Spring Break
Jonathan Pearce


Chapter One

As a young single guy, a second-semester college freshman with a lot of loose hormones floating in my bloodstream, I, Joseph Oliver Kuhl, believe the one thing my home town of Balona has not got enough of is sex. I happened to mention this opinion to my Criminal Justice colleague Sal Shaw. Sal is a Big Baloney grad like me. He was our class valedictorian and winner of the Valley Crown in heavyweight wrestling back then. My sister Ginger describes, "He's just so beautiful!" she always gasps. Sal has pecs and abs that you can see buffing out bulges in his polo shirt. He is a lot taller than me and has brown eyes and wavy brown hair

Since it's stopped raining for a while, me and Sal are sitting in the quad at CCCC on the wet plastic chairs at the wet plastic tables, getting the seats of our Levi's damp while having coffee during the break between Criminal Justice and English 1B. When I mention out loud that I believe the one thing Balona's not got enough of is sex, Sal's eyes get big behind his round gold-frame glasses. He puts his foam cup down on the table and looks at it for a minute before replying.

"Do you mean real sex or virtual sex?"

"Real sex, of course. We already got all kinds of virtual sex in Balona, like on TV and the Internet and books and magazines." In mentioning this opinion, I am really trying to interrogate Sal about revealing his relationship with my dreamgirl, the beautiful Millie Wong, our fellow student and homegirl who is not yet sitting at our table this morning, and is instead only now getting to the head of the coffee line.

"Hm." Sal messes with the hood-string on his slick black parka, pushes the hood to the back of his neck, sloshes the coffee around in his cup. "I'm not all that interested in doing real sex for now." He takes a swallow of his drink. "I got too much to think about right now, and doing real sex would just get in the way."

I am relieved but don't show that feeling on my face, a talent I am developing: not showing feeling.

"You look relieved, Joe. You must feel the same?" He is only suspecting how I feel about our girl friend.

"Well, I was just thinking about how most Balona guys are always talking about sex, present company excepted, and I wondered if any of them ever did anything but talk."

"That's what Balona guys do for sex: talk about it. That and the unmentionable." He is referring to what my dad's old Boy Scout Manual tells you not to do or you will go insane from doing it.

Frederick Douglass Jacobs joins us, plops his books down on the table, sighs as he sits. "Joe, you are talking about sex again." Frederick Douglass is not quite as tall, but in every other way he looks a lot like Michael Jordan, the famous breakfast cereal and shoe celebrity, with buffed pecs and abs but with short black hair.

"We're just talking about talking about it," I go, trying to explain the problem while rubbing under my polo shirt at my own abs, trying to find them.

"I don't talk about sex," goes Frederick Douglass.

"You're a Delta City guy now, not a Balona guy any more. That probably explains it. And that's why you wear Gap's and not Levi's. And maybe it means you do sex instead of talk about it." I am hinting here that maybe Frederick Douglass will expand on the topic.

Frederick Douglass lifts one side of his lip and sort of snorts when he hears Balona guys talking about Talking About Sex. He volunteers his opinion, even though nobody actually asked for it. "I choose to remain chaste, since I see too much misery connected with sex."

Millie walks up to our table with two books under one arm, and a foam cup in each hand. For a change she's not wearing a dress. She's wearing the usual Balona young female's ensemble: faded blue Levi's, tennies, and a gray sweatshirt. Today she's also wearing a yellow rain jacket. She tosses her head, throwing her thick black braid with the yellow-ribbon bow behind her. Millie sits and is soon joined by Patella Sackworth, carrying my books. Millie shoves one cup in front of where maybe Patella will sit if she can ever get my expensive criminal justice books and her own books down to the wet concrete gracefully, without dropping them and breaking them up in the process.

"What misery connected with sex?" goes Millie, stirring stuff into her coffee. Even Patella looks interested, which I mention since Patella doesn't often seem interested in anything.

Frederick Douglass looks down disgusted at his unopened Diet Doctor Pepper can. He goes,

"Well, just check out all the single moms hanging around the campus, dragging into class tired and smelling like baby-puke, annoyed all the time, trying to get a certificate or a diploma or some skill at something, while their little kid's locked in a beat-up old car out in the parking lot, or maybe being looked after by a grandma, and no dad in sight. What kind of future for any of 'em?"

"Even the married ones are having trouble making ends meet," goes Sal, raising his clefted chin at a table where a bunch of hard-looking chicks with tattoos are smoking cigars and arguing.

"Anyway, everybody knows that all us fellows of African heritage are built for vigorous sex. Everybody knows that." Frederick Douglass smacks the abs under his gray sweatshirt with the palm of his hand, then pops open his beverage and takes a swig. "But as for this particular African, I aim to remain a virgin till I marry." He raises his eyebrows at Sal, and Sal raises his coffee cup in salute.