"My entire unit laughed like hell, and even the guards loved it."--Donald Lattimore, inmate Lebanon Correctional Facility.

"Makes about as much sense as most song lyrics."--Wendy Marino, singer.

"The psychotic ramblings of a mere idiot."--Jeanette Latham, author's mother.

Giving his romantic efforts considerable thought during the drive from Cincinnati to his father's country house, John Elvin, a shy, twenty-four-year-old virgin suffering from a terminal case of bad luck, reached a definite conclusion. He called this conclusion Fact #2 in his philosophy of life.

John Elvin's Philosophy Of Life/ Fact #2

Sex is the figment of a sick imagination. When you are a virgin, sex does not exist.

And about the time John left the interstate highway to begin the long drive out the county road, he flipped off the radio and talked to himself, using loud, crisp words as if to reach some hidden mental recess.

"John, you are deranged. You are a loser. You are an asshole."

This series of statements was the John Elvin Philosophy Of Life/ Fact #1. His shrink, Doctor Cash, who claimed self-evaluation would help John understand himself, also called it opening up. Apparently, it helped Doctor Cash because each time John called himself an asshole during an office visit the doctor's eyes sparkled and he breathed hard.

"I don't think this is working," he would tell Cash.

"It will," Cash always said. "Call yourself an asshole again."

This was John's therapy, visit after visit, settling into a distinct pattern like his entire life. Each Saturday around four in the morning, two hours before he had to be back in the city to drive a Metro bus, he returned to his father's country home after screwing up another date.

He had become a creature of pattern, the single difference being that now he was sneezing. Tonight, he had developed a summer cold after his first and last date with Betty Lancer.

So, in between sneezes he lit cigarettes, hoping to dry up his nostrils. As smoke gushed from his mouth and nose, and the hand holding the cigarette tapped rhythm on the red football helmet next to him on the seat, he began self-evaluation.

"John Elvin, why are you such an asshole?"

John Elvin failed to find answers to any problem during the Saturday morning drive home. Blanking his mind to seek logical solutions seemed useless because asshole kept popping into his head. So he tried to find answers to change direction in his life, but something always stopped him.

That something was the county road potholes. John knew the exact location of the holes. Anyone driving the county road more than once knew about the craters in front of Felcher's Hardware. Each hole was eighteen inches deep and twenty-four inches across, positioned on either side of the yellow line so a person couldn't dodge one without hitting the other.

The obvious solution was to pull into Felcher's parking lot, which was what Nick Felcher and his sons wanted. They figured once a person entered the lot half the battle of a sale was over. If that didn't work then violence often helped.

Pulling into the lot at night was impossible because Felcher's gate closed flush with the road. The opposite roadside contained white guardrails perched on a sheer drop to the Little Miami River. This made the holes unavoidable after Felcher's Hardware closed for the day. The county maintenance crews tried hard. They kept filling in the holes, but the next day the holes returned.

There was a rumor that old man Felcher kept hacking out the fresh asphalt, seeking revenge on locals for shopping at the new mall by the interstate highway. This rumor was pure speculation, fortified by Bo Felcher, his oldest son, who was getting rich doing front-end alignments at Felcher's Garage down the road from the hardware store.

So when John saw old man Felcher or his sons, especially when having the front end of his car aligned, they laughed. He laughed with them because he was afraid they would beat the shit out of him if he didn't. Laughing when he didn't know why he was supposed to be laughing made him feel like an asshole. But since he felt like an asshole all the time, this didn't matter.

The Felcher potholes had been the main reason John purchased the red football helmet next to him on the seat.

Viewed from behind, the clerk at the Sports Shop in the new mall was a blonde with long hair and a nice butt. She disappeared into the stockroom as John passed the store, and he decided this was the place to purchase a football helmet.

When he stepped through the door a buzzer sounded. Folding his hands behind his back, he thrust his chest out and whistled as he passed rows of jogging shoes and football shirts. Waiting near the counter, he heard laughter in the stockroom. Thinking of her fine, round butt, he tried to visualize a perfect face to go with it. A deep voice mumbled in between the laughter. Must be her boss, he thought.

"Can I help you," a sexy voice said.

John turned and his mouth dropped open. The clerk had a mustache, false eyelashes, and red fingernails.

"Can I help you?" the guy said again.

"Uh, I want a football helmet," John said.

"That's nice," the clerk said. He blew on his fingernails. "I just polished my nails and they're not dry."

John folded his hands in front of his crotch and tried to look away but he sensed those huge green eyes boring into him.

The clerk smiled. "My name is Timmy." He licked his lips and blew on his fingernails, spreading each finger.

"Could I buy a football helmet?" John said.

Timmy flipped his hair back with the palm of his hand. "What color would you like?"

"I'm not sure."

"We have sexy peach, midnight yellow, and cherry red."

"Red. I'll take red."

"What size do you wear?"

"I don't know."

"We have small, medium, or large. I'll bet you're large."

"Look, I just want a helmet and I don't care if it looks like a rainbow just so it fits."

Timmy reached under the counter. "You jocks are so forceful. I love it." He unwrapped a red helmet. "Here, try this one."

John forced the helmet onto his head and tapped the top with his knuckles, testing for shock absorption. "It fits. I'll take it."

"That will be forty dollars with tax," Timmy said. "I knew you would be a large."

After John paid for the helmet, Timmy handed it to him in a bag. "What team do you play for?"

"I don't play football."

"Then you and your boyfriend must play some strange games."

"My boyfriend?" John said.

"You mean you're not gay?"

"Hell, no, I'm not a queer."

"Bruno, come out here," Timmy said. "We have a guy looking for trouble."

"Wait a minute," John said as he backed toward the door. "I'm not looking for trouble."

Bruno stepped from the stockroom. "What's going on, Timmy?"

Holy shit, John thought, stumbling into a clothing rack. Bruno was a giant wall of muscle wearing lipstick and a long red wig.

"I'm so mad. He called us queers."

John stood by the front door. "I did not."

Timmy and Bruno walked toward him.

"Timmy is real sensitive," Bruno said. "You shouldn't be calling us queers."

"I just said I wasn't a queer."

"Boy, I'm gonna tear your head off," Bruno said.

Oh, oh, wrong words, John thought as he turned and ran, dodging through the crowd of shoppers. Outside, he managed to start his car just as Bruno grabbed the rear bumper.

"I'll get you," Bruno said. "I'll stuff your head right up your ass."

This guy is a psycho, John thought. He pulled away; dragging Bruno around the lot like a skier until the bolts on the rear license plate broke and Bruno fell, clutching the license plate in his bloody hands.

"I'll find you," Bruno said. "Someday I'll find you."

So the football helmet which would one day probably cause John Elvin to be killed by a gay person was supposed to protect his head from smacking the car ceiling when he slowed down to drive over Felcher's potholes. During the week when he drove to his job or returned home, the helmet worked fine.

Only on weekends, during the early morning hours when he was deep in thought trying to find a solution to the direction of his life, he would forget to put on the football helmet and he would forget about the potholes until he was right on top of them. The car hit the holes, and his head hit the ceiling and nearly severed his tongue.

It was the same every weekend.

At age twenty-four, John Elvin had yet to see a naked female body. Books, movies, and his friends' tales of conquest didn't satisfy his needs. He wanted to see, touch, and experience the real thing. He began having nightmares during which huge, hairy vaginas with wings kept flying past his head screaming, "Fuck us, John." Each time he grabbed one it became a huge penis and pissed in his face.

Doctor Cash loved that story and had John tell it to three other shrinks who all started breathing hard but offered no solution to his problems. Cash asked him one time why he thought he couldn't get laid.

"I don't know," John said. "That's why I come to see you."

"Let's evaluate the situation," Cash said. "You're in good physical shape. You have clear skin, thick black hair, and blue eyes. Women think you are attractive, I would assume."

"Yeah, I guess," John said. "I meet enough of them."

"Then you would think that at least one of them would let you dip your noodle."

"Yeah, you could think that one of them would."

"Then what happens?" Cash said.

"Hell, I don't know. Something stupid always happens to stop any chance I have of getting laid."

"Are these stupid things that happen usually your fault?"

"Yes," John said.

"Then I would conjecture that you are mentally punishing yourself because your mother caught you pulling your pork when you were younger."

"What? My mother never caught me pulling my damn pork. My mother spends all of her time waiting for people from Jupiter to land."

Cash began breathing hard. "Let's suppose she did catch you. Tell me about it."

"But how in the hell can I tell you about something that didn't happen?"

"Pretend it happened. And call yourself an asshole while you're doing it."

John knew being a virgin had nothing to do with his mother. He also knew that Doctor Cash wasn't helping him, and suspected the man was deranged. Cash did listen to his problems. He had to pay, but that didn't matter as long as someone listened.

He seemed cursed by women. Nothing went right, and his date tonight with Betty Lancer had been no exception. He had met her downtown as she stepped off an elevator, dropping her purse right outside the elevator door. They both stooped to retrieve it, their skulls collided, and they fell backwards.

He split the seat of his pants and she ripped the back off her dress in the closing doors. He should have known then a date would be wrong, but with underwear sticking out they had something in common.

"I really like women with little hearts on their underwear," he said.

"Well, I've never seen a man with candy canes all over his underwear," she said, then laughed.

So it was a pair of his father's weird underwear, put on by mistake in the dark laundry room that morning, which broke the ice. Betty had long brown hair, green eyes, and the finest body he had ever seen in partial clothing. She worked as a private secretary for a jewelry company and she didn't have a steady boyfriend. She agreed to go out with him after he mentioned dinner at Bamanda's.

Bamanda's was an expensive restaurant-disco for egotists. Those people who liked to push their way to the front of lines with an "out of my way, peasants" attitude. A person could pay the two hundred-dollar membership fee, receive a card with VIP printed on the top, and then push past non-members standing in line. The restaurant was downstairs, the tables encircling a huge, lighted fountain. The upstairs disco could be reached by using a winding, silver stairway crossing the fountain.

Everything seemed perfect. The dinner was too spicy for John, but Betty finished hers and attacked his like it was her last meal. She seemed to thrive in the Bamanda's atmosphere. She smiled and talked, stroked his hands, touched his arms, and even once kissed him on the lips.

He hated Bamanda's. His suit was tight and he felt out of his social class, but he had heard from friends that some women loved the place. Stick it out, he kept thinking. Bamanda's just might get you laid. He wondered if it was too soon to suggest going to her apartment. She acted hot to trot. Why not just ask her?

"Listen, Betty, why don't we..."

"Go upstairs to the disco," she said. "That's what you were going to ask, wasn't it? I can read minds, you know."

"Well, I, uh."

"I just love to dance."

Hell, John thought. "Yeah, okay."

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, her tongue almost gagging him.

"Dancing makes me loose," she said. "Give me some wine and let me dance and you might be surprised what can happen." She winked and her nipples brushed his chest.

"Oh, shit," John whispered.

When they were halfway up the winding staircase Betty stopped to stare down at the fountain. The fountain was at least twenty feet in diameter.

Two statues stood on a pedestal in the center; a naked man and woman entwined in each other's arms. Water spouted from the hands and feet of the lovers and from outlets around the fountain edge. Red, blue, and green lights flashed off and on under water.

"This is just beautiful," Betty said, leaning over the railing.

"Sure it is," John said, turning sideways to let another couple pass on the stairs. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He fumbled in another pocket searching for matches. When he found the matches he had to strike one three times before it burst into flames.

At that moment, Betty spun away from the rail, throwing her arms around his neck.

"I'm having such a good time," she said. She stood on her tiptoes; her breasts jammed high on his chest.

John forgot everything as those huge tits rose and fell. The cigarette dropped from his lips and his hands shot around her waist, sliding down to her butt.

"Baby, you really light my fire," he said.

"Funny you should say that," Betty said. "I can smell smoke."

"Ouch," John said, when the match he still held burned his finger. Jerking his hands from around her waist, he raised his right index finger. "Damn, that hurt."

Betty smiled and laughed. "You silly boy," she said, grabbing his hand. "Let me see it."

John looked at her face and his eyes bulged.

"You see," she said, kissing his finger. "I'll make it better."

He wasn't listening. Smoke drifted above her head.

"Betty."

"Isn't that much better?"

"Betty."

"What, darling?"

"I, uh, think your ass is on fire."

Betty glanced over her shoulder. "God, my dress. How could you do that?"

"Don't panic," he said, smacking at her rear. People on the stairs stopped to stare. Down in the restaurant people talked and pointed. He beat out the flame but the dress was like a trick birthday candle, and when he took his hand away the flame returned.

"John, I'm getting hot back there."

The words "burn, baby, burn, disco inferno" came from the disco.

"I'm on fire back there."

The flame spread and there wasn't enough time to go down the stairs. With a swift movement, he picked her up and tried to drop her over the railing.

"What are you doing?" Betty said. She locked her arms around his neck so that his body was bent at the waist over the railing. "Are you crazy?"

"There's no time," he said. "Let go of me."

"No."

"Let go, ahhhh," John yelled, losing his balance.

He remembered the sizzling noise she made when they hit the water. That was a split second before he almost crushed his face on a red underwater light. He remembered her standing up with her bare ass hanging out of the scorched dress, and still saw her stringy hair and the eye shadow running down her cheeks. He still felt her hands around his throat when she tried to strangle him. He also remembered that the egotists at Bamanda's could laugh louder than any group of people he had ever heard.

So John drove home again with the taste of blood in his mouth after nearly severing his tongue going over Felcher's potholes. He continued to sneeze and called himself an asshole. He felt more than ever that he would die a virgin.

That was his state of mind when he rounded the bend near his father's house and he saw flares in the sky and heard the distant sound of machine gun fire.