Dear Reader: I have received at least a dozen e-mail messages all saying essentially the same thing: "All your stories are about rich folks who live in Marin County or a ritzy Virginia suburb. They play golf and drink Macallan-12 at swanky country clubs. Why don't you write a story about ordinary people? They fuck too." Well, here is a story about ordinary people.
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She was the girl next-door -- Nancy Lee Morgan - a Tomboy till her tits started to grow. We played together and skinny-dipped together till the seventh grade and then my Daddy took me aside and we had a long talk that finished with a request.
"Joe Bradley," Daddy said, "I want you to think of her as your sister and respect her and take care of her."
It was hard to think of her as my sister when we were in Junior High School and she wore that damn bikini and I tried to imagine what her tits looked like as they got bigger and bigger every month. I wondered if she was growing a thick curly haired beaver like I'd seen in the dirty pictures the guys passed around. When I started jacking off regularly she was the naked girl in my imagination.
When I was in the ninth grade I started to grow. I just kept on growing. By the time I was in the eleventh grade, I was six foot four and tipped the scales at 240. Daddy had played football and he made sure I went out for the team. I made first string before my Sophomore year was over and started every game from then on. I played defensive right tackle and I was good.
But there was a dark cloud on my horizon. It was named Lester Vernon Lowry. Lester Vernon only weighed a hundred and sixty-five pounds and he was as skinny as a beanpole. But, for some crazy reason all the girls thought he was gorgeous. That was the exact word that they all used -- gorgeous. I wouldn't a minded so much, except that Nancy Lee Morgan -- the girl that I was supposed to respect and treat like a sister -- the girl that I pictured naked in my head when I jacked off -- was the girl that Lester Vernon decided to date.
There was something else about Lester Vernon Lowry. Something that Coach was very interested in. Lester Vernon could throw a football farther than most guys could kick it and throw it through a tractor tire hanging on a rope. Hitting pass receivers was a natural for him. Lester Vernon made first string quarterback in his Junior year.
During games, Coach was always yelling at me. "Barrel-ass in there Greene. Lose those blockers and put that quarterback on his ass good and hard."
Only, he was talking about the quarterback on the other team. The quarterback that I wanted to knock on his ass was on our team. I only got one chance but I made the most of it. First-string offense was scrimmaging against first-string defense one afternoon and Coach was yelling at us to "Make it real! Make it real!"
I made it real. Lester Vernon was standing there flat-footed, looking to his right for a receiver. No blocker touched me and I was going full speed when I blind-sided him. Dead center! I must have carried him back in the air a good four yards before I landed on top of him -- all 240 pounds of me, facemask to facemask. It was a good clean hit and Lester Vernon just laid there, trying to breathe. I smiled and thought about the girl next door.
Coach comes running out on the field yelling "Time out! Time out! Dammit Joe Bradley! Not our quarterback. Never hit our quarterback like that! He breaks too easy."
I said, "Sorry Lester Vernon."
I didn't mean it of course.
I got a reputation at defensive right tackle and a knick-name. Even the newspapers used it. I wasn't black and they left out my middle name, but they called me "Mean Joe Greene" and I felt real proud.
There's something that feels real good about a nice, clean, hard hit. If you're bigger and going faster than the other guy, he's the one that gets knocked back on his ass. It's hard to describe. I don't think girls understand it. But it just feels good somehow.
One time we were playing a team with a defensive tackle almost as good as me, and he was just creaming Lester Vernon's ass. I was enjoying it until Coach switched me to offense and told me to get in there and protect Lester Vernon. I did, but it really wadn't any fun.
By our Senior year, Lester Vernon and Nancy Lee were going steady. I was still thinking about her when I jacked off, but Lester Vernon and I got to be very good friends. Playing on a winning team does that to guys.
Lester Vernon and Nancy Lee got married right after graduation. I was their best man. Lester Vernon got a job on the assembly line of an auto company, newly built by the Koreans near our town and Nancy Lee got an office job.
I thought I might get a college scholarship because I was big -- 240 pounds -- and was a pretty good defensive tackle. But they said I was too slow and nobody wanted me.
So, I went to community college for a training program in corrections. The older brother of a buddy of mine had done the same thing several years earlier and got a good civil service job at the penitentiary just east of town. The pay was good, but best of all was the job security and retirement. That really attracted me. I took the civil service examination and passed the first time. I had to wait for an opening but I finally got hired and the work was good.
We have a nice little southern town. Our two industries are the automobile plant, which the Koreans built because we didn't have any labor unions, and the penitentiary, which a governor built because we were his hometown. If you drive south for a few hours you can see sugar white beaches and emerald colored water. We don't go there very often because it's too expensive.
After I got my job as a prison guard, I got myself a nice apartment. After a year or so, Lester Vernon and Nancy Lee got some money and bought a doublewide in a nice trailer park. I didn't find out till later how Lester Vernon got that money.
There was a country western bar with a big dance floor and great music just south of town and all of us spent a lot of our spare time there, drinking beer and dancing. It was called the "Casa El Rancho" but all of us called it "The Ranch". The guys and gals from our high school who hadn't gone away to college hung out there. It was a fun crowd, but sometimes we drank too much.
I dated a few gals that I had known in high school, none seriously. The closest thing to a serious relationship was a female prison guard named Ruth Anne Wells. She was a couple of years older than me and divorced. She was happy being single but was looking for guys to take her out and I fucked her from time to time. But, I still thought about Nancy Lee naked, not only when I jacked off, but even when I was fucking Ruth Anne.
It came as a big surprise, a real shock, when Nancy Lee called me in tears one night and told me that Lester Vernon had been arrested. I went right down to the station. The cops knew me and treated me nice because of my job as a prison guard.
It turned out that Lester Vernon had been driving up to the capital and buying grass and coke from some guys in the hood. He resold it in our little town and made some extra money -- that's where he got the money to buy their doublewide.
He had a clean record and a job, so the judge, who happened to be a football fan, was good enough to give him probation. But that didn't last long because, several months later, he got picked up speeding with several guys and a big stash of pot was found in the car. I don't know if it was his, but this was a violation of his probation and that meant he went to prison to serve out his full sentence.
So now I was a guard at the prison where my high school teammate was doing time. I didn't envy him. I knew what he was in for. And there was no way I could help him. Lester Vernon was a "pretty boy" and everybody knows what happens to pretty boys in prison. I watched over him as much as I could but I couldn't do it all the time. They finally got him one afternoon in the laundry.
I got a call from "Doc" who ran the prison dispensary and our small hospital. Lester Vernon had tried to fight them off and his face was a mess and he had bruises from body punches. But, it was his asshole that was the worst. He had lacerations and severe trauma and bleeding. At least half a dozen guys had fucked him.