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.

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.

Red in the Face

“Where have you been living?” Tim asked me. I hadn’t had lunch and our food wouldn’t be arriving for some time. I was determined to be nice, give Dad the happy family he wanted to believe we were, but Tim’s voice. Oh my god… I was still waiting for the server to come by so I could order another beer. Tim’s question felt like an attempt to embarrass me.

“A cul-de-sac in Ocean Beach,” I said flatly. “Not too far from the water, no homes. No one really comes through other than a few bums. No one seems to give a shit that I’m there.”

“Language,” Tim said.

Fuck off, was the response I bit down on. I was determined to be a good son.

“It doesn’t really sound safe, son,” Dad said.

“It doesn’t sound…” Jesus Christ, it’s not safe but I can’t live with you. I scratched that response. Oh, my god, it’s safer than people trying to take bites out of me. Though it had been a week or two since that had happened so I kept it to myself rather than temp fate.

I was working on a third response when Dad continued, “We want you to come live with us. At least until you can get your own place.” I looked at Tim. Tim didn’t seem at all welcoming, but he didn’t seem against the idea, either. There was a crawling sensation in the back of my neck, something pulling my face back. “Look, the truth is, the doctor says I’m really responding well to my therapy. He says there’s less risk of me of me catching something I can’t shake.”

“Until now, I felt it was best to minimize your father’s exposure to other people, to anything they might not realize they were carrying. Now that he’s getting stronger, we agree it’s for the best to bring you in out of the cold. Like your dad says, just until you’re not sleeping in your old Bronco anymore.”

There wasn’t any response ready for that. I sat there, uncertain what they expected me to say, hoping that each moment they didn’t say anything meant it was more likely they never would. “So how ‘bout it?” Dad said. “Do you want to come by after work Friday and move in whatever you keep in there into the living room? We don’t have a lot of space but it’s better than sleeping in your car.”

“No…” I began. “I can’t then. Actually, it’s really no problem. I’ll be out of the car soon enough.”

“Do you have a place yet?” Dad asked. No. “How much money do you have saved?”

“Seven hundred,” and my words got caught as I wished I hadn’t been honest about it.

“Son, it’ll be weeks before you have enough to get out of the Bronco. Why don’t you just stay with us?”

Normally I’m smarter than this, faster with my words. I’m good at evasion. Now I felt sincerely trapped. “I’ve moved around a lot,” I said. “The last couple months have been really turbulent for me but I’ve found a spot I like and I don’t want to give it up. I just… I want some consistency.”

“I want you to have consistency. I want you to have consistency some place where I know you’re safe, where there aren’t bums wandering around outside looking at you through the window.”

I want that, too! I couldn’t figure out what my problem was. “There’s a cat that comes and stays with me. She’s a stray but she comes and sleeps on the center console next to me sometimes.”

“So bring the cat.”

“I can’t just bring the cat! It lives around there. What if it belongs to someone?”

Tim leaned in, driving his pointer finger into the table, “Andersen, when are you going to accept your father for who he is?”

“Tim, how many times am I going to have to tell you to shut the fuck up?”

“Stop!” my father shouted. I couldn’t bring myself to look, but I knew the other tables were turning to us. Even the manager across the floor had stopped what he was doing and was assessing the situation.

I wasn’t sure what to do or say. Knowing everyone was looking at me, my face started to burn. I couldn’t bring myself to meet my father’s eyes.

I just stood, said I was sorry and left.

On the plus side: My dad loves me better than I know how to be loved, I guess. I don’t really know what the plus side is to this.