learning silence to better speak

My most illegal post yet!

I asked everyone in the last post to let me know which of three possible stories they'd like me to tell in today's edition. And after a overwhelming response...

Your indifference is duly noted. Since no one seems to give a shit, I’m just going to tell the story I haven’t already told a million times.

Her name started with an S and ended with a long “e” sound. She was 16 when I met her.

A brief sideline seems to be in order, here. Of the girls/women that I have dated, the breakdown of names goes something like this.

1 Shelley - twice
1 Andrea
1 Debbie
1 Stacey
1 Sherri
1 Elizabeth
2 Stephanie’s (one with a “y”, one with an “ie”)

One night stands and unconsummated crushes excluded. So, anybody notice a pattern, there? That’s right - of the 8 long-term (over a month) relationships, over half were with women whose names began and ended with the sounds “S” and “EE” (long e). Admittedly, this is a small sample, and not necessarily out of line with the average phonetic breakdown of women’s names popular during the birth years of 1965-1975, but still, what the hell, right? Maybe, unconsciously, I knew that the women for me had this particular name (“Oh, man, I know her name was something like Stephanie or Sally, maybe Stacey? Shit, I knew this one…”) and so I dated variations of her until I found the right one.

Well I thought it was interesting, anyway.

So, S-ee was blonde, and attractive. And not very bright. She had a long, slightly horsey face that was made more lovely by her big blue eyes and high cheekbones. She was short, muscular, and curvy, with a little bit of baby fat on her. We met through a mutual friend at a Denny’s on Oracle Road in Tucson. I thought she was stupid (as was my wont. At 19 I believed that no one was quite as smart as I was. I’ve since found out otherwise…) but cute, and I was immoral enough at the time to take her number when she offered it at the end of the evening. She seemed smitten, and I was (constantly) lonely and (eternally) in need of reassurance as to my attractiveness after a series of romantic and worldly setbacks culminating about a year later in my being fired from a Dunkin’ Donuts for stealing eggs since I couldn’t afford food. I was not quite at my lowest ebb at this point, and so might have appeared to be somewhat of a catch at the time (neurotic, scraggly, slacker potheads always being so in vogue among youngish women determined to alarm and enrage their parents). I took the number and forgot about it.

She got tired of waiting and called me a few weeks later, having obtained my number through the aforementioned friend. We talked on the phone quite a bit over the next few days while I decided what the hell to do. She talked about her home life (miserable) her commitment to school (non-existent) and her dreams (more on those later). I was flattered by her attention (not to mention constantly horny and lonely), and immediately agreed upon a date after finding out that she had just turned 17.

I picked her up in the city in my 1978 VW Rabbit (nicknamed Shadrach) and took her to a movie the name of which utterly escapes me. We went back to my house and talked on the couch. I determined that I absolutely would not touch her (my suspicions aroused as to her age), but as the conversation became more and more personal, I started getting the idea that things were more than a little bad at home, and I finally got the confession that her step-dad hit her (and maybe touched her inappropriately – never really got a straight answer on that one). She kept telling me, over and over, she didn’t want to go home. It got later and later. My judgment (never super hi-fi when it came to women anyway) became increasingly clouded as we began to make out (that resolution not to touch her? Yeah, not so much.). Finally I agreed that she could stay the night, I’d take her back the next day. We agreed that we weren’t ready for sex, and slept chastely in my bed.

The next morning she straddled me like a horse and rode me to sweaty climaxes until I finally came, as well. We cuddled and made goo-goo sounds at each other for a few hours until our bliss was broken by a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

Her step-dad had ferreted out my name and number from a friend of S’s and proceeded to let me know, in no uncertain terms, what he would do to me. I, being young, stupid, and… well, mostly just really stupid, didn’t have the sense to lie and say I didn’t know where she was. Instead I told him that she was with me and that she didn’t want to come home (!). So add to my list of transgressions kidnapping. Just so we’re clear, her step-dad was a fireplug, ugly and muscular, with a jaw like Popeye and a silent, sullen charm that only lifted slightly when he spoke of riding his motorcycle. You see, he was involved with a local motorcycle club that… oh, didn’t I mention he was a scary fucking biker? Must have slipped my mind. Yeah, a tattooed, muscled, construction working, backhanding, possibly molesting biker. And I just kept his step-daughter out all night, doing god knows what to her, and she didn’t want to come home, and aren’t I the noble fucking knight? Yeah, this was getting exciting. I hung up the phone, turned off the ringer and tried to figure out what to do with the blonde sex-goddess in my bed who it seemed was setting me up to get my ass kicked by at least one and quite possibly several scary bikers. Never mind the legal action he was threatening me with after he beat me to a wet spot on the sidewalk.

A half-hour later came the pounding on the front door.

Now I found sense. When confronted by the possibility of imminent death at the hands of a marauding biker, I huddled in the bed, listening to him curse, and indicated with my eyes to the lovely creature next to me that she must, must, must, must be silent. She was in this, as in so many other, infinitely more pleasant things, utterly compliant. Fortunately, I believe she might have been as terrified as I was. She knew what this guy could do.

The only possible explanation I can give for this total abrogation of reason and good sense was… well, she told me that her only goal in life was to become an exotic dancer. Sigh. What could I have done? At my age. With a constant hard-on. And no plans. And she was cute!

Yeah, I was an idiot.

Anti-climactic-ly, that’s as far as it went. He left after about 15 minutes of sheer terror (pounding the door, threats, warnings of the imminent arrival of the police, rinse, repeat). I dropped her off at her house later that night. Met her parents about two weeks later (no one mentioned anything about it), and dated her a couple of months until I got bored and dumped her.

I saw her in the wedding columns less than six months later. Pregnant. The only other thing she wanted more than being an exotic dancer? Babies. Dodged a bullet on that one, I suppose.

posted by Scott @ 4:12 PM