Circle Of Friends - Lucien

The announcement for the twenty-fifth reunion sat around the house for several weeks before I talked to Gordon at his office and was coerced into sending in the RSVP. I figured I’d make a brief appearance and split, and then go home and read the biographies submitted by those, unlike myself, who had bothered to respond to the questionnaire.

I had a hell of a good time and the evening was over way too soon. Time is the great equalizer, and after twenty-five years most of the hot shit football jocks had pot guts and their cheerleader type wives, who had been so much better than everyone else in high school, were now pigs. Several of the plain girls who had a hard time getting dates had aged beautifully and were now gorgeous, and I spent the entire evening wishing that I were seventeen again.

Gordon, my old friend from the swim team and now a successful veterinarian, and I were sitting at a table with some other guys and we were looking at my old yearbook.

“We sure looked young back then.” Gordon commented as he turned the page to the group photo of the wrestling team. “

I wonder what ever became of Vern?” He asked, pointing a kid in the picture who also used to be on our swim team. Vern had huge balls that bulged out the front of his wrestling singlet, but in the picture they were screened by the guy in front of him.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I haven’t seen him since he got out of prison, but my guess is that he’s locked up somewhere else by now, probably on a murder charge the way his temper was.”

“Hey, remember the time that kid popped him in the nuts during wrestling practice? What was his name, anyway?” Gordon asked.

“Lucien Owens, or Olsen, I think it was.” I said, racking my brain, remembering the incident.

Lucien had transferred into the school in the middle of our junior year. He had a heavy accent that we didn’t recognize at the time as being Cajun, and he eventually admitted to hailing from Louisiana. He didn’t talk a lot, but I gathered that there had been some kind of trouble at home and he came to Washington to live with an uncle. He was short and incredibly strong and had long arms, almost like a primate. The PE teacher thought that he was a natural for the wrestling team and matched him against Vern to see if he knew any of the moves or holds. Vern was about the same weight and was an aggressive, experienced wrestler, and he quickly pinned Lucien. They went at it again, and this time Lucien ended the match by driving his fist squarely into Vern’s protruding nuts and then pinning him as he lay helpless on the mat, retching and trying not to puke.

The outraged PE teacher sent Lucien out to run laps around the track both as punishment and to separate him from Vern, who also failed to see the humor in the situation. Lucien didn’t think that he had done anything wrong; where he was raised that was just the way things were done. He apologized to Vern and offered to fight him, either fair and square or no holds barred. Vern took him up on it and they both bloodied each other up before calling it a draw and becoming fast friends.

Lucien was good around machinery, and he cleaned and overhauled the carburetor on the 57 Ford that I drove without referring to a book or anything. He just seemed to naturally know how things worked and how to fix them. The only other thing I remembered about him, other than his poor hygiene, was that he was extremely modest and hated to dress down for PE. He would always face the wall while nude, and he would hide his genitals behind his hands going to and from the shower.

“Lucien Olin was his name.” Lee offered. “He didn’t graduate, and I don’t think his picture shows up in the yearbook anywhere.”

Lee was a pharmacist, and the heir apparent to his father’s chain of drug stores. Physically he was a hundred and eighty degrees from Gordon: Lee was tall and slender while Gordon was short and stout. Gordon had started to shave when he was about twelve, while Lee’s nuts didn’t even drop until he was a junior. That must have been hell on him, not only being prepubescent in high school, but then having to deal with his sexual development when all of his classmates had ‘been there and done that’, but he didn’t let it get to him. When his hormones finally kicked in they did it with a bang and he grew about a foot in one year alone. The girls all adored him and I think he got laid before he figured out how to masturbate. He still looked twenty years younger than the rest of us, especially Gordon, who was now fat, bald, and had already been through one heart surgery.

“I ran in to him after we graduated,” Lee announced, somewhat somberly, “and I’ll remember it for as long as I live.”

“ Where did you see him?” Gordon’s curiosity was piqued.

“It’s not a happy story.” Lee warned, and then went on to tell it anyway.

“I went into the Navy in September of 1967, just after you went in the Army, Jeff. After boot camp and engine school I was posted to a minesweeper in Norfolk that was about to deploy to the Pacific.

“We hit something or other, probably a hardwood log, off the gulf coast and sprung a small leak. The minesweepers are the last wooden boats the Navy has and there aren’t a lot of shipyards capable of working on them, so we diverted to Morgan City, Louisiana to haul the ship out and check for damage.

“I went on liberty with some other guys and we ended up in this little tavern. I was nineteen and still too young to drink, I only looked about fifteen then, so the bartender threw me out. A couple of locals came along and started ragging on me, talking in that same hayseed accent that Lucien had, and I thought I was going to get the shit kicked out of me when a guy walks up and tells them to knock it off, that I was a friend of his. It was Lucien, and he had this really hot looking babe with him.

“Lucien explained that he lived outside of Morgan City and worked in one of the boat yards. He also said that he and the girl were going to this place he knew about and that I should come along. He led me to a little hole in the wall club that would serve minors, and we sat down and had a couple of beers. He had a big wad of money and he paid for everything, and as we got ready to leave he said that his girl had a friend that I should meet. That suit me just fine. I was still a virgin and I desperately wanted to change that situation.”

“You?” I said, incredulously. “The way the girls in school liked you I thought that you were getting more than any of the rest of us!”

“They liked me all right,” Lee said “Just like they liked a puppy or a cute little brother, but not as a lover. Also, my parents were very strict and were always warning me about all the diseases I could catch.”

“Anyway, we went to this little shack he was renting and he made a phone call. The next thing I knew this absolutely beautiful girl comes in and is all over me. Lucien and his girl went to the bedroom and my date and I got the couch. You remember how your first time was? Well mine was fantastic. She turned me every which way but loose and I loved it. I had been cooped up on the ship for several weeks and was packing a full load anyway, so we went at it all night and I damned near didn’t make it back to the ship on time.”

“Are you bragging or complaining?” Gordon issued the tired old compliment.

“Just remembering.” Lee smiled. “Anyway, I made it back to the ship just before liberty ended, and the other guys in my berthing compartment asked me how I had made out, and when I told them they stripped me down to look for evidence and then painted my balls with red paint. By the time I got it all scrubbed off they were just as red as they had been with the paint on them”

“Sounds like they were a real bunch of assholes.” Gordon commented.

“They said it was their way of celebrating the loss of my cherry. Anyway, they did it to another kid too.”

“Crap like that went on in the Army all of the time.” I volunteered. The Army is just like Boy Scouts except that it lacks responsible adult leadership. Evidently the Navy is just as bad. Don’t let it worry you, but the truth is that the nation’s defense depends on a bunch of armed and dangerous, and very juvenile teenagers.

“They put the ship in dry dock and found that one of the planks had been split in the collision, so the whole crew was moved to a motel for a couple of weeks while they fixed it. “I spent all of my liberty time with Masie. She lived with her folks and I had a roommate at the motel, so we usually went to Lucien’s place and used his couch. I tell you, that gal was really wild. I hadn’t been with a girl before, and I guess I thought that they were all that way. She wanted it three or four times a night and since I was nineteen and horny as hell I was happy to oblige her.

“Lucien and Janey were the same way. They would go at it all night too, and every now and then we’d all get in sync and the building would shake so hard I thought the floor might collapse. Janey made eyes at me once or twice, and I thought she might suggest a foursome, but that never happened.

“Remember in school how Lucien would never let anyone see what he had? Well he was the same way in that shack. He didn’t seem to mind me being naked, and both Janie and Masie would go all weekend without wearing anything but a smile, but Lucien always wore baggy underwear. I guess he took them off in the sack, but I’m not even sure about that.”

“You said that it wasn’t a happy story.” Gordon reminded him. “It sounds like you all had a pretty good time, what happened?”

“I wanted to jump ship and stay there with Masie forever, that’s how bad I was hooked. I had weekend liberty one time, two whole days off, and I knew exactly how I wanted to spend it. Masie and I were going at it one afternoon when the door was broken in and six men rushed in, two of them armed with shotguns.

“Git off’n her, boy!” One of them commanded, sticking the gun in my face as the other five rushed into the bedroom.

“Jesus Lord, Mase!” He said, “He’s just a scrawny kid! Cain’t you do no better’n that?”

“I got up,” Lee recalled, “I was going to show that redneck Cajun how scrawny I was, but he just put that shotgun in my crotch and told me to ‘take it easy, sailor boy’. I looked at the shotgun. It was one of those old short-barreled Winchester 97 pump guns, and the hammer was back and his finger was on the trigger.”

“Y’all just go on home now, Mase.” He said. “We’uns got work to do.”

“Do you remember that scene in Deliverance where the one hillbilly is cornholing Ned Beatty and the other one has Jon Voight tied to a tree, just kind of looking at him? Well, that guy was looking at me the same way. He’d look down at my tools and back to my face and just smile. He even had a couple of teeth missing.

“The door was open to the bedroom and I could hear what was going on inside, even though I couldn’t see in.”

“You git yourself home now, Janey.” One voice ordered, after the commotion had died down.

“Yes Papa.” Janey answered meekly before leaving the shack, still half naked.

“I done tole you what I would do if’n I caught you a’pork’n her agin!” The first man said. “And now I’m a’fix’n to do it! Just hold him down tight, boys.”

“They must have been holding a pillow or something over Lucien’s head, because his response to that statement came out only as a muffled yell.”

“That’s a purty special set of balls that boy’s got.” Someone commented. “Real shame.”

“It ain’t proper to do that to no white boy,” another voice protested. “Spesh’ly not to your own kinfolk!”

“There weren’t enough pillows in the world to completely muffle the scream that Lucien let out.” Lee related. “The five guys came out of the bedroom. One of them, the oldest, was wiping blood from a knife.

“Don’t never get caught a’pork’n your own sister.” He said, folding the knife and placing it in his pocket.

“What you want to do wit dis kid?” Gap-tooth with the shotgun wanted a piece of my ass.

“He be a’stick’n it in Masie, he already got enough troubles.” The oldest one decreed as they left.

“I ran into the bedroom. Lucien was doubled up on the bed, hands clutched to his crotch. His balls were floating in a half-full jar of white lightning that he and Janie had been sipping. There were three of them, not two. I phoned for help and then tried to stop the bleeding.

“An ambulance took Lucien away and a fat-assed deputy with an honest-to-god hound dog in the front seat of his car took my statement. When I told him that it was Lucien’s father or uncle or some other member of the family that castrated him the deputy just laughed, put away his notebook, and said something about ‘swamp justice’.”

“You mean Lucien had three testicles?” Gordon asked in amazement. “I’ve seen a few horses and cattle with three nuts, but never a guy. No wonder he wouldn’t let anyone see him naked.”

“What happened then?” I asked Lee. “Did they ever catch Lucien’s dad or whoever it was?”

“They didn’t even look.” Less said. “It didn’t even rate a single line in the newspapers. I guess that’s just how things are down there.”

“What happened to you?” Gordon asked. “Did you and Masie get back together?”

“What happened to me was that I caught the clap.”

“The Navy must not have liked that.” I said. “The Army would come down on a guy pretty hard if he caught VD. Officers always seemed to contract some kind of ‘non-specific urethritis’, but enlisted guys got the clap and then they really got fucked.”

“I didn’t tell the Pharmacist’s Mate.” Lee said. “Instead I called my dad, and he called someone he knew in New Orleans, and I went there and got a shot. It cost me two hundred dollars, which was just about all I had, but the Navy never found out about it. I never rode bareback again until I got married.”

“Did you ever see Lucien again?” Gordon asked.

“Nope.” Lee answered, slurring his words slightly.

I don’t know if it was the beer that caused the slurring or recalling his first piece of ass or the recollection of the castration of a Cajun kid with three nuts that got caught fucking his own sister.