I was an unruly teenager. So unruly that I refused to go to school for most of my high school years; my mother would take me to school, thinking if she dropped me off I’d be there, and as soon as she left I’d sneak off campus. I was just wild, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. This was back in the days when being a wild girl was not at all a good thing. You got a reputation, if you know what I mean.
We had this house on our street that these two brothers owned. It would be the two of them living there all the time, and then there was always a revolving male roommate. One of the brothers, Harold, was a skinny, long-haired blonde with a mustache. He had FLOWING hair, rock star hair, and he fashioned himself a rock and roller, too. Played guitar, sang, had some sound equipment set up in his basement. Yeah, he made me hot. We had our moments.
Then there was the other brother, Larry. Straight arrow. I think he was an accountant or something, he had some kind of “real job”, not like Harold. He was blonde, too, but real conservative looking compared to his brother. He was not exactly what I thought of as sexy, and that might have been partially because he was so nice to me.
When you have a father who’s a sadistic, narcissistic asshole, you don’t know what to do with nice. Nice feels boring. Nice doesn’t inspire lust. But it does inspire friendship, and Larry was, I thought, my friend. We would talk, we would laugh, he never put the moves on me which made him pretty unique in my eyes. I trusted him.
One day Larry got a new car. An orange Roadrunner, I think it was 1976 (yeah, I know how old that makes me). It was a hot car, all brand new and shiny. Of course when he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, I said yes. I didn’t have a whole lot of “no” in me back then when it came to boys and cars.
We go riding in his new car, we’re talking and laughing, the radio is blaring. He drives WAY out into the country. So far out that I don’t even know where we are, probably at least an hour from home. It’s starting to get dark out, and you know how dark is out in the country. You can’t see your hand in front of your face when it’s full dark. I don’t care, I’m having a good time, riding with my friend in his brand new car.
Then all of a sudden, he pulls over to the side of the road. I asked him what we’re doing, little tiny alarm bell wayyyy in the back of my mind but nothing too scary. I’m with my friend, no worries, right?
And then my friend, who’s never made a pass at me or said a single inappropriate thing to me, says “Put out or get out”. And he’s looking at me with this perfectly straight, “I’m not fucking around with you” face that I have never seen on him before. So I laughed, because this must be some kind of fucking joke, right?
Right. “I’m serious, put out or get out”. He never says my name, I think that was probably part of trying to get up his nerve to, I don’t know, rape me? Pretend I’m not someone he knows. Or maybe he didn’t give a damn that until that moment I’d thought we were friends. But I still didn’t believe that he was serious, because it was pretty incomprehensible to me that I was out in the middle of nofuckingwhere, with no way to get home, on a dark country road, with a guy telling me that either I strip and have sex with him or I could get out and walk. And it was unreal to me that it was someone that I knew. That I thought I knew, anyway, that I thought was my friend.
So I just looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. He said it again. I said, “You’re not serious, Larry”. He said it again, and sat there looking at me. I think I started to cry.
And this is what I love about my scared to death, crushed spirit, 16 year old self: I didn’t do it. I sat there, scared, miserable, as alone as I’ve ever been in this lifetime, with him staring at me and waiting for me to crumble, and in my head I screamed “FUCK YOU, YOU BASTARD!”. And silently prayed for him not to try to force me because I doubt I’d have resisted if he hurt me. I’d rather be screwed than beat up any day, but if he thought I was just going to cave from some words on the side of a pitch-black road, he was sadly mistaken. But God I was scared.
Sorry son of a bitch. He finally put the car back on the road and drove home. And I never, ever spoke to him or went near him again.
I wonder if he ever thinks about that night and what he did? Probably not, who knows. It was a good lesson for me, though. Watch out for the quiet ones. Although, in all the men that I’ve known over a lifetime, the ones like him have been very few and far between.
This Could Get Ugly 
What a horrible story. But I love your courageous 16 year old self, too.This made me think of that Killers song, “Midnight Show.”
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I am writing this comment to say that I like your blog. Other than the facts that I have not made tons of money nor do I have any children, I was a wild child too and I still am a little on the wild side. Weather is fascinating, I was watching Ike from a different perspective as I live on the other side of the Gulf, in Mérida, Yucatán, México. You remind me of one of my best friends. I will follow your blog.
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Holy shit.
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Hey Pablo y Linda, thanks for your comment. Did you get any of Ike over there in Merida? It was so huge I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m still a little on the wild side, too. I just have a 3 year old and a husband restraining me at times.
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Gwen, I just went and watched “Midnight Show”, I love the Killers. Good song. Candance…holy shit is right!
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Hi. thanks for the response. No we did not get Ike here. We have had really odd weather. Ike brought us breezes and clear blue skies. It evidently sucked up all the moisure from this area before moving north. We had not one drop of rain, no wind, nothing. I know you took a huge hit on the Gulf Coast. I used to work disaster relief duty for the feds, back in teh day when they actually got in there immediately and had an efficient system. And I can picture in my mind wht the beach at Galveston must look like….I was in Kauai and saw the devastation there just after the storm. They flew us in and we worked with the National Guard. Brutal, I tell you, seeing people lose everything. Brutal. And with all this other stuff going on with the economy, housing markets etc. I imagine it was a double whammy to some.So I see they are going to review your blog. I sincerely hope they do not crucify it. I think it is interesting and insightful.
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That’s the kind of story that says buried in the back of my memory, scared to pull out. Thanks for havin the balls to share.
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Of course I just came here thru AAYSR. Fantastic post. It really does make you wonder if he thinks about what he did that day– and also if he did it to anyone else. Scary stuff, what a nut.
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Wow.Say your comment on Immoral Matriarch and had to come one over.This post confirms you’re a tough, take-no-prisoners kinda woman: I like that.
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Holy SHIT.
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Three years ago a neighbor I’d known for a year and a half and I were out to dinner, as we sometimes hung out.He said he was interested in me, I said I wasn’t, and he dropped it.So I thought. Two nights later he came over, saying he wanted to sit for a bit, it had been a long day at work.Alarm bells in the back of my head. I talked myself out of it. I had been alone with him several times. He had never touched me, groped me, anything. So I let him in.He told me later that he figured I was lying about being a virgin, that he figured if he forced me we’d be “together”, that he was really sorry.He spent the next 3 months alternately raping me, leaving flowers outside my door, and patting my head until the shaking stopped. While everyone I turned to told me I was seduced, if I wanted to I could make it stop, they didn’t know how to help…. and turned away.Then I heard things like “at least you’re broken in now”, and “I’d call, but you’re way negative and I don’t want that in my life”. I’m just starting to be able to pull myself out of the memories when they come….. I am so glad you refused. A lot of times I gave in out of fear (he never beat me but the more I resisted the tighter he held my wrists) or confusion or just feeling that I had no real choice, it was going to happen anyway.I am SO glad you have that.
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Anonymous…I am so damn sorry that you went through that. And that your friends were so callous about it. Have you ever talked to a counselor about it? That was a long time for something so traumatic to keep happening. It might help.There was another time I wasn’t so brave, and I was older that time. I’m ashamed when I think about because it was my fault that I was in the situation to begin with. Don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t stop it. ((((Hugs))) girl.
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