A Rocky First Date

I was born a teetotaling-virgin. Okay, let’s face it, we all were. The difference is I was expected to stay that way until I married the piano player at church—whoever that happened to be at the moment—and toasted my nuptials with sparkling cider alongside three hundred of my parents’ closest right-wing fundamentalist Christian friends.

Like most girls, I envisioned myself in a white puffy dress, dodging rice and toasters as I glided down the aisle. In the born-again world, it didn’t much matter who you married since everybody was taught the same things and therefore believed the same things. The only decision was whether you wanted your kids to have brown hair or blonde.

But not me. I still believed in The One. My very own Prince Charming who God had created just for me. The boy whose job it was to love me.

As for finding The One, that was the conundrum. My first thought went to low hanging fruit. As it turned out, a real prince of my exact age existed in the world—Charles, Prince of Wales. As for meeting him, it might be as easy as hanging around Hyde Park, enduring all the self-righteous pontificating until he wandered by in his bowler hat.

But what if Prince Charles wasn't my Prince Charming? He wasn't, after all, all that cute. What if our kids came out with those big ole Dumbo ears? And so, wise beyond my years, I relegated marrying Prince Charles to Plan B. Plan A remained smooching my way through high school and college and marrying the very best kisser.

But truthfully, my parents would have never let me marry Prince Charles anyway, because Prince Charles wasn’t a Christian. Sure, he was that weird Church of England thingie, but not a Christian-Christian, meaning he had not accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and been washed in The Blood of the Lamb.

Christians can be very picky about who else qualifies as a Christian.

By my sophomore year of high school, I was starting to come out of my goofy stage and develop some pretty impressive curves. It took a while before I even noticed, given I’d been comparing myself to hourglass figures like Mitzi Gainer’s in South Pacific, not realizing these chicks were padded in some parts and cinched tight in others. No matter how much I held in my stomach, I never achieved the look, although I did get a reputation as, “the girl with the good posture.”

The first boy to notice was Rocky, a senior and captain of the football team. The only thing more shocking than the hunk asking me out was Dad letting me go. I was amazed my folks let me date a heathen. I think they thought I might as well hone my skills in preparation for nabbing The One when he came along.

Rocky showed up looking mighty fine in his short-sleeve white shirt and black tie. We must be going someplace nice, I thought. Dinner maybe. Perhaps a movie. The kind where you went inside, not arrived in the trunk of somebody’s car. What I didn’t realize was Rocky had come straight from his job as a bag boy at the local grocery and that was his uniform.

Rocky drove out past Thunderbird Road, way way way out in the desert. Wow, I thought. He really likes me. He wants to get right to the goodnight-kissing part of the date. Fine by me. I’d never been goodnight-kissed in my life.

Rocky pulled over, slid a bottle of tequila from beneath his seat and took a swig.

“Want some?” he asked, wiping his mouth.

“No thanks. Not thirsty.”

This was going rather well, I thought. A couple more dates and I’d be Rocky's Girl, a hop-skip-and-jump from becoming prom queen. I could feel my life changing before my eyes.

“So, ya wanna do it?”

“Huh?”

I'd almost forgotten Rocky, I was so busy trying to figure out how to get my dad to let me marry him.

“Well, do you?”

And what is this “It” of which you speak? —I dared not ask. I knew it couldn’t possibly be the it because nobody in high school did that it. There must be some other it I didn’t know about. I couldn’t admit I’d never heard of this other it, so instead I asked, “I donno. Do you?”

Rocky assured me he did.

“So, you safe?”

Yet another puzzling question. I thought on this first of many dates, we’d talk about football or something else I wasn't remotely interested in. But, no. Instead, we were talking about something I had no idea what we were talking about. And I was fairly certain “safe” didn't refer to the rats in my beehive hairdo because I was wearing it in a flip that night.

Oh! The Hook Guy.

The true story went like this: There’s this couple out parking when they hear there’s a one-armed escapee from the loony bin headed for Lover’s Lane. The girl freaks out and wants to go home. The boy wants to stay and get his rocks off. The boy gets ticked off and peels out. When he goes to let the girl out, he finds a bloody hook hanging from the door handle.

Eek!

I looked around to make sure The Hook Guy wasn’t anywhere around and assured Rocky I was safe. What a thoughtful fellow my impending boyfriend was.

“Anytime you wanna stop, we’ll stop,” he said.

“Huh?”

“C’mon, work with me here! I got a fight behind Pedro’s at ten.”

“Uh, okay. Sure.”

I mean, who could say no to, “Anytime you wanna stop, we’ll stop?” I’d just hang out until I figured out what this other it was, then I’d say, yea or nay, depending on what this other it turned out to be.

That settled, Rocky took off his tie.

Okay, that made some sense because it was hot in the desert, even at night.

He took off his shirt.

Alright, it might be hot, but not that hot.

Off came his shoes. His socks.

Meanwhile, what was I taking off? Not so much as an earring. And my clip-ons were killing me.

Then I heard it.

Zip!

“Stop!” I screamed.

Rocky’s trousers sucked back up over his buttocks like The Hook Guy was knocking on the window.

The linebacker turned out to be quite anti-groovy about the whole anytime-you-wanna-stop-we’ll-stop thing. He even started blabbing to his football pals that we’d done it. Or not done it, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was there was a whole lot of giggling going on whenever I passed them in the breezeway. And football players shouldn’t giggle. They just shouldn’t.

I moped around for weeks, barely talking, hardly eating. Finally, Mom sat me down and demanded to know what was wrong. I didn’t like telling her stuff because she was always trying to fix things. But let’s face it, this thing needed fixing. Either that, or I had to transfer high schools.

I told her the whole story, only to find she was proud of me for putting the kibosh on Rocky’s disgusting plans. We even laughed about it, coming up with all kinds of wacky ways to teach the brute a lesson. Finally, we settled on one. Crafted it together. Mom waved me off on my little caper and waited for me to report back.

I drove the short distance to Fry’s Food Store and hung around while my almost-beau finished packing a lady’s groceries in the trunk of her car.

“Whatcha want?” snarled Rocky.

“I’m pregnant.”

Ka-boom. The linebacker looked like he’d been hit by another linebacker.

“You can’t be,” he stammered. “I never touched you!”

“Well, I know that and you know that, but there’s all those people you went out and told—”

Knocking up a high school girl meant one thing. Marriage. And although Rocky knew the kid couldn’t possibly be his, what’s a poor bag boy to do? Wait around for months, watching for my belly to expand into a baby-sized ballon, is what. And do a whole lot of backtracking in the meantime.

Which is exactly what Rocky did.