BABE IN THE WOODS: One

Wednesday, October 30, 2013: Mt. Pleasant, NY, USA

According to its web site, the Mt. Pleasant Police Department was officially organized in 1941 after decades of operating as the Bureau of Water Supply Police, an extension of the NYPD created to police the Kensico Dam, its workers and area residents, and later as the vaguely-titled “Special Patrolmen,” keeping the peace in the unincorporated areas of the town. It was cleverly assigned 769-1941 as its primary phone number and remained such 72 years later as 16-year old Anthony DiBlanco dialed it nervously from the wall phone in his parents’ kitchen to report two zombies in his backyard dining on the family rottweiler.

Anthony wasn’t nervous about the zombies per se, as the 50,000 residents of Mt. Pleasant, located a mile south of Hawthorne, had become used to such things over the past year. No, Anthony was nervous because he wasn’t supposed to be home at the time, especially not attempting to sacrifice his virginity on the much-gossiped-about altar of Lorraine Murphy, the 17-year old redhead from across the street with the not-completely-undeserved reputation for promiscuity.

In the beginning, Lorraine had gotten a bad rap, falling for the advances of Mt. Pleasant High School’s Junior Varsity back-up 3rd baseman, Reggie Thomas, one of only four black kids in her class, earlier that spring. Reggie, a victim of too many BET music videos and Cosby Show repeats, fancied himself a “playa” with a taste for “white chicks,” even nicknaming himself “Sexual Chocolate” and bragging about his exaggerated exploits in the locker room.

In reality, he’d had sex once before Lorraine – and never again after – paid for by his coach on a “team-building” overnight field trip to New York City. The woman, he never asked her name and she never offered it, was a 22-year old college student working nights for an outcalls-only escort service.

Reggie came within 10 seconds of entering her and she convinced him it was the best sex she’d ever had and that he was “unusually large” for his size. Having glanced around in the showers on occasion, he’d already suspected this to be true.

Reggie was a year younger than Lorraine, who knew very little about baseball but was well aware that her freckle-covered body had been the subject of much scorn and ridicule for most of her life. Even the nerds in school made fun of her, despite the fact that she was actually an attractive young girl with a late-developing figure that she hid under baggy clothes. When Reggie asked her to be his date for the school’s annual Spring Fling, she had seen enough movies to know it was a trick but said yes anyway.

She loved to dance, and there was always the chance that Reggie was being sincere.

Oddly enough, he was, to a certain degree. No one had dared him to ask Lorraine out or anything. It had been three weeks since the team-building exercise, though, and he was convinced he was suffering from “blue balls,” and figured Lorraine, who was “kind of interesting looking” with her bright red hair and freckled alabaster skin, would be willing.

And she was.

And, honestly, the sex, later that night in the back of his car in the parking lot of FDR State Park, was decent. He’d lasted nearly two minutes and, more importantly, was relatively gentle, more a result of the tight squeeze the back seat of his old 2006 Mini Cooper offered than anything else – and when they were done, Lorraine was in love.

Not with Reggie, though.

Lying under Reggie’s sweaty body as he awkwardly thrust himself into her, she’d had an epiphany. She’d come to realize that she wasn’t the ugly duckling everyone had told her she was, but that she was in fact a vibrant, young, beautiful woman capable of achieving anything she put her mind to.

She also realized she loved sex.

She convinced Reggie to go down on her after he was done, sticking her moist index finger up his ass and massaging his prostate, exactly as she’d once seen in one of the movies she’d stolen from her mother’s closet the year before. He jumped at first, startled, but quickly gave in, moaning like the women usually did in some of the movies in her father’s closet.

The next day, embarrassed and feeling vulnerable, Reggie bragged of his conquest to his teammates, selectively editing the story to exclude his own conquering. Word spread quickly, and Lorraine was suddenly one of the more popular girls in school.

She slept with two other boys before the school year ended – the second one, Bobby O’Grady, starting 1st baseman, JV, five different times – performing her “deep massage” as she called it each time. Both boys edited that part out of their locker room tales of conquest, too, but would often cryptically say Lorraine “did things no other girl would,” simultaneously improving her reputation with the boys and ruining it with the girls.

Anthony DiBlanco was the younger brother of one of those girls, Jennifer DiBlanco, head cheerleader. He represented both revenge and experimentation, as she’d never done it with an Italian boy and the DiBlancos, ironically, were Sicilian.

Jennifer DiBlanco would best be described as a Grade A Bitch.

For the last six months, that’s exactly how Lorraine described her to anyone that would listen. Though never to her face, because Jennifer could fight.

The typical over-compensating cheerleader-type, she dated Mt. Pleasant High School’s Varsity starting quarterback, Jason Reed, because he was Mt. Pleasant High School’s Varsity starting quarterback, but refused to have sex with him, going no farther than hand-jobs in the parking lot and every now and then letting him go down on her when she wanted something from him. Jason was what many referred to as “a dumb jock.”

When word got around about Lorraine’s sexual exploits, it managed to steal some of Jennifer’s spotlight. At first, it wasn’t a big deal since Reggie Thomas played baseball, which wasn’t Mt. Pleasant High School’s best sport, and he was a backup to boot. Bobby O’Grady was a starter, though, and a two-time MVP who held the school record for home runs in a season with ten, and was higher up in the school’s hierarchy of cool as a result. He was also completely smitten with Lorraine, to the point where his locker room boasts were practically odes to her sexual prowess.

Jennifer’s power over the boys of Mt. Pleasant High School lie in her abstaining from sex. In her ability to promise the world with a glance, while simultaneously making it clear that she was utterly unattainable. That ability to tease is second only to the willingness do anal for the average teenage boy and, good Catholic girl that she was, Jennifer would never do anal.

Neither would Lorraine, at least not in the sense most teenaged boys meant it, but Reggie and Bobby’s edited tales gave the impression she did.

Suffice to say, Jennifer despised Lorraine with a passion unmatched, and as a result, the feeling had become mutual.

Which is how Anthony DiBlanco had gotten so lucky on a night his parent’s were out celebrating their 29th anniversary and his sister was at the mall with her cheerleader sidekicks.

About to get lucky, actually – pants down around his knees, face buried between Lorraine’s thighs, her moist finger tracing its way south along his bony spine – when the zombies interrupted and ten minutes later, he died a virgin.

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.