Read Online Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown - Free Book Online Page B

involved in so many extra-curricular activities that often my Sundays were taken up. It was just as well because Leroy was getting more and more like any other red neck. It got to the point where he thought he owned me, just because we’d do it every now and then. The crowning blow came when he bought a metalflake maroon Bonneville Triumph and I could drive it better than he could. He blew up and told me I really was a dyke and why didn’t I just shove off. Craig had left Palm Beach County the year before, and Leroy swore he hadn’t had anything like that going on so he was very righteous in his heterosexuality. If thatwasn’t bad enough he had a girlfriend at school and they were all the time at it so he was unbearable. I told him that he was an asshole plus his points were blasted so he’d better get the bike to the shop. He nearly lost his scrotum and I turned on my heel and marched off.
    Aside from Leroy acting like a moron, things were fine. I had gotten invited into all three service clubs at once—Juniorettes, Anchor, and Sinawiks. I thought I was the original hot ticket. I picked Anchor because my two best friends were in there, Carolyn Simpson and Connie Pen. Also, Anchor was the sister club to Wheel Club and I was going out with Clark Pfeiffer, vice-president of Wheel. It seemed like a supreme achievement at the time.
    Carolyn was the school Goody Twoshoes. She made me sick ninety percent of the time, but she loved the movies as much as I did, so our bond was seeing every movie in town and then tearing it apart, scene by scene. I began to think maybe I’d be a great film director, although I still hadn’t given up the idea of becoming president. Carolyn had deep blue eyes and black hair and was about five feet eight inches tall. She laughed at everything I said but then everyone did that. Underneath it all, she was still school chaplain, so what I could do with Carolyn was limited. On top of that she was a cheerleader, and she was forever at practice out behind the gym concentrating on getting her voice very low. Ft. Lauderdale High’s Flying L’s prided themselves on their bassthroated cheerleaders. I think they were shooting up on androgen to lengthen their vocal cords. Theirvoices in unison could drown out all the thousands of the enemy on the other side of the bleachers.
    Connie Pen was a different story entirely. A little hefty, like a butterfly swimmer, Connie commanded your attention by her bulk, but she was physically lazy; swimming on the team was the last thing she’d do. She simply ate too much. Her eyes were a clear, warm brown and her hair matched them but the best thing about Connie was that she was totally irreverent. We were made for each other, except that I was physically attracted to Carolyn, and except for the fact that Connie was hyper-heterosexual. She talked about it all the time, a real motor mouth.
    All three of us took advanced Latin together, and in our junior year, we applied ourselves to the task of translating the
Aeneid
. Aeneas is a one-dimensional bore. We never could figure out how Virgil got it published, and the tedium of the main character encouraged us to enliven those sultry days in Latin class. The teacher, Miss Roebuck, only added to our energy. Miss Roebuck was from Georgia, and her Latin was Georgian Latin. It was always “all a ya chotaw est” rather than
alea jacta est
. We had heard the rumor from seniors who survived the
Aeneid
that Miss Roebuck would burst into tears when we got to the part where Aeneas leaves Dido. Connie called her “Dildo,” of course. So on that day Connie and I decided to cinch Latin for the rest of our high school career. We brought onions hidden in handkerchiefs. Miss Roebuck’s voice started to quiver as Dido looked out her window at the departingTrojan. Then at Virgil’s giving Dido her suicidal buildup, Miss Roebuck opened the waterworks. The class tried very hard not to look up from their texts and trots they were so