Besides philosophy, John and Jeffrey talked about sex.
And girls. Sex, girls, the same thing.
John and Jeffrey decided one day to play golf. The miniature kind. The kind with astroturf so worn out you could see the cement underneath. The kind whose obstacles were more picturesque than challenging: the water bridge, the bricks arranged like a five-point star. The kind any idiot could get a hole-in-one just by hitting the ball straight.
John and Jeffrey liked to play miniature golf. They played regularly at Vinnie's Fantasy Golf when there was nothing better to do. John and Jeffrey also had conversations, although John usually did most of the the talking.
"What's the score?" John asked.
Jeffrey looked at the scorecard. "As of the ninth hole," he said, "you have 21. I have 26."
John knew he was winning. He was always winning. But he kept having to remind himself that the highest score was the lowest score, that the one with the fewest points was the winner.
"At utterly mindless game," John muttered to himself. Jeffrey ignored him, concentrating on the next hole. "You get the ball in the hole. Then what?" He put the ball down and studied the path to the next hole. "Where's the challenge? Look. The hole's straight ahead. No obstacles, no slopes, no hidden traps. I should complain. We should have gone to the other course. You should see it. It has a castle, a moat, even artificial alligators. You gotta see it. Their jaws open and shut every few seconds. It's wild. My turn? Good, let the professional demonstrate. There, you see? A hole-in-one. I wasn't even concentrating. Maybe I should close my eyes for the rest of the game. What's the score?"
John and Jeffrey liked to talk philosophy. At high school age, philosophy meant using words you knew the other person wouldn't know. Besides philosophy, John and Jeffrey talked about sex. And girls. Sex, girls, the same thing.
John and Jeffrey had never seen or touched a real grown-up female tit. For John, this was one of life's tragedies.
Nights at Vinnie's Fantasy Golf were less than wild. The mosquitoes feasted on the blood of unprotected arms and legs. Speakers blasted Top 40 songs into the evening. Artificial lights gave the place an otherworldly glow. The bathrooms smelled like Portocans and constant mopping. The Coke machine had a "No Refunds" sign and a graffiti note in pencil. It said, "This machine is a monster. It eats money!"
But the place had girls. Gobs of them, all ages, everywhere. At holes ahead of them, behind them, keeping scores with miniature pencils (everything was miniature here). Girls on dates. Girls from the public high school, a place where girls and guys actually sat next to one another in class, brushing elbows while they twiddled their secret locker combinations.
John and Jeffrey liked the word fuck. They added it dutifully to conversations. They said it as nonchalantly as the words "nonconformist," "raison d'etre" or "Nietzsche."
"This is so pathetic," John said, stepping to the next hole. "It's Saturday evening, and what are we doing? Playing miniature golf. What losers! Why are we here? The world awaits with sexual opportunities. Look at the guys with the babes at the seventh hole. It's all so unfair. For now we have an excuse for inexperience. For now we can blame the all-boys high school for every fucking thing wrong with us. But who's going to buy that excuse in college? You know what they say in Penthouse, the stories about the sorority fuck fests, the strip poker parties, the nymphos who'll fuck anybody, even nerds, like us. Jeffrey, I ask you, what can we do to prepare ourselves? So what if our SAT scores are astronomical! So what if our high school required four years of science instead of three! So what if we took enough Latin to translate our fucking diploma! What difference will it make when a hot juicy pussy is waiting on your dorm bed, and you haven't the foggiest idea what to do?
"This city is loaded with thousands of fuckable girls. Open your eyes! They are everywhere you look, driving the expensive cars, swimming at the pool, sitting ahead of you at the movies, so close you can see the smooth thighs and smell the gum they chew out of sexual nervousness. So many fuckable girls, so many single fuckable girls with not a boyfriend in sight, waiting to be asked out to dinner, waiting to be brought to a miniature golf course, waiting for your hands to spread their legs in the back seat of your car. One Czech guy said 95% of girls would strip if you asked them nicely. Ninety-five percent! And he was talking about the repressed Czech girls; the ones here must be fucking nymphomaniacs! This city is a breeding ground for lovely fuckable girls. Out of two million people in Houston, a million are female; about three hundred thousand are of fuckable age. At least! So there's three hundred thousand fuckable females out there, and at least a third of these fuckable females are girls we wouldn't mind fucking. That's a total of one hundred thousand fuckable girls, take your pick. And out of those one hundred thousand, you could bet at least thirty thousand would love to fuck us. Thirty thousand fuckable fuckworthy girls who would love to fuck us! That's just a conservative estimate! It could be forty thousand, fifty thousand, who knows! Out of that thirty thousand fuckable beautiful women who'd want to fuck us, at least five thousand would even be willing to pay cold hard cash for the chance. Can you believe that? Five thousand eager naked women. We're talking about a whole fucking subdivision of nymphomaniacs, complete with homeowner's associations and gardening clubs! If this city is a thousand square miles, then five gorgeous fuckable women who would pay us to fuck them are less than a mile away. Five gorgeous women! And what are we doing? Playing miniature golf! Shouldn't we be knocking on doors, stopping people at the malls, sending out mass mailings?"
John stopped talking. "What hole are we on?" he asked.
"Eighteenth," Jeffrey said and put his ball down. The final hole resembled a small house. Players had to hit the ball up a steep ramp to reach the green on the roof. The hole was where the chimney should be. The hole was important and challenging. Anyone playing it in one shot won a free game. Unless that happened (and it rarely did), the ball disappeared down the hole for good. The hole was actually a small tunnel that returned balls to the supply bin. It was the management's way of keeping people from playing the same ball forever.
Jeffrey hit the ball too hard. It went quickly up the ramp, rebounding against the far wall and settling behind a long wooden block. John took heed from Jeffrey's example and gently tapped the ball up the ramp. The ball went halfway up, then down again, rolling back to his feet. No matter how many times he hit it, the ball just kept rolling back.
Written July, 1990.
