The Book of Joe

windows and George Michael singing “Careless Whisper” on the car stereo. To this day, the opening bars of the sax solo instantly take me back to that night. Say what you will about car sex, but thirty million horny teenagers can’t be wrong. Wait, can you lift this leg a second? Put your arm over here. Is that okay? Wait, that’s not it.
    Move it up a little. Oops, sorry. Wait, now it’s good. There was a good deal of awkward fumbling before we managed to achieve penetration, and just as I began getting into the rhythm, Lucy appeared unbidden, stretched out magnificently across my consciousness in her bikini, and I went off inside Carly like a volcano.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, blushing. “That couldn’t have been too much fun for you.”
    Carly waved away my embarrassed apologies with a happy grin and kissed me warmly. “We did it,” she said triumphantly.
    “Did it hurt?” I asked.
    “Not as much as they say,” she said. “I always suspected that was just propaganda to keep us virgins longer.”
    I laughed and told her I loved her. She said it back, and before long we were at it again. This time I was able to last, bringing her to a loud, unrestrained orgasm.
    “Mm,” she said afterward, purring into my chest. “Much, much better.”
    “We aim to please,” I said, feeling like a major stud even as I felt myself shriveling up like a prune inside her.
    “You know,” Carly said, curling up in my arms, “we’re going to have to do this all the time now.”

    Kids starting in with sex are like Columbus landing on the shores of the New World; even though there are millions of natives running around in full view, they still think they discovered the damn thing. We did it everywhere: in my father’s car, her parents’ Jacuzzi, my bed while my father was still at work, and once in a ladies’ room stall at the Megaplex, which I don’t necessarily recommend. There was no stopping us.
    For a while, everything was either foreplay or the afterglow, and life was beautiful. Then Wayne and Sammy made up, and everything went to shit.
    Apparently, Carly and I did not have the market cornered on unbridled teen sex. Unbeknownst to us, Sammy and Wayne were heavily engaged in their own sexual coming of age, albeit a necessarily secretive one. They hadn’t even told me they were speaking again. I found out like everyone else did, when Wayne’s unsuspecting born-again mother stepped into his bedroom one night and interrupted him and Sammy in the steaming throes of naked passion. I never got the details on the ugly scene that followed, but it ended with Wayne’s being kicked out of his house. He crashed at Sammy’s for a few days, but when Mrs. Hargrove learned that he was living with Sammy, she stormed the Habers’ house, demanding that her son leave with her at once and immediately accompany her to see her priest. Wayne refused to see his mother, and Lucy was ultimately forced to slam and bolt the door when Mrs. Hargrove’s rage threatened to turn violent.
    Elaine Hargrove stood outside in the bitter cold of that winter night for the better part of an hour, wailing insanely for her son and cursing Lucy and Sammy at full volume, until one of the neighbors finally called Sheriff Muser. He arrived ten minutes later and, after some heated negotiations, finally managed to coax the hysterical woman into the back of his car. He then knocked on Lucy’s door and insisted on speaking to Wayne, who verified that contrary to his mother’s claims, he was not being held there against his will. Muser drove Wayne’s mother home, undoubtedly getting an earful from the distraught woman the whole way back, and recommended that Mr. Hargrove call the family doctor for a sedative. That evening the good sheriff advised his son, Mouse, that he didn’t want him showering after games and practices with a homosexual. Mouse probably had the phone in his hand before his father had left the room, and by morning every kid in Bush Falls High knew about Sammy and Wayne.
    When Carly called that night to tell me she’d heard the news from one of her girlfriends, I was stunned - and I already knew they were gay, which just goes to show how adept I’d become at the whole denial thing. My dad was still at work with the car, so I took my bike and pedaled frantically up the hill to Sammy’s house, a sense of dread beating steadily in my intestines like the lowest keys on a grand piano. Sammy and Wayne were camped out in the den,