Between hiding out at the Umpenhauer's, baby-sitting for Jody and my new friendships with Chris and Jeff, which allowed me to be a girl that rode in cars with boys, at the age of fourteen, I was hardly ever home anymore. But, rather than lessening the tension between myself and my step-father, my newly busy social and professional life only seemed to add fuel to the fire. I tried to time it so that I didn't see Jay, but sometimes this just wasn't possible. I came home to shower and change clothes one day, thinking I was safe, Jay's truck wasn't parked in front of our trailer. Wouldn't you know it, his rig was in the shop, and there was The Schnoock, parked in front of the TV, beer can in hand.

"So, you're making a special guest appearance?" he asked, not even looking up from the screen. Roller Derby, live from the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Geewhilikers.

"No, don't stand, gentleman. I'm just passing through," I replied, fliply.
"That's about all you do around here, anymore." What, was he picking a fight?
"Well, Jay, what's worse? When I'm here and you have to look at me? Or, when I'm gone and you just have to wonder?" Tit for tat, I could never let an opportunity go by to needle him.
"I don't give a good goddam what ya do but the way you're going you're headed for trouble, I can tell you that for a sure thing," he actually looked up from the Monster where the Bay Bombers were kicking ass.
"I'm not like your girls," I shot back. "I'm smart enough to do what I want AND stay out of trouble!" I don't even know why I said stuff like that. I liked his daughters. They were nice to me. But, I knew he was sensitive about it.
"Don't think I don't know what's going on. Your mom's maybe in the dark but I know what you're up to and I'll put a stop to it, you wait and see."
"Oh, yeah, you and who else? I can do whatever I goddam please and you have no right to tell me otherwise. Pay attention to your own kids and leave me alone."
"You better start showing some respect around here. You ain't fooling me for a minute. You think you can just come and go as you please. Never home except to use the phone, yakking all hours of the night, taking off without telling your mom where you're going. You're gonna change your ways or I'm gonna know why."
"Oh, drink your beer and chill out, old man."
"You watch your mouth, you little....."

Naturally, that's when Mom came in from hanging out laundry, once again right into the middle of another battle between two people she loved. She always got a strange tight look when Jay and I were at one another's throats. "Oh, honey, you're home. How nice. Would you like to help me make supper?" She always tried to diffuse these situations with sweetness.

"No, Mom, I promised Elsa I would help her weed tonight. George is off in Carson and Mama's crazy to get the garden cleaned out this week...."
"Goddam it, girl, you do what your mother asks, no if ands or buts." Jay slammed his beer down on the coffee table, his face getting even redder than usual.
"Oh, now, Jay," Mom began, "That's OK. If she promised Mama and Elsa, she should go ahead and follow through...."
"Jesus, Katie, you let that kid walk all over you. When you tell her to do something, you gotta make her do it or she thinks she can get away with murder..."
"But, Jay, I didn't tell her, I asked if she wanted to. It was just a suggestion."

Ah, yes, divide and conquer. I slipped into the bedroom to change clothes, pleased as punch to hear Jay and Mom hammering away at each other, him all, "Jesus Katie," and her just, "Now, dear," What an asshole he is, I always thought. He acts like he is God All Mighty. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered what the hell she saw in this guy. Well, a moving target is hard to hit, I figured. I ran a comb through my hair and tied my sneakers tight.

"Well, I'm off. Bye, Mom. Bye, Jay. If Jeff calls, tell him I'm at Elsie's, OK?" I threw a kiss to Mom and ducked past Jay, scrambling out the door and down the front steps.
"Be home before midnight," Jay shot at me.
"Don't worry. I won't do anything you wouldn't do," I shot back, slamming the door. Ha. I don't know why I said stuff like that, either. I really wasn't a bad girl, as hard as I tried to make Jay think so. As a matter of fact, I probably was more deserving of a Virgin Pin than Bobbi-jo or any of her ken. Going on fifteen and never been kissed. Never even close. The only boys I even liked were Jeff and Chris and neither of them were in the least bit interested in my lips, except for talking.

Elsa and I practiced kissing on each other, on our arms first and then on our lips but there was no big thrill there, either. Her lips were always wet from the Juicy Fruit gum she chewed and she wanted me to pretend that I was Elvis Presley. We played her Blue Hawaii album till Papa chased us outside. We sang all the songs from West Side Story. "You be Tony. I'm Maria," she said. But, I didn't want to be Tony, or Maria. I wanted to be Rita Moreno, now there's one tough chick. Kissing Elsa was like kissing on a canteloupe. I was pretty mixed up in the gender department. I kept getting crushes on all the bad girls, when I wasn't wondering what it would be like to sweep Kathy Holmborg off her sensibly shod feet. I didn't want to seduce her, I wanted to take her to San Francisco. I can admit that matters sexual were still a complete puzzle to me.

There was a girl in the trailer court named Becky that I greatly admired. She was several years older than me, Jeff's age, and I watched her every chance I got. I didn't have a crush on her but she had something I wanted. She could play piano and guitar and had a very nice, albeit soft, singing voice. I could never carry a tune in a bucket but if I was gonna sing, I was always gonna belt that old saw out. I was always trying to sing and even my chorus teachers, Mr. Kneller and Mr. Boroughf were always telling me to "moderate, sing from the belly, not the bowels". Hopelessly tone-deaf, I made up in volume for what I could not find in key.

When Becky played the guitar in the evenings, over by the incinerator shack, where all the older kids in the neighborhood hung out, I could almost see me being able to do that. Maybe if I could play the guitar, my voice could learn how to follow the melody. I bought an old third-hand, F-hole jazz guitar and learned about five chords. I wanted to play bluesy stuff but all Becky knew were icky-sweet songs like Puff, the Magic Dragon and Where have All the Flowers Gone? so I learned those and used the chords to make up songs of my own.

Playing my guitar which had a twisted neck and refused to stay in tune, banging away of my five chords, trying to pick tunes out to my painfully awkward lyrics, I imagined I might be able to touch other people, inside, in their guts. My voice wobbled around between low alto and tenor, graveling down into baritone as I sang. I didn't know it but down in Port Arthur, Texas, another little white trash girl was exploring those same rough sounds, trying to find her voice and years later I would listen to Janis Joplin with tears in my eyes to hear a woman finally give tune to the feelings that were all balled up inside me like a bomb, howling around to find an escape. My little sister asked me, "Don't you know any happy songs?" but I didn't. Mosie would sing with me, her thin sweet little voice trailing behind my gravelly one and oh how we laughed because we could never find each other's key.

The other thing about Becky that kept me so enthralled was her aptitude for handling boys. She had a knack for keeping them all on the line but at a safe distance. Maybe it was because she was built like Barbie, even her neck which stretched out so far before her head started happening that I couldn't figure out why the whole structure didn't just fall over when she tossed her hair back out of her face. Maybe it was the hair, a foot and a half of the stuff, all exactly the same length and not a split end in sight, all honey blonde with gold and red highlights. Maybe it was her little innie navel always peeking out between the waist band of her tight, faded Levis and her perfect polo shirts, winking every time she shifted her weight. Maybe it was the green eyes, more yellow than green, wide-eyed like a lioness, always looking around like something was gonna steal her kill. Maybe it was how it all hung together on her rangy frame.

All I know is that everywhere she went, that's where the boys would be. But, they didn't act like boys when they were around her. They got all tongue-tied and polite. Usually they acted like little animals, snarling and stomping the ground, spitting and cussing and shoving each other. But, as soon as they saw her, they stood up straighter and lowered their voices and asked please and said thank-you, which was so remarkable that even seeing it, I didn't believe it. One more Thing That Makes No (#*^++=?@~><%#) Sense. She had sex written all over her but for some reason it made all the toughs gulp and swallow and rendered the nice boys absolutely mute. So, I spent a lot of time watching the way she acted to try to figure out how I could--not attract boys but, just, well---co-exist with the things.

Boys around me were always trying to poke my boobs or push me over or stick their hands down my shirt or snap my bra strap or stick their tongues in my ear, or something stupid and nasty. They leered and tried to talk dirty or just flat ignored me like I didn't exist which when compared to the other was a vast improvement. What I couldn't understand was how she seemed to be able to turn those beasts into, well, almost humans. Even though they acted almost as stupid trying to be nice, at least they weren't like from another planet or solar system. Jeff and Chris were the sole exception to my perception that males were a different species.

All summer long Becky didn't have a boyfriend which was remarkable as every girl I knew would sacrifice major body parts (including, truth to tell, their hymens) to get one hanging on their arms. But, Becky was just as cool and casual and indifferent to 'em as could be and talked to 'em just the same as she would a girl and had, consequently, a whole pack of 'em nipping nicely at her heels. Hmmmmm.

Then, all of a sudden, she DID have a boy friend and he was the hoodlumiest of the bunch, the greasiest, raggedhairiest, inarticulate loutiest guy on the whole West end of town. And, then, it was really Go Figure time. She tamed him with a glance and it was like she had grown an appendage 'cause now anywhere was Becky, there too was Ricky, tattoos and all, shirtsleeves rolled up to show off sunburnt muscles, cigarette dangling from his cracked chapped lips. He looked like he probably had moss in his teeth, although I never got in there close enough to see. He glowered at the other fellows but he followed Becky around like nothing else in the world than a little love-sick pup.

We were all swimming down at the river one hot August afternoon, so hot and dry and still that you knew a thunder storm was a comin', even though the giant cotton ball clouds hung motionless for a hundred miles overhead. Becky had brought her guitar and was singing all her favorite songs, Jeff doing harmony in a sweet tight tenor. Half a dozen kids were kicking around in the sand, squealing about the grasshoppers they were catching everywhere. Ricky was doing his usual flopping around on the blanket, too, trying to sit on all four sides of Becky in the middle so no one else could get close to her. Kids were swimming, jumping off the rope, shooting the slides, the air was filled with blissful summer noises in gunshot counterpoint to all hundred thousand versus of I Gave My Love A Penny and He's Got The Whole World In His Hands. Just another day in the life of the children of the white trash tribes across America, staying out from under foot of the grown ups and doing whatever we can find to do to stay out of trouble and not die of boredom.

It was one of those days I wish everything could stay just exactly this way at the same time I'm knowing I better pay attention to every little detail 'cause it's never gonna be like this again, never. Ricky stood up all of a sudden, pushing Jeff over, and marched about ten feet away, shoving one of the little girls out of his path and turned back and glared at Becky. "I hate that fucking song," he spat, an abrupt non sequitur to no one and everyone. He took off down the beach, through the scrub willows and we could hear him throwing rocks into the water, kicking trees and generally raising hell with the innocent landscape.

"Oh, Ricky," Becky sighed. "He's just like a baby, sometimes. Can't stand it if he's not the center of attention." She set her guitar down and slowly stood up, brushing sand off her long legs and pulling her shorts loose around the crotch. She stepped into her sandals and took off into the bushes, turning around to look back at us and rolling her big expressive eyes, as if to say, "Oh, you know. Guys!"

The kids kept playing. The sky began to darken and the clouds to rumble. Jeff left to go to work. I jumped off the tree and took a few wild rides on the rope and then sat on one of the big boulders to let my cut-offs and shirt dry in the heat of the fading summer day. The kids were getting cranky, begging to go home, asking about supper and talking about what they might watch on TV. One by one we all started to leave. Becky's guitar was still sitting on the blanket where she had set it down and I wondered where she had gone, wondered if I should take it home or leave it where it lay. I told the kids to get all their stuff together and said, "I'll be right back. I'm gonna go find Becky. You get your shoes on and leave them grasshoppers alone, now" I began to work my way down the river bank, through the thicket of willows and scrub cottonwood. There were dozens of footpaths, but I followed the one that ran closest to the side of the river, heading towards the pools that formed beneath the dam.

I was listening to the kids scrambling around and the rumble of closening thunder and the sounds of evening birds returning to their roosts and watching my bare feet on the dusty trail, keeping an eye out for the sneaky thistles that grew thickly here and could leave nasty scratches that burned and itched for hours afterwards. A flash of red in the bushes caught my eye and I stopped fast and held still, narrowing my eyes against the bright rays of the setting sun that bounced off the dappled surface of the glinting green river water.

There was Becky and Ricky entwined in the willows. Her shorts were down around her knees and she was on her back, her arms flung over her head. Ricky's head was on her bare belly, his hands up inside her shirt. He was licking her belly button and talking hot and low and fast, calling her, "baby, baby, baby". I stood entranced, watching his tongue flick across her belly, watching her skin rise and push against his face, listening to her murmurs, "No, Ricky, no, Ricky," and his reply, "C'mon, Baby, please, just once."

I wanted to watch at the same time I wanted to run away. I knew this was something I shouldn't see, something private, something dirty. But, I couldn't tear my eyes away, either, the image of his face moving along her taut belly burning into my eyes. Becky moved her head towards me and opened her eyes and saw me standing there staring at them. She just lay there, moving against him, saying, "no, no, no," while her eyes held mine. I began to back away, my feet finding the path, my eyes still riveted to hers. I thought I should say something, I couldn't figure out why she didn't. I felt like a dirty peeker and yet I didn't want to stop watching. But, I couldn't figure out why she didn't jump up, or say something, or do SOMETHING, rather than just lay there, watching me watching them. I turned and ran and then I could hear Rocky startle, "What's that?" and the sounds of their bodies moving, scrambling up in the bushes. Fat raindrops began to fall.

I ran back to our swimming hole, my feet padding along the thick dusty trail. "Come on, you kids, lets go," I said, rushing to get my feet into my sneakers. "Hurry up, we're gonna get soaked."

"What about Becky's guitar?" one of the kids asked. I threw the blanket over it.

"She'll get it. Don't worry. Come on, let's run." The rain began to pour, the darkening clouds right over head opening up like a faucet. "C'mon. Run. Run."

We were a wet, panting crew by the time we negotiated through the cow pasture, up the road bank and across the highway back to Arrowhead, rather than taking the longer trail along the old road. The kids were laughing and splashing through the instant lakes of mud puddles that sprang up out of nowhere every time we had a summer thunderstorm. I couldn't get the picture of Becky's face out of my head, Ricky's tongue digging into her navel, her eyes looking at me from a place I had never been. Big time Stuff That Makes No Sense. I always thought Becky was one of the nicest of the good girls. I couldn't understand why she would want to roll around in the dirt with Ricky's hands all over her body. "That's what you get for looking," I thought. "You shouldn't have looked."

Sex. It was everywhere. And, so far as I was concerned, it was nowhere. It was like catching Jay with his hands inside my Mom's blouse. I didn't want to see it. But, everywhere I looked, there it was again. On TV, woman in low cut gowns were always draped long and spread out wide across the hoods of cars in the Lincoln Mercury ads. What the hell are we selling here? In the halls at school, couples were twined around each other, looking like they were growing up out of one another's body parts. Downtown, the bright casino lights spelled out sex. "Les Girls, Les Hot" the marquee screamed out over the Riverside Casino; the Club Primadonna went one better and had a plastic statue thirty feet tall of a scantily clad long- legged show girl towering above the entrance on the main drag, her vapid smile gleaming and mountainous bosom looming over the street traffic, a Sex Goddess winking in neon red and silver.

Women's skirts kept getting shorter. Sex. Sex. Sex. In the movies, everyone was trying to do it or getting punished because they did. Splendor In The Grass and The L-Shaped Room taught us that girl's couldn't afford to mess around and I knew now exactly what grown-ups meant when they talked about girls that got into trouble. But, why did getting into trouble seem so much more exciting? When bad girls got into trouble, they were sent to a reformatory called Caliente. That's Spanish for "hot".

"And, believe me," my friend Linda had stated archly, "When they say hot, they mean HOT!" Her mother had caught her Doing It with her step-father. She spent six months in Caliente. He moved to Sparks, our sister city, a small complex of casinos sprung up around the old South Pacific Railroad yards, with the Piaute Indian Reservation snaking through between.. We used to say, "Reno is so close to hell you can see Sparks." When she came back from Caliente, her make-up was even thicker and she bragged she had screwed the man who kept the boiler-plant running and gotten his ass fired.

My friend Lucille died and everybody said she had bleed to death in the bathtub after trying to give herself an abortion with a knitting needle. "She's only fifteen," I kept thinking. "How the hell can she be dead? She isn't even old enough to drive." But, I had seen with Becky that you didn't need a car to be getting into trouble. Jesus, what a mess.

Jeff told me his girlfriend Joannie wanted to Do It. But, he admitted, he was chicken. He knew she could get into trouble and then what would happen. She bought rubbers but he said he didn't believe they always worked. "What if it broke? What if she got pregnant? Her Dad would kill me. And, I'm too young to be a father." Listening to him, I was amazed to hear a boy say he worried about things like that. Even though I had seen Linda in her predatory mode, it hadn't occurred to me that girls, well, nice girls, would have that kind of itch, too. Jeff was obviously uncomfortable and I was glad.

Chris said, "Oh, fuck it, Jeff, if she wants to do it, what can you do, except give in, like a gentleman, to the inevitable?" He laughed, he was always tres amusee regarding the sex lives of his friends. He bragged that he did it, for money, with men, in the bathrooms in the parks around town.

"You're kidding?" I said, utterly shocked.
"No, what the hell do you think I was doing the day I ran into you down at Riverside, playing on the swings, like you, baby bait?"
"With MEN? You mean, like men?" I was flabbergasted.
"Well, of course with men. Boys don't have any money. And besides, it's a kick. The first time I did it, I thought the sky would open up and God strike me dead. But, instead, I got a blow job and twenty bucks. It beats the hell out of jacking off ." He could tell that he had shocked the shit out of me. "C'mon, you mean you couldn't tell that I was gay?" His cynical laugh was like a machine gun.
"Gay?" I asked, blankly. "What's gay?"
"You probably are, you dodo. Gay. You know. Queer. Homoooosexuallll" he said, stretching the word out long and thin, exaggerating the power of that word, wiggling his eyebrows and looking so mock serious I had to laugh, too."
"I don't think I'm queer," I said. "I don't think I'm anything. I don't want to do it, ever, at all, with anyone. The whole thing sounds messy. And dangerous." I added, thinking about Lucille, thinking about the vacant look on Becky's face, thinking about getting sent to Caliente.
"Oh, listen to the Queen of the Asexuals. You'll end up like Jeffie, here, a virgin old maid," he said, and socked Jeff in the arm, "I bet you're a Lesbian through and through but just haven't woke up to it, yet."
This was all too much for me. I felt all crazy and confused inside. "Lesbian?" I asked, the word rolling weirdly off my tongue. "What's a Lesbian?"
"Oh, Christ, you are a gas. Lesbian. Lesbian. You know, like Sappho. The Woman-Lover. Lesbians, like Amazons, from the Island of Lesbos. Wild women dancing naked in the moonlight. All the sex ya can stand and no babies," and he roared.
"Oh, Chris, quit picking on her. Not everyone is a sex-maniac like you." Jeff said.
"Well, say what you like. It's still the best birth control method in the world and the stupid straights are all a bunch of sad-assed hypocrites. Half the men I do are married and wish to Christ their wives would do what we do. The French have the right idea," he continued, his voice going all high and squeaky, "We don't care what you do, as long as you don't do it in the streets and scare the horses."

Jeez. Now I had some food for thought. Jeff battling nature not to preserve his virtue but to avoid complications. Chris doing it in public restrooms for pocket money. And, maybe I am a Lesbian and don't even know it. Talk about Nothing Makes Sense, No Way. I sat up in bed at night, listening to the trains going by on the tracks down below the highway and I asked the night sky, "Is that what's the matter with me. Am I a Lesbian?" I wondered about the wearing yellow and green, on purpose, just to piss the other kids off or at least shake 'em up. I thought about the women I kept wanting to go live with. I thought about all the nice girls I wished I could yank out of their boring little lives. But, my feelings about sex were all pretty negative. I hated my own body, that swelling, heavy thing, and lived entirely in my head.

I didn't feel a sex urge. Or, if I did, I mistook it for a different kind of hunger.

Kat McElroy also wrote The Curse of Falling Off the Roof for Grrowl! #4.