Adventures in Automobiling 2-The Prostitute

   During all this time, Rich, my friend from Penney’s loved cars. Chevrolets in particular. He always wanted to talk to me about my car. And every little incident with my car killed him inside. One day in the winter he found a white 1970 Chevy Nova for sale. He then informed me that 1969-1972 Chevy Novas were identical and you can interchange the parts. So to me it was a no-brainer. I bought the car. It ran crappy, but the body was okay. At least the parts I needed to fix my red one. It proceeded to sit in my parent’s driveway as I didn’t need it and wasn’t going to work on my car in the cold of winter. Finally, when summer came, I transferred the registration from my red Nova to my white Nova so I could do work on my red one.

  The white one had problems. It’s gas gauge didn’t work well. When it said it had a quarter tank of gas, it lied. It had no gas. I had to buy a Big Gulp from 7-11. Fill the cup with gas and pour it into my tank on one of those special days.

  There was a problem with the exhaust causing the car to take forever to get up to a driving speed and it didn’t sound like the muffler was even connected. Overall I hated it and only drove it for about 3 weeks.

  It just so happened that one of those weeks was the 4th of July week. I remember this because my family traditionally goes away to Vermont that week and because I couldn’t get off from work the whole week I stayed behind. This meant weeklong party at my house. The parties were eventful by themselves as one night had Mark, drunk, laying on top of his Bronco II bemoaning the loss of Dana at the top of his lungs and Dan laying in the street making “gravel angels” to prove he was an idiot, my guess.

   But the highlight came mid-week when on a particularly hot day we decided to go back to Paul’s to swim in his pool. Just before 10 PM I announced I had to get home because Dan was coming straight from work to crash at my house as we had a tendency to do when parents were away. I opted to take a back road back to my place that had few stoplights, but pretty direct. This particular night I had the “Back to the Future” Soundtrack on cassette in my car. There I am driving along listening to the score Daaaa Da Da… Da Daa Dad a dad a… etc. while cruising at a pretty good speed. When I turned the bend and saw a red light. I knew how long it would take my car to get back up to this speed if I came to a complete stop so I tried to do one of those Coast-until-the-light-turns-green moves. The light turned green, but the van at the light didn’t move. I was going to have to stop anyway.

  Just then, a woman jumped out of the passenger side dressed in thigh high fishnets and a mini skirt and ran toward my car. My first honest reaction was ‘oh geez, any girl dressed like that is sure to be taken advantage of on a first date.’ The fan started to do a u-turn as if to follow her. At that moment I was faced with a choice. I could be a jerk and keep driving or I stop, let her in and have a van chase me to the “Back to the Future” theme. In that instant it seemed like a no-brainer.

  I stopped, let her in and stepped on the gas. I didn’t go as fast as I would have liked, but it didn’t matter the van quickly gave up the chase, putting me in the awkward situation of being in the car with a complete stranger with the “Back to the Future” theme blaring so I could hear it over my non muffled car. Embarrassed, I turned the radio off. She didn’t seem to notice, she was in some kind of state of shock muttering to herself. She just kept repeating that she should never have gotten in the car with him. She had a bad feeling about him. Things like that. I asked “Blind date, huh?” She just responded “No. I’m a hooka” The things that ran through my head in those seconds after that. It instantly smelled like fish. My girlfriend was going to kill me. Newspaper article headline ‘Boy  killed while family away on vacation.”

  She asked if she could smoke. I didn’t stop her. She said my name is Linda. I was like “Kerry” and extended my hand without thinking. She shook it and I’m like ‘oh my god, what did I just do.’ I asked her why she went with him if she had a bad feeling about him and she said she just needed $20 more so she could pay her rent and get back to her kids.

  I was like “you have kids?” She had two, both girls. Then she asked if I wanted a blow job or a hand job. I forget which. I most certainly did not. I did not want the hand shake.

  I ended up taking her back to her “area” her home or work place. I felt bad and gave her the $12 I had in my wallet hoping she’d just go home. As I handed it over I half expected the police to surround me and bust me for solicitation. She took the money and ran behind a strip mall.

  I raced back home as fast as I could with my hand flailing in the air trying to shake the germs off my hand. Dan was already there. I raced into the house screaming Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Washing my hands for like 20 minutes, I recanted my tale to him and he was just laughing, telling me he was going to tell everybody the “real story about what happened.”

  I found out through Jean later that week that a van matching my description was in

volved in the murder of prostitutes behind her mom’s health clinic by Main Street.

I may have been a hero and saved a life. But all I really know for sure was that prostitutes do not look like “Pretty Woman.”