The Darkness and The Dawn

After we left the hotel, we were out for the night, first to the Big Boy where I couldn't seem to drink enough coke to quench my thirst, then everywhere else, just walking and talking through the night. We went behind a Montgomery Wards department store and jumped in and out of some boats that were stored there. There was a cabin cruiser where we thought to spend the night, but we were too jacked to stay there long.  Steve and Wayne were maniacal, embracing the speed and what it made them feel. I, on the other hand, felt terrible and was trying to resist, wishing only that I was home in my own bed where I always was at this hour, sleeping peacefully, embracing my dreams. But no dreams were forthcoming that night.  After getting hamburger money from the first car, Steve was ready to get more. He walked through the darkness checking front seats for money or anything else that was left laying on the seats.  It was wrong, I thought, a violation.  But Steve was rife.  He already had a pocket full of goodies.  

Sometime in the early morning, it began to rain, so we ducked into an elementary school to wait it out. Everything was dark and damp as we huddled together in an alcove on the gritty cement, listening to our voices echo oddly through the empty hallways, finally stretching out three together to get some rest.

In the morning, I just went home. My parents thought I was spending the night at Steve's house, so there was nothing special awaiting me, no consequences, no punishment. At least not from them. But I felt awful. My skin was like rubber, unnatural when I touched it like nothing belonging to me. I had never spent a night like that before and felt dirty inside and out. I went to the bathroom and ran a hot bath. I lay in the steaming water heating it again and again as it cooled, but the water did not soothe me.   I was sad and felt like crying. Why, I wondered? Nothing had gone wrong. We had not gotten into any trouble. But nobody had told me about speed and the way it let you down. I was not a tough boy. I was not like Wayne and Steve. They would talk about that night in highlighted detail, pursuing it again and again and again. But I was done. It was a dirty life, I thought, hard and nasty. At fifteen I was sure I was damaged, that I would never be right again.

But way leads to way, and in a few weeks, Steve had a new girlfriend. He was sixteen now and allowed to drive, but he was still on probation and was not allowed to be away from home without supervision. His mother, though, was a drunk and was responsible only half the time, and so those were the terms of his restriction. His new girl was nineteen, he said, and he had told her he was eighteen. She had a friend and the four of us were going out on Friday. He would tell his mother he was staying at my house. I would tell my parents I was staying at his.

So in the early evening on a Friday, we pulled up to his new girlfriend's house in his old Hearse. Steve was nervous as I'd never seen him before, jumping out of the car and breaking a cigarette in half before lighting it. "What are you doing?" I asked. "I don't want her to think I just lit up before I walked up," he said, hunching his shoulders and heading for the door.  He was trying to look older.  He was trying to look cool.  

His girl was older, alright. I could tell that right off. She was a couple inches taller than Steve with bleached blonde hair and a voice like a cartoon. She squeaked when she talked and had eyes that wandered everywhere. She was like a movie star, I thought, but not, like some weirder version of the funny girl in one of those beach movies that were so popular then. "We'll have to pick up Wen," she said like Minnie Mouse as we all jumped into the front seat.  We were off.

Wen was Japanese and even older than Steve's girl, and you could see the surprise in her eyes when she got into the car. Steve had told his girl that I was seventeen, and she said she was nineteen. But those were lies, and there we were, sitting in the back seat, a couple for the night, a twenty year old woman and a fifteen year old boy. Steve didn't seem to notice.  He didn't care. He had what he wanted. He had his girl and we had some Canadian whiskey and some coke and we were going up to the lake. He was excited.  It was sad.

Steve and his girl got drunk and started making out right away. I tried sipping at the whiskey, but I didn't like it at all, the syrupy sweetness and the mediciney after-bite.  Wen and I sat on the opened back panel of the Hearse looking out at the lake where the happy couple frolicked, laughing and kissing and finally taking off their clothes to swim in the lake. And as the darkness gathered, we could hear their screams of laughter coming from the distance, Wen and I trying to find something to say, in the painful silence.  Somewhere around midnight, I thought to try to kiss her. Leaning over, I grabbed her womanly shoulders and childishly stuck my tongue into her mouth. I rolled it around for a few foolish seconds while placing my hand on her breast.  She left it there a minute before pulling it away.  And then it was over.  We were done. And there was nothing left to do but lie down in the back of the Hearse and go to sleep while strange love made its way into the dampish dawn, Steve and his girl confirming their emotions on a blanket by the lake. And as it always does, the sun came up turning the dark world light. I saw the pearls of dew on the damp grass and the steam rising above the water of the lake. Beside me, Wen was curled in a little ball snoring lightly. Fog hung in the air as if to hold back the day.  How long, I wondered. How long.