Johnny

Friends with benefits is kind of a cool, detached term. When we talk about friends with benefits we're thinking of "Sex in the City" with hip and beautiful career women in a trendy and slick metropolis who don't need men for anything but sex. They're self contained and self absorbed and they need each other more than they'll ever need any man. Their friends with benefits are fit, well attired and well coiffed, sensitive to a woman's needs but never quite sensitive enough, and they're very successful in business or the arts. There's an underculture though, a hidden class, with little access to cash, who didn't go to expensive schools and don't have careers, and they fuck too. "Blue Velvet". They have friends with benefits too, and they and their kin have been doing it for generations. A "Walk on the Wild Side".

I first met Johnny in 1969. I'd seen her around before. She was quite slender and very pretty, too. She must have been fifteen or thereabouts when we met, but she already had a reputation as the neighborhood slut. I wasn't from that neighborhood, but she was beginning to branch out a bit, expanding her horizons. Her name was Juanita Robb but everyone called her Johnny.

I was just turned eighteen and had a room in an old boarding house in Johnny's part of town, where the factories were, and a third shift job in a wire mill. Reaching eighteen was a big deal then. It meant I could quit the small change minimum wage part time jobs I was stuck with and get that factory job, working eight hours a night for twice the money- about three bucks an hour. Men supported families on that wage in 1969. They didn't get rich, but they paid for the rent and the groceries with it, and had kids. So I clocked in at the wire plant at eleven every night and had to try every trick I could think of to keep my eyes open till morning, when I punched out again at seven. It was only eight or ten blocks to school from the mill and on the way was a mom and pop greasy spoon called the Dairy Bar. I began stopping there for breakfast every morning. I had over an hour to kill before my first class anyway and the hot meal refreshed me enough to make it til school began. Once I got to class I could sleep in nearly one hour shifts. I only had three classes and I only needed to pass one to graduate. I had made a deal with the Mass Media teacher that she'd pass me if I kept my mouth shut and didn't disrupt the class. She'd also agreed to sign me out to the men's room once a day so I could go outside and burn one. All I had to do was show up and shut up.

One morning, after I'd been stopping at the Dairy Bar for about a week, Johnny and her two brothers asked if I wanted some company at my table. I said sure- I could use the company. The Robb brothers were a couple of white trash jerks, but apparently they had scoped me out and figured I was OK. I was quiet in new surroundings and never gave anyone any shit unless they started something first, and then I was savvy enough to count heads before lipping off. Johnny on the other hand was pretty bright, and quite engaging, actually. I remember finding it hard to square her with her reputation. She seemed to be a pretty good kid to me, and we started having fun talking every morning. She kept a bit of a rein on her brothers- those two were a real brain trust. I tried to be polite and non committal with them for the most part. These weren't the first inbred goobers I'd met, and I knew they were just the kind of clannish clowns who'd take offense at the drop of a hat and then feud with you for life. They were careful to make certain I wasn't hitting on their sister. I reckon they were worried about competition. Wanted to mark their territory.

School ended- I just managed to graduate- and we drifted apart. I got kicked out of my room in the boarding house for having women in my room and had to move. It meant a five mile walk to work and another five home again, but it was summer and I was young. I used that time to think, and I used to cut across country, stomping through the woods and fields and staying out of sight of farmers. In the late summer I got a car, and I felt free. I drove that car to a community college in the fall after work, but I quickly dropped out. I had got myself a new girlfriend, a dancer with a fine big ass, and I had also discovered heroin. They were more compelling than creative writing and art.

I didn't bump into Johnny anymore, but word of her was around town anyway. She was using drugs by then too and I heard of her from time to time. She'd had a son in the late winter, Ralph, and no one was surprised. She'd been the entertainment at the local swimming hole for a long time and it was only a matter of time before she'd turn up pregnant and not know who the daddy was. But she did know. My mom was a case worker and Johnny was one of her cases. Ralph's daddy was Johnny's daddy- Norbert. Johnny was cagey about how long he'd been screwing her, but she'd admitted that it was him. Johnny was just another one of those hillbilly girls to become irresistible to her kin, and to Johnny, it worked out that if you fucked her, it meant you liked her.

I headed out west. I wanted to see San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean. Haight Ashbury was done by then and the Summer of Love was three years gone. The Haight was full of junkies and hookers. I got a fleabag hotel room over a strip joint, but I didn't stay long. There's urban decay nearly everywhere in the country, and finding it in San Fransisco was depressing. When the weather was good I landed at some rock festivals and otherwise just drifted. I eventually drifted back east again.

Johnny had started taking a succession of boyfriends, some of them nice enough guys, but she was one of those girls who couldn't say no, and all those pairings ended up badly, with hard feelings and recriminations. Johnny was fun, and funny. She was pretty and sexy and guys were bound to want to keep her, but she really couldn't be kept. It wasn't her fault. She'd learned early that she was all about sex, and she was good at sex. She liked it too. I had it on good authority that she did. A number of my friends had made it with Johnny.

We finally drifted into sight of one another again after a couple of years apart. Johnny was eighteen or twenty by then. She was always cagey about details. Once again it was a shitty job of mine that brought us together. I had got a job assembling brake adjusters- the screw mechanism that keeps brake shoes close enough to the drum to enable them to squeeze against the drum and stop your car, and it was mind numbingly boring. You were supposed to be able to screw six hundred of those things together in an hour. Why anyone would actually attempt that feat escaped me, when it would have been easy just to hang yourself instead. Just a few hundred feet from the factory, a friend of mine had started a drug abuse clinic, the first one in our town. My friend was a sociology major and had been a member of a task force investigating drug abuse sponsored by the state attorney general. He was rewarded with the clinic to run. I used to hang out at the clinic at dinner break, and as I had no place to stay yet my buddy told me I could crash there at night, but I had to wait til closing time at nine.

The meetings were running late one night when I showed up at nine, and Johnny was there, so I sat in on the group and talked with them til everyone left, but she hung around and wouldn't leave. My buddy finally managed to get her out the door and rolled his eyes at me. We got high in his office and he headed home. Finally I got a chance to roll out my sleeping bag and collapsed on it.

Just as I was about to drift off I heard a tapping at the front door. It was Johnny. I tried to get her to go away- I really did. I didn't want to screw up my only sleeping arrangements. But she made it clear she wasn't interested in whether I got any sleep or not. And she looked good. I let her in. She laid right down on my sleeping bag. I joined her. We cuddled there on the sleeping bag and talked, and pawed each other. She started kissing me. I did not know until that night that Johnny had had a son- we had some catching up to do. It had been rumored and I'd heard the rumors, but I was never sure what I could believe. Johnny had stretch marks though, and she explained matter of factly why.

She stayed for a couple of hours and left as perfunctorily as she had come. It had all been easy. I was to learn that fucking Johnny was always easy. It was as natural as fucking was ever meant to be. We'd talk and joke and laugh and touch each other without pretense, having fun. I don't recall it ever being so intense and passionate that we didn't talk and laugh. We never really stopped being friends. There was intensity and passion, certainly, but we just didn't take it that seriously. And we always finished laughing.

Johnny was crazy for butt fucking. She loved anal sex, and she prompted me to it. She was my anal mentor. There was no discussion. She just grabbed my dick and aimed it at her anus and said "There". I was already well lubed from her juices and she knew what she was doing. I fucked her like that for a while- I have no idea how long- when she got a smirk on her face and began masturbating me with her sphincter. She held my face so she could see my eyes and watched me lose control. And I lost control quickly. I begged her to let up and she laughed and I knew she wasn't going to let me rest. I exploded inside her and she was clearly well satisfied with herself. She must have enjoyed that. She'd had so little control and this was one little way she could be in charge. She had owned me, that much was certain.

We drifted apart again. I got clean, and got married. Johnny didn't quit shooting smack, but she did get married. She met Sam Brundage, and he was a hateful son-of-a-bitch. I had known Sam's sister, in a biblical sense, and I had worked with his little brother. They were from the same clannish and distrustful gene pool as the Robb family, but Sam was one of the ones who are just plain mean. He'd done time and came out meaner than Clyde Barrow without being as smart and if that bastard loved anything I can't guess what it might have been. The fucker had cold reptile eyes and lank greasy hair, and I think Johnny must have thought she'd finally be safe as his wife. If she did she was wrong. No one was ever safe in the same room with that twisted prick and once married he would never allow her to sleep around and live. She hadn't thought that through.

I didn't see much of Johnny during her Sam phase, but it didn't last that long. Their brief union produced another son, Jimmy, and Sam headed out for parts unknown. Johnny started dealing dope, and when my own marriage failed I used to visit her from time to time. She was still good company and we'd get high and hang out, or not get high and fuck, but it wasn't a regular thing. When I felt like seeing her I'd drop by, and she was always glad to see me, and I always left laughing and feeling better. I couldn't change anything for Johnny and I never tried. We liked each other and we hooked up from time to time. I didn't know much, but I knew better than to try to make a permanent thing with Johnny. As long as I didn't get too close, she could trust me. And I didn't dare get too close to her. That way lay madness.

After a couple of years of this, Johnny began keeping company with Ray, a close friend of mine, and Ray regularly fielded threats of violent retribution from Sam, who'd show up from time to time to assert his rights. Johnny fended him off pretty well- she surprised me. She stood her ground and told him he was through and for some reason he took it. I never did understand what went on between those two. Ray talked a good game but I knew he was just as wary of that psycho motherfucker as I was. You didn't want to be around Sam when you were unarmed.

Along about this time Johnny fucked up and sold a bag of heroin to a narcotics agent. That agent was a user himself and not much more than a rat, but that's how it's done. They get close to people, gain their trust however briefly and then snitch once they've scored. She was a very small time dealer but still counted as another notch on his gunstock. Narcs aren't looking to stop the drug trade. They're just parasites, leeching both sides for whatever drops of blood they can suck up and then moving on of necessity because they burn up their welcome quickly everywhere they go. Even the cops hate them. It's a dangerous way to live- somebody is always wanting to kill them.

Johnny went to prison. She didn't like it there, so she didn't stay. Her sentence was relatively lenient. She was a mother of two sons, and she was as charming in court as she ever was with anyone- she was very, very charming and disarming, and cute too. That little thing, when she got dolled up she looked as innocent as a skinny Shirley Temple. She knew how to charm the pants off men. She'd done it with me, and dozens of others. After not much more than a year she got assigned to a halfway house in Grand Rapids, and she walked away. I got a call from Ray one night and he said "Johnny's escaped." I drove to meet him and discovered it wasn't exactly "Escape from Alcatraz"- she'd simply walked away from a halfway house. This was bad, and I tried to explain my point of view. She had six months to spend in that place, and although I believed her when she said it was miserable, who the hell can't put up with six months?

I wasn't about to turn her in, which was why I was the guy they'd called, but this couldn't end well. I talked til my jaw hurt, and I repeated myself til I was sick of my own voice and everything I was saying, but I wasn't getting any traction. A smart friend would have picked up the phone and called a cop, but I wasn't that friend. I valued their trust. Lord help me, I was honored that they trusted me, that Johnny trusted me to do as she asked. I might have to pay for this. I guess that if I had it to do over again, I'd do the same thing. I kept their secret.

Reunited with Ray on the lam, Johnny got pregnant, and had a beautiful little blonde girl, Louanne. Ray was as proud and doting a father as you could ask for, but by this time, Ray was a patient at a methadone clinic, and he was fast becoming an alcoholic. He was a Vietnam veteran, and he managed to land a job at the post office due to that, but at thirty three years old he'd managed to abuse himself into impotency. After Louanne's arrival, he lost all interest in sex because he was seldom capable of it. I continued visiting them once or twice a week, and I spent a lot of holidays with Johnny and Ray. I was their family, the only one who knew where they were and what they were up to. Ray was working the night shift unloading mail trucks, and he encouraged me to stay with Johnny on Friday nights when he went off to work. He knew she liked me and trusted me, and he knew she was lonely. He also figured he could trust me too.

I was between wives. I had asked my second wife to vacate the premises, and my love life was at low tide. I couldn't even see the fucking water from where I was standing. My sex life was parched. It was comforting to me to have this particular connection with Johnny and Ray, to be the one person they could count on. It was little enough to be proud of, but I didn't have a lot otherwise.

One January night, Ray got ready for work, and I got up to go home. He told me he wanted me to stay with Johnny and Louanne. They'd rented movies, and he wanted me to keep Johnny company while he was at work. "Watch a movie with her" he said. "It's cool." I wanted to go home- I was tired. But I said I'd stay. He told me to spend the night, but I begged off. "I've got my dogs to take care of" I told him.

Ray wasn't out the door ten minutes when Johnny beckoned to me to come sit on the couch beside her. I knew what this meant, but I did it anyway. She talked about how she missed sex. She said Ray never fucked her anymore. I babbled about how it was the meds, and the booze, and what they could do to fix that, how it wouldn't be easy, but if they worked at it, it could work out again. I was talking to myself, trying to fend off the inevitable, trying to distract myself. Johnny sure as hell wasn't buying it. When she put her arms around me I gave up. Fuck it- I'm only human, and not an especially disciplined human at that. She had broached this subject with me before, but had never suggested that I was the remedy. Now I was more than willing to minister to her needs.

It's remarkable what insane shit you can talk yourself into believing if your need is great enough. I must have fucked Johnny three times that night. And I managed to convince myself that I was doing a good deed. It's easy for you, the reader, to see how full of shit I was. It's easy for me too, now, thirty years later. But when the sap is rising in you, and there's a warm and loving woman before you, and she is no stranger to you but a lover and friend of many years, what would you do? I had said no to sex plenty of times when the price was too high, but I couldn't do it that night.

So Johnny and I became regulars finally. We fucked every chance we got for the next two years. All with Ray's "blessing". That's what we told ourselves. I know I told myself that so much that I came to think it was true. He couldn't do it, and I did it for him. I kept Johnny close to him. All three of us got closer. I became Louanne's godfather. I was still the one most trusted friend.

Johnny and Ray got careless. They wanted to start reconnecting with family, and that led to reconnecting with a few friends. One of those friends had a big mouth, and the law tracked Johnny down. She wasn't a dangerous felon, but she was still a fugitive. She was an escaped con. Johnny went back to prison. She did her time, and was released again to another halfway house. She did get a small amount of free time, and I met her and took her to dinner when Ray couldn't.

I assumed that we would continue where we had left off. She, for her part, had decided she wanted to be married to Ray. I was good with that. But she had also decided that she had to confess her sins to Ray. "What sins?" I asked. "You" she said. Bad idea, I thought! And I said so. But now I was back in the position of trying to plead my case to Johnny again about why what she contemplated was a lousy plan. And we all know how well that had always worked. She had a bug up her ass to unburden her soul to Ray, and there I stood with nothing in my hands but my dick. For the last two years I had thought we had had an arrangement. Really, all I had was a hard on.

Ray was mad. He denied any knowledge of our affair, and even denied being impotent. He denied being a drunk. He denied having been a methadone junkie. What he did acknowledge was that I had betrayed his trust. On that point, we agreed. It was one thing to know it was happening and not have to look at it. It was another thing entirely to have it rubbed in your face by Johnny, anxious to wipe the slate clean and claim she was seduced. He had to react, and he had to be able to hold his head up with her clan. I never saw either of them again. Years later, Ray found me, and sent me a letter absolving me of my sins. He told me he'd never really loved her. I didn't believe him. I declined the reunion he had planned. I couldn't think of a single reason why I'd want to revisit any of that.

Ray died a few years ago of liver failure, and Johnny married a cop.