What Happened Next...

Christopher Meija was a rapist.

His first words out of the car were, “You’re drunk.” I hadn’t even had a chance to say anything. He was a hospice care giver who took advantage of the elderly. I bumped into his car at a light after helping Rebecca move.

His second set of words out of the car were, “I’m an EMT.”

In the front seat was his girlfriend. In his backseat was a confused elderly woman he had taken from her home.

His third set of words was, “I’m calling the cops.”

Christopher’s lesson that day was don’t call the cops when you’re in the middle of a crime. Meija was in the process of taking the woman back to his home so that he and his girlfriend could film themselves having sex with her in comfort.

Maybe his second lesson was don’t talk your girlfriend into raping the elderly. Or at least don’t let her anywhere near the cops after the fact.

Me, my lesson was never to admit to any wrong doing, whether it’s true or not.

Yes, I had one beer.

Rebecca and I… I thought we were still together. I guess I was wrong. I helped her move into her new place because I loved her. Because I wanted to be a part of her new life. At the very least because I thought we were friends.

I also thought one beer couldn’t hurt.

When we were done, she offered me a drink. I took her up on it. If she were sitting in a burning building, I would have sat with her. I would have done anything for another moment with her. So, yeah… I had a drink.

The cops showed up, I admitted to having had a drink. I passed the field sobriety tests with Meija and his girlfriend watching and scoffing at me. Over a fender bender. That caused no damage.

The cops held me until a special unit could arrive, one with a breathalyzer in the trunk of the car. I blew a .04. Turns out, though, a cop can arrest you for that, even though it’s half of what the legal limit. Because there was “an accident” involved, because Meija started to feign a neck injury, the officer arrested me.

Because there was “an accident” involved, I was charged with felonious drunk driving.

Meija talked about suing me.

But it was because of the accident that the arresting officers talked to the witnesses, including Meija’s girlfriend. Nervously, she mentioned the woman in the backseat was of no relation to either of them, contrary to what Meija was saying. They pressed her on it and she told them her family didn’t know she had been taken from her bed.

Within a month, Meija was arrested for raping the elderly in his care. He talked a lot more about suing me, then. I guess he was trying to use one attorney to pay for another.

I think about that fat, sack of crap sometimes, “I’m an EMT. You’re drunk. I’m calling the cops.”

My life wouldn’t be perfect if he had kept his mouth shut, allowed me to exchange insurance information and kept driving. Maybe I wouldn’t have been working so much because I had legal penalties to pay off. Maybe Rob wouldn’t have found me at work and through the wholly unlikely and unplanned events discovered the worst thing I have ever learned… that eating my flesh can reverse the Ratfanger’s Disease (Jesus, my life sounds so… unreal).

If he had just driven off, he might still be raping the elderly. I wouldn't have been arrested. I wouldn't have had to community service. I would be forced to take DUI classes. It’s hard to take comfort in the sacrifice, though.

Last Monday, and forgive me for how long it has been since I wrote last, since I began telling this story…

Last Monday, I walked into my DUI class, after dropping Charlie off at home. I was almost late. If I had been stuck in traffic even a minute longer, I would have been late. My group leader would have closed the door and not let me in. I would have had to pay a twenty-five dollar fine and had an extra session tacked onto my schedule.

But I was not late. I was just in time.

As part of our intro, we have to say our name, a class rule, and talk about our day. I felt very bad for Charlie. After all, she was the one who had gotten me a job, put me back on track to getting out of the Bronco, getting my life back after Rob attacked me at work and the store decided to appeal to protesters that I was a… “negative presence” that needed to be removed.

So, to tell the group about my day, I told them I found Charlie sitting on the edge of the hillside, drinking wine and watching the sunset. I told them all almost exactly what I told you. They asked if I had accepted a drink when she offered it to me. I said “yes”.

It was just a sip of wine.

But you’re not allowed to have even a drop of alcohol twenty-four before attending class.

My group leader locked the door, hit a button on the intercom.

She asked me if I had driven there.

I should have lied.

I should have lied.

I didn’t learn my lesson, standing there as Meija accused me of wrongdoing. I hadn’t learned it by the time I walked into class and told everyone a story I should have kept to myself. Or even immediately denied.

I had already told the class I’d given Charlie a ride home and that I was stuck in traffic on the way there. But I should have lied in that moment and started back-peddling.

“Stay with me, guys,” she said to the class. Within moments there were security guards outside the door. “The police will be here soon,” she said.

Where Things Went Wrong

I’m sorry for not writing sooner. This is the story that begins with me at work and ends with me in jail.

Again.

This weekend was fun, if not confusing in its own ways, but Monday came and I still found myself feeling very guilty about preferring to sleep in my car rather than stay with my dad and his boyfriend. I had tried everything I could think of to come to some resolution to how guilty I felt, drinking until things made more sense, confiding in a stray cat, fucking an absolutely bonkers chick who made it clear she did not care about my problems. Nothing worked.

For the record, yes, it is unusual to say “bonkers” unless you’ve met someone like Sam.

However, Charlie has a good head on her shoulders and I really figured, if nothing else, I’d be able to talk to her. I showed up to work early but she wasn’t in her office yet. The day went slowly, every task felt menial. I tried talking to some of my co-workers, but their English is poor and my Spanish is entirely absent. One of them does speak English a bit more so I tried getting his thoughts on the matter. Now, instead of calling me “Pepe” he calls me “Pussy”. I guess worrying about hurting your father’s feelings is not a tremendously masculine plight in his eyes.

I got to lunch early and went to Charlie’s office. Since she got me this job, I’ve always been able to swing by and talk to her about her wedding, about work, about whatever. She always makes time for me, is always gracious and kind. But she wasn’t in her office. In fact, this time I simply opened the door and went in, only to discover nothing was in her office but an empty desk and a chair that lay on its back, a few feet from where it normally sat.

I text her. I called. I DM’ed her on Twitter. No response.

I walked through the office trying to find out what happened. People pretended to not hear me. At first it seemed clear something terrible had happened. Halfway through the rest of my work shift I realized people always treat you that way when they routinely see you scraping the bottom of their trashcans clean.

On my way out to the car, I saw her car parked not too far away. Normally she parks much closer to the museum. The janitorial staff, we park way out by the Hall of Champions, a rundown gymnasium rotting in the foreground of the boarded-up Spreckels Theater. It would be a far more dismal location if not for where the parking lot drops off, above the 5 and 163 junction, looking at eye-level upon the downtown city skyline. Out there, on the edge of the parking lot, just where asphalt ends and the grass bends shortly before it’s drop into the golden shimmer of the setting sun, I saw Charlie.

“I’m sorry I’ve not been answering my phone,” she said as I approached. There was a plastic bag tucked under her folded legs, she strangled the neck of the wine bottle in front of her.

“I was afraid something happened. I thought maybe someone grabbed you to get to me… maybe.”

“Not everything is about you,” she said, patting the grass beside her. I took a seat, looking out at the buildings turning shades of blue and purple in the fading day, glowing orange at their tops the more the sun met their level. “Do you know how much time I put into this job?”

“What happened?” She passed the bottle to me but I waved it off.

“They said there’s not been enough funding to keep me on. Those fucking morons.”

“Aren’t you – Isn’t that your job, raising donations?”

“Yes. But donations have been drying up for eight years. Only in the last three years since I took this job has that been leveling out.”

“So, they just got rid of the one person who was getting them any donations?”

“So they fired me. Told me I’m not good enough at my job. They’ll bring in someone else, maybe pay them a little less. It’s not like you can just get rid of the position.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Around the green glass, her hand was turning red and purple, until I had to place my hand on her wrist and take the bottle away for fear it was going to shatter in her hand. 

“Don’t make me drink alone,” she said.

“I can’t. I’ve got that dumb DUI class tonight.”

She scoffed a bit, tried to hide it with a smile, then reached over and took the bottle back. “I worked a long time to get this job. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to even want it.”

Below the streets were still, filled with cars. Even the green-lights failed to move anyone forward as the intersections were so congested there was no longer room for anyone to move forward. “Did I ever tell you what I was doing here the day you met me, offered to get me this job?”

“Someone had kidnapped you. You had that gunshot wound.”

“Yeah, well, that was part of it. After escaping, I ran to a homeless encampment not far from here. I had to clean it up one day for community service which was the only way I knew it was there. I spent the day just hiding. There was a guy I’d seen there before, a complete and total mess. I mean, I try not to judge too much, but when you stand out at a homeless shelter… it just feels mean to get into too much detail. It wasn’t pretty. But a few weeks after I started working here, I saw him. He was working at a coffee shop, clean, together. I don’t know where he’s living but he made it out of that camp.”

“That was the worst story anyone has ever told me,” she said.

“Yeah, I think–”  

“That was the worst timing to tell that story, too. If you were to call me right now, tell me my mother had been sexually assault in a Banana Republic before going into extreme detail about how it happened, it would not be worse than the story you told me just now.”

“I feel like that’s sort of an extreme response to what I said.”

“I’m in sort of an extreme mood,” she said, taking another long drink.

The blues and purples had spread everywhere now. The orange glow was no longer even a lining on the buildings. The sky warmed pink. The cars remained stuck in traffic.

“I can’t pay for this wedding,” she said.

“What about−”

“My parents can’t pay for it, either. His parents can’t pay for it. We’re going to have to take out a loan, anywhere from $25k to $30k just to pay for it. I just bought my house. I’ll have to use it as collateral. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the payments… once unemployment comes through.” Her cheeks were red, and there were dried streaks stretching from her eyes to her ears.

“Have a small wedding. Have no wedding. Do a civil ceremony, maybe go somewhere with your parents. You don’t have to spend that much. Weddings are ridiculous. You won’t even remember it. You’ll spend the whole day worrying about one thing or another, hoping everyone else is happy, and then you’ll be in debt.”

“Do you know what your problem is, Ricky?” I hate being called that, too. “You’re too damn practical.”

“It really is that easy.”

“It really isn’t,” she said. “You don’t know my family. I’m not saying you’re wrong or that they’re right. I’m just telling you the way it is. I don’t want a wedding. At all. They’re childish narcissism-machines. But if a woman in my family were to elope, everyone would take that as a personal offense. They’d write her off.”

The warm pink had cooled and the sky was falling a dark blue. “C’mon,” I said, helping her up, “it’s time to go.”

“Have the rest,” she said, pushing the bottle into my chest. “If I drink alone then I’m an alcoholic.” Down the steep slope of the hill, I saw two other bottles of the same brand, wedged beneath the brush. Standing up, I could see three corks in her plastic bag. “Don’t make me an alcoholic on top of everything else.”

I took the last drink, hardly even enough left to have called it a drink. But it made her happy and that was worth something. “Let me drive you home,” I said.

Eartha Cat

“I used you as an excuse,” I told Eartha last night. She sat there on the console, watching me pick away pieces of bubbled plastic from the ceiling. “Obviously it was a dumb thing to say. I’m not really sure what I was supposed to do, though.”

She broke her lock on me to follow blackened specks break from the seared cabin and fall into my lap. For a while I had been bouncing around different beach communities, just sleeping wherever. My second night in this spot, I had the back window rolled down to let in fresh air. I thought it was the smell of charred upholstery that woke me up, as occasionally that hot chemical smell does. Instead I saw it was a ten-pound gray tabby sitting on my chest, lowering her neck to stare at my face, as if I were a toy she wasn’t sure worked.

"Dad thinks I hate him." I stopped picking at the ceiling, working out the extra bits from underneath my nail, then running my fingers together to work off the grit. “Does that make me bad?”

Eartha blinked, that thick blink she does, her eyes slowly closing and opening. If people blinked like she does the expression “in the blink of an eye” would be used to describe how long to boil an egg. She turned towards the window.

“I don’t like Tim,” I said. “Why can’t a straight person hate a gay person without being made to feel homophobic? Dad always looks at me like I hate Tim because he’s gay. Like it has anything to do with it. I feel like gay men look at straight men and just wait for them to be homophobic. Like I have to approve of everything, not just sex stuff, but hairstyles, clothing, movie choices… Every time I say I don’t like something, one of them acts like I’m judging them. They tell me ‘I don’t understand’. Like because I’m straight my opinion is invalid. Tim loves those cooking shows on TV. Loves them. Man has never made dinner once in fifteen years, but if he turns the TV on, he leaves it on cooking crap until he falls asleep. But if I say anything, it’s because ‘straight guys don't understand cooking shows’. I’m the one who cooked in that house! Until I graduated high school, I was the one who made dinner every night I stayed there.”

Eartha had begun smelling the back of the driver’s seat, where I had bent that girl over the night before.

That girl who had knocked out that guy in front of me.

That girl "spilled" what was left of whiskey bottle into my lap only to be soaked up by what is left of the cushions in my backseat.

That girl who didn't seem to care what my name was or be very flattered when I asked hers.

 

After a while of her straddling me across the backseat, after that first bite she sank into my lip and all the ones that followed, my heart rate got away from me. I pushed her off and turned her around, bending her over the driver’s seat. It was defensive at first, I just kept thinking she was about to rip away my skin. But pinned over that chair, her mouth open taking deep, quivering breaths... It was tremendously uncomfortable, stuck between her and the low ceiling. I just kept kissing the back of her neck rather than finding a better position. Somehow she was able to reach down and pull the reclining lever, the seat dropped forward, giving me better leverage. Every time she bit me, my lip, my ear lobes, my neck… Jesus Christ, I thought she knew. I thought she knew who I was and, like that fucking kid, was working up the courage to really bite into me.

How fucked up is that I didn’t care in that moment? God, she tasted so good, I was willing to see where anything went.

But the fear and the excitement had built so sharply in me that the buttons on her pants ripped away as I yanked them halfway down her thighs. I didn’t even think to apologize. I just stepped down with my foot, forcing them to the ground.

As we went, she’d throw the condoms out the back window. It was a reprehensible move in my mind, even drunk and horny enough to fuck a woman I thought was about to eat me. But I wasn’t about to complain about littering.

Afterwards she just lied on top of me, her back against my chest, her legs bent upwards while mine folded against the side of the Bronco. I didn’t think she’d want to be touched, but she pulled my arm across her like a safety belt. “I’m sorry,” I’d said first. “Jesus Christ…” she cut in as I did. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Does your dick get soft and turn into a pussy?”

“Does yours?” I asked. She hit me in the ribs with a backwards thrust of her elbow. “I just mean, you were drunk. I shouldn't have... taken advantage of the situation.”

“It was my idea,” she reminded me.

“Right, but… I just mean, I guess I should have been looking out more for… whatever.”

“Why? You think because I was drinking you raped me? You were drinking. Did you stop to think I was raping you?”

“I try to have a feminist view point."

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll leave,” she said to me. “You think you’re somehow more responsible than me because you have a penis? You think that alcohol makes me helpless but it makes you irresistible?” I began to open my mouth to respond, “Remember what I said about shutting the fuck up.”

So, I did. We both lied there, sobering up. In the morning she borrowed a pair of gym shorts I bought on sale from Old Navy. I offered to walk her to her car and she reminded me once more to shut the fuck up. I didn’t even get her name.

Eartha doesn’t have a name tag. I just call her that because I think “Eartha Cat” is an awesome name. I never had a cat, though. I’m not even sure why comes around. I don’t feed her. She just comes around and sits, listening to me talk.

 Her big, yellow eyes reminded me I had been quiet for some time, thinking about the girl the night before. “I’m sorry,” I said to the cat. “I just saying, Tim’s not a bad guy. I just can’t forget what he did.” It had been my hope that talking it out with Eartha would give me some kind of insight, help me figure out what to say to my Dad to make things better. As my mind returned to the subject, I felt less motivated. “Why should I need to?”

On the plus side: I got a text from that girl from the night before, though I’m not sure how she got my number. Her name is Sam.

So, I Met a Girl...

Since running out on my dad, I’ve had a hard time… I don’t know. I’m trying not to think too much. 

So I left the Bronco and wandered through the old homes and poorly lit streets until I reached the peach-lit crowds of idiots that make up this neighborhood. I found my way into a bar, one close enough to hear the waves breaking down the block, sat down at a table and did quiet a nice job of not thinking of anything until a young woman in front of me threw a punch.

It was refreshing to see the punch wasn’t directed at me, but the man in front of her. He was almost a foot taller than she was, but it was a good solid punch and I don’t think I ever saw him get back up. People were standing so closely together, he hit a clump and slid down to the floor slowly, like a thawing sheet of ice.

By the time he had disappeared from view, she was looking back at me from the other side of the table. “Are you next?” she asked.

It seemed very likely she would decide the answer was “yes”, no matter what I said. It was to my great surprise that not long after we were holding each other up as we walked back through the old homes and poorly lit streets. “I’m telling you, you don’t want to go back to my place,” I said to her.

“I’m telling you, I don’t like to be told I like,” she said back to me. The unreal color of her skin seemed more natural in the street lights, and the faded green color of her sleeve tattoos seemed then to be a shimmering, fresh black color. Her hair was long and tightly wound to the back of her head with dark red chopsticks protruding out. She looked lean, but I had no idea how really strong she really was until she grabbed me by the collar and pinned me to the Bronco.

I thought maybe she’d kiss me. Instead she looked over my shoulder into the cabin. “What the hell is this?” she asked.

“Someone burned my house down,” I said to her. “This is… just what I have now.”

She nodded slowly, either she was falling asleep or resigning herself to the rest of her night. “Get in the car,” she said.

“Don’t you have a place you’d rather go to?” I asked unlocking the door.

“Yeah, I have a really nice place with an infinity pool and a third floor balcony. I just really love fucking losers who live in their car,” she said crawling into the driver’s seat in front of me.

“There’s a charm about you that’s hard to place,” I said, getting in.

She sat in the passenger’s seat and pushed her foot against my chest, driving me between the chairs into the backseat. “Yeah, I’m a charmer,” she pulled the driver’s door closed and crawled back, straddling me. Her breath smelled like the whiskey we’d bought at the pharmacy on the way back, but her neck still smelled of sun tan lotion. It was salty, and firm against my tongue. She leaned into me, working her fingers into my hair, until taking a hand full and pulling me back.

She held me there, looking down at my face maybe twenty or thirty seconds. “I have to admit,” I said, “I’m not really sure what’s going on right now.”

She looked to the left and right of me, to towel that has begun to collect cat hair draped across the back. “Are you sure it was your house that burned down?”

“It’s been kind of a bad year,” I told her.

She looked down at my lips, tracing her tongue against the rim of her lower. “It’s only February,” she said.

I sort of shrugged my shoulders. What a depressing thought.

She continued to hold me by the head, shifting left and right on my lap, either content to slowly work her way closer into me or like a cat wriggling its tail before it’s pounces. “Why did you punch that guy?” I asked.

She leaned in, biting down on my lip. I’m sure you can imagine how scary that is for me. I could feel it where my nipple used to me. But she didn’t go down too hard at first, but slowly got there, sliding her hand down the side of my face, breathing into my mouth.

This is a bad idea, I thought as I placed my hands upon her waist.

My heart began to pick up, I could feel it in my wrists as her wriggle became a forceful rocking.

Good ideas aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

On the plus side: I managed to stop thinking about whatever I had set out to stop thinking about.