The Night The Bad Guys Won

Yes, I know the girl's name starts out as one thing, and ends as another. It ain't her real name anyway, and I decided to leave this one unedited... I wrote it during my student teaching experience, upon hearing a rather disturbing conversation between two teenage girls. One of them was quite certain that it was perfectly safe to go to a certain party. After all, those boys wouldn't DARE try anything funny! She knew their NAMES!

Me? I know better.

______________________________________________

First of all, this ain't a funny story.

No, seriously. Not funny. Kind of sick, actually. Certainly offensive. Especially to women, most likely.

But it's not funny, nor is it intended to be. To anyone. If it is anything, it is an object lesson, and not a real pleasant one.

Still curious? Wanna keep reading? So be it. You Have Been Warned.

*****************************************

The seventies were burning out rapidly, not much left of them, and I was, I believe, fifteen at the time.

It was Saturday night. I hadn't had any particular plans for that evening, except perhaps for checking out the new Saturday Night Live, but the show had been kind of lame since Ackroyd and Belushi left, that last season, and Sam had shown up unexpectedly at the house, and asked, "Wanna go to a party?"

An hour later, as it grew dark, I stood on the porch of someone else's house, holding a beer, and wondered where the party was, and if it was coming anytime soon. True, the beer was cold, and free, but beer does not a party make. I knew the other guys at the party -- my high school was small enough that everyone knew everyone -- but none of them were guys I hung with, and aside from Sam, I had nothing in common with 'em. Jocks, mostly. Someone's folks were out for the weekend, and the house was at Sonny's disposal. And where were all the chicks? You can't have a party without chicks!

This seemed to be the consensus with the other guys at the party, too. Most of them were older than I was, juniors and seniors, and they ignored me, for the most part, beyond a brief "hey, how's it goin."

Not my idea of a wild time, really. Sam knew people, though, and circulated relentlessly. Me, I stood on the porch and wondered how long Sam was going to want to hang around.

...so I was the first to see when El Blotto pulled up out front ... with Shellie in the car with him.

I perked up. Shellie? Hm. Perhaps this party might manage to amount to something after all.

Most guys would not regard a party with twenty guys and one girl as being a real interesting affair. I would normally agree... unless the girl was Shellie, or someone like her.

Shellie was something special, you see. Freshman, a year younger than me. Couldn't have been more than fourteen... but you wouldn't know it to look at her. Long honey-colored hair, the face of an impudent goddess... and a remarkable set of hooters, much observed by young men and envied by young women.

No, seriously. Ask any ten guys from my old high school at random, mention the name "Shellie," and they'll say, "Oh, yeah, Torpedoes Away?" She had the knack some girls seem to have of defying gravity with 'em, and filling out a T-shirt or sweater very nicely.

She knew this, of course. She'd figured out how to hypnotize guys with her hooters around age twelve, and had been refining her technique ever since.

Shellie was the subject of no little debate and speculation among my peer group. Was she or wasn't she? Did she or didn't she? No one knew. There were, of course, those tyros who swore they'd been in her pants since day one, but no one of any credibility had ever claimed to have made it as far as first base. Two guys I knew had gone out with her, and not gotten anywhere, and not much cared for her attitude. Apparently, she measured affection in terms of dollars spent and gifts given, before she made up her mind about whether or not she liked you.

El Blotto draped his arm around her, and laughingly hustled her into the house. I raised an eyebrow, and followed. Perhaps this party might turn out to be interesting, after all. How long would it take her to drink enough beer to seriously entertain the idea of taking her top off and dancing on the table? Another girl had done this at a party the previous month, and my friends and I had very much regretted we hadn't been there for that one. Perhaps I'd be privy to an even better show, with some patience...

Within the hour, sure enough, she had been convinced to dance on the dinner table. It hadn't taken too long to get her good and schnockered; apparently, she didn't have much taste for beer, but she did rather like homemade wine coolers. I found out later that there hadn't been any wine in the house; what she was drinking was a mix of Kool-Ade, lemon soda, and some kind of clear booze -- vodka, perhaps.

It did have the desired effect, though. She'd gone fairly quickly from wondering why she was the only chick at the party to giggling madly and agreeing to repeated demands to dance on the table. She wasn't bad at it, either, even without a brass pole to cling to... but her top remained firmly in place. Lots of hip wiggling and jiggle action, but she seemed comfortable enough dressed.

"Take it off! Take it off!" chanted her drunken chorus.

"I don't wanna," giggled Sherrie. "It's cold in here!"

"Take it OFF! Take it OFF!"

"YOU take it off!" she laughed.

...and at that, one of the football players roared a mighty football cry, and snatched Sherrie from the tabletop, and ran away into another part of the house, while she giggled hysterically from over his shoulder.

I was irritated. The floor show had been prematurely terminated. Man, if they'd left her alone, who KNOWS what she might have been ready to do? Glumly, I went and got myself another beer, and went out on the porch to drink it. The music was too loud, and I was never all that wild about Thin Lizzy, anyway.

The song was "Jailbreak," by the way. Over and over and over again. Someone really liked "Jailbreak," by Thin Lizzy.

So I stood on the porch and drank my beer and wondered where Sam was, and how long I was going to have to hang around before he finally felt like going home, and whether or not I was going to have to drive.

"Hey, dude," said the Turtle. "You're missin' the show."

I glanced around. Turtle was leaning out the front door. He didn't have his shirt on.

"Nothin' personal, guy," I said, "but I didn't come all the way out here to see YOU with no shirt on."

"I'd worry about you if you did," he grinned. "Seriously. You in, or not?"

"In on what?"

"Come check it out," he leered. "She's gonna do us. All of us."

"Sure thing. And then she's gonna sprout wings and fly home."

"Hey, man, you were invited. If you don't wanna, well, that's your trip."

"Seriously?" I said. "You're seriously sayin' she's gonna pull a train of what, twenty guys?"

"That's what she came here for."

"Seriously?" I said. Somehow, this didn't seem quite right. I mean, nobody had EVER gotten to first base with this chick, verifiably, and now allofasudden after five wine coolers, she's ready to take on the whole football team, plus coaches, manager, and waterboy?

"Come see for yourself," the Turtle said, and he vanished back into the dark, loud cavern of the living room.

This I had to see.

One of the back bedrooms had two doors leading into it. It was empty, aside from a mattress someone had yanked off the bed in the master bedroom, and flopped on the floor, but enough light leaked in from the hall that if you looked in either door, you could plainly see what was going on.

Sherrie was lying on the mattress. She appeared to be nude, but it was kind of hard to tell, what with El Blotto on top of her. El Blotto was dressed, but had his pants around his ankles.

At first, I thought Sherrie was unconscious, but at one point, she moved, although it seemed kind of feeble. It didn't really look like two people having sex. It looked kind of like El Blotto was trying to restrain her, actually, although she didn't look like she was putting up much of a fight. Somehow, she didn't look anywhere near as lively as she had ten minutes earlier on the kitchen table.

I leaned closer. El Blotto was talking to her, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. She replied in a kind of whimper, but I couldn't hear what she was saying, either.

And then, three guys walked past me, into the room, and began to undo their pants. They lined up neatly, and waited for El Blotto to get out of the way.

A minute or so later, Sherrie happened to look up... and notice these guys... and I heard very clearly what she said, then. She shrieked like a banshee who'd just stepped on a land mine.

At that point, El Blotto DID restrain her. His actions and body language changed, rather sharply.

So did hers. Rather than the relaxed, limp kind of posture she'd had a moment earlier, her eyes were now quite big and bugged, and she was furiously trying to bring her legs together and get some traction with her feet, a move which was made rather difficult by El Blotto's presence between her legs.

El Blotto leaned down and began speaking in her ear. I couldn't hear what was said, but her reactions told me, pretty plainly, what was happening here. She had assumed someone wanted to play grabass in the back room, and was drunk and dumb enough to allow this... but now the rest of the gang wanted to play, too.

...and they were GOING to play. Whether Sherrie liked it or not. The only choice she had was the Hard or Soft Option.

Cooperate, or suffer.

Her eyes got even bigger, as El Blotto spoke in his low voice. They darted back and forth, panicked, resting temporarily on every face she saw.

Mine included.

"Uh," I said.

A couple of guys in the hall looked at me.

"Uh," I said again. "Uh... hey, is this a good idea?" I said. I immediately wished I had said something different.

"You got a problem with it?" said a guy whose name I didn't know.

"Uh... well... partyin' in someone's mom's house is one thing, man, but this... man, this is going too far, don't you think?"

The statement made perfect sense to me, and I was mildly surprised to see that the looks on the faces of the other guys in the hall did not seem to agree. In fact, a couple of them looked downright hostile.

"Bitch wants it," someone said.

"Are you nuts?" I said. "Man, look at her. She's scared shitless, in there. I bet nobody told HER what the deal was--"

In the room, Sherrie yelped. I don't know if she heard me talking, or if someone did something in there, or what. I glanced in at her. She looked at me.

She looked at me.

"Man, this is no good," I said. "Take a look at her--"

Suddenly, someone grabbed my by the collar, and swung me into the wall, away from the door. "You are NOT going to mess this UP, man!" It was dark in the hallway, and I couldn't see who had spoken. Suddenly, I seemed to have five guys surrounding me... and the looks on their faces were not sympathetic.

I couldn't believe this. "Are you guys SERIOUS?" I said. "Man, this is a friggin' crime, guys! This is--"

"She's not YOUR girlfriend!" someone snarled, accusingly. "What do YOU care?"

"Bitch wants it. Look at her. Bitch wants it."

"You do NOT want to mess this up, man."

I looked at the faces of the guys around me. Boys, really. The eldest of them might have been eighteen. I knew them all. I went to high school with all of them. And I was coming to a realization that I did not like, that in fact was beginning to frighten me.

These guys were going to friggin' rape a drunk fourteen-year-old girl.

For being drunk, and stupid, and having big boobs.

And, worse, they were prepared to stop me from interfering. Violently.

Guys I went to high school with. Guys who played football. Guys I had in some of my classes.

Who WERE these people?

"Guys," I said, sounding weak, wussy, even to myself, "think about this, man. She does NOT want this. Man, you could--"

"I think you need to go now," someone said, pushing into the crowd. He took my arm and dragged me into the living room.

I glanced around. Where the hell was Sam? I couldn't see into the back bedroom any more, too many guys in the way. What was happening back there? Was SAM in there? What the hell--

The guy who had grabbed me shoved me roughly onto the front porch. In the porch light, I could see who it was. He played football. Won a couple of scholastic awards, too. Had his picture in the paper. A senior.

"Look, man," he said, "this is going to happen, one way or another. Now if you want in, say so. If you don't want in, you need to leave."

I stood there and stared at him. I still couldn't believe what I was seeing. Were these guys CRAZY? "Man, they put you in jail for this shit," I said.

"Nobody's going to jail," he said. "She showed up, she got drunk, she took us all on. There's sixteen guys who will say so, too. Our word against hers."

I stood and stared at him.

He anticipated what I was thinking. "Man, you could have got your ass handed to you in there. I saved it once. I ain't gonna save it again. You open your mouth, and it's STILL sixteen against you and her. It's gonna happen, one way or another. And the only difference you'll make is whether sixteen guys kick your ass or not."

We stood there and stared at each other for a minute.

What I wanted to say then, was, "Do you realize you're inflicting an act of physical and psychological torture on a fourteen year old girl, dude? You realize, you're scarring her for life? And that's assuming you and the rest of the Jackass Squad don't knock her up in the process, because if that happens, at least one of your drunk asses is going downtown, man."

But I was young, and stupid then, and my knack for words was not then what it would become. What I managed to say was, "Man, what about her?"

And "This ain't right, man. You know this ain't right."

He looked at me there, on the porch, as the june bugs battered themselves stupid on the bare porch lightbulb, and for a moment, I dared to hope he might actually have an attack of conscience... that maybe I'd made a difference.

"You're drunk," he said. "Go home, dude."

And he closed the door. And locked it.

I stood there. After a few minutes, the porch light went off, and the music volume went WAY up.

I stood there. Nothing happened. Finally, I walked away. It occurred to me to find a rock or something and start bashing windshields. I actually went so far as to find a good sized rock before I realized that I was three miles out of town, and that if these guys realized what I'd done, they'd catch me halfway back there and beat me stupid. Hell, they were drunk, too. They might kill me, even without meaning to.

And it still wouldn't do Sherrie a bit of good.

So I dropped the rock and walked home.

********************************************

Sherrie didn't come to school for a few days after that. When she did start showing up, the word had circulated pretty well about her wild and wanton behavior at the party the previous weekend. Lots of knowing looks and looking-down-the-nose at her. More than a few lewd propositions and jokes. LOTS of very public party invitations.

I noticed she never wore her pink "Foxy Lady" tank top to school any more. In fact, she seemed to have radically changed her style of dress. For the rest of the time I knew Sherrie, you would never be able to tell she HAD boobs, from the way she dressed. Long trousers or slacks, never skirts. Heavy, baggy sweaters or sweatshirts. She took to wearing a jacket a lot of the time, even in the hot South Texas climate, out of season.

No charges were ever brought against anyone. No complaints were ever made. I wondered what I would do if I were brought to testify, but no one ever asked me to. Once, a guy bumped me in the hall hard enough that it felt like a body check, and muttered, "keep your damn mouth shut," but that was all anyone ever said to me about it.

Sherrie had smiled a lot, back in the day. After the party, I never saw her smile again. Every tyro at the school had dates with her, though, in which she performed like a wildcat, again and again, into the night... but none were verifiable. The guys whose word was good said that she always turned down dates. In fact, she didn't much seem to want to go out with anyone. Ever. She was never seen at parties or social gatherings any more, or in extracurricular events. It's like she simply went to school... and then went home... and stayed there until forced to go to school again.

She was a junior when I graduated. I have no clue what happened to her after I left town. Her reputation still flourished, though, nurtured and embellished, and passed on to each new freshman class.

*************************************

I'll be thirty-nine this year. This happened a long time ago, but in some ways, it haunts me still. I can't say I got it as bad as Sherrie did, but I certainly got the same choice she did: cooperate or suffer.

She and I learned the same lesson that night: that just because you think you know someone doesn't mean you know someone. And even if you do know someone, you can't necessarily count on them being the same guy you know when he's drunk and in the middle of a mob.

And sometimes the bad guys win.

I still feel a little ashamed of myself for not doing something, for not speaking out, for not charging in, singlehandedly, and saving the day, with my strength the strength of ten because my heart was pure.

And a little voice in the back of my head says, quite rationally, "And you would have been beat bloody and perhaps killed, by sixteen drunk and dangerous guys. And you wouldn't have saved the lady fair."

And then the other little voice pipes up, "Yeah, but you could have at least tried."