My First Time

It was difficult but not impossible

I remember the first time I had sex in a car. It was in a '65 Volkswagen. Imported from Germany after the Big War, Volkswagens were renowned for their economy but not for roominess. As I remember, they had an advertising campaign that really worked despite competition from American made cars with big engines. Anyway, the VW belonged to Mike Bennett. Old Mike, (I call him Old Mike now because he's old, but he wasn't old at the time I borrowed his car. Matter of fact, we were the same age.) Mike's father gave him the car to go back and forth to school. Mr. Bennett Sr., now that was a man's man. I heard that one time he and his buddy Eduardo had been drinking and Eduardo got so drunk he wanted to fight everybody in the bar. Not a problem if you’re built like Bennett Sr. but Eduardo was only about 105 lbs of skin and bone. Well, Bennett Sr. being Eduardo's best bud stepped in to stop him from getting hurt, so he cold cocked him, threw him over his shoulder and took him home to Magda. You don't mess with Magda even if she's just a wisp of a woman. Once her mouth starts working you won't stop her. You had to let her wind down no matter how long it took. She said to leave Eduardo on the step and go on home. So, Bennett Sr. got in his car, not the Volkswagen, that comes later. 

Bennett Sr's sweet ride

No, his car was a white-over-powder blue '57 Chevy. I'll tell you no finer looking car's ever been designed than that Chevy. It had a bright orange 283 cu. inch V8 engine. Everywhere he went, guys wanted Bennett to pop the hood so they could look at that orange motor. V8's were a big thing back then. They sounded different from a straight six; most of us could tell just by hearing if it was a V8 or a six. My father told me when that when he was a young, guys with Model A Fords would compete to see who could set the idle lowest on the four bangers and keep running. He said it was a real treat to watch the engine fire one time, pause a bit then fire again and keep going like that. You had to keep the engine running at least a minute to qualify. Nowadays you look under the hood of a car and you don't see anything that looks like a motor. It's all hoses and pipes. Hell, you don't even see spark plugs. The way I grew up, you took the spark plugs out and cleaned them with a wire brush. I had to borrow a gap gauge from Juan to set them. Those things cost about a buck, but why buy one if Juan would lend you his? He was a nice guy who let you borrow his tools but you had to clean them before giving them back. One time Mr. Bennett let him drive his '57 Chevy. Juan took it on the FM256, got it up to about 90 miles an hour before the State Trooper pulled him over. Juan figured he was in trouble but his Mom always told him to respect the police so he just pulled over expecting the worst. This was going to be bad. The Trooper was a badass that nobody wanted to cross. Everybody called him Thumper because he looked like a rabbit. His eyes were close together, pinched looking, and he had a bit of a hare lip that he tried to hide under a mustache that made him look like a rabbit with a mustache. Turns out Thumper just wanted to look at that orange 283 V8. But his judgment left him and he told Juan he would let him go if he let him drive the Chevy one time. Juan could follow in Thumper's Ford Cruiser. Off they went. Thumper got the Chevy up to 85 with Juan in the Cruiser close behind. Competition among men is built-in to every cell so Juan gunned the Ford and started pass Thumper now hitting 90. As they got bumper to bumper, Juan thought about what his Mom, Rosario told him about respecting the law. Rosario had been brought up hard, working the cantaloupe fields in Marfa, Texas and she knew a thing or two about disrespecting the law. If you’ve ever tasted a cantaloupe from Marfa, no other cantaloupe will ever satisfy you again. The good ones are bigger than a softball but smaller than a soccer ball she told me once. Cut ‘em open, get the seeds out and you’ll get tastiest, sweetest orange fruit that doesn’t taste like an orange. Whenever I went to the store for my mother to buy cantaloupes she told me to ask Mr. Barrera where the fruit came from. Mr. Barrera owned a grocery store two blocks away from my house. An old guy, if you went in to the store, he’d be asleep on a stool next to the cash register. A lot of his customers would get their stuff off the shelves and leave the money on the counter. Well, I know that’s shocking to hear but that was in the 60’s when things were different. These days, even 10 year olds are staging holdups. Matter of fact, just today I read in the paper about just such a thing. Don’t laugh. I still get my newspaper delivered. I pay once a year by check now because of an incident with the paper boy that I won’t get into now, except to say that the kid conned me and my neighbors paying him twice. Mr. Ramirez got so mad he went to the kid’s house and got into a fight with Howard Johnson, the kid’s father, not the Howard Johnson motel magnate. The nearest Howard Johnson to our town was in Fort Stockdale, 10 miles away. We never got to use the swimming pool because you had to be a guest there except once when my Uncle John came to visit and stayed at the motel. My father said Uncle John thought he was big stuff and our place wasn’t good enough for him since he sold some gadget he invented to Montgomery Ward’s for a lot of money. Back then Sears and Montgomery Ward were each trying to beat the other for customers until “Monkey Ward” (that’s what my Dad called it), got in trouble and had to sell out to Sears. And Sears was different then, too. Their name was Sears Roebuck and Co. I don’t know what happened to Roebuck but one day it was gone. Now I hear that Sears and Kmart are the same company. What a world. I never had much truck with Kmart. I was 12 when they opened their first store at the edge of town. You’d think they were giving stuff away; and if you thought that, you’d be right. The place was packed with shoppers who were getting some free stuff; balloons and hot dogs, Cokes for two cents. Cokes had been five cents all my life for a six ounce bottle. 

Pepsi, better than Coke

You could buy a 12 ounce Pepsi for seven cents and get two cents back when you returned the bottle. We kids did the math and the Pepsi was the better deal. Problem was, where to get seven cents. Enrique figured it out. Two of us would go into Barrera’s store real quiet. If Mr. Barrera was asleep we’d steal some empties from behind the counter then wake him up and ask for the deposit money. It was the perfect crime that only worked once. You know, I haven’t thought about Enrique in a long time. Margarita, the waitress at the Knock Knock Diner, said she heard he was a big time mortgage broker now. The Knock Knock wasn’t exactly a diner. It was Manuel’s house. You had to knock on the screen door and wait for Manuel to come out to take your order then wait on the porch. Margarita would bring it out and set it on a little table for you. If I’m right about it, this was the origin of knock knock jokes that become popular once every generation. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ham & Eggs, How? Over easy”. 

But I could be wrong.  

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Important Note from Time Served

The foregoing should serve as a tip that you won’t find in books on How-To-Write-Good.

Never write while under the influence of powerful antihistamines that are likely to make you dopey like the bourbon your mother used to put on your gums when you were teething.