Somebody Love Me (Journeys) (3 page)

Chapter Three

After a month of hanging out with Mary and Cathy, I started to lose interest in the things they liked to talk about, like going to druggie parties and obsessing on Dave the drummer. I decided to make a new friend in an effort to show my dad I could make friends with people he approved of.

So for a while I distanced myself from the two sisters and I hung out with a girl my father introduced me to. She sang in the church choir. Her name was Jenny and she was two years older than me. I found out she'd never finished high school, but I'm pretty sure no one in the choir knew that, including my dad.

My father thought she would be a good influence on me because she was a "good Catholic girl" from a decent family he'd known for years. Not that any of that stuff mattered to me. Ironically, she ended up being the worst influence of all. My father wasn't aware of her dropout status when he'd introduced us, or the fact that she slept with her boyfriend.

But I loved singing, and participating in the choir was something I could do with my dad that gave me a chance to spend time with him. Jenny and I hit it off right away and we started hanging around each other after practice. My dad seemed pleased I'd made a new friend that would be a good influence on me, unlike Mary and Cathy, who he referred to as "the girls with the crazy mother."

What my dad didn't know was Jenny's favorite subject to talk about was having sex with her boyfriend, Dirk. I called him Dick as a joke, but she didn't take offense. She just said she really loved that about him. When I asked her what she referred to, she elbowed me and said, "His big thing, of course."

She talked about sex even more than Cathy obsessed on her crush over the drummer, plus she added details I had no idea existed, like various positions and stuff like that. I doubt my dad had any idea she constantly talked about sex and was talking to me all the time about how great it was and how much I needed to try it. She almost had me convinced I hadn't lived until I'd "gotten off" with a guy.

All of the stuff she told me about their encounters made me more than a little curious. Jenny had been "making love" -- the term she used when she referred to sex -- with the same guy for over two years. He was twenty-one and had his own apartment where she slept with him. She hadn't turned eighteen yet, and somehow she'd kept him interested in her even though she wasn't all that pretty.

I figured if someone as unattractive and -- I hate to say it -- "fat" as my friend Jenny, who rarely washed her hair, could keep a man through sex, then it couldn't hurt to find out what was so great about it. Yeah, I was curious, but I still had a moral problem with the whole idea of getting your "cherry popped" just so you could say you did.

Call me old-fashioned, but it seemed wrong for a girl to lose her virginity when she wasn't in love with a guy just so she could tell her friends she did it. But this girl was persuasive, and she told me that was how she and her boyfriend had fallen in love -- by having sex. Now that explanation captured my attention.

I wanted somebody to love me. I needed someone like Fish was at the beginning; someone who treasured me and liked spending time with me. Someone who wanted to kiss me all the time would be a bonus. I needed that experience again like an addict needed cocaine. Jenny said she'd hook me up with a great guy, and I believed her.

I suppose it was my own fault that I listened to her instead of using good common sense, but I finally agreed to talk to one of Dirk's friends on the phone. His name was Mike. I don't remember his last name. He was fun to talk to, though, and I even snuck out of the house a few times to call him back on a payphone so we could talk in private. He was nice -- I'd give him that -- even if he was nineteen going on twenty. And he didn't talk dirty to me on the phone.

Jenny swore he was really cute even though she didn't have a picture of him. She promised me that I'd love him if I got to know him. I figured if I liked him even a little bit, sight unseen, then maybe we could get together and see how things went. He did have a nice voice, but that was all I knew about him.
That, and his age.

I don't know how she did it, but Jenny managed to get me all excited about meeting this guy. We'd been friends for less than a month, but she'd made me totally rethink my beliefs about sex. My friendship with Mary and Cathy had planted that seed in my mind. Jenny just made me long for it through her romantic notions. I wanted to meet Mike badly enough to lie to my parents about where I was going that night so I could see where things might lead.

Technically I was going to see Jenny, but the truth was I never planned to spend the night at her house. The idea was for me to meet Mike and spend the night at Dirk's place getting to know Mike, while Jenny fooled around with Dirk.

Jenny said Mike was even better looking than her boyfriend and I was fortunate that he really liked me just from talking to me on the phone. She said she was glad that I'd finally meet him so we could all hang out together.

She gave me directions and I wrote them down and shoved them into my pocket. I brought a little bag of clothes and a whole lot of excitement with me. She said we'd "party up" first, whatever that meant. It sounded fun, so I figured why not? If it would help me relax for my first time, it couldn't hurt. Up to that point I'd never drunk more than one beer in my life, and though I knew people who smoked pot, I still hadn't experimented with it myself. The worst thing I'd done was smoke cigarettes.

So I took the bus to this neighborhood where Jenny's boyfriend lived, and I walked to his apartment as the sun was setting. It made the neighborhood look creepier because the streets were littered with trash, including dirty diapers. Random beer cans and needles rested alongside them on the lawn, as well as little rubber things that looked like deflated balloons. My neighbors would freak out if that kind of trash lay on the ground where I lived. They'd probably call the cops. I shivered at what those disposed items indicated about the neighborhood, well, beyond the obvious.

The sun set pretty late during the summer in Central New York. Earlier Jenny had told me she'd meet up with me at Dirk's apartment between eight and nine o'clock at night. I knocked on his door at exactly 8:30 that evening. Somehow I'd managed to arrive at Dirk's place first, and I didn't like it. My initial excitement about meeting Mike faded as time passed and there was still no sign of Jenny.

If I had realized my friend was planning to abandon me that evening, I would have taken the last bus home. But I didn't find out she wasn't coming to her boyfriend's house until after ten. She called him after she got home from the hospital and said she was sorry, but she had to cancel. Apparently her mother had passed out and she had to stay with her mom at the ER until they released her to go home. By then I'd had a few too many beers so my mind was fuzzy. I didn't know what to do.

"Sorry to hear that, babe. Wish you were here." He winked at me.

He wasn't the only one. I needed Jenny to make me feel safe. The longer I sat in the apartment alone with her boyfriend, the more uncomfortable I got. So I drank more beer, which was the worst thing I could do since I was such a lightweight.

Dirk laughed and told her I'd already gone home. "She was a nice girl, too. What a bummer Mike wasn't here to meet her. He said he'd be late. When he gets here, I'll tell him we'll just have to reschedule. Love you."

He hung up before I could grab the phone and tell her he was lying.

"But I'm still here. Why'd you tell her I left?"

He shrugged and grabbed two more cans of beer from the fridge. Returning to where I sat on a kitchen chair, he offered me one. I shook my head, which spun from the motion. I was drunker than I cared to admit. I'd heard about people getting wasted. I was almost there myself, so I said, "I've had enough."

Cracking open a can, he sucked it down and burped. With a smirk he popped open the top of the other one and some froth sprayed in my direction.

I frowned and wiped my face.

The way he looked at me with a gleam in his eye made me nervous, and a slight panic crawled up my throat. The room started swaying when I tried to stand. So I sat back down. Dirk sat beside me on another chair. I studied the cigarette burns on his Formica-covered table top while trying to decide how to handle the last minute change of plans.

I couldn't decide if I should call my dad and ask him to come get me, or hang around and wait for Mike. I dreaded being grounded, so I chose to wait. I remember Mike saying something about having a car. Maybe he could give me a ride home.

When he wasn't looking, I studied Jenny's boyfriend to try and understand what she found so appealing about him. He wasn't nearly as attractive as Jenny had described, and he had a slight body odor about him just like she did. He also didn't take very good care of his house.

Jenny never mentioned he was a slob or that they had regular shootings on his street. If she had, I doubt I'd have taken the bus to meet him or agreed to spend the night. I also had a sinking feeling that Mike wouldn't be that cute, either.

While I waited another hour for Mike to show up, I suddenly sobered up enough to realize I'd be alone with two men I didn't know. So I asked Dirk for another beer, thinking it would make me seem more mature and help me to relax.

My nerves were totally shot from not knowing what to do now that I was stuck at Dirk's house alone. "Is Mike ever coming?" I finally asked him.

"Nope. He canceled hours ago."

I stiffened. "When did he call?"

"When you were in the bathroom earlier."

"Why did you make me think he was still coming when you knew he wasn't? I would have left an hour ago and taken the last bus home."

"I wanted to try you out myself." He laughed at my attempt to stand. "Just kidding. Relax and enjoy yourself. I won't bite."

This time I did manage to get up, but he easily sat me back on the kitchen chair since I could barely stand. Nausea bubbled up in my throat when I thought about his comment. Surely he wouldn't do that with me when he had a girlfriend who happened to be my friend. I must've heard him wrong.

"I want to go home." A slight whine tainted my voice, but I was tired and a bit drunk. Not so much that I wanted to throw up, though. At this point I would have puked on his floor just to show him how much he revolted me.

"Hey, you said it yourself. It's too late to catch a bus now." He shrugged and said with a smirk, "I wouldn't go outside by myself if I were you, so you might as well spend the night with me."

I stared at him in shock. The intense look in his gaze suggested he wasn't planning to let me sleep. Tears sprung to my eyes and I felt like I was choking. He'd trapped me.

Dirk didn't have a car, and I couldn't go outside. Hitchhiking wasn't an option. There were no buses. I'd gotten myself into the situation and I couldn't get out.

I could hear people arguing next door and I didn't want to get mixed up with people who were drunk and fighting. So while I dreaded it, I asked Dirk what he thought I should do in the hopes he'd help me find a ride home and leave me alone.

He smiled and handed me another beer. I sucked it down until I became light-headed and woozy. I never finished the last can. I knew from Mary and Cathy's party stories that if I kept going I would've gotten sick, and though I wanted to make a mess just to spite him, at the same time I didn't need to barf on top of everything else. Plus, I hated vomiting and the pinched feeling in my gut told me I wasn't far from that point.

Dirk gave me some potato chips and a cheese sandwich, which helped settle my stomach a little, but it still hurt. Whenever I got stressed, I got bad pains in my gut. I told Dirk I didn't feel much better, so he cracked open a kitchen drawer. He pulled out a pipe and a bag of stuff that looked like pot. I'd seen marijuana before, so I knew what weed looked like. Maybe it would help.

"This will calm your stomach down. Chill now, woman, I was only messing with your head." He winked and prepared a bowl of pot. Flicking the lighter, he tilted it and lit the stuff in the pipe. He sucked in a deep breath. While trying not to cough, he handed it to me. I'd seen Fish and his friend smoking bowls of reefer before, so I knew what to do.

From the looks of things I'd be stuck there all night anyway, so I took a long pull on the pipe hoping it would help me relax. He promised I'd be safe, right? He coughed, slowly releasing the smoke from his lungs. I copied him and did the same. Only I coughed a lot more than he did, until I could barely catch my breath.

Not wanting to look like an ignorant child, I took a few more hits off the pipe hoping it would make the morning arrive sooner. If I passed out he'd probably leave me alone. Since his crude comment, he hadn't touched me, so I clung to the hope that he had been joking and would never cheat on Jenny.

Pretty soon I didn't care what happened to me. No doubt that had been Dirk's plan all along -- to make me weak and more vulnerable. I was floating, and internal thoughts filled my mind that made me laugh out loud. I had no worries at that point, only a giggle bug that wouldn't go away.

Chapter Four

Dirk studied me as if assessing my mood, which was semi-hysterical, to say the least. I heard myself talking stupid and saying things that made no sense, but I couldn't stop. He encouraged my silliness by cracking funny jokes. Then out of the blue he started talking about his friend Mike, but referred to him as "the dick head."