FRANKIE FALCO

Her eyes rise to my face and I look at her and she looks at me.

You're made for love and you know it. You don't fool me with that so-called bikini which covers twice as much as the one-piece of the blonde girl who gave me the fuck-me look an hour ago. What a waste to be at Jones Beach and saddled with Trish. All this fucking opportunity, opportunity for fucking and its all going to waste.

The French chick has this witch-bitch thing going. Cast a spell on me. With her is the ugliest four year old girl I ever did see , face like a doorknob. I want to say to her, lose the chow dog and come with me. We'll go back in the changing room over there and I'll lock the stall door. We'll have to do it standing up, but so what? I'll give you a ride on my love rocket.

Her sweet suntan lotion and my dark oil mixing on our skin as I pump into her. You looked at my crotch, lady. That means you want it. If this fucking world worked the way it should, we'd all do what we wanted all the time. Life is short and my dick is long, like the old man always says. I should be able to say, come, and she would come, because she wants to. Go in the stall, ten minutes of me pumping and her going whoo-hee, whoo-hee, and I could shower off and go back to Trish. Instead, with a class piece of ass like her, you probably gotta do flowers, candy, and talk to them. When all you want is that they serve up the goods and they want to anyway. Because somebody told them, don't serve it up unless you get dinner in a nice place first and he tells you you have beautiful eyes.

She's looking and I'm looking and I think, you want me because I got the best body on the beach. All those hours of free weights and building up these abs and pecs and lying in the sun every Saturday and Sunday with the oil on. You probably never met so much man. Just come with me and I'll show you.

Something's happening in the air between us. Its like one of those staring contests you get into with the other kids. You lose if you laugh first. When its between a man and a woman, the woman always loses. Surrenders, more like. In a moment, she's going to give me a little witchy French smile, or she'll say something, and then I'll know the bitch is mine. Shuck her out of that bikini in two shakes and put it in her.

Instead she gets a grip on herself and her face goes blank, like a robot. The thousand yard stare, like I'm made of glass and she's looking right through me. Lady, I saw you peeking at the goods, what you gotta go and do that for? Maybe if she didn't have the little rat with her. She turns back to Joe Bicomini, the hot dog guy, and orders a dog for the rat. I stand there a moment waiting for her to look again but the stiff way she is holding her shoulders tells me she won't.

So there's no reason now not to get right up in her face. If she likes me she'll look again, and if she's saying fuck you, its a way of saying fuck you right back. I go stand next to her, too close, at the counter and make like I'm studying the menu. So close she can smell me. Meanwhile I'm whiffing her: suntan lotion, woman sweat, and some expensive perfume mixed up together.

She knows I'm there because she makes a little explosive French sound with her lips, "plouf" and steps away. She gets her two hot dogs and goes off with the pug tagging at her feet. I wait for her to look back but she won't give me the satisfaction.

Fuck her if she can't take a joke.

Nothing to do now but go back to Trish. I don't even like to be on the beach with her. Everybody is starting to call her my "fiancee", though we never even got engaged.

Trish is the kind of girl you can brag about nailing, but not marrying. She's like a second-rate girl, pretty enough that you can tell everyone you fucked her and they'll smile because they know you have a lot of women. She's the kind of girl people say they wouldn't kick out of bed. She has nice skin and hair and beautiful tits. Her face is not exactly ugly but its kind of a dog-face, and she's no brain surgeon either. She has this way of repeating what you just said as a question, with a dopy look of astonishment, that makes me want to drop her off a bridge and put her out of her misery. And her hips are too wide, so that when we have to go to the beach she always wears those bathing suits with the frills around the middle, like the old biddies wear. I hate to be seen with her at the beach. That's why I'm always running off somewhere, going to the concession or looking at the pool for a buddy or diving in the ocean to get away from her.

For a pretty slick guy I got myself in a hell of a mess. Its not like I couldn't get laid. There were always new chicks around, and if you were dry on a Saturday night there was always Susan Sparrow, who you could find nodding out in one park or another, and who would let you fuck her for a bottle of Southern Comfort or a handful of reds. There wasn't even any reason why I would hang around with Trish. If she was a stranger I might have picked her up in a diner, banged her once, and that's it. But the girl next door?

It happened because I wasn't really paying attention. We grew up together, so Trish was like a sister or something. I never really thought about her in that way. Then I don't see her for a year or two, and she shows up again with this amazing pair. Her tits were the talk of the town. She starts giving me these looks; I run into her at parties at several of the guy's houses. We're alone talking in somebody's hallway at two in the morning and Trish says, You know I always liked you, Frankie. She rubs those tits on me and gives me a little kiss. That would have been the moment for the alarms to go off: ayuga, ayuga, dive, dive, dive! So what do I do instead? Its Saturday night, I haven't gotten laid in two or three weeks---couldn't even get Susan the night before, too much of a line--and I go into automatic, start with my moves. Bang her, go home feeling good, and am totally unprepared when she's hanging around on the street, waiting for me to come out the next day. And why not? The chick only lives three houses down. Its like, what's the difference between Trish and a brick? Answer: when you lay a brick, it doesn't follow you around for a week.

So I still could have said no, but idiot than I am, I have to bang her again. I have nothing better to do. Two weeks turns into three weeks, turns into a month and a half, we're going to the beach together every Saturday, I'm looking for a way out, and Trish tells me she's knocked up!

I know about ways these things can be taken care of, but before I can get the words out of my mouth, she told her dad and he talked to my old man and I'm told by him I'm about to be the groom in a shotgun wedding! I never would of believed it could happen to me.

The old man says, Lorry Devenell sells me my paper goods. You don't wanna marry his daughter, you shouldn't a fucked her.

I know I should of kept my dick in my pocket, I say, but isn't there a way out of this? She's not even pretty.

He says, you shoulda thought of that before.

So I think about what Father Anthony always says, what I can remember of it because I'm not much of a churchgoer: Dad, marriage is a sacrament. A man and a woman for eternity. I'm only twenty-five and I ain't ready for that. Not to spend the rest of my life with one woman.

And he says: Jesus, you're stupider than I thought. Who ever said anything about not having other women? You're just going to marry this one is all.