A Tail of Onions

There's an old saying, truth is stranger than fiction, and my friend Josh is pretty strange. He has an onion plant growing in a flowerpot in his apartment. It's huge. It looks very old and bedraggled, and has something that looks like an old pocketknife sticking out of the dirt. You can just barely see it underneath all the onion leaves that got cut off or died and fell over.

Josh told me, during one of our camping trips, about his first sexual experience with a girl. I tried to tell him about mine, but he wasn't interested. I swear, the man has a fixation when it comes to sex. He was married briefly, about four years I think. Things went sour, according to him, and the way he keeps talking, I think it's because there weren't enough onions involved.

He says he was 19 before it happened. He really shouldn't be talking to anybody about this shit, but that's just my opinion. He's a good friend, and we help each other out a lot in the factory where we work. A friend is a friend; it's pretty simple.

Personally, I think 19 is a little old for a guy, and I thought the object of his desire was a little old, but legal, which is a bonus on his character score-card. He didn't get into the specifics of what he did before, but his first actual sexual encounter with a girl was, apparently, something very important to him.

I'm relating the story to you, because my own experience was nothing similar, yet I've had tons of jealousy, wishing, really, that mine could have been like his. Not exactly like his. I guess the intensity of it, you know. Why he was so intimate in his telling of details, I'll really never know. I think it's just an aspect of close friendship. Everyone needs someone to talk to sometimes, and I don't think he had anybody else he trusted.

I'm going to paraphrase a little here, but I'll relate the story as closely as I remember it. If you wanted the real scoop, the real source, you'd have to go to him, but he'd never tell you. Josh isn't his real name, of course; so if you know someone named Josh, you know for a fact it wasn't him. I think this will boggle your mind, because it certainly did mine. I've never known anyone else who had an experience like this one on their "first time."

***

(And this is pretty much what he told me:)

I had only two close friends by the time I got to Junior College, but I loved them to death. For a while, I was subject to being called up in the military, and you know, back then they had the "buddy" system where you could join up and serve with your buddy, wherever they went. We thought about doing that. We thought we were real creative, we'd fake them out by one of us signing as a buddy with another, and then the other signing as a buddy of him. That way we'd all be serving together. Found out later, it didn't work like that.

But even though we loved our country… we had some doubts about why our country was, where it was at the time. Hell, we thought the best thing for us to do, really, was go to college, even if we were faking it, drink beer and chase pussy.

Now, none of us would admit it to the others of course, but we were all virgins. I know we were. But you know how it is. I guess you do. I mean, when you think you may get called up and blasted away in a nano-second, one of the thoughts that crosses your mind is, good heavens, I may get blown away without ever tasting the pleasure of a real live woman!

Ok, well, we always called them girls back then.

(Here, Josh is silent for a moment. "Yeah," I say. "It's a bit vague by now, but I remember.")

What the fuck was I talking about? Oh, I was telling you about my first time with a real girl. Damn, this is killer beer, Josh.

(I laughed. I had sprung an Australian import on him.)

Well, it was on the night we all three went out, one Friday. We called Bertram "Slim" because "Bertram" is too fucking weird in the first place, and too hard to pronounce in the other. And the other guy was my very best friend Cory.

Well, Cory had a friend, Mike, who had an apartment in town, and we went up to see him. He was a couple of years older than the rest of us, and he already had his eye on a honey. Well, that's not true. He was already into a honey very seriously. But never mind that, we'd all been working our asses off all week, the cheap fucking oil field shit that paid enough to get your own apartment, and he had his. "Honey" – I forget her name now – wasn't living with him yet, but just seriously around, you know?

Anyway, he had a keg that night, and we needed some relaxation. Hell, I reckon 20 people showed up at one time or another in that cheap, two-room apartment.

Maybe I should skip some of this?

(I nodded. I was getting sleepy, and his story wasn't helping.)

Onions, goddamit.

We got our guts half-full of beer before we realized how fucking starved we were, and I wanted a cheeseburger with lots of onions, and onion rings on the side. God help me, there couldn't have been a more perfect waitress at The Derrick.

You're not going to believe this shit. She comes up to me, and I swear to God the most perfect set of breasts I've ever seen is staring me in the face and it's almost like those tits are talking to me, not her, when she says, "Cheeseburger with everything, side of onion rings?"

Now, I'd never been to this place before. There was no fucking way, man. I had just enough lubrication in me, it didn't seem like nothin' to just answer her, "Yes Ma'am, and when do you get off?"

"Hardly ever," she said, and my friends cackled. She took the rest of our orders, but I felt very singled out.

I had to suffer through all the damn jokes after she left, but they kind of shut up when she brought our orders. It was about ten o'clock by then. Streets were already deserted, pretty near. Hey man, this is what she said. I know, I remembered the next day, and the next, and the next, and never forgot. "Roast beef sandwich here; burger and fries over here; grilled cheese and tots here; and…"

"… and a cheeseburger with onion rings for you. Is it Josh? I had them put extra onions on the burger, hope you don't mind. Oh, and I get off at eleven."

Something changed with all that. My friends started acting more polite, and everybody lingered over their meal. Normally, twenty minutes, and we'd have been out of there.

I think what it was, everybody saw the chemistry happening except me. Me, I didn't need to see it. I was part of it.

But I tell you one damn thing, it's nice to have friends like that.

It's like the whole damn world was conspiring to get me and her together. We finished up the meal, it was almost eleven already. We walked on out to the parking lot and Mike, Cory and Slim started jawing away and cutting up so bad, it became obvious we weren't going nowhere for a while.

I don't know, it's like Mike must have had a stopwatch or something. He produced a tennis ball from God-knows-where and threw it toward the back of that old greasy spoon. Then, the audacious bastard says, "Go get that for me, Josh."

The several beers I'd had were wearing off and I wasn't really in the mood to be fucked with, you know? But he didn't say it unfriendly or nothing, it was like he just lost it and was too tired to go get it or something. I glanced at the others and they just shrugged, although I thought Cory was maybe grinning a little bit.

So I thought to myself, "What the fuck," and I went on to get Mike's stupid tennis ball. It had bounced off the corner of the dumpster and made a sharp left turn behind the building, so I had to disappear around the corner. And just as I did, guess who was coming out the back door?

"Hello, onion boy," she said. "Whatcha doin'?"

I said I was just lookin' for an onion, I mean a tennis ball, my friend had thrown back there.

"How exciting," she said.

I swear I don't know what come over me next. I say, "Damn you're pretty." And damn her hide, she just smiles at me.

Not sure when I found my tongue after that, and I really don't like to think about it. I know I must have looked like some kind of fool, standing there, shuffling my feet. Eventually though, I asked her, "Wanna come to a party?"

"Sure," she said. Could have floored me. "Don't you need to find that onion?"

"Tennis ball," I said.

"Oh yeah," she said. I almost thought I saw her wink.

"Nah, fuck it," I said. "Can you come right now? You need to call someone or anything?"

"Nope," she said. And so I motioned for her to come on. Looking back, it amazes me that I remembered to ask her name.

("What was it?" I asked.)

Connie. Oh God, sweet Connie.

It was really cool how the other guys left me alone, and started acting almost respectable.

And there really wasn't any party left, once we got back to Mike's place. You know, I learned the true meaning of friendship that night. Connie and I had a beer. Okay, well I had a couple more actually.

I honestly can't remember why everyone else disappeared, but they did. I think Slim and Cory went back to the Junior College dorms and Mike probably went over to see his honey. I vaguely remember him slapping me in the side, saying "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

So all of a sudden, there I am alone, with Connie and a third of a keg of beer. Wanna know what happened then?

(I nodded.)

Well she didn't want no more beer, and neither did I. Seems like every word we said, our mouths came closer and closer together. Closer we came, the more I could smell onions. This girl adored onions. I think maybe she was an onion.

(I laughed.)

Well we fell to kissing, and man, I hadn't been like that before, I was needing to be all over her.

"Please don't," she kept saying, but our clothes kept coming off. I guess if her body had been saying something different, I'd have stopped. But she just melted into me as I undressed her, and the more I didn't stop, the more she melted.

Oh fuck!

("That was it?" I asked.)

Well the rest you know. I guess. You fumble around, you do what feels good, she hurts, she stops hurting, she asks for more, and more. And after you finish you're done. Onions.

("What the fuck is it with you and your onions?")

I'll tell you later.

***

Which, he eventually did. I tell you, patience is a virtue, and sometimes a person needs lots of patience with a friend. He was quiet after that for another long while. My mind wandered off to thinking about the half dozen big bass we had in the ice chest.

Josh downed another several brews, and then started talking again. I pretty much hope he doesn't remember telling me that girl's skin, mouth and pussy all tasted like onions, and that whenever he whacks himself off, if he wants ultimate pleasure, he puts a couple of onion slices on his chest first.

Then he went quiet again, lost in some sort of reverie that I'm only now beginning to understand. We were bedded down by then. I turned over in my sleeping bag after just a few minutes to ask him something else that had occurred to me… I was wondering if he'd ever tried to look her up again… and what had happened, that he lost touch in the first place? But he was already asleep.

Thing that gets me (and this really does get me) is that he claims that she had 3 orgasms that night! I can't imagine that, not with a virgin, and the way he tells it, they were both virgins. And when he drove her back to her car, he says at about 3 in the morning, she makes him stop at an all-night grocery. She runs in, buys one sweet Texas onion, and asks him if he can find a knife somewhere, which he does. Then she slices it in half and gives him one of the halves.

The way he tells it, they didn't say another fucking word to each other. Not even good-bye.

Some day soon, I'm going to ask him if he's ever tried to look this girl back up. I swear, that must have been one hot match-up.

(CONNIE'S DREAM)

I don't know how I know, this beautiful boy, the tousled head of hair, slim as an onion stem. Oh God, I'm going nuts. Play it cool, Baby.

Onions. How do I know? I can't explain this…

Oh please stay… don't go yet…

Your prayers are answered, Honey-child. There he is. Don't let this slip away.

I'm scared. Do it! No don't! Oh I don't know! Yes, do! (Don't you dare say it.)

We smell like onions. That will be our sign forever.

*white and green*

Oh shut up, I'm still asleep…