We were supposed to go out for ice cream. His pickup idled a block away from my house, but everyone could hear the low rumbling. My father didn’t stop to look out the window as I walked out the front door and headed in the opposite direction of my friend’s house. I asked myself if I realized the implications. I wondered as I stepped off the porch if I had a chance to turn around and forget the forty-year-old waiting for me down the street. I figured it to be too late and stopped turning around.
I walked down the cul-de-sac until I saw the pickup with the tinted windows. A man with a beer gut poking his steering wheel and a Detroit Tigers hat covering his eyes gestured me over with a flick of his finger. I climbed in and greeted him nervously. He did the same. He jostled me on the shoulder. A large hand came down on my knee. He revved the truck, stirred it awake, and pulled out onto the main road. His hand moved almost in tandem with his breathing as it traveled up and up and up and my heart quickened and a thousand thoughts raced through my head and the smoke from his cigarette choked the air out of my lungs and my eyes widened as the hand kept going and the passerby remained ignorant as he reached the top and he felt something stir in his grip.
“Nice.”
He gave it a shake. The cigarette went out of his window and died in a pile of tobacco and spit. The man swept his eyes across my body as if I were a slab of prey bundled up and awaiting my fate. His hand moved to please me and to loosen the nerves holding my shoulders up to my ears. It didn’t work. His Chevy maneuvered itself into a far off corner of a carpool lot situated off the highway and overlooking the steady stream of commuters. There were only a few other cars parked in scattered spaces around the lot, all of them empty. I shivered as I removed my shoes and climbed into the backseat. It was July.
“First time, right?”
I nodded, and he grinned.
“I’ll be gentle, cutie.”
With that, he joined me in the back with a surprising swiftness I didn’t expect from a man his age. His lips tasted like char. His hands moved too fast. He peeled away my clothes as if I were a new toy--freshly made, never used. My head went back as he tipped me and spilled me all over the polyester seats. I asked him if he had protection. He said no. I asked him if he had lubricant. He said no. I did not say no.
We were supposed to go out for ice cream.
