My Ride of Passage

I didn’t know she was a prostitute. I don’t to this day, to tell you the truth. All I knew was there was a lady in distress and, damn it, I’m a gentleman.

I was headed to my grandmother’s house to do my laundry. I was in my 20s, and a grandmother’s house is the best place to do your wash when you’re that age. If luck is on your side, a grandmother might provide wash-’n’-fold service while you are going through the fridge and watching her cable.

So I was garbed up in sweats and a tie dye because, deep down, I’m some sort of counter-cultural, hippy troublemaker out to stick it to the man. And, since I didn’t have any clean drawers (on my way to do laundry, remember?) I went commando. ’Cause that’s just the kind of rough-and-tumble maverick I am. Grrr!

Just at the entrance of my subdivision, right by the bus stop, an anxious young lady frantically flagged me down. I can never turn my back on a frantic young woman. It’s a character flaw.

“Oh … are you going up to Glenwood? Could you give me a ride up to the Mrs. Winners up on the corner of Austin and Glenwood?” Now you can get a Street View of my neighborhood from Googlemaps and you’ll know why she was so anxious.

The bus must be late, she was obviously in a hurry and I was going right by there on my way to the Interstate, anyway. What harm? What harm, indeed.

“Hop in!” I said.

She got in.

She was a skinny black chick, might have had orange hair. Heck, it’s my story ... she had orange hair. She had an unsavory – one might say “used” – body odor not quite masked by the cinnamon gum she rolled around her mouth like a particularly beloved cud. I don’t like cinnamon.

She was definitely not Penthouse material. Waffle House? Maybe. Whore house? Sure. Nut house? Without a doubt. But not Penthouse. She couldn't even have made the back page of Hustler if she stuffed her bra and won the lottery.

She did have a nice set of choppers, though. Must have just had her teeth floated. When she smiled, you could barely see the back where the bit goes.

“Oh … Thank you!” she said, “Oh … I was at that house on the corner and they wanted me to do things. Nasty things. Things with their dog. And I don’t do that stuff.”

I’ll admit, I was taken aback for a moment. I was thinking along the lines of, “Nice day, isn’t it? I like a day when it’s nice, don’t you? Nice days are good. It’s good to be nice.” But I recovered quickly. I’ve been around, after all. I’ve lived in New York. I’ve seen things.

“Not an animal lover, are you?” I asked. I’m smooth like that.

I stepped on the gas a little.

“Oh … thank you so much for stopping,” she said as suggestively as you could say such a thing. Then she reached over and touched my pee-pee. Right through my sweats where you could feel every contour. Real friendly girl. But I couldn’t have that. Not on laundry day. And we were driving by a church for God’s sake!

We made it to the Mrs. Winners in relative silence. I really didn’t know what to talk about after that. My thoughts were for the future. After all … she touched my pee-pee. I had to marry her now, didn’t I?

I stopped the car. This is where we part, mon cherie, I thought. Of all the cars in all of the world, you had to hop into mine. Farewell.

“Can you take me up to Columbia?” she asked, skankily.

Sigh. Only one major intersection over. In the opposite direction from the Interstate, but in the interest of goodwill, I thought it would do no harm. This was my first prostitute, after all, and I wanted to make a good impression.

So, now we’re at Glenwood and Columbia. Google it. It gets worse as you head toward town. Maybe you can see the Atlanta skyline from the Street View. Pretty, isn’t it?

Not from where I was sitting.

I looked for a nice, warm, whore-friendly place to pull over – a nice corner with lots of Southern exposure – when she asks to go to the *next* major intersection.

I’m so nice.

At Glenwood and Candler (Google *that* one!), she wants to go further. Wants me to take her “some place” to meet “somebody.”

Something in the back of my naïve little head said, “Danger. Drive no more.” So I pulled into the first driveway I found. She got out and ran without so much as a “By Your Leave” and didn’t look back.

She might have known the neighborhood better than I did. I didn’t know until later that I had pulled into a Police Station.

That was years ago. But sometimes, on cold winter nights, I wonder, where did she want me to go? Who did she want me to meet? And would she touch my pee-pee again?


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Thanks, Cog, for helping me work through my pain. That’s the most action that little Plymouth Duster ever saw. Next time ask me why I can’t eat tuna.