2003-03-02 - 9:58 p.m.
This entry is written for On Display. It was supposed to be posted last month but it took a while to write. The collaboration topic is �disaster date.�
DISASTER DATE
When I was a teenager, many, many bad things qualified as disasters. Now that I�m older, the word �disaster� is reserved for the really serious events. As a result, I can see that I have had some very, very bad dates in my life. But I�ve never had a disaster date. Yet just after I turned 18, I came much too close.
Ralph saved me. Ralph was a young man from the streets of Queens. He had the outer toughness needed to survive there but he actually was a gentle soul and he very much wanted off the streets. He signed up for a job, a job at a summer camp for mentally retarded children and adults. He became a regular counselor who spent days and nights with his charges. Me, I was the music counselor, the youngest counselor there, and I lived in the cottages across the road with my roommate Julie.
Julie was a college girl and, as I recall, she was a junior. Ralph, who also was older, was sweet on Julie and he was nice to me, in part because she�d taken me under her wing as a younger sister. That camp was my first experience in living away from home and it was quite an experience. There were drugs (but never when children were around and, strangely, not really around me.) There was sex, lots of it, freely available�although I was not a part of that either.
Then I met HIM. HE listened to me. HE didn�t treat me as a younger sister or a younger cousin or a younger anything. And I was so desperate to be acknowledged as older that I didn�t see the warning signs. HE was so happy to have what HE thought was a pliable, inexperience teen that HE did not see who I was. HE figured talking me into sex was a foregone conclusion. HE figured wrong�but HE was patient for a time.
One night, during our off-duty time, HE talked me into going into the back field. There was a tent there but I either didn�t remember or just didn�t think. I didn�t get back there much because the music counselors didn�t. Most general counselors, and he was one, did. So, after darkness fell, we took a walk as we often did and we came to the tent. HE wanted me to go inside. I didn�t want to. Somehow, and I�m not sure how, we ended up on the ground, wrestling for high stakes. I was telling him �no,� HE was ignoring me, and we were wrestling. Worse, I was losing.
And then, from nowhere, there was Ralph. To this day, I�m not sure how Ralph knew where to come. Afterward, all Ralph would say was that it was luck. But it was something more than luck. It was some instinct of Ralph�s or he had heard something somewhere from somebody. Normally, Ralph would have been off walking with Julie or across the road at the cottage with her. I learned later that he did go to the cottage that night but told Julie that he had to do something important and left.
Ralph stood there. HE rolled over and off me in surprise. Ralph just reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me up. �She�s leaving with me, man,� was all Ralph said. Luckily for Ralph, I don�t melt down until after any crisis has passed. �I�m going with Ralph,� I said�and we left hand-in-hand.
But Ralph saved more than my virtue. We walked to some benches. I cried and sniffled and felt apart. Ralph just let me do it while he continued to hold my hand. As I calmed down, Ralph told me that he was going to put his arm around me and then he did. �Some guys are...� he said�and then he used the street vernacular that expressed exactly what he meant. �Just remember that it�s some.� Over the years I remembered Ralph�s arm, not HIS roving hands and power, and, as I promised, I remembered that it was �some.� I was more cautious but did nothing destructive in fear�at least not then or because of that night.
If I�d been older or more self-confident, I might have told the camp director about the evening but I never did. Everyone knew I�d been interested in HIM and I thought (and still think) that I would not have been believed. Still, I wish I had taken a stand but I didn�t. HE was gone a few weeks later, before the season ended, and I�ve always wondered if there was another episode and another girl�s story.
In recent years, I�ve wondered what would have happened if a crisis counselor or a victim/witness person had gotten hold of me. They would have wanted me to muck around in my fear and to dwell on the incident. They would have gotten it all wrong.
But, for me, Ralph got it right. I thanked Ralph then and I still thank him�wherever Ralph is these days. But for Ralph, that date would have been a disaster.
LAST YEAR: Why I Write
LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
A Wonder Like That
Laughter
Sad Day in the Neighborhood
Out to Get Me
Ah Ha!
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
