I went to school the next day thinking that everyone would know what Uncle Bill and I had been up to all weekend.
I felt like I had a big W, for whore, stamped on my forehead, and that everyone at school would see it and nod knowingly. But nobody said anything. Still, I was nervous.
Not only was I nervous about people at school finding out about me and my uncle, but I was also apprehensive about what Bill had said the night before about going somewhere that night, something about learning how to suck cocks.
When I got home, Uncle Bill had me work the register, like I did most days, while he went upstairs to do some business, so he said. And I guess he did, because he had me work straight through until closing, rather than going up and fixing supper.
As soon as we closed, he told me to get in his pickup and we took off. We drove to Jeff City, stopped and grabbed some burgers, then we went to the mall. We went to several shops, and he bought me some clothes, but these weren't clothes I could wear to school.
Nope, these were what I came to call my whore outfits. Uncle Bill bought me several short, slinky dresses, mostly of thin material. They revealed a lot of my legs and a lot of my breasts, what there were of them. He also bought me several pairs of stockings, several garter belts and four pairs of thigh-highs. We also bought some cosmetics - mascara, blood-red lipstick, eye liner - stuff that when worn made me look like a slut. Our final stop was to a shoe store where he bought two pairs of high heels, the slutty kind with open toes and thin straps across my feet.
Significantly, he bought me no bras or panties. It was about dark when we got back to the truck. As soon as we climbed in the cab, Uncle Bill ordered me to take off my clothes and put on one of the outfits.
"Here?" I asked, incredulously.
"Right here, right now," he said forcefully. "Sophie, you're going to have to learn that the only acceptable response to anything I tell you to do is 'yes sir.' How many times do I have to tell you that before you learn? I told you to change clothes and I want you to do it NOW! Is that clear?"
"Yes sir," I said timidly. Looking back on it, I seethe when I recall how docile I was back then. Maybe if I had stood up for myself then, a lot of what was done to me later would have never happened. But it would be a long time before I developed enough backbone to rebel at the way my uncle treated me, and it almost came too late.
So I quickly shed my shoes, my T-shirt, my jeans and my socks, and waited for Bill to show me what he wanted me to wear. I was mortified, then, when told me roughly to keep going, to take off my bra and panties.
I was afraid of someone coming up and seeing me naked in my uncle's pickup, but I was more afraid of disobeying him, so I quickly shed my underwear.
Bill handed me one of the new dresses he'd bought me, a thin, loose-fitting one-piece miniskirt of an almost translucent material with a gray and pink floral pattern. I waited for him to hand me more, but the only thing he gave me was a pair of my new shoes.
That was it. I still felt naked without my underwear, but I didn't say anything. Uncle Bill was in one of his moods, as I'd already seen, and it was better to just shut up and do what he said. For the final touch, he told me to put on some of the make-up we'd bought, and to lay it on thick.
I felt like some kind of circus freak as we drove out of the mall parking lot and headed for the seedier side of town. After driving for a few minutes, we pulled up in front a rough-looking bar called Cosmo's Saloon that had a lot of pickups and motorcycles parked in front. My heart was in my throat as we got out and walked to the door.
Just before we entered, Bill told me not to tell anyone that he was my uncle, that if anyone asked, I was his girlfriend.
I will never ever forget the feeling of entering that bar that night and seeing the leering looks on the faces of the men in that bar. I felt like a zoo animal on display. What made it worse was trying to walk without falling down.
Until that moment, I had never had on a pair of high heels in my life, and I could almost hear the derisive laughter as I wobbled toward the bar. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, and no one so much as touched me.
Thankfully, a young man at the bar got up and offered me his stool, and I sat down, grateful to be off my feet. In all honesty, however, I'm not sure if he was being gentlemanly or if he was offering me a seat so that I would unwittingly show off my naked pussy. I kept my knees clamped firmly together to prevent that, but my short skirt still rode up my thighs, giving the drooling patrons a look at most of my legs.
Bill ordered two beers and handed me one. In 1988, Missouri had still not raised the legal drinking age to 21, so I could drink legally, if I so chose. But I really didn't want a beer. I had always been afraid of alcohol because of my vivid painful memories of my mother's drunkenness, but Uncle Bill told me to take it, so I did.
Later, I would be grateful for the refuge alcohol provided, as a means to numb myself to the things I did. But that first beer - and it was the very first taste of alcohol in my life - went down awfully hard.
Uncle Bill walked off to speak to some people that he obviously knew, leaving me alone at the bar. Sure enough, several guys walked up and started hitting on me, and I nervously tried to smile and engage them in conversation. But they seemed to back off when I told them I was Bill's girlfriend. I got the distinct impression that Bill Trotter was a known and respected person in that establishment.
Only the bartender seemed to know the real score. After the guys drifted off, he leaned in real close and spoke. He was a big, bearish man with tattoos all up and down both arms.
"Listen, Sophie," he said. "You can relax. Ain't nobody gonna fuck with you here. Bill ain't gonna stand for it, and neither will I."
That made me feel a little better, and I finally finished my first beer, and the second one wasn't quite as much of a struggle. We chatted, and I learned that he'd grown up in the same town as Uncle Bill and knew my mom from high school.
Of course, after I finished that second beer, I had to pee, and I was terrified of the idea of walking to the ladies room, under the influence of two beers on high heels. So I walked slowly and carefully to the bathroom, a stride that resulted in an exaggerated hip motion that caught the eye of every man in the joint.
I got finished, and returned to the bar, but before I sat down, Uncle Bill took me by the arm, said it was time to go and escorted me out.
