I wrote this as an exercise in a workshop a few years ago. I think it’s true, but I’m not really sure:
Screwed
It sounded horrible. Us neighborhood kids could not get over just how bad it sounded. We heard wails coming from somewhere down the street. Intrepid investigators that we were, we went from house to house, starting at the top of the block, and stood in front of each, listening very carefully.
It wasn’t coming from the Curry’s house on the corner. No sound ever came from that house. The sound was still coming though, only this time it sounded less like people, and more like someone’s dog was being stepped on. Kind of a squeal. And then another one.
It wasn’t coming from the Vine’s house, although the Vines had five kids and you never really knew what any of them were up to. They were all smart kids, and it could have been that one of them was doing some sort of experiment on one of the other ones.
It wasn’t in the next two houses, because we would have known. Those were our houses, and we were the ones who had noticed the strange sound in the first place.
The sound was getting fainter, splitting in two. When it had started, it sounded like someone was being whipped, a girl most likely, being whipped, it had subsided and split into two sounds, one was kind of a grunting sound, like someone was moving something heavy and the other was sort of whining.
Repetitious. Grunt, whine, grunt, whine, grunt, whine.
It was coming from the Boyer’s garage. That’s for sure. There was no doubt in our minds.
The five of us stood on the sidewalk at the end of their driveway and listened to the sound. The Boyer’s next door neightbor, Mr. Andreoli … Jack … was a nice guy, but he didn’t like us kids hanging around his yard. When he came to the door, my first instinct was to run, but I knew he had seen me and the four kids I was with. So we stayed. He came to the door with his finger to his lips, like he was shushing us. He closed the door and walked across his lawn toward us.
“That’s Taffy,” he whispered. “They must be mating her in the garage with another pure-bred cocker,” he said. “We need to let them be and not make any sound for a while now. Go on and play.”
“Is she hurt?” Danny asked. His dog, King, had been hit by the milk truck. Danny was the one who thought it was a dog in the first place.
“Oh, no. No. Well, no, not really,” Mr. Andreoli said. “She’s being screwed, and she doesn’t like it.”
“Screwed?” I ask later in our backyard. “How can one dog screw another dog?”
“Don’t be so stupid,” Danny said. “They were screwing, like, you know, like screwing like people.”
“Screwing? Like with screw drivers and stuff like that? What, are they building something?”
I really want to get to the bottom of this screwing thing. I’ve heard it before from other kids, and I just don’t understand what the big deal is. It sounded like work to me. Why would work hurt so bad?
“No. You know, screwing like when your dick gets hard and you stick it in a girl,” Danny said. He was totally serious. Every time my dick got hard I just left it alone. I didn’t know I was supposed to stick it anywhere.
“Where do you stick it?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. My brother didn’t tell me that. But if you do it a lot it makes the girl have a baby.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yeah, I thought they came from the hospital, but now I know that when you screw, you make a baby, and only a boy and a girl can do it after screwing a lot. Then the girl gets fat and goes to the hospital and the baby pops out. It must hurt a lot, because Taffy sure was wailing.”
“So, Taffy has to go to the hospital?” I ask.
“You are so stupid! Taffy is a girl dog getting screwed by a boy dog so she can have puppies. I think I’d rather have a puppy than a baby,” Danny said.
“Yeah, me too,” I say.