"DOIN THE VIRGINITY RAG"

Summer didn’t live there anymore. During the night Fall swooped down, like a voracious bird of prey, sending summer fleeing back to its special place, to lick its wounds and plot its return. Everything had changed. The morning sky was painted in hues of black and grey, the air tinged with a sharper, cleaner smell as if the suffocating humidity of summertime had been sucked out of it. A chill, light rain was falling and muffled clashes of thunder could be heard in the distance. A palpable foreboding appeared under the inky blackness of the clouds, a sense that the day was doomed, that nothing good would come of it.

Dickie Spears paid scant attention. This was destined to be the most important day of his life. He would make sure of it. He would throw caution to the winds, he would leave no stone unturned - and if it became necessary - he was fully prepared to fly in the face of all that was right and good.

Dickie sat ramrod straight at his desk in Theology 101 that fateful morning his hands folded in front of him as if in prayer. A mad evil smile slowly formed on his lips, like a sunbeam pushing its way through the mist, the hypnotic voice of Brother Claver working its magic in the background, expounding on his theory that Jesus was indeed gay. Dickie, giddy with anticipation, swooned with the realization that the sainted priests and brothers had crossed over into enemy territory. It was they who would take the reins, it was they who would point the way. It was they who would become complicit, his allies, his co-conspirators, his partners in crime, along with fellow students from years past whose “high degree of animalism” had resulted in their banishment by judicial order from nearly every institution of higher learning within the jurisdiction of the court.

The powers that be, coming to the belated conclusion that dumping increasingly larger quantities of salt peter into the food served in the student cafeteria had done nothing to calm the raging waters of the great Testosterone Sea that surged through the all-male campus periodically overflowing its banks to disastrous moral and legal effect and impelled in large measure by desperation rather than divine intervention, suddenly and with no prior warning declared a nearby all-female Catholic college an official “sister school” dispatching to each of the young ladies a tastefully printed invitation requesting their presence at the premier Mixer of the academic year, each one embossed with a number colored fire engine red which corresponded to a number inflicted upon each and every one of their newly adopted brothers. Rosaries clutched tightly in trembling, sweaty hands they prayed that they had not inadvertently poked the beast in the eye with a stick.
Dickie chose not to attend dinner in the communal dining hall that evening, utilizing the time to make himself desirable, an endeavor even he was forced to admit would be no mean feat. He primped, he preened, he rubbed, he scrubbed and he scraped.The whole time a picture forming in his mind like the image of a photograph being born in a silvery tray of chemical wash, an image so ephemeral that it hung there just beyond the reach of his consciousness. A glimpse of the evil she-devil, the wanton seductress drenched in the smell of illicit sex outside of marriage who would lift the heavy burden of celibacy from his young shoulders as if it was just so much gossamer. The Jezebel without a face, just a number, assigned to him by the luck of the draw.

The arrival of their siblings was heralded by the mating calls of more than one hundred young men hanging from every available window of the ten story residential dormitory building whistling, catcalling and launching, at full volume, sexually explicit epithets so blatant they would have brought a blush to the cheeks of the Marquis de Sade. And still they came, waving, smiling, giggling, innocent lambs to the slaughter.
Dickie reached into his pocket, delicately removing the priceless white card with the number 149 prominently displayed on its face. He stared at it lovingly, this his ticket to ride, lightly pressing it to his lips coveting it as if it revealed the exact location of the Ark of the Covenant. As he made his way to the door he paused momentarily before the full length mirror stuck to a wall. And there he stood, resplendent in a cream colored trouser pressed and creased to within an inch of its life coupled with a sky blue button-down shirt modestly cinched at the neck and sporting a pair of tasteful gold plated cuff-links at the wrist. Completing the ensemble burgundy penny loafers spit shined to a blinding sheen. Never one to over accessorize, Dickie was compelled by circumstances beyond his control to don his gold framed spectacles due to the machinations of his roommate. Phil, who had not drawn a sober breath since arriving two weeks earlier to begin his university career and having laid waste to his own personal stash of strictly banned alcoholic beverages helped himself to every last drop of Dickie’s mouthwash and contact lens solution managing to rise Lazarus like two days later from a self-induced stupor with all of his major organs intact and functioning normally.

Dickie left the dormitory and made his way to the Recreation Hall oblivious to the chill and the damp, full of himself, tingling with the heady machismo that placed him firmly at the top of the sexual food chain. He arrived, pushed through the heavy doors and stepped onto a soundstage populated by the denizens of a fantastical world created by an ersatz Fellini. His personal Cinecitta, images being flung at his head like some demented carnival game, the place spinning out of control, all manner of grotesque creatures surrounding him screaming, howling, gyrating, doing the carnal jig to a Salsa beat, the room revolving faster and faster, all of that cocksureness he had felt breaking away piece by piece flying off into the void - just so many chunks of Hitchcock’s deadly carousel.
Dickie was prevented from turning on his heels and fleeing in a panic from the place by an insistent poking at the small of his back and the sound of a husky yet feminine voice pushing through a crack in the incessant din whispering “Excuse me. Are you number 149?” His blood ran cold, his heart pounded in his ears like a jungle drum, his body taken hold of by some otherworldly force stretched to its full height and turned one hundred and eighty degrees to face the one who had come in search of him. And there she stood, Josie, Dickie’s number 149.

Josie’s body with more ups, downs and loop-de-loops than an amusement park roller coaster wrestled voluptuousness into submission giving new meaning to it, black hair plastered to her head resembling something snatched from the scalp of Sally Bowles, huge hazel eyes decorated in shades of green and blue by the ghost of a crazed Salvador Dali and lips slathered with a gray -black concoction shimmering, pouting, making promises they could not possibly keep. She was clad in shiny black high heeled leather boots which snaked their way up her shapely calves arriving at their final destination just below the knee, a black mini-skirt which ended its journey well shy of any decent location and a long sleeved black pullover the fibers of which could be heard, if one listened closely enough, moaning with the strain of holding her ample breasts in place. Dickie’s initial reaction was a strange mixture of morbid curiosity, holy terror and a smoldering desire to see her naked.

Dickie and Josie did the dance of the strangers at first, locked inside themselves unwilling or unable to show their true colors. As the evening wore on, however, they were able to tear down the wall that separated them and come together like the two halves of a long divided country. They laughed, they sang, they danced, they made periodic trips to the alleyway at the rear of the building to grease the wheels with copious amounts of Tequila which they sucked from a large bottle of the stuff that Josie carried in her oversized purse. This being Dickie’s first ever truck with the demon rum he soon lost the ability to blink, his mouth contorting itself into a half-smile-half-frown - the mask of a fool. Dickie had never felt so free, so unburdened of the norms, so at one with nature and every last one of his fellow human beings, so ready to step up to the plate, an eternity spent roasting like a side of beef in the flames of hell be damned.

At almost the same moment the festivities reached their dizzying heights and began their bumpy yet inevitable backward slide into oblivion. Josie, with tremulous voice asked Dickie to accompany her on a tour of the campus, showing particular interest in the recently constructed chapel which had caused a bit of architectural buzz in the area due to its circular design and unique stadium-style seating. Dickie, in a generous attempt to give her one final opportunity to avoid the inevitable, reminded her that the hour was late, the weather inclement, the night pitched in darkness and the chapel surely locked. Josie, leaving little room for the Holy Ghost, stepped closer to Dickie eyebrows fluttering like crazed butterflies and began to toy with the buttons of his shirt and she gushed, “Oh that’s ok. I’m sure we can find something else to occupy our time.” And there he stood, the self same man-child batting last in the lineup, with little hope of reaching first base - picturing himself sliding safely into home plate.

They arrived at the chapel doors after a harrowing journey through a heavy downpour and gusts of a chill northerly wind, lightning flashes illuminating their way. As Dickie had forecast the chapel was locked down tighter than a medieval maiden’s chastity belt. Josie, taking advantage of a momentary crack in Dickie's macho façade, threw her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest breathing in the scent of him with an audible, sensuous sigh.

Showing no signs of releasing her death grip Dickie and Josie began their return journey stumbling along the way like a set of madcap conjoined twins. At the halfway point of their trek Josie suddenly took control and maneuvered them off the asphalt roadway onto a dirt path that ran alongside it. Josie, in a brilliantly choreographed series of moves, extended her left leg crooking it behind Dickie’s right knee and raised her arms heavenward as if surrendering to an invisible police Swat Team. Defying every law of gravity she bent backward at the waist fixing Dickie with a hypnotic stare that rendered him almost comatose and in one fluid movement so graceful the Bolshoi had never witnessed the likes of it she jerked her leg back sharply simultaneously thrusting her tightly balled fists forward meeting his chest causing him to fly upward and backward hanging there for a hilarious Looney Tune moment before crashing down flat on his back into the muck with a loud THWACK. Dickie stepped cautiously into the long, dark tunnel walking toward the light his mind a wrecked, useless thing, his body wracked by a severe case of the holy heebeejeebees, summoning from some hidden place within himself the courage to take one last desperate peek through the slits that used to be his big brown eyes and saw Josie floating in the air above him like an errant dirigible. He let out a bloodcurdling horror movie scream as she plunged downward arms flailing seeming to grow larger with every inch of her descent landing on top of him with all the force of the Hindenburg colliding with New Jersey covering his mouth with hers performing the prescribed procedure for resuscitating drowning victims while her nimble fingers expertly explored parts of his body even he was not all that familiar with.

Dickie felt trapped, hemmed in, a Vestal Virgin overpowered by a marauding Hun, his only way out, surrender, his virtue in return for his freedom. An uncommon ennui overcame him, he gave up the struggle, he settled his posterior comfortably into the primordial ooze bubbling beneath him and not wishing to miss even one second of his inevitable deflowering flung his eyes open as wide as humanly possible and found himself staring into the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God.

And there she stood, all twelve glorious feet of her, placed there by the founding priests and brothers as a daily reminder to all who passed of what their sinful, lustful ways had wrought, clothed in sculpted robes of white and celestial blue, arms outstretched in a gesture of eternal supplication, head bowed, lips frozen in a frown so deep as to rival the profundity of any ocean, a stream of alabaster tears flowing down her beautiful alabaster cheeks.

Life on earth as Dickie knew it came to a screeching halt at that moment and the sweet, sweet hum of one thousand heavenly hosts filled his ears with sacred sounds, his mind skipped along crystal clear as a Colorado mountain stream, every sinew of his body magically imbued with the physical strength of a comic book superhero enabling him to roll Jose over onto her back, jump to his feet in one stunningly athletic leap, reach down to grasp her hand and pull her to her feet. Still clutching her hand, Dickie led Josie back to the original scene of the crime not one word passing between them.

They arrived at the party a modern day Frick and Frack, perp-walking their way to the dance floor, an entrance worthy of Bonnie and Clyde. The music still blasting, all conversation ceased and feeling the heat from dozens of eyes boring into them they tripped the light fantastic through the last numbers of the evening interrupted by several more trips to the alley where Dickie was able to claw his way back to that blessed drunken state from which the Virgin had plucked him. But he knew that they knew, he knew that the jig was up and he blanched with the realization that it would require more than one lifetime to live down the shame, doomed to spend his allotted time in Purgatory right there on God’s green earth.

The band played the final dirge of the evening Dickie and Josie barely swaying to the music, he clinging to her like a barnacle stuck to her hull. The music stopped and some unknown someone in some unknown place flicked a switch bathing the room in the light of one hundred suns. Dickie, blindsided and unable to speak grabbed Josie’s hand in a vice-like grip and squeezed, one last call for help. There was still time, she could still save him.

Josie ignored it. Dragging him behind her like a stubborn cocker spaniel on a leash she led him to the place where she would board that huge mechanical chariot that would wisk her away. They stood among the multitude facing each other hands clasped Dickie looking down Josie looking up he trying to find the words to explain, but none came. Josie reached around him and placed one hand lightly on Dickie’s left buttock. With the other she reached up grabbing the collar of his shirt, twisted it like a garrote and pulled it down until they faced off nose to nose. Leaning forward she brushed his cheek with a tentative, tender kiss, skipped several beats, grabbed herself a handful of Dickie’s derriere and squeezed it like a lemon destined for a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade her other hand giving his shirt collar one more twist cutting off most of the oxygen supply racing toward his brain. She tugged at it one last time her magnificent lips coming into contact with his left ear and in a voice eerily reminiscent of Don Corleone she murmured, “Ok sweet cheeks tonight was strike number one, Just remember three strikes your out” and pushing him roughly away she joined the gaggle of girls boarding the busses. Thrown off balance Dickie staggered backward several feet watching her disappear into the mob he looking every inch the sole survivor of a horrible airline disaster being pulled from the wreckage.

And there he stood soaked to the skin, covered in mud, virtue intact, as pure as the driven snow, an unwilling and reluctant paean to celibacy, an example to be followed, a beacon of light beckoning the lost souls stained with the sin of lust to repent and reap their heavenly reward, a Five Star General in the army of the chaste.

Dickie, shoulders slumped, head bowed, legs weighing as much as tree stumps, methodically dragged one in front of the other painstakingly propelling himself back to his humble dormitory room where the air stank of solitude to contemplate his future, a life devoid of meaning, a life devoid of minty fresh breath, praying a silent and secret prayer for a quick and painless death hoping against all hope that passerby would be unable to distinguish the teardrops melting into the raindrops cascading down his face.