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Excerpt

Lynda

A novel by

R. P. Veraa


Raping Janice Anderson was the last thing I wanted to do. It's the last thing I can remember.

In Lynda,R. P. Veraa tells the story of Lenny Johnson, the troubled star wide receiver of a high school football team in rural Minnesota. When Lenny regains consciousness after a football accident, he has no memory of the accident, the game, or that entire day. What he does remember is terrible, and makes him hate himself.

They weren't finished installing new lights in the stadium, so the first game of 1972 was postponed until Saturday afternoon. On Friday night--when the game should've been played--Howie Krebsbach and I were bombing around and stopped for subs and pop at Sardoni's Sandwich Shop, where Janice worked after school. She had served us, and smiled warmly as she returned my change. "I hope y'all have a good game tomorrow."

I said I was sure we would, and I gazed at her for a long moment, my fresh sub in one hand, my change in the other. I loved the way she'd said "y'all" like a southern belle--though I knew she'd never set foot outside Minnesota in her life. She smiled boldly into my gaze and said, "I'll sure be rooting for y'all." Like most kids in my class, I'd known her since first grade. I'd always been warmed by the unfailing good humor that radiated from the clear blue eyes in her sweet pale face--a face that seemed even whiter by contrast to her long black hair. In a town full of light-haired people, her hair was something special. Strange, I thought, that I'd never dated her. I'd gone out with practically all the other girls at one time or another, but somehow, as we began our senior year, I'd never taken out the most desirable one of all. I resolved to correct that as soon as the season was over and I could break training.

I thought of her smile as I ate, and made the mistake of mentioning it to Howie. "Janice sure looks good," I said, finishing my sandwich.

"So why don't you pick her up and ball her?" he said. That was Howie's way of dealing with girls. He'd been a big ugly slob ever since first grade, and he'd hated girls every minute of that time, just as they loathed and hated him. No girl in town--even the most desperate--would let him near her. Until he got on the football team. I don't know why, but some girls will just do anything for football players--even make it with Howie Krebsbach.

And with Howie, there was no doubt it would come to that. His idea of a smooth pickup was to walk up to a girl, stare at her boobs, and say, "Hey. You wanna get laid?"

Some girls got awfully embarrassed by that, most just walked away and ignored him--and a few would tell him to screw himself. Howie was used to that, and would just go on to the next girl. Howie always wore his filthy letter jacket, and once in a great while a girl would be impressed enough by it to let him drive her out to the corn fields and screw her. Once in a great while seemed to be enough for Howie's simple needs.

He never ceased to be amazed, though, at how often the rest of us scored. "They close here at ten," he said. "Tell her you'll pick her up."

"Nah," I said. "We've got a game tomorrow."

"You're chicken," he said. "You're afraid she'll tell you to go to hell." He rummaged through his wallet and pulled out a crumpled bill with ketchup on it. "I got five bucks says you can't pick her up."

I really just wanted to get home early for a good sleep, but I knew I'd have to face Howie's ragging all through the game tomorrow if I couldn't pick up Janice. There were no customers by the counter, so I walked up. She looked at me expectantly. "Something else?" she said.

"I was just thinking. I'd really like to talk to you about something. Can I give you a ride home after work?"

"Gee, I don't think so, Lenny. My folks have fits when I don't go right home after work."

"Well, yeah," I said, "Me too. But I'll just drive you right home. I can't stay out either. I've got a game tomorrow."

"Well, okay, I guess so. Right at ten?"

"I'll be here," I said.

Lenny, paralyzed and torn with self loathing is taken by his parents to retirement in Florida, finds a chance for a new start and a new life with Rebecca Wilson.
From the first moment that I'd set eyes on Lenny, one question was uppermost in my mind--almost to the point of obsession. What--if anything--can he do sexually? Before I met him, I'd never given that sort of thing a thought. I just assumed that people with paralyzed bodies--with paralyzed genitals--were impotent and just couldn't do anything. I didn't think they'd even want to.

But with Lenny's first glance, I knew that was all wrong. He looked at me with those big sexy blue eyes under their long lashes, and I knew he thought about sex--a lot. He must've known what I was thinking, because he started that "fiancee" business so I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to really be engaged to him--or to be married to him. I thought of that a lot, too, as we spent a lot of time together.

But Lenny's demons won't allow it.
Janice, I thought, and Rebecca. Two sides of the coin of my failure as a human being. . . Rebecca and I exchanged perhaps twenty words in the remaining week of class. Often she looked as though she wanted to say more, but I would never have been able to stand it, so I always turned away before a conversation could begin.

She wasn't in school for summer term, and the rumor was that she'd gone away for the summer. . . For years after that, I dreamt of her often, waking up sweaty and trembling, with the smell of her strong in my nostrils.

In the weeks after what I came to call The Great Disaster I noticed that I no longer got erections when my father changed my Texas Catheter. In fact, I never had an erection again.

But these misadventures with Janice and Rebecca prove to be just the beginning in Lenny's twenty-year long journey of self discovery. What he learns about life -- and about himself -- make riveting reading. Veraa's insight and perception brings out universal truths, even in the most unlikely characters.
I've gotten used to being a crackpot--I mean, it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it, right? So when I decided to resurrect a religion that's been dead for two or three thousand years, I didn't really expect a flood of converts. I know it's got a lot to do with the way I am, but I honestly don't know if I sought out the Goddess when I was ten because I was already a prepubescent lesbian, or whether the Goddess selected me and led me into the dark groves of Lesbos.

Whatever happened, I know that I found a bunch of old books on mythology and anthropology in a drawer under Dad's desk in the living room. When he found me poring over them on the floor, he said, "Oh, do you want those?--they belonged to your uncle Wilbur."

Well, that was enough to seal it right there. Uncle Wilbur was the only man I've ever loved--and ever will love. He committed suicide when I was seven. I knew then that he'd hanged himself from a big old oak tree behind my Grandma's house, but I didn't find out until years later that he had done it at midnight on the night of a full moon--I had to check the date in an old almanac at the library to be positive about the moon, but I was pretty sure before I looked it up. He had taken off all his clothes in his room inside the house, and put on a woman's silk panties, stockings with a garter belt, a brassiere and high heels. Then he'd walked out in the back yard and hanged himself. Nobody knew what he'd done in the moonlight before climbing the tree. But I've got some ideas.

It's just a matter of primitivity. I mean, they didn't have Doctor Ruth in the stone age to tell them where babies came from, did they? I imagine when the earliest people came down from the trees, they just fucked because it felt good. So then when women swelled up and had babies, it was a big miracle, and naturally they'd be awestruck by this feminine power. Now, we've got a pretty unmistakable cyclic pattern--I guess it was even more unmistakable before clothes and tampons were invented. And of course, the other big thing with a monthly cycle is what? The moon, right? Especially since these folks spent a lot of time outdoors. Well, they didn't even have doors, did they?

So right away, you've got something magical about us, and you've got us related to the moon, and what's magical has to do with birth and fertility and so voila, the Great White Moon Goddess

I really grooved on this idea. Only, I didn't feel stuck up, like I'm the Goddess or something. My sister, the breeder, would've thought that, but I just wanted to worship the Goddess, and from that on to loving women--or, as I said before--vice versa.

I read my uncle's books, and a lot more stuff since then--anything that happened to agree with what I'd already decided. It's not just that there's a Goddess--just one. She's always there as a triad--that's where the Christians lifted the idea for the trinity. But a trinity of men is an abomination, as far as I'm concerned. The Goddess, you see, is always manifest as the virgin, the nymph, and the crone; Athena, Aphrodite, and Hecate. She's there just the same in hundreds of ancient religions all over the world: Astarte, Isis, Freya, Bloddeuwedd. And She's always in threes, like the three muses or the three fates or the three norns. It's all beautiful, and I really loved the Goddess and wanted to serve Her.

Now, one thing you've got to know about all this: these early stone age tribes were matriarchal. It makes sense, doesn't it? I mean if you want to reckon your family, and as far as you know women just miraculously get pregnant for no apparent reason, the only parent you'd have would be Mommy. So the most important, or the wisest, or the oldest, or maybe the toughest woman in a fistfight--got to be queen.

Unfortunately, men being what they are, the queen didn't do much of the actual bossing around of these burly cavemen. For that, she needed the biggest, toughest guy around, and he got to be king. But the important thing is, he got his power only because he was married to the mystical, magical, queen, who stood in for the Goddess. So the way it worked is, she got to decide who she wanted for a mate, and that guy would be king. Until, of course, the queen decided to get a new guy. Then they'd kill the old king by hanging him from an oak tree and whacking his genitals off with a sharp flint knife. Actually, the knife was always shaped like a sickle. I don't know why, it just was. They did this every year at the winter solstice, because they figured getting a new king would be a good way to start the new year. In fact, they finally decided that this sacrifice would cause a new year and bring back the sun, because they figured that if the woman is a Moon Goddess, the man must be the Sun God. So it was a terribly important thing for every early culture all over the world.

So that, as far as I'm concerned, was the good old days.

If you're wondering, no, my uncle Wilbur didn't castrate himself. I bet he wanted to, though.

But men, being what they are, eventually screwed it all up. Somewhere back in history--or prehistory if you want to be picky--some big guy must've decided at the end of the year that he didn't much want to be hung from a tree and castrated. Probably by this time guys had decided that babies were really caused by what the guy did to the woman nine months earlier--and of course they figured the woman's role in the process wasn't even all that important. And sex has never been the same since.

So, this early male chauvinist king decides not to let them sacrifice him. But they still figured they had to sacrifice someone, and they got the idea of setting up some poor kid as king for a day. They bowed to him, and dressed him up in the king's robes, and he probably even got to fuck the queen, but at the end of the day, they hanged him on the old oak tree. Remnants of this practice were still around in Europe a hundred years ago, when they'd have a "Lord of Misrule" just before Christmas. Then they mourned for him and the dying old year.

The next day, the regular king would come back, and they'd celebrate his rebirth. That's where all the resurrection myths come from.

I suppose if I'd lived in the stone age--the early part of it--the good part--I could've been a pretty good heterosexual. I mean, making love outside in a grove of trees, and the guy worshipping me and all. And then, when he was doing it, I'd look up at the bright full moon and worship my Goddess, and it'd all be a mystic religious experience. And then, eventually, I'd get a chance to hang him on a tree and cut his balls off. Those old tribal queens must've had a lot of fun.

So, as a kid, I'd fill a big silver chalice--actually, it was a vase my mother never used--with my Dad's Beaujolais to pour libations and drink communion with. I used to go outside and commune and masturbate at midnight to the Goddess every full moon. Either in my own back yard, or, better yet, over at my Grandma's under the oak tree--until when I was sixteen and she somehow managed to accidentally burn the house down, and they put her in a nursing home. The oak tree was cut down then, and they built a Burger King on that corner. Sometimes, at midnight when the Burger King was closed, I would creep into the parking lot beside the Dumpster where the tree had been and strip in the full moon's light, pour a libation and lay on the pavement smelling the garbage and communing with my Goddess. I was a very devout kid.

#
-- Copyright 1995 by R. P. Veraa
All rights reserved.

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