Encounters You Wish Would Be Wiped From Your Mind

I'll give this a shot ...

Between the time I graduated from high school and went I started at Ball State, my family moved out of state. I was five-plus hours from home without a car, so for holidays I either had to be picked up by my dad, ride a Greyhound (which is worse than hell on earth) or bum a ride from someone to get to the airport.

For Thanksgiving '89, I choose the latter. I didn't have class the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and fortunately, the guy who lived in the dorm next to me was headed home that Tuesday. He lived three exits down I-465 from the Indianapolis airport and said he could give me a ride. All seemed well.

This guy deserves an explanation. His name was Seth. He was covered with hair everywhere on his body but his head. He looked like an undeformed Sloth from the Goonies and he seemed a lot older than the other guys too.

He was a criminal justice major who took it WAY too seriously. He had scads of Guns & Ammo magazines all over his dorm room and we'd get a rise out of him by ripping on guns. He'd say cryptic shit like, "I better not be cleaning my gun when you start in on me." But despite his bluster, we knew he was harmless, basically a dork with a hard-on for guns, and he was generally a pretty gregarious guy.

So Tuesday comes and we roll down to his modest house on the south side of Indy. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until his dad came home from work. The Great Santini had nothing on this asshole, who apparently ran his house like Cool Hand Luke's prison camp.

We sit down for dinner and he says to me, "Can you get me the corn?" So I pass him the corn. He gets this sour look on his face. "No, can you give me the corn?" I'm confused and everyone's looking at me like I just wiped my ass with the Gospel According To Matthew. Apparently I had committed some household cardinal sin in Sergent Asshead's estimation.

Finally, his wife, who seemed nice enough and I hope to God was on the right end of their probable S&M relationship, pipes up. "He wants you to serve him the corn." I was aghast, who the hell does that? But I needed to get to fucking airport, so I gave the shithead his corn. "More!" he claimed. I was beginning to understand why my classmate had gun issues, I wanted to put a cap in this fucker's ass myself.

Anyway, supper went on with an air of trepidation not unlike the Texas Chainsaw Massacre dinner scene. Seth just sat there, munching his food. My one-day of horror was probably the elixir of all of his life's issues.

Later, Seth suggested we visit his brother at Marian College. Great. Anything to get out of crazy house. We go. We drink some. His brother seemed much more adjusted than Seth. I even mentioned the dinner thing and his brother said not to worry about it because his dad was an asshole. Seth perked up and didn't say anything, but you could tell he didn't quite agree. Seth had daddy issues, but who could blame him?

Later we head back to Seth's house and he gives me the option of sleeping in the guest bed or in their basement on a foldout bed. I had seen the guest room, and it seemed trashed, so I choose the basement. Seth was cool with that, but he asked if we wanted to drink some more beers and watch a movie on the VCR in front of the foldout. I was like, OK, it's your house and all. He pops in some dreck like Silverado and we have a few Bud's.

As the movie wound down, I told him I was getting tired and wanted to go to bed. He was cool with that and got some pillows and sheets for me to use.

As he's going about making the bed, I couldn't help but notice he was making a bed for two. Midway through the process, I began to get concerned. I perked up and said, "Seth, I don't need all of that. I don't need two pillows, I'm fine with one."

"Oh I know."

Confusion reigned, but thankfully, my antenna that detects mounting dread was well-tuned. I began to suspect the worst.

"Where are you going to sleep, Seth?"

"Oh ... I figured I'd sleep down here with you."

Cue Psycho music in excelsius.

Seth had his own room with his own bed upstairs. I know because he showed me his Rambo poster that hovered over it. There was absolutely no reason for him to sleep with me other than ... you know ... and there was no way I was going to become Seth's Bitch, airport ride or no airport ride.

I had to think fast, I frantically worked through my skunky Budweiser haze and reached for the most logical option.

"You know what Seth? I think I'll sleep upstairs in the guest room. My stuff is in there anyway and that way I'm not in anyone's way tomorrow morning."

Trashy? Yes. Single bed? Never have I been more thrilled at the prospect of sleeping in a single. But if Seth decided to call my bluff, I was fucked, I had no other options. In that nanosecond where I waited for a response, I had this Deliverance-like vision of a gun in my mouth, staring up at Rambo in Seth's room, while I served his dad peas as I got fucked in the ass.

Thankfully, the hope drained from Seth's face. "That's cool," he said as he dejectedly tossed me the pillow. "I'll watch the rest of Silverado on my own. You know where the guest room is."

I slept on top of that bed all night, refusing to even get under the covers, curled up in a ball cursing Pepsi-Cola for transferring my dad to Akron. Seth took me to the airport without incident the next day, but didn't say much of a word.

I moved out of the dorm after my freshman year and lost touch with Seth, though my old dorm buddies kept up with him.

Years later, Seth apparently had a girlfriend (It was the only one I ever heard him having, besides some ho who deliberately led him on in the dorm. He called one day and her boyfriend/dick-of-the-day answered with, "Yeah she's here, she's gurgling my jizz." He bawled for several hours), but the relationship fell apart because Seth could only get aroused via anal sex.

I don't think I had ever told my buddies about my night at Seth's until that came to light. Of course they thought it was hilarious. "You almost got raped by Seth!"

Last I heard, Seth was a cop in one of Indy's northern suburbs. By now, drunk with power and a gun, he's probably morphed into the gay Favra from Super Troopers, so don't speed in Hamilton County and watch your ass.

 

JDV, is that you? How ya been, buddy?

 

Masterful as usual, Bubs.

 

Hey, Bubbler, want to go camping?

 

"Ya got a purty mouth, Bubbler."

 

At least it wasn't in the back of a Volkswagen.

 

Did you say hi to dad too?

 

Goddamn. That made me laugh. A lot.

 

"Squeal like a pig, Bubs"

 

Bubbler,

You lazy ass bastard. You shoulda walked to the damn airport.

 

Once again, Bubbler justifies his place on my all-SportsJournalists.com ballot, which reminds me to send my ballot to HB.

 

I've got nothing that'll top Bubbler, or even Mikey311.

But when I was in high school, I had a little crush on one of the softball players. She was a year younger than me and we'd chatted a couple times as reporter-subject (bow chic a bow wow) but that was it. I graduated and I figured that was that. But one of my best buddies was in the class of '92 so I partied with him in June...we ended up at some party with her and we hit it off. I was too chickenshit to make a move, even though I think it would have been a smashing success. But we kept hanging out in groups and I was alternately confident this would work out and scared shitless to try anything, because really, how many long-term crushes end with spit being swapped?

Then she asked me to come to one of her summer league softball games. I said sure. I figured this was finally it, I coudln't piss this away now.

So we're driving on the highway and everything is going pretty well. We drive by a closed rest stop that was famous in our neck of the woods for being a dumping ground for dead prostitutes. I make some crack about how that's a great place to go and kill a prostitute.

Dead. Silence.

She didn't say much to me the rest of the way down. on the way back, I made some reference to moving and started singing Bad Company's "Movin On." She said something like what's keeping you here.

Man. I was a fucking mess as a teenager but I never screwed something up that quickly and that royally.

She dropped me off and never returned any of my subsequent phone calls. I saw her a few years later at a diner in town. I was with my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and we nodded and said hello. I wonder if she got in the car and said "That guy kills prostitutes."