Chapter 10 Not Again
Not Again
WITHOUT MY PARENTS IN MY LIFE, I WENT ON A RAMPAGE.
I bounced around houses and did whatever the hell I wanted.
You always hear that girls get attached to the men they lose their virginity to, but not me.
After my first time and the pregnancy and abortion with Jordan, I grew restless—and that only fueled the wild streak inside me.
There was a party every night of the week, and back then, Vegas just had a sparkle. The city felt bright and alive—or maybe we were just so young that we hadn’t lived enough to realize how dark the city really was.
I was still working odd jobs to put money in my pocket.
I started at Fatburger, which was short-lived when I quickly realized that I hated being around all the grease.
So I got a summertime gig at Wet’ n’ Wild as a lifeguard for a few summers.
I never missed a day on that job—this water baby found so much joy in a bathing suit and pool all day.
But my real hustle was stealing expensive clothes from Dillard’s, with Stacy as my partner in crime.
Stacy was Pinky from Pinky and the Brain—she didn’t stand more than four foot nine with dark brown hair and big, beautiful, sky-blue eyes, but would make you want to crawl in a hole if you ever crossed her.
And anytime there was a scam going on, Stacy was front and center.
Remember the big Starter jackets that were all the rage back in the day?
We would buy XL jackets, take a box cutter, slit the lining ever-so-perfectly, pull the stuffing out, and leave the jacket empty.
Usually, our targets were whatever name brand jeans were trendy.
We would grab every pair we could and act like we were going to the dressing room to try them all on.
Inside the dressing room, we would stuff those Starter jackets with as many pairs as would fit.
This was way before alarm tags—I like to think we actually had something to do with that particular innovation.
We were like pirates returning from sea when we got back to Stacy’s house with our loot, sorting our booty and reveling in our haul. We were some of the best-dressed criminals in Vegas, because we always kept some of the stash for ourselves.
After sifting through everything, we’d drive over to the deep Eastside, to a place called the Attic, and they would buy all the items we stole with price tags intact.
They must have known what we were doing, but it was their hustle too.
We’d steal a two-hundred-dollar pair of jeans, and they’d give us fifty dollars for each pair and turn around and sell them for a hundred dollars.
Honestly, I’m thankful for those dudes at the Attic. They kept me afloat in one of the hardest times of my life. Because of that fifty dollars a pop, I was able to survive.
Stacy and I kept that hustle up for year—until one day, we were finally caught and arrested. Our faces were even in the local newspaper, because law enforcement thought we were such crafty thieves. I guess they wanted to show copycats they were onto us. To this day, I’m proud of that one.
* * *
JEFF WAS OLDER—MAYBE TWENTY-THREE OR twenty-four, and I was still sixteen.
He would pull up to the high school in his lowrider and pick up underage girls right after they got out of chemistry class.
But I was young and didn’t see how creepy he was.
He just seemed hot and popular and him being older seemed cool, not dangerous.
One day, he pulled his lowrider up next to me. It was obvious what he wanted, and I was definitely into him. But I’d only just had that abortion, and I needed to take things slow.
“I like you,” I told him, “but I’m not ready to have sex. I want to hang out.” He nodded like he understood.
The third or so time we hung out, Jeff took me to a party at his friends’ house: brothers who were big shots at school. Someone handed me a plastic cup of the Goldschl?ger everyone around me was knocking back.
I’d never tried it before, and I took a sniff of the glittery drink—Wowee, that’s strong. Fuck it. It sparkled, so I was in.
It was fucking disgusting. But I wasn’t going to look like a pussy, so I kept drinking. Before I knew it, Tasha and I had damn near finished the whole fucking bottle between the two of us, drinking until we could no longer taste that sickly sweetness.
But Jeff wasn’t partying like everyone else—he wasn’t even really drinking. He was just sitting back and watching me as I got absolutely shit-faced. It was like he was waiting.
I was blacked out, but I do remember going into the bathroom to try to make myself throw up.
If I could just puke, I’d get my head straight.
As I leaned over the toilet with my head slung low in shame, the door opened.
Jeff, all hazy in my blurry vision, came in.
I crouched lower in front of the toilet so I didn’t look so pitiful, but I must have pulled myself up, because I remember flashes of us making out, and then it’s just all black.
I woke up with my face pressed against the cold bathroom floor. From another room, I heard that same party music still playing, and when I looked down, I realized my pants were off. I pulled myself up, still unsteady, and it hit me.
Oh my God. He raped me. I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t believe it.
I stumbled out of the bathroom and went upstairs, just trying to find a place to lie down. I found a room with no one in it and I passed out in one of the brothers’ beds. Fade to black, again.
* * *
IT WAS MORNING WHEN I woke up, with one of the fuckin’ brothers on top of me, trying to stick his dick in me. No, no, no. Waking up with your pants taken off twice in twenty-four hours is enough to send any woman into a rage.
“What are you doing? I don’t want to have sex with you,” I yelled. I managed to get him off me and get up before anything could happen—thank you, God—and ran into the next room, where I found Tasha passed out.
“Tasha. Get up,” I yelled, shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes, took one look at me, and we got the fuck out.
* * *
NORMALLY, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPENED to me at that age, I’d figure it was my fault.
Even if I knew that Mindy and Bill weren’t particularly Christian in their parenting and had put me through hell, eventually I started to think that I must have deserved it.
I’d done something wrong or acted crazy or been too rebellious, and so, naturally, something bad would come my way as some kind of cosmic punishment.
But for the first time in my life, I felt violated in every single way.
It didn’t matter how much I’d had to drink, throwing back those Goldschlagers in the brothers’ living room.
Jeff had no fucking right, and I was mad as hell.
I had a beeper that Jeff kept blowing up, but I just wasn’t interested in speaking to him.
He called every friend I had as well, looking for me.
But what was I even going to say? My mind was spiraling through rage and anxiety, and at one point, I even felt bad for him—maybe he missed me, or maybe he felt guilty.
For the next fifteen years, I’d watch myself and the women around me try to love away the anger or violence of their men, to feel their pain deep inside us and try to take it on.
But that weekend, my empathy was just a flash, and it quickly dissipated and returned to anger.
A few days after the party, I was hanging at Lisa’s and the phone rang. She answered, put her hand over the phone, and turned toward me.
“It’s Jeff. Do you want to talk to him?” Hell, yes, I did. I had sat with this anger long enough. Maybe he would apologize. I grabbed the phone out of her hand.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Where have you been? Why haven’t you haven’t called me back?”
“Because of what you did the other night.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.” Oh, really. Rage was building up inside of me, and hearing his voice made me even angrier.
“Jeff. I know what you did. It’s fucked up, dude. You’re a piece of shit,” I said. “You had sex with me when I told you I didn’t want it. You fucking r-r-r-raped me.” I felt so helpless that it was even hard for me to get the word out.
I slammed the phone down. I was not very good with boundaries. I’m still not. But I felt so wronged in such a disgusting way that nothing would move me to speak to that man ever again.
Funny how life always circles back. I heard about him over the years. He married some girl from my high school class, treated her like shit, had an affair. Fucking loser.
* * *
EVEN THOUGH I’D BEEN EXPELLED, I still went to the football games.
Part of me missed being in school—deep down, I just wanted to be a regular kid.
One night after a game, a red Eagle Talon pulled up in front of a party at a friend’s house.
I’d never seen a car so nice in my life.
What was it doing in this neighborhood? The door opened and out came Tony, a rich kid from the other side of town in Green Valley.
His mom and stepdad were loaded—and Tony had a job as a dental assistant, but I wasn’t easily impressed. I was always the pickier one of my crew with the men I selected, even from a young age. So when Tony somehow finessed me into going on a date, my whole crew was shocked.
Tony and I fell fast, and for a moment in time, he was my world.
As with all young relationships, we were wild.
And he had money and a car, so that meant the world was our oyster.
Tasha’s mom even loved him and accepted him into our tight-knit family.
Tony was here to stay. Or, at least, stay awhile.
* * *
I’D GOTTEN PREGNANT WITH JORDAN one of the first few times I had sex, and with Tony, I slept with him right away. Man, I moved fast. Sex had become my way of expressing my love—but now I can see how it filled the huge hole in my heart for feeling so unloved as a child.