Beers & Sticky Boobies

There are things that you and your best friends do that you will never forget for as long as you live. I was reminded of one such occurrence today when I was talking to my best friend, Bridget, and we started to gab about one of our adventures one fateful Homecoming night.

This was before the high heel craze, and I was just a little closet gay boy in Alabama, who had great hair, and new perfectly straight teeth, I was just beginning to get the hang of high school and come into my own. Bridget was the same as she is now, beautiful brown hair that is always perfectly curled with the aid of her hot rollers,and pearls with every outfit, even when she was playing basketball, which just goes to prove that she was, and is still a lady. This maybe the best time to mention that we have the same size feet, and as fate would have it,her secretly gay friend always tried on her stilettos, and now she is asking to borrow his. We were usually each other's back up dates to these sort of things, just so we don't appear to be dateless or pathetic, both of us with the understanding that if there was an available man at the function, we would bow out gracefully and race to see who could get his number first. This year, however, circumstances were different and Bridget had been asked by a junior, which was no matter to me because I had a secret weapon, her name opossums, is Audrey. The one thing you need to know about Audrey is that you never know what she is going to do next, she is a firecracker, a wild card, and it is the one quality that she has that has made me fall and remain deeply in love with her. Audrey came to homecoming at my school, that only had 144 people at the time, and turned my modest Catholic Boarding School on it's ear.. Most girls wore a long floor length dress made out of all kinds of hideous fibers that I wouldn't let come within a 23 foot radius of my body, and they all had ghastly up-do's that their pageant mothers did for them on the porch of their double wide, every hair held securely in place by copious amounts of Aqua Net and bobby pins. Audrey, however, came into that sorry excuse of a dance wearing a sassy and dangerously short teal flowy dress that showed off her long dancer legs, with her hair down, and wavy. She wore her show choir heels and told all the nun-wanna-be's that they were designer, Michael Kors or something, they were definitely $45 from a dance apparel store, but these people ate her up, they loved her, as anyone would, they thought she was a big city girl. We all danced, I showed her off, and that is when the trouble began. One girl, Marie, came up to us and asked us if we "really wanted to party". A note to anyone reading this that is in high school, and is approached by a "Marie" type person, always say "HELL NO MARIE YOU CRAZY FUCKER". Trust me, it will only save you many hours of stress and heartache. Naturally, Audrey was all about something, a little more exciting than the electric slide. So we follow Marie to a gas station that shares the same main road that our school does. Audrey and I pull up behind my friend Claire, who has a car full of Freshmen who in turn are all related to her. And then, our friend who will forever live in my mind as the Wootten drove up. The Wootten was the smaller scale version of Audrey, she was kind of a ding dong at times, but I always have loved her. So, the Wootten and Marie get out of their Cadillacs, yes two white 16 year old girls in Alabama drove matching pimped out Caddy's, I know, what the hell, and pulled out beers from their trunk. I am not going to lie to you, I was this little virgin gay boy who spent his time admiring shoes in Vogue magazine, the same little gay boy who had the fear of God put into him by his parents if they ever caught him drinking and driving, I started to panic. Audrey was all about this. I was petrified.

We each got handed a bottle of Bud Light. It was warm, Marie had gotten
"a guy she new" (that means one of the redneck boys who hangs out at the local Wal-Mart, who graduated high school three years earlier and dropped out of community college after a month because he was going to be in the Army, then he failed because of drugs or something, and now spends his days huntin' and fishin' and drinking Natty Light in the back of his pick-em-up truck, scamming on girls who are still in high school, because they are the easiest ones to convince to sleep with you because everyone your own age knows you are a dumb ass, you know, those types). We all sat in our cars, with open hot alcohol, in our hands waiting for the person in the next car over to take the first sip. The Wootten did it first. Then Claire, then Bridget, then me. I looked over at Audrey who handed hers to me, and told me to drink it, she was "watching her weight". I forced down two gulps of my beer, then I heard the sound of what I thought was a mix of God and my Mother in my head. "YOOOU ARE DRUNK! YOU CAN'T DRINK AND DRIVE!!" I just knew I was shit faced, those two gulps had rendered me unfit to drive and I started sweating, I was an alcoholic, a drunk, I was my GRANDMOTHER!! I turned to Audrey, who had her eyes bright and lit up. She had been planning to use this as her opportunity to drive LaRhetta, my car. She had been bugging me about it ever since I had gotten her, and now took complete advantage of the situation.

"You don't look like you should be driving, how many beers have you had? What if we get pulled over, what will your step dad do if he knows you were drinking and driving?"

She had me cornered.

I agreed to let her drive, but she had to go slowly, the radio had to be off, no cell phones were to be used whilst driving, and she had to keep her hands on the wheel.

PS Audrey didn't have a license.

So we all decide that we need to go back to the dance before someone wonders why all of our cars are parked across the street at the closed gas station that was in clear view from the school. We stashed the beer bottles in a bush in front of the store, and we all get back into our respective vehicles. I was coaching the license-less Audrey, "OK, put it into reverse, now check your mirrors..." She started to back up, slowly, as coached, and started to turn the wheel to back out of the lot. As she is turning the wheel, I will never forget this as long as I shall live, Marie's gray Cadillac slams into reverse and plows right into my car.

MY POOR LARHETTA was in her first accident! We were all stunned that this had happened. I just knew right then and there that the cops were going to show up and breathalyze me and send me to prison, Audrey was going to get the death penalty for driving without a license, and my poor car was going to be sent to a junk yard and sold for parts because no one else would ever buy such a beaten up heap of junk.

Marie got out of her car. Everyone else sat in complete silence, mainly because they thought that I was going to commit a homicide right there in the Pepco parking lot. I opened my car door and got out. My bumper lay there half hanging on with dear life to LaRhetta, half defeated on the slick black pavement.

All Marie could say was "Man, don't worry about it. It won't be that expensive of a fix." As she lit her Camel No. 9.

"It's a fucking Saab Marie! Windshield wiper fluid is expensive for this car!, " I shouted back.

Everyone is slowly starting to trickle out of their vehicles and Marie and I are in the midst of an all out screaming fest when we start to notice a lot of traffic on the road behind us. The dance had started to let out and people's parents were driving by, to pick up their sober, not screaming children up from Winter Homecoming.

Some cars started to honk at us. 11 of us in all, all in our formal wear standing around my broken car in 23 degree weather, wondering what the hell we were going to do.

I will tell you what we did, we panicked. Everyone fled to get into someone else's car so they could leave before anyones parents recognized them and pulled over to see what was happening. Bridget, my best friend in the entire world, yelled at me "See you back at school! Call me!" she jumped in Claire's car, and they drove off, Bridget's coral dress flapping in the door, leaving Marie and me to our own battle. Audrey is sitting in the car at this point, giggling & texting.

We stood there, in awe. We weren't sure what to do at this point. Then,the only remaining soul in the Pepco parking lot, the Wootten, lept out of her car doing what looked like, a boob massage. She was screaming "BOOOOBIES TO THE RESCUE!"
I asked her how much she had to drink, and that this want a time to talk about her mammary glands. She whipped out her fake sticky breasts that she was using to keep her dress up at the dance and adhered them to my bumper and stuck it back onto my car. It was amazing. It worked. The Wootten was my hero. We decided that I would worry about fixing my bumper later, and I would call Marie in the morning with an estimate.

Audrey drove us up to the dance, right as it was letting out, everyone staring at the two C-cup stick on's that LaRhetta was wearing, the monks and nuns that were chaperoning eyed Audrey and I wearily as we walked across the quad. I looked around so I could yell at Bridget, but I couldn't find her. Audrey and I had a final dance, and then decided we wanted IHOP, I was going back to get in my car when I noticed a coral dress sticking out of someone else's car. I went over to the window, of the old stank ass pick up truck and saw my best friend having her face licked, seriously, licked, by the junior boy who had asked her to the dance, Robby. Robby was so frightening, a nice comparison would be that of a goblin. I, at first thought that I was still drunk from my two gulps of beer, but nope, it was happening. I died laughing at the scene, and Bridget gratefully got out of the car, vowing to never leave me stranded again at a gas station as long as she ever lived. Having to make out with Robby, I figured was punishment enough, so I let it slide.
And went to Ihop.

I came up with some lie to my stepfather about this situation the next morning, it must have worked, because I am alive today to tell it. Don't ever go to parking lots and drink warm beer purchased by a redneck. It just isn't worth your time.

xox
William