Slow Dancing with Boys at Washington Junior High

Rock Island, September 1972

When I was in 6th and 7th grades (models are ovr 18), I was told incessantly about my upcoming "discovery of girls."  No matter that I thought "girls are yucky!" now.  One day soon, very soon, I would awaken changed, my body and my mind aching to kiss, hold, hug, and have sex with girls.

My parents, my teachers, Brother Reno, Grandma Davis, my cousin Joe -- they all insisted that it would happen, it was a fact of life, universal human experience, as inevitable as sunrise. As the days and months of 6th and 7th grade passed, they became more insistent, constantly interrogating me: "Do you like girls yet?  What about now?  Now?  Now?"

Meanwhile, the school kept trying to jump-start my "discovery."

One Friday afternoon shortly the beginning of 7th grade at Washington Junior High, we were all herded into a gymnasium decorated with red and gold streamers, the boys and girls on separate sides. A table on the north side had rows of paper cups full of beet-red punch and piles of sugar cookies that looked like they had been sitting around since Christmas.

“What’s going on?” I asked my friends (my boyfriend Bill wasn't there; he had football practice). They didn’t know, so I approached a hulking Ninth Grader.

"It’s the canteen,” he grunted.  "It's to teach all you Spazzes how to dance with girls."
"I'm not dancing with any girls!"

He laughed, a short derisive laugh.  “That’s what you think, Gomer! Nobody gets out of here alive unless you ask a little cutie pie if you can drag her, and she says ‘Oh, yes, please do!’”  The last came in a squealing falsetto.

"My church doesn't allow dancing.  It's a sin in the eyes of God.  I can get an excuse from the Preacher."

Soon a teacher walked onto the stage and announced that it was “time to dance.” He put a single on the record player: "Song Sung Blue," by Neil Diamond.  A few boys crossed the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards and dragged girls onto the dance floor. Others followed, until eventually most Ninth Graders and quite a few younger boys made the trek.

My friends and I stood our ground.  No one tried to force us, though once a teacher clomped over and announced with a grin that we couldn't hold out forever – in a matter of days or weeks, or months at the most, our ache of desire would overpower our shyness, and we would cross the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards, and approach the Girl of our Dreams, and become men.

That's never going to happen!  I thought savagely.

I noticed a few boys, maybe a dozen, on the east side of the gym, mixed in with the girls, chatting casually.

“Why don’t they have to drag girls?” I wondered aloud. “Are they already men?”

“Man, you got fruit-loops for brains?” my Ninth Grade informant exclaimed. “They’re the exact diametric opposite of men. They’re Fairies!”

“Like. . .um. . .in Mother Goose?” I asked, perplexed.

“Naw, Gomer...remember Acting like a Girl, the stuff that got Mean Boys on your case in diaper school?  Fairies are like that, but tons worse – they pretend they really are girls! So they hang out with girls instead of hugging and kissing them!  But they can't hold out forever!  Watch this!"

He suddenly vaulted across the gym to the girls' side, grabbed a seventh-grade Fairy, and dragged him out onto the dance floor.  They slow danced until two teachers rushed in and pulled them apart.  Everyone laughed.

"He was too obvious," I thought, not realizing that he intended to humiliate the younger boy.  "I can hide it, I bet."

I scanned the girls' side of the room.  I saw Dan, who would become my second boyfriend, but for some reason I decided on a cute dark-haired 7th grader named Brett, who was engrossed in a conversation with a girl.  I tromped over and asked "Wanna dance?" with a friendly, non-threatening smile.

Brett stepped aside, thinking I meant his friend.

"No...you."

He stared, his eyes wide with suspicion.

"Not a slow dance, a regular modern dance," I explained, "Where you don't touch each other."

"I...um...."

"It's crowded...who will know?"

He looked to his friend for advice.  "Oh, go on," she said, pushing him toward me.

I took Brett's hand -- warm, damp with embarrassment -- and led him onto the dance floor.  We danced to "Knock Three Times" and "I Feel the Earth Move," careful to always have a girl nearby and constantly move across the dance floor to avoid discovery.

It worked wonderfully!  I was dancing, laughing and joyous, with a boy.

I kept it up for several weeks, dancing with Brett or other from the girls' side of the gym.

Then, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun.  One afternoon Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" came on, a slow dance. Most of the kids on the dance floor fled to their respective sides of the gym.

Brett looked at me quizzically.  "It's ok," I said.  We began to dance, slowly, not touching, but close, gazing into each other's eyes.  I wanted to hold him in my arms, I wanted to kiss him.  So I reached out and took both of his hands.

Then someone grabbed me and jerked me roughly backwards.  It was a teacher.  "Picking on a kid, just because he's smaller than you!" he snarled.  "A week's detention!  Brett, you can go home."

After that, I got an excuse from my Preacher to sit out the canteens.

Brett and I stayed friends, but we never danced again.

See also: Why Corpses are Called Stiffs

The Sausage Sighting Prank at the Funeral Home

I was saddened to hear that Larson's Funeral Home in Rock Island is closing.

It may seem strange to get nostalgic over a funeral home, but the gigantic blue-stone structure in downtown Rock Island was an important part of my childhood.

1. It sent out advertising calendars to everyone in town every year, perhaps as a momento mori.  I checked the date hundreds of times on a red-emblazoned calendar from Larson's Funeral Home.

2. It was the site of a major sausage fondling.

In the fall of 1972, when I was in seventh grade, my friend Craig's older brother had a job at Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim was sixteen years old, tall and lean, with sharp features, a thick neck, and hard wiry biceps (I never actually saw him naked).

All he had to do was stay in the office overnight to answer the telephone, take down the information about someone who just died, and call the mortician to arrange a pickup.

Most nights, no one called, so Jim just camped out in the office: there was a television and a couch where he could sleep.  Down the hall there was a kitchen, with lots of leftover hors d'oevres in the refrigerator.

No one said Jim couldn't have friends over.  On more than one occasion, he had just enough time to shoo everyone out and dispose of the pizza boxes and beer cans before the mortician arrived with a pickup.

Seventh graders were all in awe of the boy who had a brother who worked with dead bodies!  Was it gross?  Was it creepy?

Could we see one of the dead bodies?

We asked, but Jim refused:  "I could get into a lot of trouble."

"Come on -- you let your friends visit all the time."

"Yeah, my friends.  Grownups, dig?  I could get into a lot of trouble letting little kids run wild in the funeral home.  What if you knocked over a funeral urn, and scattered some poor guy's ashes all over?"

That only made us more anxious to go.

Finally, one Friday morning around Halloween, Jim gave in.  "We just had a new pickup last night," he told Craig.  "That boy who died in the car accident down in Coal Valley.  He's still in the embalming room. You guys come over tonight around 10:00 pm, and I'll give you a tour."


10:00 pm?  We had to be in bed by 10:00! This would take a little strategizing:

1. Brett, the cute dark-haired boy I danced with at the canteen, invited Craig, Bill, and me over for a spur-of-the -moment sleepover.

2. At 9:00 pm, Brett's older brother and his friend offered to take us all out to Happy Joe's for pizza.  They said "We might be back a little late."

3. At 10:00 pm we parked on a side street and, talking and laughing to cover up our nervousness, walked up to the front door of Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim let us in, told us to wipe our feet, and showed us around.

The lounges, the music room, the library, the coffin room.

Jim demonstrated why Barnabas Collins, the vampire on Dark Shadows, was never filmed getting out of his coffin.  There's no way to do it without looking ridiculous.

That was interesting, but we wanted to see the dead body!

The small chapel, the large chapel, the kitchen, the office.

What about the dead body?

"Ok, I saved the scariest part for last," Jim said loudly, stopping in front of a tan metal door.  "I just want to make sure you're prepared.  Sometimes the eyes are still open, and they follow you around the room.  And do you know what rigor mortis is?"

We shook our heads.

"You know why they call corpses stiffs?  Because their bodies stiffen up.  Everything stiffens, even, you know, down below."

"No way!" I exclaimed.  "Not the dick!"

Jim nodded solemnly.  "Everywhere.  It's pretty gross.  I won't make fun of you if you decide to stay behind."

Are you kidding?

He opened the door and led us into the embalming room.  It looked like a doctor's office, all white cabinets, rubber gloves, and gleaming steel implements, but on the examination table lay a naked teenage boy.

Blond curly hair.  A cute round face, a red mark on his forehead.  Eyes closed.  Smooth hairless chest, pale arms and legs.  Beautiful, thick Bratwurst.  Fully aroused.

I  couldn't take my eyes off it.

"You can go up and touch him if you want," Jim suggested.

The others hung back, hesitating, but I moved forward to the table.  Jim looked surprised when, instead of touching his hand or face, I gently wrapped my fingers around his penis.

It was warm!

At that moment Corpse Boy opened his eyes.

I jerked myhand away.

He sat up and yelled "Uggh!"

We all screamed and ran from the room, out into the small chapel, and into the foyer.   Brett got to the front door first.  It was locked.

Jim and his friends were laughing.  "We got you good!"  he exclaimed.  "Meet my Cousin Boris, from Transylvania."

Corpse Boy emerged, pulling on a pair of jeans.  He was still partially aroused.   "I vant to suck your blood!" he said in a Dracula accent.


I was pretty sure that it was all a prank before I grabbed Corpse Boy's penis.  But not entirely sure.

Years later, I ran into Jim at the Mall.  He asked "Have you felt up any corpses lately?"

I get nostalgic thinking about Larson's Funeral Home.