Johnny America

 

The Sum­mer Julie Wrecked Her Pontiac

by

It was the sum­mer of ’82, I’m sure of it. I re­mem­ber be­cause that was the sum­mer that Ray grew a mus­tache. I think Gra­ham grew one, too. Come to think of it, we all had mus­tach­es. It was a time of mus­tach­es. Mus­tache time. I re­mem­ber eat­ing pep­per­oni slices at Fec­cini’s and feel­ing the grease tick­le my whiskers.

I al­so re­mem­ber that sum­mer, be­cause it was the sum­mer that I be­came a di­nosaur. I would hide in the sheds and garages of my neigh­bors, and jump out with a great big roar­when they opened the doors. For a mo­ment, things would be pret­ty tense. Then, they’d rec­og­nize me from my mus­tache and we’d both have a good laugh. My neigh­bors would for­get what­ev­er chores they had set off to be­gin and we’d all sit to­geth­er on the back porch drink­ing High Life and watch­ing the fire­flies fill the night with their shame­less flirtations.

It was on one such night that I met Er­ic. At first, I thought he looked de­li­cious, and that I would eat him. Then I no­ticed his hair­lip and felt mo­men­tar­i­ly sor­ry. I took him­to my ex­tra se­cret hid­ing place. We lay in the dark for what seemed like an hour, but was ac­tu­al­ly an hour and a half. We talked most­ly of pas­ta. He said his fa­vorite was tortelli­ni, which I said didn’t re­al­ly count as a pas­ta. Then he said I was drunk. Maybe I was.

Yes, it was shap­ing up to be a tru­ly amaz­ing sum­mer. Then Julie wrecked her Pon­ti­ac. Af­ter that, I didn’t much feel like stuff­ing my­self in­to dusty, dirt floor sheds. Not to men­tion the spi­ders. No, things were dif­fer­ent af­ter that. But we kept our mustaches.

Filed under Fiction on February 1st, 2010

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Holly wrote:

This is about 110 per cent sweet. (I re­al­ly like it.)

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