Editor's Note:
Though this is primarily a heterosexual tale, this story does contain scenes of gay male sexuality. If this offends you, please do not read further.
*
To tell the truth, I'd gotten pretty tired of Terry. He'd seemed exciting and a little dangerous when we were first getting involved with each other; he could talk a good line. But now he was kind of tedious. He wasn't the exciting "bad boy" anymore. He was just a boy—and one who would never grow up.
But I guess I wasn't quite ready to accept the implications of this awareness and, when he asked me to go away with him for the weekend, I agreed. A few days away at the cabin his uncle owned seemed like it would be a nice break from work. Given that I was aware that the end ws near for us, maybe my acceptance of his invitation was using him. If so, I'm okay with that. He used my a lot more than I ever used him.
Terry referred to this as a "break," too. But what the hell would it be a break
from
for him? He didn't work—didn't have a job and, so far as I could tell, he didn't do anything around his house, either. At least, nothing but watch one of the 150 channels of TV he was stealing from the cable company.
I needed the break, though, so here we were, in my car (because, right...like Terry had a car that was reliable enough to drive down the block?) headed off for a weekend at a cabin with a guy I was to find out's even less of a man than I already suspected.
It was my car but Terry liked to drive. I guess he thought it made him more like a man. Hitting the accelerator hard made him feel like a man, too. I told him to slow down several time. We were off the freeway now and driving through small towns in Ohio. These towns were serious about enforcing the speed limits. They said it was for the safety of their residents, especially the children. But it didn't hurt that they made lots of money in fines.
It was after the third time I'd told the asshole to slow down that the inside of the car lit up red from behind. Oh shit! Now we'd be stopped. Terry would get a ticket that I'd wind up paying for because he was "just a little short."
It took Terry a while to slow down and pull over. He was acting strange but when I asked him about it, he said nothing was wrong. He was just looking for a place to pull over. He'd passed several places he could pull over so something was up, but he wasn't going to tell me what. We had plenty of time for him to tell me what was going on because the cop took his sweet time getting out of his cruiser and coming up to Terry's window. But Terry wasn't talking; he just squirmed in his seat a little.
The cop's suspicions had been raised, I'm sure, by Terry's delay in pulling over. As soon as he'd gotten Terry's license and the registration, he asked Terry to get out of the car. Terry's delay in complying with this demand did nothing to allay the cop's suspicions. When Terry finally got out of the car, the cop had him "assume the position" over the hood of the car and then stepped back to look in the driver's seat. His flashlight beam scanned the driver's seat and came to rest on a small corner of a plastic bag that was sticking out from between the seat cushion and the back. The cop pulled the bag out and I felt a sick feeling in my stomach.
The cop opened the bag, touched the powder and tasted a small amount. The taste confirmed his suspicions and his expression confirmed mine. Mr. "I-Don't-Have-Money-For-Gas" managed to come up with money for coke. Now, we were in deep trouble.
Terry was handcuffed, guided back to the cruiser and pushed into the back seat. Then the cop came up on the passenger side and asked me to step out of the car. I got out and he did his duty frisking me—very professionally. When he started to put handcuffs on me, I tried my best to get out of this. I told him I had no idea that Terry had anything illegal in the car. That didn't work. I tried flirting a little and crying a little. This guy was a straight arrow and it was clear that those tricks were not going to work. When I tried to argue that I had nothing to do with this and he didn't have any reason to arrest me, he said, "Are you," he fumbled to open the car registration sheet, "Stephanie Turner?"
Of course I was. And when I said so, I was treated to a lecture on the presumed responsibility of the owner of a car for illegal contraband transported in the car. I was escorted back to the cruiser and pushed in to the seat opposite Terry.
"You asshole!" I shrieked.
"Don't worry," Terry tried to console me. "I'll get us out of this." Fat chance. Terry never got us
out
of trouble. He didn't know how to move in that direction. But I didn't want to argue with him. I just wanted to pretend that he didn't exist.
The police station, if you can call it that, was little more than a large room with a small holding cell on one side and a couple desks and some file cabinets on the other side. There was the stereotypical cot on one side of the holding cell and that's where Terry and I were told to sit after we'd been "processed."
There were three cops in the office all together: the young, by-the-book guy who arrested us and two slightly older guys who appeared to have desk jobs. One had the gut you'd expect to go along with being a desk jockey and eating way too many doughnuts.
Nothing was happening and our requests to find out what was going to happen were met with silence or shushing. Finally, after we'd been sitting in the cell for about an hour-and-a-half, Terry got the attention of the oldest cop, who appeared to be a sergeant if I can read the stripes. Terry told him that he needed to talk to him and the sergeant came over to the cell. Terry went as far from me as possible and started whispering to the cop.
Terry pointed to me, covertly, he thought, but it was obvious enough to me. And the cop looked over at me. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it wasn't good. Maybe Terry was trying to blame the coke on me. The second time the cop looked over at me, his eyebrows were raised in a way that made me think something else was going on.
The sergeant walked over to the other cops and huddled with them for a while. They looked at me in just the same way that the sergeant had a second ago. I saw the young cop who arrested us shaking his head but the others were clearly putting pressure on him. Finally, something was decided. The younger cop sat down, looking uncomfortable and a bit unhappy; the two older cops walked over to the cell. As they approached us, Terry moved as far from me as the cell would allow. I had no idea what was up, but blissful ignorance didn't last long.
"Your boyfriend, here, tells me that you'd fuck us all if it would get you guys out of this jam you're in. Is that right?"