Quest To Be Cool

Written to be performed at a show with a theme of "CONSENT". I was hesitant to share but the fact that I had more rights four decades ago than young women do today leaves me speechless.

TW: sexual assault

Crystal Escajeda was the star of the secretarial program and hands down the hottest girl at my business college. In 1985, I was enrolled in one of those schools you see advertised along with commercials for bail bonds and DUI lawyers. I was in my second year of an associates degree in Business Applications and Information Systems, which was some fancy pants designation for a hybrid of accounting and computer programming. In layman’s terms: paper pushing ledger nerds who also write code.

At nineteen, I was surrounded by people like myself;  smart, dorky, desperately trying to trade their IQ points for confidence. My look was classic 80’s mall chick but my personality fit in with all the awkward dudes in my department. I was prone to wax on endlessly about heavy metal,  morose poetry, and my ever present desire to stick it to “The Man”.

Crystal was everything that I wasn’t; feminine, exotic, glamorous. She wore skin tight colorful dresses, she had long painted nails with decals, she wore glitter eye makeup. She was flashy in a way that seemed refreshing and effortless and carefree.  

I saw Crystal every morning in the smoking section, taking long drags of her Virginia Slims. Even her cigarettes had sex appeal. Every guy in my department couldn’t stop staring at her, she was our unofficial technical college homecoming queen.

I was the envy of all the nerds when I was smoking a Winston on a Thursday afternoon and Crystal asked me to hang out with her on Saturday night. I tried to act aloof, but I was shaking with excitement when I told her yes. 

“Great,” she said. “Give me directions to your house and I’ll pick you up at 7.”

She arrived at 7:05 in her bright orange Mazda with gold wheel covers. She had a red fuzzy steering wheel and she was cranking “In My House” by the Mary Jane Girls. I wanted to spray whatever she was made of all over myself and let it sink in deep.

We drove south to an all ages dance club that was the place to be on a Saturday night. It was $4 to get in, and it was packed full of sweaty teenagers sipping spiked Jolt Cola and dancing to the latest from Madonna and Michael Jackson. Crystal and I headed to the ladies room where we smoked hash in her one hitter pipe while a big line of girls waited to use the bathroom. Ever a nervous people pleaser, I cringed while we tied up the bathroom smoking and talking, knowing that people were waiting, but Crystal didn’t care. She breezed by their angry stares as we linked arms and laughed and made our way out to the dance floor. Crystal was made of Who Gives A Fuck. I was pretty sure this was going to be the best Saturday night ever.

I lost her in the crowd for a while. I danced with a few dudes who were a little too smooth for me, but I convinced myself I was having fun. When Crystal reappeared, she had a guy on each arm, both attractive in a Jock Next Door kind of a way. She gave me a woozy smile and said, “Eileen, meet Joe and Mike. They live near here, let’s blow this place and go drink some beer.”

I was tired and wanted to go home, but Crystal was my ride. I was striving to be made of Who Gives a Fuck, so I nodded and headed with her to her car.

We followed them a few miles, pulling into a driveway of a nondescript rambler in a neighborhood full of college students. Joe and Mike’s place had a frat house vibe, filled with sports memorabilia, empty beer bottles full of cigarette butts, and socks on the floor.

Crystal immediately disappeared into a back bedroom with Mike and I put it together pretty quickly that there wasn’t going to be any group socializing.  It was midnight and I was out of steam, but I told my mom I was spending the night at Crystal’s so we could stay out and do whatever we wanted. I decided I just had to suck it up and earn some points for being a good wingman.

Joe appeared with two beers, handing me one. I sat on the far corner of the couch, he sat next to me. He opened my beer and put his hand on my knee. I pulled my knee away, he again put his same hand on my same knee. I stood up and crossed my arms across my chest.

“What’s your deal?” he said, marching me into a corner. 

“I’m done for the night. I’m really tired and I’m just going to wait for Crystal, if you don’t mind.”

He glared at me in disbelief. He was the kind of guy who could get any girl to go home with him. He was tall, he was blond, he had an athletic body, he had a John Schneider on “Dukes of Hazzard” kind of appeal. And he clearly was not used to hearing the word “no”.

He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned towards me, telling me in a hushed voice,  “You know I’m a lot bigger than you are. You know I can just make you do it.”

I swallowed hard. I had some experience doing things I didn’t want to do, and not just as a girl getting a college degree in computer programming, a subject in which I had zero interest.

I grew up wanting to do all the adult things right out of the gate. I started sneaking out of the house to drink and smoke pot at fifteen. I decided that being a virgin was juvenile, and I entrusted my best friend Jennifer's brother Alan to help me shed that label.  It wasn’t romantic in any way, I just wanted to know what it was like to have sex, and I'd known him a long time and I felt safe with him.

I slept with Alan two weekends in a row, and I really didn’t get what all the fuss was about as far as sex was concerned. I mean, I liked kissing him but all the other parts just made me feel so embarrassed, I pretended to be asleep when we got to the actual sex part. But I liked hanging out with older kids, doing things I wasn’t supposed to do. I felt rebellious and free spirited. I was hell bent on experiencing it all so when I actually became an adult, I would know more than everyone else did. The kids at my junior high seemed like such a joke, playing video games and discussing whether they had enough allowance to buy the new Billy Joel cassette. I was hanging out at night with men; men who drove cars and snorted cocaine and made me feel like I might be pretty.

Jennifer and I arrived after midnight one Saturday to find the same crowd we'd come to know. We’d been hanging out long enough that the novelty of us being jailbait had worn off, we just blended in with everyone else. Alan had his arm around a cute girl I didn’t know. She was a high schooler, so older than me but younger than Alan. It didn’t matter, he wasn’t my boyfriend. I decided to drink and mingle with some new people.

I got talked into doing some shots of Jim Beam and they went straight to my head. The boom of Bad Company was blaring as I laid down on the couch, one foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning.

I woke up to silence and darkness, but I wasn’t alone. On top of me was Alan’s roommate, Jeff. He was twenty-one, always the oldest person at the party. He would hang out in the corner and brood most of the time. We all found him to be pretty creepy. 

I pushed Jeff off of me as I felt like I might get sick. “I don’t feel good,” I told him. 

“You should take off your clothes and get comfortable.”

I shook my head no and kept trying to push him away as he undid the top button of my jeans. I tried to kick him as he pulled them down over my hips. He put his finger over his mouth and said “sssshhh” as he took off my underwear and pulled off his own pants.

I wanted to scream but I didn't. I didn't get how he could be turned on by a drunken, disheveled fifteen year old, but I suppose he assumed I came there to have sex with anyone who was interested. I didn't, but I thought it was my punishment for being somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. I had heard stories of this happening to other girls I hung around. When we slipped out into the night, we had an unspoken agreement to keep everything that happened a secret. A pact that equaled consent to it all, for better or for worse.

After I put on my clothes, I woke up Jennifer and asked her as I choked back tears if we could go catch the bus home. My body burned with shame and regret, wishing I could do the whole night over again.

In the forty plus years since that happened, not once did I ever believed I was “raped”. I mean, I understood it was statutory rape based on our ages, but I didn’t fight back, so it was my fault. I was complicit because making a scene would spell out my social suicide. Everyone would have gotten in trouble, not just me. In the weeks and months after, I continued to regale myself with all the positives I could spin from it. I should be flattered he wanted to sleep with me. I didn’t get pregnant, I didn’t get an STD. Now I knew not to drink so much at parties. I learned to stay closer to my friends when I was out, not let my guard down so easily. I shouldn’t have slept with Alan first, I shouldn’t have been there at all. I should take all these lessons and absorb them, forget about what happened with Jeff and just move on.

Those lessons were firmly in the front of my mind as Joe put his hands put his hands on my shoulders and threatened to rape me.

I stepped backwards so I was outside of his reach.  I took a deep breath and tried to channel someone stronger than I was, someone who would not be messed with. Some version of me that didn’t care about being liked by the cool kids. I let that girl do the talking, hoping her voice wouldn't shake.

“It’s true, you are bigger than me. And suppose you could force me to do a lot of things. But let’s get real clear that you would be forcing me, because I’m not into it. If you touch me, when I get out of here, I will round up every guy I know to come back here to rip you to fucking shreds.”

He put his hands on either side of my face and I thought for a moment he might snap my neck. But I couldn’t show fear, I just kept looking back at him with a blank expression. The only sound was the thumping of my heartbeat in my ears.

He broke the silence with, “It’s too bad you’re not cool like your friend. It’s really too bad, because I might have liked you. But I think you are a total fucking bitch.” He took his hands off my face.

“I can live with that.” I fell back down onto the couch, hands shaking as I picked up a magazine off the coffee table. He stormed off down the hallway, slamming the door to his room.

Crystal reappeared just as the sun was coming up, sleepy faced, rumpled hair, tired smile. 

“Ready to go home?”

I told her the story in the car as we made our way out of their neighborhood.. Her expression was like she smelled something burning.

“That was really stupid, Eileen. That guy was super hot. I don’t get you at all.”

“I just wasn’t into it.”

“That’s your loss, girl. You make no sense to me.”

We smoked cigarettes in silence as we made our way towards my house. She stared through the fuzzy steering wheel straight out the windshield as I opened the car door and said, “See you Monday.”

I knew she would never talk to me again. 

Monday morning all the nerdy dudes at school who had spent their weekend playing Pac Man greeted me with eager faces. “How was your Saturday night with the hottest girl at school?”

“Things got kinda ugly."

“Bummer. Next weekend you can play Nintendo with us if you don’t have plans.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I'd really like that.”