We were both seventeen and had not really dated much. She was a very attractive chick who had blossomed into a stunning beauty. But she didn't get asked out much because she was one of those brownnosers who joined the pep club and was Secretary (or some other meaningless job that you eventually put on your college resume) of the Student Council. So she was under the radar of every cool kid in the school.
But she was on MY radar, though. Basically, that's because I wasn't cool. Well, I had been the big man on campus at my previous school, but we had moved over the summer to this new community and it was taking me awhile to crack the Da'Popular Code. It turned out to be harder than I thought. I was tall and slim and artistic but the only thing that seemed to count in this fifty-horse town was whether you played on the football team. Yep, our new state was Texas; and being from Connecticut was two strikes against me already. The fact that I was an Honorable Mention all-state soccer player from New England I kept to myself.
So here I am, going out with the equivalent of Kelly Kapowski's cousin Beatrice on this particular Thursday night. It wasn't much of a date. As I mentioned before, she was a "Save a Beached Whale" kinda gal who probably recycled soup cans religiously down at the Feed Store. Our little date involved working in a soup kitchen all the way down in Lubbock, which was an hour's drive. But that worked out well because it gave me the chance to sit close to her in the little Hybrid Honda with the bumper sticker on the back window that said "Don't Blame Me. I Voted For Kerry."
As you can imagine, our little excursion down to "'Bock" became a precarious adventure, as every Bud-drinking cowpoke and Ford F-150-driving redneck had to give us a dirty look as they passed by going eight-five MPH. A few even gave us the finger. I'm sure that in the old days, if we had broken down, they would have determined that I spoke Yankee and thrown me into a old oil derrick out in the bush and taken Beatrice and sent her to a Republican re-education deprogramming facility. But the little Honda kept putting along, and we arrived at our destination.
Driving into the rear entrance, our headlights bright, we saw something that singed our mindscreens for life: a filthy homeless man suddenly dropped his jeans and lowered his butt. He squirted a vile concoction of stink.
Slamming on the brakes, Beatrice screamed.
I didn't know what to say. So, instead of keeping my pie hole shut, I tried to make light, and said, "He probably just ate at the soup kitchen."
Beatrice gave me the dirtiest look I'd ever seen, and then told me to wait in the car. She clearly did not think that it was funny.
Finally, two hours later, she was done with work (for which she earned extra credit, I later learned), and we headed home. She refused to speak to me, no matter how many attempts at an apology were tried.
So, on the outskirts of town, I told her to stop the car. I got out to start hitchhiking. She left me standing there, without a jacket, in a cold rain.
Fortunately it's easy to hitchhike in Texas (this is its one redeeming quality), and I was home safe and sound within the hour. The friendly redneck insisted on driving me all the way to my front door. When I told the redneck -- and I'm not insulting all Texans or all Southerners here; I simply mean that he was a country boy wearing a cowboy hat -- what had happened at the soup kitchen, he began laughing and said, "That's Charlie!"
Charlie, it turns out, is this guy who is homeless in Lubbock and who relieves himself all over the city. He had been put in jail, but he always gets out and keeps doing it. The cops have decided to let him do it because he doesn't break any other law. Everyone in the town calls him Charlie; apparently the dude is some kind of local legend.
The following day at school, Beatrice refused to talk with me. My whole senior year basically was a total waste because I was hated by the jocks, nerds, cowboys, football players, brownies, musicians, and even the teachers. Beatrice made up a story that made the rounds that I'd abused the homeless dude -- which, even in Texas, seems to be tantamount to being a horse rustler.
Moral of the story: never watch a "brownie" with a brownie.