I bought that picture off Pam for twenty bucks that I stole from Pa and me and Susie we sits some days and we passes that picture back and forth and we laugh remembering how it was once and she puts her hand down there and pretends like she’s close to coming and that makes us laugh all the more.
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→Thanks to my cyber writing friend Lindsay for letting me share this with you! Hope you dug it. For more, visit “Just a Writer’s Page.”-PMc←
Patricia Ann McNair 
(I couldn’t resist writing something in Jamie’s defence… cos there’s always two sides to a story…)
They expect it these days, don’t they. Girls do. They expect a guy to make an effort with how he looks. They want him to look pretty and to smell clean. Like the people they see in their magazines. That’s what they want. And you know what? They people in the magazine, well they ain’t fuckin real.
I don’t mean they is made up. They has names and they is real enough that way. But the pictures of ‘em, that’s what aint real. Not exactly what they look like. There’s people that take they pictures and then they make ‘em better, you know. They got special fuckin tools for alterin things and makin a person look perfect and that’s what we is all competin with.
You gotta almost be like a girl in the attention you give to yourself these days. You gotta have your hair cut neat and always be combin it and always lookin to see it’s set right. And you gotta watch what you eat so you ain’t so thick about the middle and so your cheeks are a little sunken. And you gotta work out some, so there’s definition when you takes off your shirt. A girl likes that.
I was helpin Mrs Brewster carry in groceries one day, carryin ‘em from the truck into her house, doin a good deed. She made some remarks, you know. Like she said I was real handsome and strong and how she liked that. And she said I smelled good enough she could eat me all up. She stroked my cheek soft and she kissed me on the lips, the sweet tip of her tongue pressin into my mouth. Then she stepped back to see how I was with that. She was pretty enough even though she was a lot older than any girl I’d been with before. She began unbuttonin her blouse and I could see her tits and she was watchin to see how I was, watchin intently.
Fuck, if in that moment I didn’t know what was right and what was wrong.
Mr Brewster didn’t exactly catch us at it. I was leavin his house and tuckin in my shirt and we passed on the front porch. I said as how I was just deliverin the groceries, you know, just deliverin. But he knew what was what and he said if ever I was at his place again he’d take a fuckin gun to me and his words was all spittle and punch. That’s not how they tell it down at the diner, of course. They alter things there, too, makin everything more excitin than it is. In the diner they says as how Mr Brewster caught me with his missus in their bed and he put a bullet above my head and I had to leave in a hurry with my dick like a tail ‘tween my legs.
Thing is, I’m just ordinary. Sure I make an effort. But you gotta, like I said. I work at Codie’s Grocery Store six days a week and with the money I earn I get me fancy shirts from a catalogue, and shoes with a glassy shine to ‘em I get too. And I smell like cucumber and green tea and lemons. And girls like that and they think I’m somethin. But really I’m just ordinary. And that thing with Mrs Brewster, well that ain’t really what I’m like. I was shit scared the whole time and I don’t mind admittin now that I’m real sorry for what I did to Mr Brewster, but there ain’t no way to say that and so I walk about with everyone thinkin they knows who I am.