BRUISE VIOLET

Note: Jack had been a dick to her Monday night, had made her pay for her own booze with her money,
and was just, well, a dick. So she didn’t go to see him Wednesday. She is walking home from school, very
nervous (about the writing she’ll have to show Eric tomorrow) and is thinking she’ll work on some old
stuff, polish it up. (Please also note that Jack has connections to the Outlaws through his brother, a
Peckerwood from CA with connections to the Bandidos, dealing in meth.)

As she is walking home from school he pulls up in his Fiero; he’s wearing shades and Metallica is
playing loudly on the stereo. He looks over his glasses at her and says “I’ve been driving around for the
block for over an hour looking for you, where the fuck you been?” He didn’t know she had detention,
he’s been waiting and circling the block. She thinks he must really want to see her, maybe he feels guilty
for being a dick. He invites her to a party. “Yeah, sure, when?” She tries to act cool but is really thrilled
by the idea of going to an adult party. He tells her “Tonight, meet me in back of the Roost at eight
o’clock.” She’s leaning in the passenger window, but he doesn’t unlock the door. She hopes he’ll drive
her home but he doesn’t. It’s six already, so she only has two hours to get home and get ready. She
knows she won’t have time to work on the story but she figures she’ll do it when she gets home; she
knows Jack has to be back at two because that’s when Jeanine gets off work.

For the party, Chrystal had yesterday gone thru some boxes in her mother’s closet, is thinking
she should dress up for the party. Choices are limited, but she decides she can try to wear a maternity
top of her mothers (flouncy sleeves, peach colored floral print), which her mother must have worn when
she was pregnant with her. The idea was kinda squick, but the plus was it was very short and comes
down to mid thigh. It is kinda kinderwhore, which is cool, ex. for the craptasticly groovy 70’s floral
pattern. She tries on heels but the lower curve of her ass shows, so she goes with strappy sandals, not
really appropriate for the weather, maybe half inch lower and tugged/ripped the sides of the blouse so
it was down a little lower. She also puts on a pair of hoochie-hoop earrings, large enough to dangle off
her wrist like bracelets, cute little baby barrettes she jacked from ??? to put her hair up and since
nothing went with the craptastic floral she went with straight lipgloss, like there as an oil slick on her
mouth. She noticed the bracelet, mixed of colors didn’t go with 70s pattern, thought about it, thought
about taking it off but doesn’t.

She gets ready and hump it over to the Eagle’s Roost. Jack is not talkative, seems a little
nervous. He says they’re going to Rockford, which is an hour away. He turns up the music loud and she
gives up on trying to talk. (“Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman.”)

Got in the car, drive up to Rockford.

They end up in a residential neighborhood, pull up the street, a bunch of bikes up front.
He’d parked the Fiero a bit down the street, turned off the car and said, “Lookit, Bebe, this ain’t some
kiddie kegger tonight. You gotta be frosty.”

She said something a bit smart and flirtatious. “I’m a ?” He’d been deadly calm and serious when he
replied, “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I am 100% ain’t shittin’—so just keep your mouth shut in
there.” She’s offended. “Well why the fuck did you even bring me then if you think I’m going to be all
stupid and break into a Kriss Kross routine or something?” He dials it down a bit, he doesn’t want to
make her sullen. “Listen, I’m not trying to come down on you, Bebe. But these are my business
associates, so be frosty.” “Ice cold,” she thinks, “ice cold.” “Well, fine, gotcha, that’s all you needed to
say.” They walk to the house, there are lots of bikes out front. People are barbecuing in front, feeding
large dogs (Rotties, Dobies, Pits) with scraps. The guy she sees first is shirtless, wearing leather or denim
vests with gang patches with a big gut hanging out. The patch has a death’s head skull with spotted
crossbones. The door is open. Jack walks ahead of her, talks to a guy at the door, they walk in.

Inside there are some women. A guy comes up to greet Jack, Jack looks over his shoulder and says “Sit
tight.” leaves her standing there. She looks around. The women don’t look at all friendly, they look over
at her with some hostility and clearly she’s not going to hang out with them. They all look much older
and harder than Chrystal. Everyone here is at least 20 years older than her, she thinks. She stands in
one corner feeling very awkward. She looks at the stuff on the wall, school photos and pictures of
somebody’s family, small handprints in plaster. She avoids looking directly at people. A girl comes in the
front door, a bit younger than Chrystal, normal looking. She sits in front of the TV and starts playing a
video game. Chrystal asks, “Hey, cool, is that the new “Sonic and Knuckles?” Chrystal tries to start a
conversation but the girl gives her an odd look like she’d belched instead of talked and then ignores her.
The girl’s mother looks over and tells her “Letta! You know not to be playing your video games when
your Uncle Ray and Tommy are here. Go upstairs and finish that homework.” The girl frowns, puts down
the controller and goes upstairs without a word. This leaves Chrystal feeling even more awkward, when
mercifully Jack leans out of the back room and says “hey,” and gestures her back. She goes back, pulling
her dress down as she goes, as the women give her more dirty looks.

The back room has a pool table, boxes stacked up, some serious guns (not deer rifles for sure). There’s a
big American flag on the wall and a POW/MIA flag. Besides Jack there are two biker types leaning
against the pool table. There are bottles of Bud on the pool table. One guy is younger and really buff—
which would have been more attractive if it didn’t strike her as the kind of buff that you only see in guys
in prison yards, with wavy red hair and a ruddy tan, wearing only a vest, bare arms, sleeved with tattoos.
He’s good looking, but has lots of tats and face that suggests you don’t piss him off if you like the profile
of the your face and want to keep it in line. She looked at the tats, but tried not to too much because
she’s afraid to attract his attention, but her eyes riveted themselves to his massive right bicep which
pictured a gigantic octopus, its big round eye starring and its blue tentacles trailing around a woman,
seemingly violating her and drowning her at the same time. He doesn’t say much. The other guy is
older, has a beard, wears his hair long and in a braid, he’s got a wiry build with a scar under his eye.
Serious guns lying around, and they don’t look like deer rifles either. She didn’t know who these guys
were, and didn’t want to either. She sure the hell wasn’t going to ask.

They appraise her; Tommy makes her very nervous, she hopes she measures up and she hopes Jack
won’t get offended, which could lead to big trouble. Uncle Ray talks to her and generally treats her as
cool; he’s basically a nice person.
She says “hey” diffidently. Jack holds back from the whole scene. Ray says “heey… whaddya thinkin’?”
He smiles, seems ok. She says “Uhhh” and looks over at Jack. He doesn’t say anything or even look at
her. She was on her own apparently. “Uh, Not much, I guess...except maybe I’m thirsty though.” Ray
laughs as if she’s said something really clever and says, “Help yourself, doll.” He points to a twelve-pack
of bottles in a cooler on the floor/small refrigerator. She’s nervous about bending over, holds her skirt
down; they’re watching her. She takes a beer and looks at it, not wanting to open it with the cloth from
her dress. Ray says “Help the lady out, Tom.” Tommy takes it and opens it on the edge of a table,
reminding her of a curb stomp. She doesn’t look up at him, just his arms/hands. She notices a spiderweb
tattoo on his elbow and recently scabbed over knuckles. She takes it back and takes a sip; she giggles a
little because she’s nervous. Again she looks at Jack and he studiously avoids looking at her, just sips his
beer. “I’m Chryssy. By the way.” (since no one has bothered to introduce her) Ray clucks his tongue and
says “You’re a pretty girl.” She feels herself blush and says “Oh, thank…” she starts but he interrupts
her. “Do you like to party?” Now she’s nervous, not sure exactly what she’d be committing to. Now
when she looks at Jack he looks at her, a look that says “be cool.” She says “Sure.” He smiles, reaches
into his jacket and pulls out a tiny plastic vial with white powder in it. Now she is more confident; this is
something she’s used to. He lays down a line on the edge of the pool table. He snorts first and then
hands the vial to Tommy; he lays himself a line and snorts it. Ray takes it back and lays two more lines,
and Jack and she take a line each, Chrystal again holding her dress down as she bends over. She rubs
her nose (sting) and waits for the rush, giggling a little. 1. WHAT CRANK IS LIKE: STING IN THE
NOSE, SHIVERS AND A JOLT. HIGH ABOUT A HOUR, RUSHING HEART. SENSATION OF STARS FALLING
DOWN, FLASHLIGHTS, POUNDING HEART (YOU CAN SEE IT!!) It hit with with a jolt, rubbed her nose.
Whoah. They were staring at her and she wondered if her eyes were literally bugging out. Ray: “You
okay there, doll?” C: (giggling) “Yes. Thanks for asking.” (more giggling). She felt a sensation like the stars
were falling, dropping, and she stumbled and Tommy caught her. She looked up him, to the octopus
eye. His eyes, back to the tattoo. “Nice tat.” Inanely. His face is impassive. She knew something was
wrong, different, wrong. She wanted to ask him what it was she just took, because it was kicking her ass.
She asks shyly, “Uh, uhm...” put a shy hand on his forearm, which was also weirdly bulgingly muscular.
“Excuse me?” He looked down at her and it was unnerving. He put down his beer, and she watches his
hand come towards her face and she thought she was going to fall over, he’d push her over. He took
ahold of her chin and inclined it 45 degrees to the left. (she notices his knuckles are roughed up)
towards an open door at the corner of the room. She didn’t know what else to do but smile brightly and
offer, “Uh...thank you so much.” All their eyes are on her, and she went in, the bathroom. She goes in,
stares at herself, at her pounding heart, and when she blinked her eyes there were flashing lights. She
looked at herself in the mirror, laughed. Then comes back out. Someone had put on music. All three of
them watched her, and she tried to appear confident, to...sashay like ???? Gloria Swanson waiting for
her close up, tried to purse her lips. (?) And she did feel confident, kind of. It was a great fucking song.

Mississippi Queen, If you know what I mean

Mississippi Queen, She taught me everything

Way down around Vicksburg, Around Louisiana way

Lived a Cajun lady, we called her Mississippi Queen

You know she was a dancer

She moved better on wine

While the rest of them dudes were'a gettin' their kicks,

Buddy, beg your pardon, I was getting mine!

She realized how badly she wanted to dance. For some reason she didn’t feel shy about it though, and
there wasn’t really anything better to do, and they just kept looking at her. When she noticed the three
men watching her she began to more freely, more seductively. She looks at Jack periodically to make
sure he approves, he does. It encourages her. Ray takes the last swig from his beer, puts the bottle
down on the table and moves in front of her, puts his hands on her hips and starts moving with her.
Suddenly he lifts her up by the hips and puts her on the pool table. He leans in close, she can’t see his
face, and whispers “pretty girl” against her neck, she can feel and hear it, it seemed to vibrate up her
skin. He moves his hands under her shirt, pulls her panties down. She is feeling the effects of the drugs,
her heart was pounding, pounding so hard it was almost beating out of her chest, but part of her mind is
really scared. He pushes her gently back onto the pool table. She looks over at Jack and Tommy,
coming out of the bathroom with something in his hand; he put it down and sees Tommy undoing his
fly. Queasiness in her head and gut, and it’s not all from the...whatever it was. She looks at Jack and
Jack looks back at her. Some part of her brain senses that he’s seeing her for the first time, and she him.
She realizes how carefully planned all this was. And then Jack starts to undo his fly, too.

When Ray is done Tommy lifted her off the pool table like a ragdoll and turns her around and takes her
from behind. She looks and sees the balls on the table between the beer bottles and thinks if someone
took the shot they’d hit her right in the face. Tommy is big and rough and it hurts. He pulls out she
wanted to sigh in relief, then she feels something cold, cold and wet and oozy in her rear, and his fingers
in there. Oh, god. She was afraid. He then starts doing her anally. She resists a little, so he pulls her off
the table and puts her on the couch, grabs a pillow, shoves it under her hips as she’s draped over the
couch. Her toes are only just barely skimming the floor. Ray says, “Ease up, doll. Tommy doesn’t like to
hurt girls, and won’t you unless you fight it.” She starts to cry. Jack says, “Have her suck you off. It’s why
I keep her around.” As he takes her anally Ray stoops down, wipes the tears out of her eyes. “Aw...Don’t
cry, pretty girl. We’re not going to hurt you. Why would we want to hurt a pretty little girl like you?
Tommy and me, we’re going to treat you real good.” (pats her head) There now. You like to suck cock,
don’t you? You wanna suck my cock, pretty girl?” He puts his penis in her mouth. He closes his eyes and
says something cryptic and seemingly disconnected to everything else “Airy flower”. She sees off to the
side that Jack is jerking off watching them. Then Ray pulls out of her mouth and she watches his half-
erect cock bounce as he walks back over to the pool table and get out another beer. Then Tommy pulls
out and Jack comes back and starts to take her anally. Chrystal is sore and says, “No. Wait…” and puts
and hand back to push him off. But Tommy is still standing there and he’s still hard, and he grips her
shoulders roughly and swings her around to face him, reaching down hook one of her knees in the crook
of his arm and yanking it up. Then he enters her from the front and she sees him nod towards Jack, then
Jack comes in from the back. Chrystal feels a bit of fear and panic, but there’s no way she could get
away. Tommy has large hand on the back of her head and is pushing her flush against his chest, the side
of her head against the base of his neck, can’t move her head. She tries to looks over, desperately and
ironically at Ray, as if for some strange reason he’d help her. But he’s not even looking; he’s pouring out
another line from the vial. Her Chrystal brain told her, what the hell did it matter anymore, if she just
stayed cool and compliant he might share some with her and then none of it would matter at all.

But Chryssy wasn’t trying to hear that, and the panic started to rise as Tommy held her tighter against
him and it felt like she could barely breathe, and Jack that traitor keep pushing, pushing from behind
and it hurt bad. It seemed no part of her body could move on its own, just her fingers and she
desperately wiggled them, trying to reach the beads of the bracelet. Witch lady, are you there? Witch
lady? Witch lady? It hurts. I’m scared. She can smell Tommy and taste the salt on his skin and she felt
like she was drowning with the woman on his bicep, like she’d been sucked in under his skin. If she could
only breathe she would scream but no one would hear if she was already under. Something tickled
inside her then and a sound came out of the deafening beating in her heart. Close your eyes. She
obeyed, and instantly a wave of calm hit her. Her lungs opened, and her breath came out in a stuttered
sigh. The arms around her still held her against his chest, and his hand was on the back of her head but
instead of smothering it was like she was a baby, his baby, his pretty girl, and he cradled her against him
and anything he did to her was fine because he was going to treat her real good.

Thank you, witch lady, Chryssy said, and Chrystal brain admonished her, “It’s not magic, you little idiot.”
But Chryssy was mollified and faded away and left Chrystal alone, but nothing ever scared Chrystal so
she didn’t give a shit. She closed her eyes again, opened them, and then watched as the stars begin the
fall around her. It was so weird, so not right. She tried to focus her mind on something, and for some
reason the Ween tape/cd came into her mind. She starts to try and list the songs on it. (She’s going thru
Ween’s “Chocolate & Cheese” in her mind. “Take Me Away”...profound! Spinal...Spinal Meningitis got
me down...Freedom of....of ‘76”...”I Can’t Put My Finger on It”. Profound, profound!—They were singing
it especially for her, and it the most profound fucking thing ever written.

Is it alive, does it writhe?

Can it survive under the sun?

I can't put my finger on it

Is it green, is it red?

Is it alive or is it dead?

I can't put my finger on it

She figured she might be able to find the answer to this most important question in history of mankind if
these men weren’t all screwing her six ways to Sunday. Which was also a vexing problem, she realized. It
seemed she could indeed (as if she mathematically compute what the product of six ways to Sunday
actually was...well, she probably couldn’t, but Mr. Jaleel probably could...which seemed uproariously
funny to her, and she laughed in her head. But then dorky Lance leaned in to her face and shouted
“Not!” really loud. He was so fucking annoying! She’d like to knee him in the groin but her legs wouldn’t
work, and now her mind had somewhere to go and it didn’t particularly feel like taking the rest of her
along. By the time she’d caught up to it again she was vaguely aware she was lying face down on the
pool table, her dress is up around her waist and her panties were gone. Which was funny. Then not.
Somebody takes her by the back of the hair lifts her head up, looks at her, it’s Tommy, but her eyes were
like camera lenses and she whirled them but couldn’t find the right one to bring him into focus.

“She’s out of it.”

Then more talking, Uncle Ray says “Sweet little thing...she’d be the belle of the ball back at the
clubhouse. Whatdaya think, Tom? Should we invite her over?”

“Wouldn’t be nothing left of her if you did.”

Uncle Ray, something to the effect of “Nah, you’re right. Sweet little thing. She’s a nice girl.” Tommy
grunts.

“She go down for you yet?”

“I’m pacing myself.”

“Don’t wait too long, brother. She’s a step up for a lop, but she sure won’t last long with this one.” Ray
then turns to Jack, smiles and asks, “Whatdaya think there, uh...(snaps his fingers, then points at him)
Gregory?”

“Sorry? Are you talking to me?”

Smiles. “Right. Just wondered if you had an opinion on that.”

“Uh, not really. It’s Jack, actually.”

“Jack, right. You might want to change that, Jack. Sounds too much like ‘jackoff ’, don’t you think?” Ray
laughs and Jack laughs weakly. Then he turns back to Tommy.

“Now see? This sweet little girl’s in need of home.”

(grunts) “You want her?”

Uncle Ray: (laughs) “Not around my old lady, no.”

She wonders what they’re talking about? Is this what horse-trading meant? A horse. A pony. A pink pony
with polka dot bones.

He asks Tommy, “You? Pretty little thing. Young. Nice girl. You’d do good with a nice girl.”

Tommy picks up her head again, looks at her. Asks, “How old?”

Oh. They meant her. She thought about holding up her fingers, but then realized she didn’t have enough
of them. And she couldn’t make any of them move anyway. Which was funny. Then it wasn’t.

She heard Jack come to her aid. “16.”

Tommy: grunts. “Too much trouble.”

Tommy walks over for another beer, looks over to Jack, says “Get her up. I don’t want to fuck a corpse.”
Jack goes over, shakes her shoulder roughly, rough voice, “Wake up.” He tries to pull her up off the
table, but she sinks down and Jack can’t hold her up. She wanted to laugh, thought she was laughing,
but it was all stuck inside. Tommy looks over, looks disgusted, puts the beer down and comes over,
takes her from Jack, hefts her back up on to the table and cuffs her across the ear. It wasn’t hard but it
made her brain jangle, she could hear it. (song, ding dong? ) It shakes up her head, she blinks. Her cuffs
her again, a little harder. Chrystal says “aaow,” tries to turn onto her side, puts both arms up to cover
her head. Tommy hitches his hands under her armpits and hauls her up to a sitting position. Her head
lolls back a little. Tommy backhands her briskly (not super hard) in the face, says, “Look at me.” She
looked at his face, trying to focus. Says, oddly, “Hi.” He grunts, then grabs her by the wrists, puts them
up to his shoulders and says, “Hang on.” She willed her fingers to move, and they entwined around the
leather like?? (And either she or he wraps her legs around his waist) She vaguely felt him start to fuck
her again, and she can just can see Uncle Ray and Jack doing a deal—how? Packets of drugs come out?
Money? Oh, ha, ha, she thought. It’s the “French Connection”. That was a good one, and it’d be funny to
see Jack in a too-small hat.

Tommy pulls out, picks her up off the pool table, pushes her down by the shoulders, has his cock out,
takes her by the back of the neck and pulls her head onto it. She wanted to watch the movie Uncle Ray
and Jack were in, but complied because really, it would have been rude not to since she was his guest.
She can hear a little bit what Uncle Ray and Jack are saying. Tommy pulls out of her mouth, moves his
hands from her head down under her armpits and pulls her up. He’s staring down at her, trying to gauge
if she was steady or not or him to let go of her. She looks up shyly and asks him very politely, “Can I have
more, please?” Tommy asks her, somewhat quizzical, “More dick?” Chrystal asks, “The..(trying to
articulate, thinking)...the coke?” Uncle Ray and Jack have been watching this, and Jack says, “Dumb
bitch.” Uncle Ray says, in an almost warning, “We like ‘em dumb. So should you, Jackoff.” Tommy tells
her, “No more now. Not unless you want your heart to stop. Later maybe. You can have more dick
though.” Picks her up and hauls her over to the couch and positions her to kneel down on all fours on
the couch and starts taking her doggystyle.

It seemed so weird she was facing Jack and Uncle Ray while Tommy just kept going and going. Her
crotch felt numb and her body was jerking forward with his thrusts and she was gasping. It seemed a
rather an inconsequential detail but she realized she didn’t like it very much. If she’d actually spoken it
she had no idea, but she heard Uncle Ray say with some sympathy, “Sorry, doll. Tommy just got out. And
he likes to fuck.”

She dropped her head and let him ride it out, while someone inside her head began to sing, “Mister,
would you please help my pony? She’s down in the dirt, would ya help her? I think she’s fucked up...”
Which was hilarious, because Ween was fucking hilarious.

When Tommy finally finished she wanted to sigh in relief, 'Thank God.' He stood over her. She looked up
expectantly and wondered if maybe he was waiting for an apology for her rudeness? She tried to thread
the words together but before she could complete it he pushed down on the small of her back until she
was fully prone, then shoved a pillow under her head.

“Go to sleep.”

She watched him walk back over to Uncle Ray and Jack. She tried to follow the plotline but it was going
all Lynchian so she just closed her eyes. Anyway it was only polite to do what Tommy asked her, since
she was his guest. And her brain wanted to leave again anyway. She realized she must have drifted off,
because all of sudden a clamp was on the nap of her neck, threading through her hair and pulling her
face up.
It was Tommy again, and he was squatting down in front of her. He held out his enormous paw and in
the web between his thumb and forefinger was a scattering of the white powder. “Crank, babygirl. Not
coke.” She dutifully snorted it, embracing his hand in both of hers. This time the high seemed to hit her
right away and she nuzzled against his fist with her head like a cat. She whispered a breathless, "Thank
you," and kissed him over and over again, like she used to practice on Wil Wheaton in the blue sweater.

She heard Uncle Ray say, “See? She’s a nice girl. Nice, pretty girl for you, Tom.” Which made her smile
beatifically. And though her eyes were closed in euphoria she could still feel Tommy holding her head up
and studying her intently, like he was checking a piece of collectible glassware for cracks, while Ween
sang ‘Mister, would you please buy my pony? She can't talk because she's a pony...‘

Then Tommy grunted, “Too much trouble.” And she smiled and smiled.

*******************************************************

He’s going to be thinking that he needs to be careful to keep his emotional distance from Chrystal. Her
drinking in his class disturbs him…what if it’d been someone else’s class…she really would be out the
door. He mentions the smell, incredibly vile. He didn’t even want to know what it tasted like even
thought the sent of the liquor made his noise itch like pollen season. Simply put, he didn’t do what he
should have done, what he’s expected to do…and it wasn’t purely for her benefit that he didn’t either.
He’d done it for himself, to feed this unnatural curiosity about her. Rules exist for a reason, and the rule
actually protects them both. Simply put, he’s on dangerous ground, and he needs to tread carefully.
Avoided Roman? More hints dropped about abuse? Feels emotions towards Chrystal (based on
what he knows about her past, and her resiliency, but thinks he should maintain distance. ERIC IS VERY
WELL AWARE HE USED THE PRETENCE OF ‘CONSEQUENCES’ TO GET AHOLD OF HER WRITING. HE
REALIZES THIS IS DANGEROUS, HE COULDN’T HELP HIMSELF HE WANTED TO GET INSIDE HER, KNOW
MORE ABOUT HER. HE VOWES THAT HE’S GOING TO BE ‘A TEACHER’ LIKE HE WANTED TO BE, TRIED TO
BE AND FAILED THE DAY BEFORE. (memories of Fareeqa?)

******************************************************************************
******************

“That was your own damn fault, what happened up there. I want you to know that.”

“Whaaat? The...party?”

“All of it. Your little act, and with guys like that. You’re goddamn lucky, goddamn lucky. And you’re too
fucking stupid to realize it. Dumbass bitch.”

“Whaaat? They were nice. (confidential) I think the big one liked me. Do you think?”
“Yeah, he liked you, you stupid cunt. You’re lucky you’re not still up there right now getting that nice
guy’s name tattooed on your ass. Dumb bitch. Like I want anyone coming after me asking questions if
you disappeared, when it was your own damn dumbass fault. Fucking hell!”

Jack had dropped her off in front of the bar. She wobbled a little when she stepped out the car, which
made her think maybe she was still high. The Wurlitzer in her brain had brought up Donna Summer, her
mother’s music. It had a great beat to fly to.

Bad girls, bad girls

Talking bout the bad girls

You bad girl, you sad girl

You’re such a dirty bad girl

Now your mother won’t like it when she finds out

Bad girl is out at night…

A little fear, then fear about what Jack might have planned for next time. But she’d do anything and she
knows it. Then she figures it’s all good–she’s just kinky, experienced. Not like other girls her age–Shelley.
She was doing straight up porno shit, yo. Then thinks of Mr. Gilbert, Eric–bet it would turn him on, wish
he could have watched her porno. Wonders what he’s like sexually, damn, he’d be such a great lay, she
just knew it. A beast like that Tommy, but wouldn’t have her be with other guys though, she was sure.
She wound the bracelet around her wrist. No, he wouldn’t want to share; he would be like a hungry lion.
She could see his fair hair was blowing back in the wind like a mane, even when there was no wind.
Which was weird, but Mr. Gilbert could do that. I mean, the Great Gilbert, was he the shit or what? He
pointed his red pen at her and said, “You didn’t stay the fuck out of trouble, did you? You’re a bad girl.
Beep-Beep, uh-uh.” She laughed, but some part of her mind was rolling up the reality cogs again. Then
another image of him popped into her head: kicked back with her journal and a pina colada, reading her
most intimate thoughts, because she realized, God no, that would be worse than letting him seeing her
naked. I’d rather die than have that arrogant prick read my journal… damn, I really need that notebook
back. For the hundredth time her thoughts came back to the same place. I don’t care what he thinks of
my creative writing. I just want my notebook back.

She gets the key and goes inside, gets story ready and is really nervous about Eric looking at it. Chrystal
has the idea that her boozy lifestyle has enhanced her creative writing, bringing out real emotions,
unlike most high-school stuff. In fact she rarely does any creative writing, just journaling. She has to
pick out a story after having sex with two men the previous night. She might pick something from an
earlier more innocent time, possibly a horse story related to the poster she has on her wall that she did
when she was very young.
Washed all that remained of her makeup off, puts on no panties, throws on a pair of her mother’s black
hospital work pants and black tank top totally unacceptable for October in Illinois, her hair was wet so
she just pulled it back into an, slightly frayed Hello Kitty! ponytail holder. Kept the sandals. gets story
ready and is really nervous about Eric looking at it.

The day went fairly well. She kept putting her hand up during French class, and Madame said
her accent was improving, which was fucking hilarious anyway you looked at it. She’d high-fived Lance
the Doofus for some reason that escaped her 3 seconds after she’d done it. She’d even talked to a few
people and laughed at what she thought were jokes. Even Mr. Pressman’s during Chemistry, and he said
he thought she was funny too when she came up to him at the end of class and asked if she could have
some of the stuff from the stockroom and blow herself up. He asked her if she was sure she hadn’t
already? And that was also funny, and she laughed again. He told her, “It’s a nice change for you to be
asking questions in class, but you should find yourself a big bag of Krunchers! and try to keep a low
profile for the rest of the day.” She’s asked why, and he told her, “Because your head is leaking.” And
she’d laughed uproariously, because that was really funny.

“Mr. Pressman, you’re a good teacher. I mean, not that I give a shit about science. But that’s not
your fault, yo.”

The man did seem suitably moved by this and told her she should hurry to her next class so she
wouldn’t be late. She started out the door but turned back at the last moment and flashed the Vulcan
salute at him. He returned it.

She tried to follow Mr. Pressman’s advice, but couldn’t quite contain herself. She’d actually
exchanged some brief pleasantries during lunch with stupid Donnie the Koosh-Douche, but when he
pretended to invite her out to some poetry slam shit during lunch she cut him off and yelled, “Psyche!!!”
and flipped him off vigorously with both hands. Everyone looked over, so she must have been louder
than she thought, but luckily there weren’t any teachers around.

But now she was coming down and just feeling nervous and jittering, and it sucked. Chrystal
walked down the second-floor hallway, full of nervous tension. (Note: there’s other students around,
this is the end of school) She glanced at the wall clock and saw she had five minutes before detention.
She ducked into the girls’ room and leaned against a sink. She wished she had brought another bottle of
“Fanta” with her. She still wasn’t completely decided if she could do this, and the clock was ticking.
Well, she just had to. There was no other option. She took a deep breath, looked in the mirror quickly,
(an abortive and uncharacteristic primp?) and race-walked out the swinging door and down the hall to
room 204.

Chrystal grabbed the door handle and twisted it, but it just rattled in its frame. Peering through
the wire-reinforced glass of the small window she saw empty chairs in a dark classroom. Had she been
wrong about the time? She checked, no, she was on the dot. She turned and surveyed the hall,
momentarily unsure of what to do. At the far end of the hallway she saw Mr. Gilbert, chatting with
another student, “Big Dawg” Adenauer---he’s wearing zubaz pants, like a stoned/psychedelic zebra! She
was already feeling shitty—she didn’t need their fashion assault, too. as they walked towards her. He
and his buddy Scottie “the hottie” Skolnick as they walk up the hall. Oh great, she could just imagine the
intellectual integrity/substance of that conversation. The cleverest those ever got was reciting Jerky
Boys routines back and forth and trying to laugh exactly like Beavis & Butthead. She wondered how Mr.
Gilbert could stomach it. Chrystal thought one last time about walking away. Then his voice was right
next to her, still talking to the student. He saw her as he approached and said jovially “Well, Chrystal,
glad to see you didn’t run away.” (She feels a frisson…he can read her too well, it’s scary, she thinks she
needs to guard herself better) He turned back to the students trailing him. “Come see me on Monday
for a list of library references, Brady.” He turned towards the door and dug in his pants pocket for his
keys, producing an unusually small bunch for a teacher. He leaned in towards the door just as she did,
brushing lightly against Chrystal as he did so. She shivered slightly at the touch. He was in an upbeat
mood and picked the right key with a one-handed wrist movement. In a deliberately phony stage
whisper he asked her “Did you bring the merchandise?” She motioned towards the notebook in her
arms. “You have mine?”

He opened the door and held it for her. She ducked past him and waited just inside the door.
He walked to his desk with Chrystal following, pulled a drawer open, and extracted her battered journal.
He held it out to her and they made the exchange silently. I don’t care what he thinks she thought
again. (Intimate eye contact as she hands over, has to almost ‘offer it up’ to him, torturous, definite
sense of submission, tinge of humiliation, an offering of her ‘naked’ self. She notices his hands, they’re
big, large, strong. It reminded her of last night, and she blushed, peeked up but he didn’t seem to notice.

She pulls out a book, and he asks her what she’s reading. It’s Marguerite Duras’ “The Lover”.
“Ah”, he says. That’s a beautiful book. Beautiful and sad. But mostly beautiful.”

She stumbles, says, “I want...I’d like to, uh, read it in French.”

“Then I don’t doubt you will someday.” He smiled at her, and she feels a tightening in her chest,
and she wondered what the hell that was about—it scared her.

She went to the same seat in the front row and sat down. He says, “Now there’s not going to be
a ‘whatever’ every third sentence here, is there?” She just blushes. Eric sat down in his chair, leaning
back at his ease instead of his usual straight posture, opening her book of creative writing to the first
page. Chrystal had Duras in front of her which she pretended to open and read. Instead she found
herself constantly peeking at Eric, looking for any facial language. Except for the occasional flipping of a
page, he barely moved, giving her no clue about his inner thoughts.

After finding herself reading the same paragraph for the 50th time without having the slightest
idea what she’s read, she looked up at the clock. Blessedly only ten minutes of detention remained.
Finally Eric closed the journal. Chrystal forced herself not to look up, staring ferociously at the book in
front of her. Eric stood up and walked over to her desk. She continued to stare intently at her book as
he set the journal down on her desk.

He walked back to his desk and started arranging the papers on it. As he fussed she moved the
journal aside and said, “Is that it?”

“It was very interesting. I liked some of it quite a bit. Of course it would benefit from a little
polishing. You get your tenses mixed up sometimes, and some of your similes are a bit exaggerated. You
might consider taking my Comp. 340, the creative writing course I teach.”
 “Gee… thanks. Pass.” (Facial expression like sucking on pack of Warheads--Sourly)

“Well, it’s up to you. Writing is a laudable hobby and if you enjoy it I would certainly encourage
you to keep it up. Of course if you’d like it to develop into something more, perhaps professional
writing, you’ll need to take some courses.”

She made a pile of all her things in front of her. “Can I go now?” she said in an irritated tone.

Eric looked at his watch. “Yes, in four more minutes.” After an awkward silence, he cleared his
throat. “In the course of our acquaintance, Chrystal, I wouldn’t say that I’ve gotten to know you that
very well, but I do think I have some insight in regards to certain issues you’re dealing with.” He
hesitated briefly. “I know young people think adults are out of touch with the problems that they’re
facing. Sometimes that’s accurate, but not in this case. I know you’ve talked with Ms. Honeywell in the
past, and I do know she has had some experience in these things. She’d bend over backwards to help
you if you asked her. I’m sure she could find you a good Alateen group nearby.”

Chrystal rolled her eyes. “Your concern is touching, but I can take care of my own business,
thanks.”

“Can you? I’d say that’s debatable, given the trajectory you’re on.”

“The only trajectory I care about is the one out of this door in another four minutes. No, three,”
spoken very smugly.

He looked at her for a moment, then shook his head. “That’s certainly your decision to make,
but you’re a talented young woman and I don’t like watching what you’re doing to yourself.”

“Spare me.”

“Spare you? I think that’s the very last thing you need me to do, Chrystal. Spare you from what?
The fact that you’re on a downward spiral, and apparently willfully so? Being around you, girl, it’s like
watching someone desperately trying to flush themselves down the toilet, over and over again, swirl,
swish, swirl, swish...as if she’s convinced herself that’s where she belongs.”

“My, I had no idea scatological references could be so touching and strangely poetic. I moved,
really. Why, you’ve almost brought me to tears again.”(snide, she fakes wiping a tear with a slash of her
index finder down from under her eye.)

He sighed. “More of the same, I see. I’d probably be accomplishing more having this
conversation with a houseplant, since it would at least be feeding off my oxygen.”

“Was that an insult? No, not from the sainted Mr. Gilbert.”

“I guess it’s too much to expect you to take anything seriously.”

Chrystal, acidly. “You can quit tiptoeing around now, you know, trying to be the bigger person.
It’s over. This is the last you’ll ever need to see of me. So this is your golden opportunity. Tell me what
you really think of me; I won’t hold it against you, pinky swear.”

“Is that what you want?”

 “If you have it in you.”

Eric throws up his hands. “Okay, since that’s the game you want to play, I’ll play it. Chrystal,
when I look at you, given your attitude and determined lack of self-reflection, all I can think is it’s a
waste of good brain cells.”

Chrystal stood up and picked up her books. “Well, bravo, hometown. I know you could have
done better than that, but whatever. But you know what? It’s quid pro quo now. You want to know
what I think of you? (steps closer to him, makes sure he’s looking at her) To me, you’re a waste of a
good hard cock.”

She knew she had struck home when she saw him freeze, speechless. He blushed and turned
away. She’d actually made the Great Gilbert blush! She smirks. “You know, I almost didn’t make it in
today, Mr. Gilbert. Probably not for the reason you’re thinking though. Truth is I’m flat out fucking
exhausted! I could hardly catch a break from all the action I was getting last night. Three holes, no
waiting, Mr. Gilbert. (she laughs) Hot, huh? And, you know, the whole time I was thinking, I wonder if
the Great Gilbert can do it better. I wonder if he can live up to that nickname of his. Can you?” (Eric
doesn’t move.) “Aw, you’re a little shy, huh? Well, damn. I was sure if I finally yanked your chain hard
enough you’d yank back and then we could have some real fun.”

(mock sigh) Well, like I said, maybe I’ll see you around, hometown.”

She could hardly help from giggling on her way out. What a prude! Geez, could he be any more
self-righteous? How had that clown ever scared her? It was Friday afternoon and everyone was gone.
She stood in front of the large swinging doors and looked out. It had started to rain heavily. She
thought about going back to her locker for her headphones, but the silence and emptiness were
intimidating. Finally she pushed through the doors and into the cold and wet. Remember she’s in thin
pants, tank top and sandals. Water running over her toes is cold, and she’s cold.

(She’s still going to be thinking about him) Chrystal pulled her ? shirt up over her head but water
still trickled in. (she’s not wearing anything under it!) Her pants hung low and loose and the exposure
made her feel awkward. As a result of her seeming inability to do the laundry at home, she’d been
reduced to wearing a pair of her mother’s thin black cotton scrubs (comfy—and if BradyCo can wear
Zubaz she could wear these things!) and they had gotten wet almost immediately and clung damply to
her skin. She stopped under an elm tree, waiting for the worst of the rain let up. This is pretty lame,
there aren’t even leaves on this tree. Maybe she should just go for it—run or something. On the street
a black car slowed down as it drove past, so shiny it cast reflections from its slick black surface.

The car slowed to a halt, its headlights creating a shimmering cascade of light on the rain.
Chrystal looked over as the car stopped but couldn’t see through the windows. The window lowered
with a faint whirr? What sound?) and she saw the profile of the sinfully handsome blonde man behind
the wheel, looking straight forward.

“Ride?” His voice was flat and emotionless.

Chrystal barely suppressed a giggle. Well, she’d heard better pickups—but then she’d heard
worse too. Let’s see how homeboy stacks up. Maybe all those little cheerleaders just needed to learn
what a real man like The Lord of Leighton wants.
 She bent down and looked in the window, smirking, searching his face for clues.

“Sure, I’m always up for a good ride...and there are so few gentlemen around here that can
provide it.”

He leaned over and opened the door and she slid into the seat, brushing water out of her hair.
“Hope you don’t mind water on the upholstery. It’s really coming down.”

He didn’t respond or even look over at her as he pulled away from the curb.

She rubbed her arms to try and get some warmth into them. “I forgot my coat again.”
Wordlessly he turned the heat up.

At this conversational rebuff Chrystal made a dismissive face and settled back into her seat. The
car rolled on smoothly through the rain. She wondered how a teacher could score a nice ride like this.
He must clean it twice a day—you could do surgery in here. I hope he’s not this antiseptic in the sack.

“Uh-oh, Mr. Gilbert, it looks like you just missed my turn. (Smirking, flirtatious, looking over at
him) “Well, guess I’ll just go along for…whatever.” She smiled and leaned back in the seat.

The car turned into Eric’s neighborhood and cruised up the streets. They pulled up into a
driveway. Who would have imagined such luxury? Not bad at all—maybe being a teacher is a pretty
good gig after all, maybe they should stop bitching all the time. It was a sandstone colored, stone-front
house that was trying to go for an old-world vibe, but was obviously brand-new home, with a large bay
window out front. The landscaping had that too immaculate look, clearly the result of professional
landscaping, and the tree out front was so young it was still staked.

He turned off the engine and opened his door. So this is Chez Gilbert. (They get out of the car).

Eric preceded her to the door and held it open for her. She ducked under his arm and went into
the living room. Nice little crib. The room was spacious and high-ceilinged. Several large windows
reflected muted light off the white plaster walls. It had a fireplace and several tall bookshelves on the
walls. It smelled of leather furniture and pine logs stacked neatly in the fireplace. She ran her fingers
over a polished marble countertop, feeling the smooth stone. Her feet sank into a deep white carpet,
making her nervous about leaving wet tracks on it. She walked over to one of the bookshelves and
examined the titles, tracing her finger across the titles (she’s obviously doing this for him to notice,
peeking back at him, trying to be flirty, but it’s actually pretty obnoxious). It mostly looked like academic
titles, and she was genuinely interested and wished she really could have some time alone to peruse
them.

“My, what big...books...you have, Mr. Gilbert. Have you read them, or are they just for show?”

“I’ve read them.”

“A real U of Chi boy, aren’t you?” (She laughed at her pun. His eyes are dark and inscrutable. She
smiles seductively.) “You’ll have to teach me all about...(glancing at one of the titles) “The Consolation of
Philosophy” someday.” (she laughs in what she thinks is a seductive fashion) She notices the stereo,
which looked expensive, worth a few hundred at least. This was more interesting to her—she wondered
what he was into. There were a bunch of CDs out and she flipped through them with less deliberate
tease—there was a lot of stuff she’d never heard of, but some she recognized: Aretha Franklin, Miles
Davis, Sly & the Family Stone, jazz, blues, and soul—interesting tastes. She didn’t know what she’d
assumed he’d be into, but this fit as much as anything. He was “class”, she knew that. She wondered
how he had scored such a good life.

“You like to kick it old school, huh? Hmm...let me find something for us to get in the mood,
hmmm...”Slow Jams”...

(She makes a remark about wanting to put on some of his soul love cd to ‘get into the mood’, want me
to dance for you??, doing a little hip swivel, trying to seduce, flirtatious, obnoxiously so. What music
does she turn on?

She glanced over at Eric, who was carefully brushing off his coat (what kind?, loosening his tie)
and brushed water out of his hair and smoothed it down. She saw a shape she recognized—a bronze
and gold bottle of Glenfiddich single-malt sitting on a countertop with a single lowball glass next to it.
This is the good shit. Mmm…Oh yeah...This is some major class up in here. She smiled and walked over
and picked up the bottle, admiring the label.

She looked sideways at him, smiling craftily. He looked at her impassively, arms crossed. (He
may loosen his tie at his point) “A-ha, I knew you were a drinking man.”

She opened the bottle and poured a generous shot into the glass and sauntered over to him.
“Want me to dance for you, baby?” With a flirtatious smile, she presented the glass to him, peeking up
at him from beneath lowered lashes, snaking her hips with the music and singing along to the lyrics.
“Let’s get it on...mmmm...get it on...come on, baby...”

His hand swept by so quickly she didn’t even see it, knocking the glass from her hand. Shocked,
she saw it hit the floor and tumble, leaving an ugly brown puddle soaking into the white carpet. She
turned back to him, mouth agape. She felt his grip on her wrist, making the loose metal links of her
watchband trap her skin. She grimaced at the pain and looked up into his face. Blank eyes stared back
at her. She said “Owww”. His grip loosened but he didn’t let go.

She looked at his face, in his eyes very intense, alarmingly so. She tries to pull her wrist away, a
bit jokingly. “Excuse me…” He doesn’t let go. She tries to jerk away; she can’t even budge. “Seriously,
you need let go of my arm, I’m not playing.” There was no reaction except for a small but noticeable
tightening of his grip, which caught the skin around the Timex again. She winced then instinctively
brought the heel of her free hand up into his face. The blow never landed—He dragged her towards the
chair and bent her over. She gasped for breath as he let go of her and stepped back.

She looked back, ready to say “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” when she saw him
look steadily at her as he reached for his belt buckle with measured slowness. She thinks “it’s brass tacks
time, apparently. Guess the scouting report says this player isn’t much on foreplay.” and opened it
slowly, letting the belt slither out from the belt loops and dangle from his hand like a thin black snake.

“Stay down.”

Motherfucker she thought, watching him deliberately coil the belt up around his fist, leaving
about a foot hanging down. She was wrong about the foreplay thing, apparently. This was it. She
probably should have guessed, she supposed: she’d brazenly teased about being kinky to get at him;
well, now she’s come up against the real thing. This man was the real thing. She felt a surge over her
body, like an electric current. She couldn’t name it, but it scared her. So was she going to go running
away like a cowardly little bitch? NO. She felt a hollowness in her stomach and her breath came shallow
and halting. A sick, nervous excitement took hold of her, making her stomach feel fluttery. Slowly,
hesitatingly, but compelled by a deep and unexplored desire, she lowered her eyes and pushed her
hands forward, offering herself to him.

You can trust me, he’d said. Well, okay then. She’d trust him, even though every nerve in her
and instinct in her was telling her it would lead her to ruination.

Chrystal, usually safely anonymous in her body, was acutely conscious of the thin wet fabric
clinging to her bottom. She heard a swoosh and squeezed her eyes tightly shut just as the belt came
down. It stung intensely, and she gasped a small “oh,” more from the shock than any pain. A hot stripe
slowly bloomed where the belt had struck. Oh my god…oh my god...She winced as the heat worked its
way in and put her forehead down on the cushion. The belt started to come down regularly, every few
seconds. Oh my god it hurt, could barely keep still, but she could get lost in the sound, intoxicating.

Seeing the belt the couch beside her, in some part of her mind, she registered he’d
stopped…only he hadn’t. She felt his hands on her hips. His touch felt like 100 volts shocking her as two
of his outside fingers ran down her flesh, pulling down her pants. She feels one arm go around her waist
from above, then he slide in beside her and pull her body over his thighs, holding her around the waist
as he began to bring his hand down on her. She’d never known what it’d been like to be so acutely in
her body before. It was heady. It was terrifying. She tried to grip the leather cushion, trying to hold the
babyish whimpers in her throat. But she could hear them, and beyond the burning was the knowing he
could hear them, too. Jesus, it was too much. It was all…too much.

It was several moments before she realized he had stopped. He took his arms off her, nudging
her hip off him and she slid to her knees in front of the sofa. She wondered if he wanted her to suck him
off now, in front of her. It’s what she would have done before, what was always expected of her. And
this was why it surprised her when she felt him walk away, looking back to see he had picked up the
scotch glass from the floor and walked to the counter, standing with his back to her pouring a drink. She
managed to stand up, feeling quivery. Whatever the conversation was to be past this point, she didn’t
know what it would be or how she could even conceive of handling it.

She put one hand on her stomach, so full of shock and nervous energy she felt ill, everything in
last few days hitting her at once. She desperately needed to decompress. With the other hand she
hitched up her pants. In a calm monotone Eric said “upstairs, second door on the left.”

It was always a thing she would have to deal with (we should show this happening in the past---
feeling sick to her stomach because of nerves) How’d he know that I need to use his bathroom—does he
read minds? She headed upstairs haltingly, one hand on the metal railing and the other holding up her
pants.

They were so attuned to each other, she felt, like two tuning forks vibrating in synch. OMG, it
was unthinkable that she was actually in his home, and that he’d…well, Mr. Gilbert had…? She blushed
bright red, didn’t think she could ever utter it out loud. And nobody would believe her if she told them.
Her own mind was having a hard time believing it, but her body did, for sure. She had built him up so
much in her mind, and what it’d be like to have him. Or for him to have her, which seemed more fitting
in this case. Incredible, overwhelming, hype as hell. It had been all that, for sure. But still Mr. Hometown
had found a way to shake it all up. Shake her up. She thought back to watching “Streetcar Named
Desire” on the late show with Granny one time. Blanche DuBois sashaying down the staircase—up in
her case--‘Well, you are not the gentleman I was expecting—‘ God, it was all too much. He was...too
damn much.

She got to the top of the steps and moved towards the doorway, eyes tracking the carpet. She
stood in the doorway and stopped in surprise. Instead of the bathroom, she was looking into a spacious
bedroom. It was well-lit by a large window on the opposite wall. She walked towards the bed looking
around at the furniture, Spartan but tasteful. The room smelled like him, it was his personal space and
she felt she had no right to be here, was intruding. She started to back out and collided with Eric, who
had come up behind her unheard. He put one hand on the back of her neck and twined it into her hair,
reached around her waist with the other, turning her towards him, just a shade shy of gently. Still
holding the back of her neck, he reaches his other hand to her chin and cups it between his finger and
thumb, tilting her face up to his, waiting for their eyes to lock. And then he brought his mouth to hers,
she parted her mouth and he slid inside. She could taste the dark tang of whiskey on his tongue and it
made her want to swoon. Then the hand in her hair twisted, tightening its hold and his other hand
moved to the side of her face, and his tongue began mauling her, sucking on her tongue. He started
pulling her head back by the ponytail until her back arched and she could only hang on to his waist for
fear of toppling. His body through the shirt felt big, broad, hard and solid. It felt like she was clinging on
to a Greek statue of a perfect man. Still not letting go of her hair, her let this other hand slide down one
side of her throat, into the depression of her collar bone, down over her breasts, his fingers circling her
nipple before sliding down over her belly and around her hip. With a quick and firm movement he
reached under her buttocks and drove her hips hard and slightly up against his hips, and she gasped. His
mouth mashed against hers. Then he arched her hips further up against his and pulled her head further
back, and all she could do was part her legs and try to grip her thighs against his waist for fear of falling.
She thought she would lose her breath and coming back to her mind from just the sensation of her body
she felt his eyes, his eyes dark and intense and staring into hers.

“Look at me.”

Not bothering to break contact with either her eyes or her mouth, he began to move forward,
half guiding and half pushing her towards the bed. When he broke the bodily contact it was sudden and
unexpected---both hands, one moving down from her neck and the other slightly up to her hips, she felt
herself being lifted and then flung backwards. Even though she knew the bed was in back of her, she still
felt the brief and disorienting sense of falling back into nothingness before she landed. Before she could
catch her breath, he’d bent over her and took ahold of either side of her waist and yanked the already
loose pants down to her knees. The hand that cupped against her crotch was broad and warm against
her. She swore her heart would beat right out of her chest when she felt two of his fingers slip inside of
her, circling inside her and then trailing out to flick against her clit. She wanted to moan at their removal
as he drew back. She watched as he brought them up to his mouth and stuck them inside, sucking them.
He stared at her the whole time, and she felt the heat take her face and her heart pounded. She knew
he was still staring at her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes, had to look away. Her sight was drawn down
to his waist, and she noticed the movement. She felt herself shaking, but his movements seemed so
calm, steady, purposeful, as he wordlessly began to unfasten his pants.
 He straddled her, and as he bore her down into the mattress the hair on her arms rose like an
electrical current was passing through her body. She turned her head to the side, but he wouldn’t have
it. He grasped her chin and forced her face towards his own.

“Look at me, goddamnit.”

She did, and the intensity of his gaze reflected back a brilliant blue. She could drown there. As
he returned her stare something in those eyes reached out for her like a physical touch.

His nostrils flared. "Faciam ut mei memineris, dum uitam uiuas…You wanted me, kitten. Now
you got me, aren’t I the man of your fucking dreams?”

“Yes.”

A wrenching sound between a growl and a cry came out of his throat and he grabbed her hips
and lifted her up, flinging her farther back onto the bed. Then he was on top of her in an instant, taking
her by the wrists and holding them down and out to her side. With both wrists secured in one his hand,
he gripped her chin with his free one.

“Look at me. Do not look away. Do not dare. You understand?”

She nodded, but still he pressed. “Say it.”

“Yes.”

Her tongue danced lightly at her lower lip.

“I’ll do whatever you want. I...I want to.”

Naked raw power/dominance in his eyes. She recalls what he said about the lion’s cage—she
knew what he meant. He was the lion and she was the wounded prey. Lifting one of her legs, he pushed
his hips in between her thighs and slid inside of her. She turned her head away, then caught her self and
face forward. and even though she was ready for him she winced a little, still sore from last night. She
felt him biting at the side of her neck. Then on her earlobe with much more force. His mouth was
against her ear, and he was panting, growling, whispering some of the nastiest, dirtiest things she’d ever
heard in her life, things she’d never even heard of before that he said he was going to do to her, and if
her mind and body weren’t occupied with just feeling it all her whole face would have gone red. Then as
if finally giving in to it all, he thrust quickly and deeply inside her, and she realized what she hadn’t
before, that he had been holding back, because when he thrust this time it was all of him. He took her
like an animal, an animal let off its chain. He rammed his tongue into her mouth with the same ferocity
as he’s entered her moments before. She could smell his cologne. His zipper scraped roughly against
her inner thigh, but she didn’t care. It seemed so much a lesser sensation to everything else. Does he go
down on her, and she tries to squirm away, embarrassed, her hands in his hair---he’s not just licking but
sucking, and she feels his teeth nip her ‘down there’, and it throws her over the edge—she comes. She
begins to squeal (in embarrassment. Not licking, sucking, eating, for real. Says ‘oh god, oh god no, stop?’
Does she come? Yes. so he gets back on top of her, back inside her.) She could barely inhale, but his
breathing was deep and ragged. He took her wrists again, then her hands, their hands clasped together.
She could hear his breath, feels him slow tempo, going even deeper, that he was trying to prolong it as
much as possible, and he did. (Is he licking/sucking at her neck/shoulder, her ear, breathing her in,
sniffing? Cataloging her—it was creepy and terrifying) She could only see the cloth and stiff collar of his
shirt, incongruent light blue pinstripes and the scent of musk and spice of his cologne, she sniffed back,
gingerly.

She felt like she wanted to do this, to be this for him, with him. Finally she felt him come inside
her, collapsing on top of her with his baby-fine hair against the side of her neck. She, compelled almost,
reached up and touched it shyly. Almost at her touch he let go of her hands/unclasped them, levering
himself up and off the bed.

“Get dressed,” he said, “I’m taking you home.” He was suddenly very businesslike, facing away
from her and tucking in his shirt and zipping his pants. She struggled up off the bed and pulled up her
own pants, fumbling with the drawstring. He fussed impatiently while she rearranged her clothes,
adjusting his cuffs and smoothing down his hair. He was clearly and deliberately avoiding looking at her.

Full-on coyote syndrome in effect, she thought. What an asshole!

“I take it you won’t be sending me flowers tomorrow.”

Her taunt got no response; he simply started downstairs assuming she would follow. He wasn’t
even going to pretend it was worth a shit, what happened. What never happened, apparently.

Chrystal fumed. “Do you really think you can do what you just did and then take me back home
to my mama?” She was almost shouting now, following after him and hurling invectives. “What, class
dismissed now, huh? You bastard.” She almost picked up the scotch bottle and hurled it at his back,
desperate for him to at least acknowledge. No, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how
much it cut her. How much it hurt. It was almost an involuntary reflex when her hand closed around a
book and launched it at the back of his perfect blonde head. The second she realized what she’d done
she was grateful for her poor aim—it crashed against the wall—a picture on the wall (a can see him with
Josephine Baker posters, Blue Note album posters), which rocked. Eric had stopped dead still. She held
her breath.

He stood perfectly still with his back to her but everything about him seemed to pulsate. His
voice was low and devoid of emotion. “Pick it up.”

She scurried over to obey. She returned the book to where the best of her recollection she’d
taken it from.

She said she was sorry, in a mere whisper. She kept her head lowered but peeked over at him.
He turned slowly. She swallowed, and her heart lurched in her chest. The eyes that pinned her were
black and scary. His hands were shaking. She swallowed again.

“Don’t throw anything at me. Ever.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She watched him clench his fists, slowly close his eyes and take a long, deep breath. When he
opened his eyes again his demeanor had mercifully softened. He stared at her, and after a few moments
she was able to return his gaze. They held each other silently. His lips parted, and it looked like he was
going to say something. Then he took another deep breath and drew them back together. He closed his
eyes, and when he opened them again the cold indifference was back and whomever it was she had
been connected to a few moments before was gone. She continued to get only stony silence as she
followed him outside.

He held the door to the Eclipse open for her, all business now. She was tempted to just ignore
him and haul her own ass home, but he must have read it in her eyes for he said with ultimate calm and
confidence, “Get in or I put you in.” She had no doubt he would, and the thought of his hands on her—
she’d just lose and it scared her what might come up, come out of her of he did so. So she obeyed.

“310 Taft,” she spat out and sank into the seat and stared straight ahead with her arms crossed
tightly over her chest. In the deadly silence of the ride home, the ticking sound from the car’s heater
almost made her put her fist through the windshield. Or she’d just start screaming and screaming and
screaming and never stop. She feels something, a big knot of emotion lodged in her chest, like she’s
going to have a coronary right there, feels like she’s going to cry from anger, it would be anger not
sadness, but he wouldn’t know the difference, and she would die before she had them thinking he’d
actually hurt her. She’d never show that to him, not ever. No way.

She watched the pleasant suburbs give way to light industry and then working-class squalor. As
they approached her house, she roused herself.

“Drop me at the corner.”

“No, you’re going home.” She wanted to scream at him, call him out for the sanctimonious shit-
eating bastard he was, but his voice was ice and steel, such utter calm. She glanced over, still no eye
contact from the jerk. But she doubted she’d like what she saw if she got any.

They arrived, and he angled his car over to the curb. Chrystal opened the door before the car
had completely stopped and jumped out, slamming the door and walking down the street without a
backward glance.

A part of her mind registered the engine turning off and a car door opening but it was still a
surprise when she felt someone grab her arm and yank her around.

“In the house, I said.”

She whirled the rest of her body around to face him, almost nose to nose, well as close as that
comes given their height disparity. “What the fuck do you care? I’ll just go out again when you leave.”

“So be it. Once you’re in that house, my obligation is done. From there, you can do whatever the
hell you want.”

She glared at him, breathing heavily through her nose. They stared each other down. She tried
to think of a way to wound him, reach some vulnerability, but his eyes were cold blue and flat, ice and
steel, not that matinee blue anymore and she realized this was a battle she couldn’t win: he just didn’t
care.

Her eyes itched, and she knew she was going to say something stupid, but she knew if she tried
to let nothing out everything would, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t, allow that to happen.

“God, I hate you.”

 His grip on her arm tightened. “Good. You have a brain in your head after all.”

“I told you, I’m not stupid! I used you! I got exactly what I wanted! I got what I wanted and now
I’m done with you, so fuck off. Just fuck off!” She tried to yank her arm away, but he wouldn’t let go.
Instead he pulled her closer, until her hip was wedged against his thigh. He leaned down towards her
and she could feel as well as hear his silky growl into her ear.

“So you did. So you did, kitten, but know this: I got what I wanted from you, too, and it’s not me
that’s going to have the souvenirs to prove it. Now you best have gotten your fill because next time I
might not let you walk away so easily. I hope you understand me. Say it.”

She paused, catching her breath, then felt him butt his forehead against the side of her head
and though it wasn’t enough to hurt she thought her knees might buckle from the contact anyway.
“Yes.”

“Good. Now run along home, little girl, and I’ll be seeing you around. Not the reverse. Not if
you’re half as smart as you think you are.”

He backed away from her hand loosened his grip. She needed no further encouragement,
angrily pushing his hand away with the palm of hers. She headed up her walk. She couldn’t stop the
moisture from welling in her eyes, but she’d made damn sure he would never see a single tear fall. She
crouched down to get the key from under the mat, feeling the beginnings of a deep soreness as the
muscles of her butt stretched and her front/loins ached from over-stimulation, and went into her house.

Chrystal closed the front door carefully, almost gently—she wasn’t going to give the
neighborhood the door-slamming routine. She heard the sound of his car door shut and the car pull
away down the street. She leaned back against the door, taking several deep, shuddering breaths. The
“don’t you ever touch me, …not ever… not ever...again....” finally allowed to come out. She desperately
tried to choke back the sobbing and tears welling up, making her whole body spasm. She took more
deep breaths through her nose, teeth clenched tightly. (Almost an ugly snorting, trying to hold the cries
in). Finally she jammed her knuckles into her eyes and waited for it to pass.

I’ll die before I cry over him.

Chrystal wiped her eyes off and noticed red chafing on her wrist. That prick. She went down the
hall to the bathroom and quickly stripped off her shirt and pants. She turned in front of the mirror,
looking for marks. There was a mark on her upper arm where he had grabbed her and a raw spot on her
inner thigh from Eric’s zipper, in addition to some leftover pinkness from the belt. Her groin had slow,
dull ache.

Souvenirs.

So, he’d kept at least one of the promises he’d whispered into her ear: this indeed felt exactly
what it meant to be “fucked” in every sense of word. . (Does he say, “Have you ever really been
fucked?”—staring right in her eyes, dark eyes. I mean fucked, kitten. You’re going know what it feels like
to be fucked in every sense of the word.” This asshole thinks he can treat me like some cluck? She was
shaking with the insult of it.
 She could still detect a faint miasma of his cologne, like a ghostly unwanted body pressing
against her and there was a disgusting dampness still between her legs. She rubbed herself and wiped
her fingers on a towel, feeling nauseated. Wanting to scrub off the entire day, she turned the shower on
full-blast and as hot as possible and stepped in. She winced as the searing water jetted over her skin but
forced herself to stay in. She scrubbed herself completely with a crescent of cheap off-brand bodywash
over and over. She winced when she cleaned the sensitized areas but still washed furiously. The floral
scent faded after half a minute and gave way to a flat antiseptic smell but she ignored it and kept
washing three, four times. Even with her skin raw and red as a peeled tomato she still felt dirty.
Thinking it will take a lifetime of showers to the get the scent of him off her body she gave up and shut
off the water. She stepped out and patted herself as dry as possible, unable to even rub a towel over
her skin.

She wiped a swath of moisture off the mirror with an angry swipe of her hand. Sunken eyes in a
fish belly pale face stared back at her.

Reality-check, Chryssy-kins. Not even you could be stupid enough to think a man like that would
really go for you, right? Did you really think, this...thing in the mirror could ever be mistaken for a fellow
intellectual, a confidant, a human being, or anything to him? Spare me! You stupid bitch...! Don’t…
make…me…laugh!

She pounded on the mirror with her fist and the glass cracked. She looked down at her hand,
seeing blood already flowing.

Ah, fuck! Ah, Jesus Christ! She shook her hand a few times, trying to shake the pain away, but
instead drops of blood flew around the bathroom. Ah, fuck me! She took a large wad of toilet paper and
wrapped it around her fist, clenching hard.

And this year’s lifetime achievement award for dumb cunt-ery goes to…Chrystal Perrin!
Congrats, bimbo! She scowled, and shook her head, assessing the damage. What a fucking mess!

She picked up the large curved shard from the bowl of the sink---then gasped and pulled her
hand back sharply. There was a thin red line on the tip of her index finger and she grit her teeth at what
felt like the biggest bitch of a paper cut ever. She shook her hand a few times, then reached back for the
shard but thought better of it at the last moment. She instead tore a few more squares off the toilet
paper roll and wrapped them around her thumb and forefinger. This time she fished the glass out using
extreme caution. There was something so brilliant and bright about it. It glinted with a white shine as
she turned it in the light, admiring the wicked scimitar curve.

The thought came unbidden, an equal flash of grim brilliance, the edge slicing into the pale flesh
of her wrists. She held it delicately against her arm, enthralled.

Do it.

With a sudden burst of resolve she pushed the point into her skin and started tugging
downward. The pain was shocking, making her whole body double over. She hurled the shard of glass
into the sink and jammed her toilet paper wrapped knuckles against the seeping cut. Stupid, stupid,
stupid…what the hell did she think she trying to do, that she would ever be anything more than a
coward. And as for a cry for help…shit, like anyone would care if she offed her miserable ass anyway—
she’d be hard pressed to get anyone to patch up the mess she just made, let alone mourn her passing.
Then she heard creep’s voice, as if he were speaking directing into her head, rich with sarcasm and
contempt.

“Logic, Miss Perrin, logic…my obligation is over, you can do whatever the hell you want.”

Feeling violently nauseous she collapsed in front of the toilet and hung her head down. For a
minute she thought it was a false alarm, but then it hit her hard, and she squeezed her face tight with
pain. Sobs wracked her body; hot tears sprang up in a violent purge.

She lay against the toilet, sobbing uncontrollably, until exhaustion overtook her.

She pushed herself upright and unwrapped the paper from her hand. As she looked down into
the toilet, she saw a single streak of color spiraling outwards from the discarded tissue like a crimson
galaxy. She surveyed it with cold resolve, then pushed the handle down and turned away.

As she walked down the hall her passage through the cold air in the hallway crystallized each
droplet of water still on her skin. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and hurried to her
bedroom, leaving a trail of sodden footprints in her wake.

All I need to do is get some sleep.

Feeling drained of emotion, like a wrung-out dishrag, she threw herself down on the bed and lay
staring at the ceiling. Her thin blanket was wadded up in the corner somewhere out of reach, so she
pulled the sheet around her mummy-like and lay with her arms crossed over her chest like an effigy.
The cold of the room penetrated, with no warmth inside of her to fight it. She looked with a dead
sightless stare at the warped dirty panels of the ceiling, flecked with the remains of cobwebs; one panel
sagged open at one corner like the mouth of an open grave. The room had the stale odor of dirty
laundry and mildew. She clutched the sheet tightly around her in spite of its pilled feeling. She shut her
eyes and deliberately slowed down her breathing, trying to stop it completely, to blank out everything.

She opened her eyes. There was an urge inside of her, an itch deep inside her body, needing to
be scratched and growing steadily more demanding. No effort of will could make it go away; the
demands of her body overrode the will of her mind to oblivion.

I gotta find Jack.

She knew it was a dumb, dumb idea. It was pretty clear he didn’t want to see her ass around
after last night, unless he could rent it out for cash to someone else. Even going there would be
debasing, and what she would have to do for drugs would be infinitely more so—if he even let her score.
She saw herself as the inner-city crack whore of so many movies, begging for just one more hit from a
smirking, contemptuous dealer. Women who whatever needle they jabbed under their skin had sucked
out the last of their souls when it was withdrawn. That pathetic ghetto bussa would be her someday if
she weren’t careful. But she needed something, anything to kill the pain. To kill her or kill the pain. She
didn’t much care which.

She squeezed her eyes tightly and opened them slowly. She stood up and let the sheet fall on
the floor. She decided to see if she could gild the rapidly wilting lily. (Everything she does here needs to
be completely cold and clinical.) The thought of some purpose, a mission, renewed her. It gave her a will
to live, for the time being. She went to the bottom left drawer of her dresser and pulled it open, yanking
it past obstructions. She started excavating, tossing aside old pilled sweaters, a frayed pair of cutoffs,
and a yellow sundress from six years ago. She pulled a small red t-shirt with a gold ankh symbol on the
front that she’s had since she was 12 that Grandma Doe had bought her in the souvenir shop when they
went to the Field Museum in Chicago. She pulled it on—it was tight of course, exposing her navel.
Feeling self-conscious she tried to pull it down to her waist, but it was too small. She decided that the
kind of panties she would need to go with this special ops mission she didn’t have—the last pair that
might were dangling off the handlebars of some Harley in Rockford, so she decided to go commando.
She went into her mother’s room and opened the closet door and grabbed a pair of her jeans. Old
Jordache cowgirl jeans with fancy western stitching on the rear pockets wouldn’t have been her first
choice, but at least they were clean and fit fairly well. She slipped into a pair of pumps her mom wore to
weddings and funerals. She walked over to the dresser and surveyed the makeup and perfume choices.
She considered several colors of lipstick before lacquering up with a streetwalker red. She puckered her
lips in the mirror to check the effect. She picked up the mascara and unscrewed the wand, hesitating,
trying to apply it without poking her eyes out. She sniffed the fragrance bottles individually, wondering
what kind of woman got their perfume from a porcelain bunny’s ass. She finally used a generous spritz
in each underarm from a disc-shaped bottle with the half-moon shaped metal top. Mmmm,
mmm…feelin’ foxy with Foxfire. She lifted a hank of hair from both sides of her face and sprayed
Aquanet over it, letting it drop. She looked in the mirror, turning her head right and left and puckered
her lips, licking of a few flecks of red on her teeth.

She walked back down the hall, stopping before the door to Dean’s room. She hesitated a
moment then turned the knob and went in. Nothing had been moved since his death two years earlier.
Her breathing caught, and she struggled not to let a wave of emotion overcome her. Everything here
was museum quality Dean. Smell of dust, fine layer of dust over the posters. There were stacks of vinyl
records and cassettes, a worn baseball bat with a glove hooked over the top, and images of blondes with
inflated boobs reclining on wet sand and the Iron Maiden poster showing a grinning white-haired
skeleton clawing its way up from the fiery pit of Hell. She walked over to the closet, trailing one hand on
the bed as she went. She touched the pillow, seeing palest of blonde hairs still resting there. She felt a
lump in her throat and quickly turned away from the bed and opened the closet door. A faint lingering
odor of patchouli wafted out, it was a fucking disgusting stench, even now two years later, but it had
served its purpose to mask the odor of cannabis. She glanced on the floor and sure enough there was
the shoebox. Opening it she saw there was still enough left to create a very pleasant high, but no
thought of using it passed through her head. She could never even consider disturbing the sacred shrine
of Dean’s room. She kisses two fingers and touches the box, returns it. On the racks inside hung a couple
of dozen t-shirts, jeans with worn out knees and Dean’s black leather motorcycle jacket. She wondered
if some sympathetic magic would imbue her with Dean’s impenetrability. She shrugged the psychic
armor of the coat over her thin shoulders, feeling the suppleness and smelling the worn spicy masculine
scent of the leather. She left, carefully closing the door behind her.

It was still drizzling as she walked down the street. The sidewalk was cracked and uneven,
awkward in her high heels. There were no people out, only the occasional car driving past. An eerie
blue glow emanated from most of the houses she walked past, indicative of people settling in for an
evening of television. From the next street over a driving bass thump and loud voices wafted over,
revving car engines and guys standing outside with beers. She ran her hands through her hair, which
was sticky from the hairspray, worried that the damp would flatten it down. She walked over a railroad
track. Many places had no sidewalk, forcing her to walk in the gutter. She saw a deserted playground to
her right. Memories or sounds: the squeak of the old swings, one broken, hanging half down, bounce of
teeter-totter, sound of laughter. A warehouse loomed to her right, corrugated steel front sealed with
heavy padlocks and protected by sagging chain-link fence.

She felt sick as she walked, desperately craving alcohol or drugs. Her feet and ankles ached from
walking on rough ground in heels. She finally gave in, taking them off and walking in her bare feet. She
held them in the crook of her arm so people on the street wouldn’t see them. The wet and cold made
her feet ache.

As she approached what passed for life in a lifeless town the car traffic increased. All along the
main drag kids were scooping the loop, leaning out of car windows shouting at each other, loud music
mixing together. In the empty lot across from Olmsted’s Country Market they had gathered talking
loudly, flirting, lounging on car tops, and playing music very loud. She turned up the street.

A pickup truck pulled alongside her, slowing to match her pace. It was an old Dodge Ram, white
with metallic brown trim, heavily mud-stained. Three guys crowded into the cab blasting out Tim
McGraw:

Got coolers in the back

Tailgates down

There's a big fire burnin' but don't be alarmed

It's just country boys and girls gettin' down on the farm

One of them rolled down the window and leaned out. She looked straight ahead and hunched
over, seeing him only from the corner of her eye. He wore a backwards ballcap and was just a bit
scruffy. He wore a loose, long-sleeved white shirt. He appeared a little older, in his early 20’s. “Hey,
hey, where ya goin’? Hey, Cinderella, why don’t you let me help you with those shoes?”

She continued walking without saying anything. She needed more than a Michelob longneck or
whatever swill they were drinking in there and she knew that was the best she could hope to get off
them. He tried again. “Hey now, I know you’re not deaf over there. What, you think you’re all that and
a bag of Funyuns, huh?”

She felt him staring at her and turned up the collar of her jacket to shut him out, but the truck
stubbornly paced her. The cars behind the truck were honking now. The man yelled one last time.
“Aaah, fuck you, gutter bitch.” All three of them laughed raucously and the pickup sped away, a plastic
bag filled with sunflower seed shells arcing out of the window and hitting her in the chest. Saliva-coated
husks dribbled down her shirt. She brushed them off with a grimace of distaste and kept walking.

The assholes barely registered on Chrystal’s consciousness. All her thoughts were on scoring
drugs and tuning the world out, no matter what she had to do. She put her shoes back on and kept
walking.

Finally she crossed the small asphalt parking lot in front of a row of stores, all closed now except
for the Eagle’s Roost bar. As usual there were a couple of indeterminate men standing out front doing
absolutely nothing but somehow looking busy, and like every bar in the country there were three neon-
lit beer signs in the window—Miller, Michelob, Bud. The red-painted door stood open and the smoke of
countless Marlboro’s and the power chords from Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” spilled out into
the night.

Next to the door was a large sign reading “Absolutely No One Under 21 Admitted.” She ignored
it and squeezed her way in.

Chrystal peered through the dimness, her eye drawn towards a pool of light in the back of the
bar illuminating two pool tables. She’s not sure he’s there, so is scoping it out. She scoped out the path
back. The area to her left was filled with tables crowded with men drinking. The bar to her right was
solidly packed with people standing, while the cash register station had a long line of people ordering
drinks from an the bartender, handlebar mustache, (biker) shaggy and bearlike. The coast was as clear
as it would ever be, and she carefully wound her way back towards the pool tables. There, cue held
vertically as he surveyed the table, stood Jack.

Reaching the back, she watched Jack and his buddies discreetly through a narrow gap between
two drinkers, reconnoitering.

Jack bent over and made his shot, concentrating intently. She looked at him with the indifferent
eyes of a stranger, for that she knew, after the night before he truly was. His wavy, dark brown hair was
almost shoulder length and carefully swept back behind his ears in a way that was intended to look
casual. He was very good-looking, with sherry-toned brown eyes, long lashes, and sensual full lips. He
wore a plaid lumberjack shirt over a white t-shirt, pirate-like gold hoop earrings in both ears, and had a
fashionable amount of stubble on his chin. His jeans fit like they were tailored. His motions were
languid but catlike and graceful as he moved around the table, lining up shots. It was plain to see what
had drawn her to him, even from the start. Clinically she noted his physical attractiveness, feeling no
emotion.

One of his buddies noticed her and nudged Jack between shots. He glanced sharply at her then
went back to talking to his friends and sipping beer. She went to the rear of the bar and out the back
door and stood waiting. In faintly reflected streetlight she saw cars parked at the far end of the alley
and a dumpster surrounded by trash. A feral cat (appearance? Painfully thin, hair matted, torn ear?
nosed around it. She called, “here, kittie” gently. It scented her, peered up at her with luminous yellow
eyes and then fled. As time passed she grew increasingly anxious. Please make him come, please make
him come. She kicked her shoe heel nervously against the wall, wishing for a cigarette.

After about ten minutes the door opened. Jack walked out and looked around without seeming
to notice her. He pulled a cigarette out of a pack and calmly lit it. Looking straight ahead, he spoke in a
laconic voice.

“So. Why’d ya show up here tonight? Think Gerry might finally front you a beer?”

His speech was deliberately enigmatic, forcing her to hang on every word. It was the opposite of
the plain speaking style of rural DeKalb County and had once seemed exotic and glamorous to her. She
had once had dreams of them going away to the Bay Area, California, where Jack was from originally.
(CoCo County tattoo on his stomach!!! She asked what that meant—he told her Contra Costa County
and maybe a shamrock??? She asked if he was a House of Pain fan and he didn’t know what the fuck she
was talking about. Rap? He doesn’t listen to that nigger shit.

Now his style just ratcheted up her tension, giving her no clue as to whether he was likely to
come across for her.

“Oh, I came to see you, Jack.” She was trying for the Lolita flirtatious effect.

“Now why would you want to do that for?”

“I thought maybe we could get together.”

“I’m busy.” (takes a drag off the cig)

“You’ve never been too busy for me before, Jack.”

He shrugged. “Things change.”

She sidled over to him and leaned against his side, putting one arm against his and running her
other hand over his chest and down to the front of his pants, rubbing his crotch. “Some things don’t
change.”

He didn’t respond immediately, just taking another drag on his cigarette. “You want free
samples, try Sam’s Club.”

“We’ve always had good times together. The best, Jack…Jackie. That’s gotta count for
something, right?” She tried to quell her rising panic, keep the whiny desperation out of her voice.
(another drag of the cigarette, evaluating. She thinks he’ll give in now, it’s the usual signal.)

“Business is business, Bebe. The junk has a higher street value than you do.”

It was a cruel slap in the face, making her wince. She had known he could be cruel but was
shocked at the bluntness of it. She took a breath and swallowed her pride, wheedling him, hating the
desperate whininess in her voice but unable to stop it. “Oh come on, please. I need it.”

He laughed. “You’re going down fast enough on your own; you don’t need a damn thing from
me.” He stomped out the cigarette and turned to go back into the bar.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I gotta slow down. But not tonight, okay?” A pleading tone crept into her
voice. “Jack… I’ll do anything… really, anything at all. I mean it.”

“Anything, huh?”

She smiled slyly and nuzzled against him. “Anything you want, big man.” The lines was/were
straight out of “Coffy”, but she was fairly certain Jack wouldn’t notice.

He started walking towards the end of the alley, towards his red Fiero. She followed. The car is
kinda beatup on the inside, but outside it’s clean and has a spoiler. Inside there’s huge speaker system
though the stereo is kinda fucked up and he has a wedge in there so the tape will play; it’s playing
Metallica. She thinks how Jack had once ‘let it slip’ that he knew Kirk Hammett in Richmond, California
(where he’s from) but now she knows he’s full of shit. But she used to believe that, believed everything
he said. She remembers how cool she thought he was when he came into the Roscoe’s to talk to
Jeannine (her mother’s replacement at the bar). (how she met him, always had plenty of weed, and the
good shit, never bammer, all bud. He seemed like a big pusherman, pretended to be. She asked if he
could get anything; he said yes. She asked what about ecstasy, because she had only heard about that,
that that was in the city raves, not out here in the boonies. He said sure, he could get whatever. And he
did get ecstasy, and she dropped it with him and they fucked until he had to go pick his wife up. And
that’s how their “romance’ had started. She had actually thought she was in love with him back then,
that maybe one day when he got sick of Leighton he’d take her to the Bay Area/ San Francisco with him.
She thought he was smooth, so suave, she thought he was ‘if Cary Grant starred in Superfly”—yeah,
she’d really thought that thought. Everything he’d been saying about her lately was right—she was a
dumb bitch, such a fucking dumbass bitch to think something so stupid.

(While in the car, he makes a comment like “so how’s school?” and she replies “you’re a funny guy,
Jack.” Because he evidentially wanted her to think that was. And feels an overwhelming sense of
loathing for him, disgust, and disgust at what she’s going to be doing with him.

They pull up to his place; it’s an older (semi-Victorian) house converted into two apartments and
he lives upstairs. He pulls up he pulls directly bumper to bumper of the green Datsun, flashes his
headlights twice and turns up the car stereo with bass boost; it shakes. (the “Enter Sandman” riff).
Immediately a small hairy craggy, angry old pissed off Scotsman-looking dog appeared and launched
itself at the window, enraged barking and gurgling, the lacy curtain pulled back slightly, an old woman
peeks out suspiciously, watching them and pulling away and shush her enraged dog. Jack stink-eyes her,
says “Suck it, nosy old bitch”. Chrystal feels embarrassed to be with Jack.

They get upstairs and Jack walks into the backroom, comes back with a small baggie/vial of
power. Chrystal notices how small the amount in it is, feels worried/anxious. He pinches some out, puts
it in the web of his thumb and forefinger and sniffed, widens eyes, blinks/closes eyes, opens them says,
“This shit is kickass, isn’t it?” She watches anxiously, holds the small bit in the bag up at about shoulder
height and with his other hand reaches down and undoes his fly. Tells her to “earn it, strawberry.” He
said it with a wry voice, but she knew in his heart, as he no doubt did as well, if he had one, that it
wasn’t a joke.

As she is down on her knees, giving Jack head. There’s a bigscreen tv in the living room (which is
already on), which is almost too big for the room, and as she’s going down on Jack there’s Dennis
Miller’s big craggy head talking to her.

“Y’know, Bill Clinton can walk solemnly through the Rose Garden with Nelson Mandela every
day of the year and we’ll still see a ruddy-faced frat-rat who’s probably wondering what the presidential
seal would like on the ass of that reporter in the second row.

Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but what has happened to the presidency?

The last half dozen presidents have been bunko artists who made Melvin Dumar look like he
was Edward R. Murrow. Let’s dust for prints. You had LBJ, the jug-eared sage of the South, whose
Vietnam policy tore the country apart like a silk blouse marked down to $2.99 at a Target Assistant
Manager’s Day Sale.
 You had Nixon: a flesh homunculus with a paranoid psyche lodged in this whirring tin brain like a
radioactive walnut. Nixon, with his preternatural sweaty brow and a beard so thick he had to shave
while shaving.

And then there was Gerald Ford, whom I hold personally responsible for Chevy’s talk show.

Enter Jimmy Carter, lusting in his heart and driving a VW Rabbit to the airport himself to pickup
the Russian premier.

Which led us to Ronald Reagan, the aging spendthrift with the black enamel Bob’s Big Boy
hairdo who told the country that could have our pie and eat it, too. And we’d never get fat while we lay
in bed, stupefied by potato chip grease and bourbon, a hand in our underpants, watching “Lifestyles of
the Rich and Famous”, and hoping we wouldn’t have to wait until next week to win the lottery.

And Reagan, Reagan begot Bush, the thin-lipped C student from Yale who spent more time out
of the country than Roman Polanski. George Bush, a President who looked all the more like a king for
the fool he kept with him—the freckle-faced muffin head from the great state of Indiana, Dan Quayle.

And it tells me a lot about how far the presidency has fallen that a guy like Quayle can actually
throw his jughead crown into the ring, in public, in print, and not be hounded from the room in a hail of
desk staplers, dictionaries, small trash barrels, and half-eaten boxes of vegetable fried rice. I am
appalled that this Chuzzlewit can actually aspire to the presidency outside the walls of a mental
institution and people don’t tie him down and scrape his frontal lobes with a trowel like some demented
Clockwork Orange Droogie who’s due to be rewired.

No, our expectations have shriveled to the point where people just nod and write him a check.
“Yeah, okay. President Quayle. Beautiful. Where’s the bathtub with the Kool-Aid?”

And that dumps us out at the Clinton presidency—Faust meets Lil’ Abner. Bill Clinton…Cute kid,
but I’m not exactly getting the “Ghandi-ji” vibe off him at the point. Not a bad man, but not a good man
either. Not a man of character, solid and sure, principled and even-handed, but an average Joe, tugged
all around the game board of life by his need to be liked, his desire to press his flesh against the flesh of
pretty girls, his love of fatty foods, rail drinks, and sappy Fleetwood Mac songs, peddling gim-crack
philosophies to a simple beat any clunk can dance to.

Sure, Bill has a few good ideas, and he seems to genuinely want what’s best for the country, but
so what? Does that make him a President of consequence like Jefferson, Lincoln, or Truman? No, it
doesn’t. He’s only the President because every four years, we have to pick one. That’s all. He took a
ticket, waited awhile, got his order, and pretty soon he’ll leave the restaurant. We’ll clean his table and
get ready for the next shmo with aspirations beyond his capabilities.

Well, I’ll be honest with you, folks, what I’m looking for is somebody to just swipe the table
clean in a frustrated Five Easy Pieces rage because the service in this place is really starting to suck. I
mean what happened? What do we see these days when we look at a President? A schemer, a poll-
taking self-aggrandizer who knows how—when he is caught red-handed cheating on his taxes, humping
a campaign volunteer, or squelching the common good for PAC contributions—to run down to Kmart
and wade into a bunch of hamburger-addled wage slaves, snatch up one of their wally-eyed babies
stunned into placidity by mother’s milk mixed liberally with diet Coke and Nuprin, kiss it for the cameras,
then zip back to the Oval Office while the photo-op is developed and mainlined into the homes of good
folks who will see a man who’s done wrong, surely, but loves babies. And that’s America: dulled by
mindless entertainment to the hard facts, and hopeful that the Big Lie is really the big truth.

Well, the Big Lie just isn’t going to work anymore. And I think that if this President and future
Presidents really want to be taken to the bosom of the American people, they’re gonna have to come
clean with us. They’re going to have to drop the obfuscation, drop the smoke and mirrors, and the
pretense and denial, drop the weapons-grade bullshit, look America squarely in the eye and say, “Yeah, I
inhaled it. Then I drank the fuckin’ bong water.”

Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

There’s the sound of a key in the lock, the door opening. Jeanine walks in and goes ballistic,
starts beating on Chrystal. “I fucking knew it. You! You little slut!” Jeanine grabs Chrystal by the hair,
pulls her up, punches her repeatedly in the face, swings her around the hair, throws her down on the
floor and begins to kick her in the stomach. Jack is trying to calm his wife down. “Baby, baby come on…It
was nothing. A fucking blowjob. She’s just some dumb whore. You know I love you, baby…” He wraps his
arms around Jeanine and discreetly grabs Chrystal by the hair, pulling her up and tossing her towards
the door. Hint—retreat now, kid. Chrystal scrambles out, bruised and in bad shape. She staggers down
the street. Now she’s really in pain. Her stomach is throbbing, she’s had her hair pulled out at the roots,
she’s bleeding from the mouth, has a cut lip…on a scale of one to ten that was probably a grade 14 ass-
kicking. And she’s sucked that fucker’s ugly fucking dick and didn’t even get nothing for it, either. Wasn’t
that some shit? She starts to laugh manically. This is just not her fucking day.

She wanders down the street and out on the highway. She’s thinking, wherever she ends up, she
doesn’t care (out to the bridge?) She’s walking down the middle of the county gravel road. She hears
something coming and headlights, looks back, dust coming up. She thinks (strangely) it’s him, and stands
there (doesn’t move out of the way, or duck out of sight. The car stops in back of her/slightly to the side,
it’s a beatup chevy old chevy Malibu station wagon, guy open the door slightly, it’s an old guy, thinning
hair, gray on sides that kind poofs out, shiny pate, uneven front teeth when he smiles, wearing an army-
green jump suit/one piece overalls that have the fancily cursive name “Donald”. He asks “Do you need
some help?”

Chrystal says, “no, I’m fine…thanks.” (seems odd even to her own ears, and she chuckled.

“You sure?” He looks skeptical, and slightly afraid of her.

“Yeah. I mean...” and she shrugged and chuckled again.

“You need a lift or something?” He’s studying her, really looking at her.

She looks back at him. He didn’t look like a killer. She thinks “fuck it”, her day couldn’t get any
worse, and gets in. He has a metal lunch box and mug and she feels a wave of sadness, hadn’t seen once
since Dad. Then wave a sickness, and she hoped it would be from her stomach and not tears. “Hold on a
minute.” She opened the door and stepped one foot out. She heaved, then spit out blood, coughed,
more blood.

From the side, the guy’s voice. “You need to go the hospital?”
 “No, I’m cool.” She gathered some spit in her mouth but swallowed it and got back in the car.

“You don’t look so good, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I accidentally walked into a locomotive.”

The guy is really nervous now, looks at her like he’s suspicious that’s she’s nuts or something.
“You sure you don’t want to go the hospital?”

“I was joking.” He continued to look at her. “About the train, right?” He kept looking at her.

“I crashed my car. It’s no thing.”

“Yeah? I didn’t see any accident.”

She gestured vaguely to the right. “Wasn’t here.”

“Off Leland?”

“Yeah. A deer.”

“Christ. You clipped a deer?”

She realizes she’s out of her element. “Missed the deer. Swerved into the ditch.”

“Damn. I got a hitch, you want me to pull you out?”

“Nah. I’m good.”

He’s very confused. “You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s totaled.” He continued to look at her. “It’s a beater, yeah? I mean, fuck it, right?”

He looked at her skeptically. “Don’t leave it long, County will take it out and bill you.”

“Yeah.”

“You sure walked a long way.”

“Can you take me up the college?” (Trying to cut off the conversation)

“Sure. I’m heading up that way.” He starts the car and proceeds. After a short silence he asks
her, “So are you from Leighton?

She can’t see any way of it, figures it’ll be easier to bullshit if she stays closer to the truth.
“Yeah.”

“Maybe you know my son.”

“It’s a big school.”

“Leighton?”

“What? I thought you meant NIU.”

“No, he goes here. High school.”

 Her curiosity gets the better of her. “Who?”

He smiled. “Donnie, Jr.”

Donnie Hentges?

He repeated it for her, and it sounded even more awful. “Donnie Hentges.”

“Uh…No, sorry.”

“I thought you might. Leighton’s not really a big school.”

“I’m not from here.”

“I thought you said you were?”

“Me? No, no. I meant I got family here.” She figures it will kill her, but if she’ll give him her
neighbor Jabba’s name if she has to. “I’m from…” she hoped to pull something he probably wouldn’t
know. “…Naperville. I graduated from Naperville.” She can’t think of any high schools, so adds, “In
Naperville, I mean.”

He looked over at her again. “You don’t look very old.”

“Yeah. I get that a lot. I graduated high school a couple years ago.”

“I’m Don Hentges, by the way.”

“Chrys. Uh, Novoselic.” Oh god, she thinks. Stupid.

“You like it up at DeKalb? I work up here so it’s on my way.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

“We’re trying to talk Donnie into it. He wants to go to college in New York or some business
though.”

Perfect. He’ll blend right in with the rats.

“So far away.”

He can do better. Have you suggested overseas?

“Columbia. That’s it.”

She just caught herself from laughing out loud, masking it somewhere between a choke and a
cough.

“You sure you’re okay?”

She wiped her eyes and nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

He smiled. “I talk about my kids too much, I know. Donnie though, he’s a good kid. Proud of
him.”

“Oh yeah?” She said with as much fake interest as she could put into it.
 “We take him over to the Lutheran home every Sunday. He plays his guitar for his grandma and
the other residents.”

Court ordered? she thought, but said, “That’s thoughtful.”

“He’s got chops, too.”

“Yeah?” Well, this was quite a mystery to her as she’d never known fuckball Donnie to even be
in band. His grandmother would probably rave about her little Donnie-boy plucking out “Chopsticks” on
his ukulele though. Old people were good about that: confidence builders.

“Writes and sings his own material. He’s good.”

It took her aback. “What?”

“He was doing open mic night at The Jumpin’ Bean Cafe---you know it, right off S 3rd and
Lincoln?--every Monday, but they’re going to have him do Fridays now, early Fridays, you know, unless a
big act comes through.”

Chrystal was stunned. “Wow.”

Don, Sr. beamed. “Yeah. We’re proud of him.”

The previous day came at her like a bad flashback. The poetry slam shit. He’d been asking her to
go watch him play.

‘They’ve offered to pay him a little, too. Not a lot, but still, that’s something. It’s a pretty big deal
for him.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, he…”

She had to get out of the car. She had to get out now. She had to get of here.

“Can you turn here, turn on Varsity? It’s right up here.”