Bad Boys
During my senior year of high school I had a photography class with Billy. He was a tiny blond punk rocker with a mohawk and he and his friends were just the coolest ever even though they all went to a private Christian high school. I was a quiet bookworm who generally didn’t get in trouble, even though I kind of wanted to, so of course I was in love with bad boys. Billy and I hung out in class a lot, cracking jokes and screwing around behind the teacher’s back and one day towards the end of the school year he invited me to go to a party with him and his friends. I was so excited! Finally I was going to be hanging out with these totally hot guys outside school!
The party was somewhere near where they all lived, which was about 35 minutes away from where I did, so I drove to meet up with him. We met in the parking lot of a restaurant and I left my car there to get in his car to the party. Since I was his date and all I got to sit in the front. I’d only ever seen this guy in class really so I hadn’t noticed that he was a spitter. He didn’t chew tobacco or anything, he was just one of those people who spits like crazy when they’re outside. Except he wasn’t outside and he wasn’t even spitting out the window, he was spitting in the back seat. On his friends.
I absolutely didn’t want to be the prissy girl who made him turn around because of one or two (or a veritable rainstorm of) loogies. Plus his friends thought it was a riot and it seemed that this was a normal consequence of riding in his back seat. And they were still hot, bad manners aside. I tried really hard not to think about the state of his backseat after we got out of the car and have fun at the party, which was okay. It was a bunch of teenagers hanging around under an overpass drinking cheap alcohol but it was punk rock, right?
Later, Billy drove me back and we sat in his car talking and listening to music. I was rattling on about something when suddenly I noticed that he hadn’t said anything for a few moments and was a little twitchy. I asked him if he was okay and instead of answering me he reached over to turn up the music, then opened his car door, leaned out and vomited. A lot. After the fifth or sixth heave he sat up, spit a few times and wiped his mouth. I think I might have asked him again if he was okay although I was a bit stunned. He kind of nodded, popped in a couple of orange Tic Tacs and kissed me with tongue before I even knew what was happening. Then announced he had to be home for curfew.
