by Stahl, Shey
“You’re already working on the drunk part.” He pointed out handing the whiskey back to me. “I’m sure I could find a pole somewhere if you want to just mark that one off now.”
The look he gave me was almost laughable. I say almost because I was too busy trying not to mount the boy. It was a justifiable response in my mind but then again I was trying not to rush into this.
I took the whiskey back looking at the label and wondering why they didn’t put a warning label on the outside of the bottle that said: May induce sexual behavior.
Dylan had ways of getting people do things he wanted and managed to convince a bum on the street to buy us a bottle of whiskey for fifty bucks and a pack of smokes.
Now we were enjoying that whiskey.
I wasn’t a fan of whiskey just like I wasn’t a big fan of the beer last night. Dylan got a good laugh at my first drink and told me his grandpa’s words of wisdom: It’ll put hair on your balls.
“I don’t want hair anywhere.” I told him completely serious and eyeing him like he was crazy for suggesting that I needed hair on my balls. Not that I had them.
“So bare…” Dylan smiled keeping his gaze from mine by taking another shot of whiskey, “huh.”
“I’m not even going to answer that one.”
“I wasn’t asking. I was imagining.”
I took the bottle from him wondering if he was capable of a conversation that he didn’t turn sexual. Probably not.
The whiskey burned and tasted like shit but I enjoyed the feeling it gave me. That tingly warm feeling was giving me the courage to talk about stripping and my virginity.
“I want to get a tattoo.” I paused before looking over at him. My legs rested against the dashboard as he finished writing. “And lose my virginity. Don’t forget to write that down.”
Nodding, his smirk was evident along with the increased breath, but he wrote my virginity at the end of the list and tossed it on the dashboard in front of him. I looked at the bag to see what he wrote and noticed the last one said “innocence” instead of virginity.
“What about you?” I asked glancing over at him. “Aren’t you going to write yours down?”
“I’m gonna do any goddamn thing I want to.” He told me pulling out a cigarette and lighting it before tossing his lighter on the dash over the bag.
I like his lips around the end of a cigarette, and I love the way he squints his eyes when he inhales. When he holds the smoke in his lungs and smiles, I wanted to scream.
“You’re not going to write a list?”
“Nope, I’m going to be spontaneous. Take my list city by city. If I want to piss alongside the road, well then, I’m gonna whip it out.” His blue eyes twinkled mischievously.
I think I fainted with the way he said whip it out and I really wanted to be around when that whip it out took place.
Drinking alcohol does things to people besides flushed cheeks. Now I understood why it did that. It gives you liquid confidence too. Confidence you ordinarily didn’t have, or at least I didn’t ordinarily have it.
Somehow, and I blame this on that whiskey, we started a game of confessions that started with me complaining about my pinky toe that had no toenail. It was weird shaped and I found it cute but annoying because of the way it curved I had no toenail on it. Both feet were that way too.
Dylan smiled. “I have a nipple ring.”
I knew that already, I saw it earlier. “My legs are too long for my body.”
“You’re a woman, that’s impossible. Long legs are awesome.” I took another shot and then he said, “I have a birth mark on my ass that looks like a naked lady. I’m quite proud of it actually.”
“I once tried to give myself a nose ring and ended getting a bloody nose. It was a mess.”
Dylan laughed.
“My ass is too big.”
Dylan smirked. “Also not possible,”
“It is possible to have an ass that’s too big.”
“While I would agree it is possible, yes, yours is perfect,” he laughed dropping his head back against the seat looking up at the headliner. “Ah, my weakness,”
“What?”
“Your ass.” he clarified keeping his eyes on the headliner.
I thought for a moment pushing the bottle of whiskey back at him. Dylan took a drink straight from the bottle just as I had done.
“Tell me about these nipple rings.” My eyes were locked ahead of me refusing to look anywhere else. The darkness around us was again comforting. He couldn’t see my cheeks warming this way. “When did you get them?”
“I got them a few years ago.” Dylan examined the bottle seeming to find the wrapper interesting just as I had done earlier. “I was drunk and let some chick do it. Hurt like hell.”
“Can I see them?” I finally snuck a glance at him. He was staring at me, his eyes glowing.
“Wrap those long legs around me and I’ll show them,” he drawled out slowly, his eyelids heavy and drooping.
Was he drunk? Or maybe he wasn’t…oh…maybe he was turned on?
I’m not sure if it was to tease me or just to be a total guy in that moment but he chuckled shifting again and leaned slightly in my direction. His right hand slipped from the wheel and rested on his stomach and then not so nonchalantly, he lifted his shirt, slipped his hand down the front of his shorts and adjusted himself.
I tried not to look…but I did. It was one of the hottest gestures I’d ever seen.
He did that on purpose. I knew that. And to make matters worse, when he started the car right after that, he changed the playlist on his iPod to All Night Long. Nothing was said until I burst out laughing, my hands over my heated face to hide my embarrassment and blush.
Naturally, he grinned playing the drums with his hand on the steering wheel. Feeling the music, I reached over to the volume and turned it up. Dylan glanced at me but said nothing, he too, feeling the music.
A subwoofer I didn’t know he had thumped vibrating my seat as I settled back into the comfortable black leather.
Tossing the whiskey bottle in the back seat, we drove about a mile down the road to a rest stop where we decided to park for now while we tried to find a nearby hotel. We talked about getting a tent or something for camping as that might make it easier than finding a hotel every night but we had no set plans.
As Dylan looked on his phone for a hotel, I listened to the lyrics and I couldn’t help but think about what this summer would offer me. Then, my eighteen-year-old hormonal body, thought about what all night long would mean.
I didn’t have any experience sexually. None other than kissing and some pent us frustration. Hell, I hadn’t even clicked my own mouse, as Mercedes would put it.
Now, with Dylan teasing me, and the hormones surfacing, touching seemed like a good thing to try. I once watched a YouTube video with Mercedes and another friend Jessica Long of a porno. We talked briefly about it but out of the three of us, I was the only one that hadn’t had sex. In fact, out of most of my friends, I was the only one that was still a virgin.
Mercedes lost hers sophomore year to Kasey, or so she told me, and Jessica, she had lost hers at Homecoming to her boyfriend of the last few years Brian.
I would ask Eric at times why we didn’t want to have sex with me and he would tell me that I was like a treasure to him, something he wanted to keep untouched. To me it seemed stupid and something that Elvis Presley did to his wife Priscilla to keep her to himself. I tried many times to get Eric to do more with me but he always put an end to it early on. I felt him get hard once but that was it. Turns out, he didn’t have the desire to because he was getting it elsewhere. It made me wonder how many times they had been together and how long they had kept it from me. I wondered what Kasey thought of it and if Jessica had known all along. The more my mind played over conversations we all had together the more it made sense to me.
My thoughts twisted to Dylan again and the attraction I was feeling for him. Maybe it was the mystery of him or that we were alone, togeth
er, with no one to stop us but the thoughts of him being my first was more than exciting.
While I dreamt of things I shouldn’t have, Dylan switched playlists often never leaving it on one particular genre for long. He seemed to have a vast variety of songs and artists and surprisingly a lot of the same songs I had on my iPod. The thought that we shared interests made me smile and more comfortable with the decision to leave with him.
Dylan said he found a hotel about ten miles away so he waited a few minutes to sober up and then we got back on the Interstate.
The music provided a nice filler too of what didn’t need to be said. Sometimes, most of the time, I think people talk too much. I enjoyed the silence and appreciated it for what it was.
Eric and Mercedes always talked. I couldn’t go anywhere without either of them talking my ear off. After a while I got good at tuning them out but now I understood what I had been missing out on—the silence and not having to tune anyone out.
Before long, and feeling the effects of the few shots of whiskey I had, I fell asleep with my face pressed to the window and Dylan’s sweatshirt as a pillow.
5. Leaving – Dylan Wade
When I left home, I intended to leave alone. I wasn’t running from anything, but I never planned to stay in Olympia.
I knew I would leave. That much had been planned.
My life there had nothing to offer me other than another trip to jail.
Why I left?
Well, that was a long time coming.
I didn’t have any epiphany or anything. I wasn’t expecting to. After Drew, my older brother, left, I didn’t want to be there any longer and there was nothing holding me there.
It took me some time to decide that I was really leaving as I had a full scholarship to Juilliard for my music but I wasn’t going.
That life wasn’t for me and it pissed me off that Landon’s mom had applied for me.
Graduation day wasn’t exactly the day I had planned to leave either but that morning, seeing my dad drunk again, I decided enough was enough. For a man that watched his wife die at the hands of what that very bottle did, he was a piece of shit with absolutely no self-respect.
I for one wouldn’t stand to be subjected to his constant fucking mood swings and abuse. I’m not saying he was abusive in the sense that I was hit regularly but when he punched me at the school; it wasn’t the first time he’d laid a hand on me. For eight years, I took it. Now, I wouldn’t any longer. I understood why Drew left when he did. I only wished he had taken me with him. But then again there was Bailey, and something about her forced me to stay.
Now that I had left, I would be happy never speaking to my dad again or talking about him. I didn’t have any emotional anger issues that resulted from it nor did I think about it. What I thought about was who blames a ten-year-old for the death of his mother?
Ken Wade did.
Who blames a fourteen-year-old for his brother running away?
Ken Wade did.
It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t driving the car that crossed the center line. But I knew who it was and that didn’t sit well with me at all and essentially was another reason why I left.
I was heartbroken when my mom was taken from me. She was everything to me in my world. She was more than a mother, she was my friend. I had no idea how to react to it but I also wasn’t given a chance to. I was forced to act like it didn’t happen. For that reason, I did what most kids would do at ten. I acted out. I expressed myself in ways that got me in trouble, which in turn caused more tension between me and Ken.
I also wasn’t to blame for Drew leaving. When he nearly overdosed, I found him, yes, but our dad’s reaction was just to ignore it. That was why Drew ended up leaving. He would never get help here and my dad was really hard on him. I can’t say that I agreed with Drew’s way of using but it wasn’t my place.
I think Ken’s deal with us boys was that he never wanted kids. I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for us. I say that because it’s a fact. Drew was an accident and so was I. My mom was seventeen when Drew was born; our dad was twenty-nine. That right there seemed odd to me but again, that wasn’t his fault if you asked him. It was my fault because Drew ruined his good time with his under-aged playmate. Over the years, he blamed us for a lot of things because it was easier than blaming him.
I’d like to tell you that this never had a lasting effect on either of us but I’d probably be lying. Drew turned to drugs; I got into trouble, bad trouble a few times.
Like it or not, the daddy who hated us, caused some unreserved anger at times.
I have never been a violent person for the most part but if provoked, yeah, I reacted like any other person when pushed enough. When it came to douchebags, I reacted. My dad was one of those douchebags. Of all the times Ken had laid a hand on either of us, we never fought back. Drew did once, the day he left. For the most part, we didn’t want him to see that we were affected by him.
With all that came my decision to leave. It happened graduation day. As I watched Bailey, a raging grace of unspoken words, she was finally standing up for herself, something inside me reacted too.
For months, I had a bag in my car, ready to leave at any time but for myself, I would graduate first. Then when I heard her speech, it was decided for me.
I was leaving that day. At the time, I had no idea where that summer would take us and if you had told me what I know now, that day, I wouldn’t have changed anything. Well, maybe a few details but not a lot.
Ken, more than likely still drunk, walked over to my car after the ceremony. I was surprised he even came to watch. Usually he was either at the bar or his office. Why he felt the need to come to his son’s graduation was a mystery to me. “And where do you think you’re going?” he said stumbling to my car.
Part of me, the stubborn eighteen-year-old didn’t want to tell him. The reality of it was that it wasn’t his decision any longer. I had no more ties to him and hadn’t since October when I turned eighteen and discovered that he had lied to me for years.
“I’m leaving,” I said to him preparing for his response and knowing it wouldn’t be taken lightly.
“Why?” He seemed hurt by the decision but I also knew deep down it meant nothing to him. I was simply a tax deduction at this point.
I shrugged appearing distracted. I was distracted. I just wanted to get away from him and out of this fucking town for good.
“Tell me why you’re leaving.” He pressed stepping closer. “Is it because of Drew?”
My body tensed naturally knowing his next move when I said. “Because it’s time. You don’t need me here anymore. Now you can have your bottle but I won’t be your excuse any longer.”
“I can’t believe you.” His tone took on a defensive pitch. “You fuck up my life for eighteen years and now you’re just leaving. Just like your mom and brother? Are you going to see Drew?”
Shaking my head, I tried to ignore him. This wasn’t a fight I wanted to have and it was none of his business if I was going to see Drew or not.
“You’re never going to amount to anything with that shit music you play.”
Ken knew the one thing that would set me over the edge. He used it against me frequently. When I was twelve, my uncle Eddy gave me an acoustic guitar for my birthday. When I got into trouble at school, he made me watch as he burned it in the backyard. He did shit like that. He took the one thing you loved and destroyed it.
There was one thing I took pride in and that was my music. Ken knew that. When he wanted a reaction from me, he used that. I wasn’t trying to make a career out of it but it was something I put all of myself into. He knew what it meant.
“Fuck you,” I screamed losing control. “You don’t know anything about me!”
There was more truth to that statement than he would ever understand but he didn’t hear me. He never would.
And as I expected, he hit me.
“You ungrateful little shit! I gave you everything you ever
needed and that’s how you repay me?”
To my dad, leaving was disrespectful as he felt, and this was a constant debate between us, that if anyone left him, they were being ungrateful. My mom included. It didn’t matter to him that she was killed in a car accident and that it had nothing to do with him. In his eyes, she left. Same with Drew. It didn’t matter that he nearly overdosed and needed to get clean. To Ken that didn’t mean a goddamn thing.
After all this with my dad that afternoon, I wasn’t expecting was Bailey.
For years I wanted to talk to her, comfort her in a way I didn’t know how to. When my mom died, she comforted me. She held me when I cried. But then, as I got older and started looking for ways to rebel, I never heard from her again. When I turned eighteen, I understood why she was pushed away from me but at the time, it hurt to know I lost the only true friend I had.
All along, I saw through the barrier Bailey had, just as I knew she saw through mine. Sometimes you just know a person. It doesn’t matter if you never talk. You know them. You have a silent connection. We had that through lingering stares and unspoken gestures such a brush of the shoulder in the hall or a smile thrown her way.
I almost talked to her at Homecoming. My only purpose there was to piss people off. That was my first riot charge too, but I got a smile out of her that night.
I watched her that night. Hell, I watched her every day but that night, dressed in a lilac gown, she was beautiful and I desperately wanted to talk to her, tell her how I felt and what I knew about her family that she didn’t.
As I sat in the shadows, before the riot, I watched her in the arms of a guy that knew nothing about her.
I wanted her. Fuck did I want her. Not going to lie here but Bailey Gray was and always had been a fantasy for me. It started around twelve and never let up. You’d be surprised how often I thought of her, more than I cared to admit, and when she wasn’t looking, I dreamed of showing those ways. Most of which were in my bed obviously but I cared for Bailey too.
Not only was I insanely attracted to her, she was like a breath of fresh air for me and she never knew. I saw her at school, didn’t say anything, but I instantly felt reprieve from everything I felt crushing me.
