Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Editor’s Note: This story is going to be a two-parter, but the Credits at the end of this part of the story meld two things from my past.  One was a comment made by a female friend, who was a God-fearing woman.  The other was an experience from small hometown teenaged activity. 

I’m the wife of Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs, Trinity Naomi Tesla, that’s TNT, Yeggs, but most people call me Glyce, pronounced “Gliss,” since it is short for Nitroglycerin.  I explode when shaken.  My husband works homicide in the big city of Tracy.  His partner is Jim Wednesday.  Poached Yeggs works with him, too, but this time I am being drawn into one of my husband’s investigations, one I did not know about.

I had just laid Gigi down for a nap and the doorbell rang.  When I looked out, I saw an old friend, but an old friend that I dreaded ever seeing again, Margaret MacLean, aka Maggie, aka Mags.  Too bad, she was not that “clean.”  When I was growing up, we lived in the cul de sac and she lived on the corner, nearly neighbors.  As an incoming high school freshman, I thought she was the most popular girl in school, worldly, a lot of charisma, a lot of potential.  It did not work out that way.

At first, I thought of just having her wait and then leave, but when she reached for the doorbell a second time, I was afraid Gigi would wake up and she would be very cranky without a nap.  My maternity leave was about up, but maybe it would not hurt to reminisce.  I opened the door before she hit the bell again.

“Mags Maclean, what brings you to this side of town?”

Mags gasped, “Oh, you surprised me.  I was going to ring a second time and then leave a note.  And it is Lothrop these days.  I thought you knew I married Larry.”

“Yes, but we were friends long before that.  Please, come in.  Would you like coffee or tea?  I just put Gigi down for her nap.”

“Gigi? Are you going for French names these days?” Mags asked.

“No, no, no.  Gigi is the nickname.  We named her Gloria Grace Yeggs.  With the initials of G.G. it seemed a good nickname.  She has been a great blessing for us.  But Gigi is going to be a second family.  By the time she reaches kindergarten all our children will be in college.  Do you have children?”

Mags smiled, “Yes, we have four girls and one boy.  The boy is in middle school.  Two girls are in high school, one is at a community college, but Madelaine is married with a little one on the way.  I’ll be Granny here in another three months, give or take.”

I asked, “What brings you here?  Last I heard, you lived on the far side of town.”

Mags didn’t make eye contact as she thought of a convenient lie.  “Oh, just in the neighborhood.  I thought we could catch up.  Reminisce maybe.”

I tried to obtain as neutral a face as possible.  “Those were wild times.  I have left that life far behind.  I don’t know if reminiscing would be productive.  You know, too much water under the bridge?”

Mags was undeterred.  “But we were friends for a long time.  I left that lifestyle a long time ago, but I didn’t think it would hurt to catch up.  And if you have tea, might I have some Earl Grey?”

“Sure, let’s go to the kitchen.  Then, we can get anything that you want.  Let me check.”  I looked at my phone.  “Yep, the baby monitor is synced with the phone.  If she stirs, I will hear it on the phone.”

We went to the kitchen.  I fixed the hot water, and she accepted an Earl Grey tea bag.

“So, what do you want to talk about?”

“Well, I became a Christian about ten years ago.  I hear you and Deviled are big wigs at the big Metho-Presby church downtown.”

“I don’t know about big wigs, but Dev teaches three Bible Studies, two here at the house each week, but not tonight, so we are fine.  The third is at Lily the Pink.  We have both served as elders, but neither of us are on the ruling board at the moment.  I would not characterize us as big wigs in any case.  Easter is engaged to the pastor’s daughter, but that gains us no status, just more headaches.”

“Larry and I have been going to church since we first married.  Ummm, but I was wondering if you ever think of those old days when you would come to our house.  Do you?”

“Honestly, until you walked up in the front yard, I have not given them much thought at all.  I apologize, Mags.  I was between my freshman and sophomore years.  You lived three or four doors down on the corner.  You were a year ahead of me in school and you were popular.  I might have been on the school soccer team, but otherwise, no one knew who I was.  I walked in, unannounced at your home, and for a little over a year, we were inseparable, you, me and Frick and Frack.  But it all went wrong over the course of that year.”

She nodded, “That’s why I came by.  I want to apologize, but I wanted to talk about it.  Like I said, I have left that life behind, but with regrets.  Can I talk it through?  Please?”

I was thinking, ‘Don’t say it out loud!’, but I nodded an affirmative.

She started, “I think you underestimate your popularity.  You were not just on the soccer team, you were the top goal scorer in your freshman year.  You had fans.  I might have had fair weather friends, and I might have looked popular, but you had staying power.  Yes, I know.  I screwed things up, and it started that first day you came over.  To this day, I have no idea what possessed me to do it.”

I started to feel wetness in my eyes.  I had to hold things together.  I could not explode, and this was about to be dangerous territory.  Memories that I had buried long ago.  Dev did not even know about this.  We had talked about everything, but when it came to what Mags and I and Frick and Frack did in her bedroom, or the parties Mags invited me to, especially at the lake, nope.  That was behind me.  What good would it serve, and I did not do anything really rotten, just risqué, very risqué, and extremely risky.

But Mags, recounted the tale in her words.  Mine might vary a little.  “My older sister, Moe (short for Maureen), ushered you back to the bedroom.  When she got my attention, there was you standing in the middle of the room and Frick and Frack sitting on the bed.  My sister said that we should have fun, and don’t do anything she wouldn’t do.  That’s what made me think of the idea, but for just a little bit, you and I talked.  Frick and Frack earned their names by not even introducing themselves.  I suggested to you that they were Frick and Frack, and then Frick finally talked.  She said, ‘No, I’m Frick and she’s Frack.’  We laughed at that, and the names stuck from that moment on.  I never learned their real names.  I think it was the Devil who tempted me.  It ruined my life, but what my sister had said to not do what she would not do…  I thought of what she would do.  I suggested that we …”  I clinched my eyes shut and thought ‘Don’t say it!’, but she did.  “I suggested we all get naked and try my sister’s toys she let me borrow.  We did that, but I noticed you did not use the vibrators like they were supposed to be used.  The three of us labeled you, ‘Goody Two Shoes’ from that moment on, but you didn’t seem to mind, as long as the four of us were all having innocent fun.  But it wasn’t very innocent, was it?”

I shook my head, “No, not innocent at all.  One thing led to another.  I mostly stood by you and watched, but…”

“But that gets ahead of me with the story, but I guess not.  We would talk about movie stars and sports heroes while we played with the, umm, toys.  Frick and Frack were in their own world.  Not really romantically interested in each other, but there was a bond there, like they were related or something.”  I nodded.

Mags continued, “But then, I got up the courage to sleep with my boyfriend, but only if you were there.  We now have children of our own, but our parents treated the teen park at the lake as a safe place for teens to go have fun.  There was a lot of drugs and alcohol, especially on the island.  And sex was in every direction.  The island had some porta-potties, and Moe said that the best place for unobserved sex was behind them.  Even then, I wanted you to stand guard.  To make it look spontaneous, my boyfriend had already gone to the island.  We did our thing while you stood guard.  I wanted a second round, so we stayed on the island.  When I lost track of my boyfriend, we found him behind the porta-potties making love to two other girls.  I had thought he was the one.”

She continued, “But then, I hooked up with that polite boy down the street.  He came to my house twice a week after school, and we started to make out in my bedroom, on the two days you and Frick and Frack weren’t there.  Then, he was invited to that rich girl’s house, and my second love affair had ended.  My only consolation was that it took two girls to replace me.”

I asked, “But he left you for one rich girl and eventually married her.  I see them at the Hoity Toity Club, when Pauline invites me to dinner.  Neither one of us can afford the membership, but Pauline’s husband is the greenskeeper, Mashie Niblick.  One rich girl is not two rich girls.”

Mags answered, “You don’t know the rich girl’s reason for hooking up with him.  She had an older sister who was married to the son of a very rich family.  You know, doubling the potential to get even richer.  But one big problem, her husband was shooting blanks in bed.  We are talking about practically no sperm at all.  This rich girl sleeps with my old boyfriend a few times and then suggests his sister do the same.  The ruse was to have the husband go off for a conference alone.  Then, maybe he would not be shooting blanks upon his return.  She got pregnant.  So every year, year and a half, there would be another conference, and another successful pregnancy.  But by the third child from the older daughter, the younger daughter had married the old boyfriend.  They got pregnant at the same time and the kids look like twins.  The rich husband and the parents just shrug their heads.  Rich, but dumb!”

I asked, “Where is this going?”

Mags shrugged, “After my next boyfriend who moved out of town… Oh, he was the one to marry.  He was so kind and gentle.  When his parents moved before my senior year in high school, I lost it.  My sister set me up with two guys you don’t know about.  One night stands.  So, that totaled five guys that I had slept with.  By this time, I was more interested in the drugs, the booze, and the sex, than in meeting new guys.  My question for you, maybe two questions, is when did you quit guarding my back?”

I responded, “That next party at the lake.  Moe already knew what they were going to insist on at the parking lot – no clothing, not even flip flops, a totally nude experience.  As you said, I might go along to a point, but all I did was take my swimsuit off and sit on a little hill, watching the orgy in front of me.  I guess orgy is too strong of a word.  Most of the kids paired off and sat watching everyone else.  There were guys who were alone, but it looked like I was the only girl that was alone.  I was about to go into my junior year, and I had never developed any good friends, not that anyone at those parties would be a good friend.  I watched you, but you were so wasted all the time, there was no way I could ‘guard’ you.  Then a little after dark, after you had slipped off with two or three guys I had never seen before, you jumped up in front of the bonfire and said, ‘To all the boys here, Mags, the boy magnet, is letting you know that the store is open!’  You took a big swallow of whatever liquor you had in your hand, and the line began to form.  I got up to leave, but Moe had the car locked.  It took me an hour to find her.  By then, the line going to you was longer and two or three other girls had the same idea, so more lines.  I found Moe, barely conscious.  I asked about Frick and Frack.  Moe said that she had been with them, and they were now somewhere else on the island.  Her cryptic comment was that Frick was a freak and Frack had them back to back.  I have no idea if she was being descriptive or poetic.  I got the keys, got my swimsuit, and I walked the five miles home, in the dark.  And I never came by your house again.  It looked like you were on a path of self-destruction, but then, where did Larry come from?”

She waved a hand, “Oh, he was just a guy in the line.  When it became his turn, I passed out.  What he says that he did was to turn to the next guy and say, ‘This one is broken.  Find another line.’”

I asked, “Like you were a kitchen appliance?”

Mags nodded, “Then he rolled me over on my stomach and he said I threw up and he dragged me to the lake to wash me up.  He then held me until I woke up the next morning.”

I asked, “Did you go steady after that?”

Mags shook her head.  “No.  Larry was just a guy in the line, but as I passed out more, he was always the guy who pulled me from the crowd to clean me up.  Then one time when he wasn’t there, I got pregnant.  Larry knew it wasn’t his, but he was the only one to volunteer to marry me and be a father.  That was when Madelaine came along.  Larry insisted we go to church, but I have no idea if he ever believed.  I kept going to parties.  I got pregnant two more times when Larry was maybe or maybe not the father.  The last two though, I tried to clean my life up and Larry was definitely the father.”

I was thinking, ‘How disgusting!’ but I smiled and nodded.

Mags continued, “But then, I accepted Jesus as my Savior.  After Larry finally had his boy, and he wasn’t interested in any more children, I announced that I wanted my virginity back.  Sex had only brought me heartache.  I wanted to focus on loving Jesus.”

I asked, “But, Mags, the Apostle Paul said that we should not make a decision like that without it being agreed by our spouse.  Does Larry like the idea?”

She was shocked, “You don’t know?  It’s why I’m here!  Larry was killed.  Your husband has had me in interrogation all week.  Larry hated the idea that I wanted my virginity back.  After cheating on him, and him getting me and cleaning me up, now he was going out at night because I wanted to sleep alone.  Every time we had sex, I remembered a lot of the times before I was saved, with other guys.  The Kama Sutra calls that the congress of transferred love.  I never saw Larry.  I saw all the sin, and it made me sick to my stomach.  Yes, I am responsible for Larry getting killed, but I did not do it.  He went out to find a new partner, but we are too old to go to the teen beach anymore.  Besides, they closed it down finally.”

I was dumbstruck.  She could quote Kama Sutra, but she did not know the basics of what the Bible teaches regarding a married couple, but maybe that is typical among church people these days.  I fumbled for words, “I am so sorry, Mags.  Dev always questions the spouse, but he only keeps asking the same questions to make sure you told him everything.”

Mags shrugged, “It’s mostly been the other two.  Jim Wednesday and that young nephew, Poached.  He’s a cutey, but they ask the same questions every day.  Who were the people I used to hang out with?  Who were Frick and Frack?”

I asked, “Who were Frick and Frack?  They were your friends.”

Mags pounded her fist on the chair arm, “No!  They were your friends.”

I shrugged, “No, the first I ever saw them was when they were sitting on your bed.”

Mags said, “Okay, but when Moe opened the door to you, she saw Frick and Frack coming across the lawn to follow you.  They told her something about how you had walked ahead of them.  When you walked into my bedroom, you stared at me, but then Frick and Frack came in after you.  If they weren’t your friends, then why were they following you?  You kept saying then and just today that I was the popular one.  I had fleeting friends that as soon as I started doing drugs, they were gone.  But you, you were not just the freshman on the soccer team.  You were the leading scorer in the league, not just on the Flintheart team.  You had all those games where you got hat tricks for three goals in a game.  Most other teams were lucky to win a game one-nil!  No, I thought you would go pro.  I guess you got married and that ruined all that.”

I shrugged, “No, it was a combination of getting pregnant with Easter two years later.  We got married after I finished high school, but I played at the university for two years before I got pregnant with Easter.  By the time I was back in shape to play, I had lost interest.  I saw the need for the field of study that I created.  Psychology, even sports psychology, does not do it all.  Physical therapy does not do it all.  I designed a field of study to bridge between the two, and I saw that need while pregnant and working as an assistant coach on the team.  I’m sorry, Mags.  I had always thought they were your friends.  The only thing they would know about me was soccer.  Maybe they were soccer fans.  But, Mags, it gives me the creeps.  If they were fans, why didn’t they say so.  Why did they come into your bedroom and watch us take our clothes off?  They could have violated us.”

Mags said, “No, we did that on our own.”

At that moment, Dev, Jim and Poached came into the room.  Dev said, “Jim, can you talk to Maggie again?  This was helpful.  Poached, get the yearbooks together.  We need to find out who Frick and Frack were.  And Sweetie, if you can stand up, come to me.  You need a hug.”

“But, but, but.”

Dev shook his head.  “No motorboat noises.  You need a hug.  I hear the explosion in your voice and in the look in your eyes.  Now, Sweetie, not after the explosion.”

We hugged.  I gave her my best bear hug ever, and she fell asleep.  Blaise, our high school son, had hugged Margie to sleep and I could never do it until now.

As I placed her in the recliner, Mags asked, “She got naked, sure.  She played with the toys, but without doing, you know. … We called her Goodie Two Shoes, but she said it was these explosions.  What does that mean?”

Dev replied, “Our honeymoon night was a great example.  The hugs did not work.  After the ceremony and all the photographs and all the buildup to that wonderful day, she was wound up so tight that she became too excited when we reached a house someone loaned us for the night.  A friend of her mother’s was using it as rental property, and we lived in it for a while after the honeymoon until she found someone to rent it, but that night, all that was in it was a bed with brand new sheets and a clothes hamper.  Our instructions were to put the sheets into the hamper and leave the key on the bed.  Glyce, short for nitroglycerin, changed into some lingerie and I took my outer clothing off and then she went at me with arms and legs flying.  She loved me, but she could not control anything on her body.  I tried the bear hugs that had always worked, and they didn’t that night.  I got a bloody nose, scratches all over, one black eye and swelling under the other one, but we finally consummated the marriage, and afterwards, she was sound asleep.  All the fight was gone once we had done the deed.  We went to Florida for the honeymoon with no more incidents.  All her emotions were built up in her wedding day, all perfect until we reached the bed, and when we got back, her mother’s friend expressed concern.  She thought there might be a few drops of blood on the sheets due to Glyce being a virgin, but not as much as she found, and in several spots on the sheets.  She was afraid Glyce was a hemophiliac.  I did not say a word about the bloody nose or some of the scratches that were fairly deep, but her emotions get amplified, until she seems to have superhuman strength.  Explosion is just a way of explaining it.  If she had not simply sat and watched when she was at your house or the lake, it might have ended badly.  I am surprised she kept her cool just watching.”

Then I woke up.  “Dev, you gave me a Blaise hug.  You didn’t think you had it in you.  But, you, you are the master hugger.”  And I chuckled, but then drifted back off to sleep.

Mags asked, “But how did you get here so fast?”

Dev scratched his head, “You were giving evasive answers, especially about Frick and Frack.  We followed you to see if you were hiding something, even something unconsciously.  When you came to our house, we came in through the back and heard every word.  A lot of it, I never knew.  My wife and I never kept secrets, but I guess she kept a few about you.  You kept mentioning her living nearby and being pals along with Frick and Frack.  And some of the evidence pointed to something from your past instead of Larry’s.  Now, we know that you were not evading the questions; you just didn’t know.  But now, we have to know.”

Credits

The concept of regaining someone’s virginity came up in conversation years ago.  It was one of those ladies that you would never think an ill thought regarding them.  We laughed it off.  Physically, there is no way to regain one’s virginity, but you could do so spiritually, I suppose.  But the question is, “What would cause someone to want to do so?  Was there sin in your life that normal marital relations with your spouse is ruined due to images of past sin?  Some feel that any sexual “congress” is sinful, but that is not the case.  Yet, if you cannot become intimate with your spouse without thinking of sinful and hurtful intimacy in the past, that might be a good time to discuss the matter with the spouse and devise a mutually agreed upon plan.  God forgives and forgets, but sometimes, it is hard for us to forget.  And even if it is a hang-up on the part of one spouse, both need to know about it and both need to make a mutually agreed decision in love.

Frick and Frack were a comedic ice skating duo from Switzerland, both born in Basil, Switzerland.  Their act has been attempted by many since and never duplicated, at least not completely.  They appeared with the Ice Follies and in a couple of movies.  “Frick” was the name of a village in Switzerland, and “Frack” was a Swiss German slang name for a coat.  In calling themselves Frick and Frack, it was a Swiss joke on the world.  Today, Frick and Frack are used to mean two friends, maybe oddball friends.

The term “Goody Two-Shoes” is from a book The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes written in 1766.  It is a children’s book about an orphan who strongly kept her virtue and rising from poverty to become a teacher, a wife, and a mother.  It is usually used today as a derogatory term because someone thinks themselves above what the others are doing.  It is rarely ever used for someone you really like.

And the idea of a teen beach, even to the point of going nude, was inspired by a variety of towns in the southeast near where I lived.  The teens would meet and then block off a few blocks of town so that they could drive in circles. They would play their music at ear-splitting decibels.  The “agreement” was that the police would not interfere until after midnight.  This was either one day or two, say, Friday and Saturday nights.  The parents would rave about how it was so wonderful that the children had a place they could go for good clean fun, but when I heard that in Sunday School one week, I had just picked up six hypodermic needles in our front yard, a small yard, but with trees between our yard and the neighbor’s, it was the perfect place for the teenagers, having good clean fun, to shoot up with their drug of choice.  I had proof of the drug use and alcohol use.  With everyone involved being teenagers, drawing a line to sexual activity is not a stretch of the imagination.  When the parents who raved about how wonderful the clean fun was heard what I had found, they called me a liar.  We decided to change churches.  But the key was that it was unsupervised fun, and it was not clean or safe.  Yet, the parents put on blinders and tossed the keys to the car to their teen.  And I am sure that the other towns had similar issues, and no one supervised.  No one questioned.  And no one cared.  But now that those teenagers are the forty-something parents, have they put a stop to it?

Kama Sutra is a book written by Vatsyayana. While most consider it pornographic, if you go beyond the extremely graphic paintings in a variety of Indian styles, it is a book for the most part about intimate “congress” between a man and a woman. While it gives some sage advice, I would not recommend the book. But it is odd, and quite common, that many people might be able to quote from Kama Sutra rather than the Bible, yet they call themselves Christian.