Chapter 2
The president blew his nose and dabbed away the few remaining tears from his eyes. Then he waggled an angry finger at Trish's father. "If you set me up as a pigeon, you'll regret it, Amos Lovejoy."
"I'm innocent," Lovejoy burbled. He didn't sound very convincing.
"It's all his fault," Trish's mother angrily pointed to Acid Head. "He's to blame. And don't think we're not going to press charges. Breaking and entering. And robbery." She peered at Acid Head with baleful eyes. "He looks like a hop-head, too."
Lovejoy raised his hands to remind his wife that he was the head of the family. "Please, Brenda. I'll handle this matter."
"Then handle it!" Brenda Lovejoy retorted. "Before your entire future goes down the drain." She cast an apprehensive look at the president.
The five people involved in the near castration of the president were seated in the spacious study of self-made millionaire Amos Lovejoy. The president's cock had not been severed from his body. But he was still in a state of shock from the near tragedy.
Acid Head offered an explanation, a not-too-convincing one. "I only intended to scare the old bugger." The freakout, a college chum of Trish, had at first been denied entry onto the Lovejoy estate. Then he had broken in. He was spotted by a servant. When several estate guards arrived to throw him off the grounds, they found him about to castrate the president. The guards overpowered the freakout and took away his knife.
Trish bounced to her feet. Whenever she was angry, her round, dark eyes always looked coal-black, and her pretty face grew wrinkled with meanness. Now her face looked mean and her eyes were blacker than sharkskin. "I'm going to press a few charges myself," she announced to the assemblage.
Amos and Brenda Lovejoy looked nervous and remained silent. The president found more tears to dab at with his handkerchief. Acid Head looked amused. "Let's start with rape," she said, turning to the president.
"Your word against his," her father very quickly reminded her.
With arms akimbo, Trish looked incredulously back at her father. "Whose side are you on?" she demanded.
Amos Lovejoy smiled feebly. "Your side, darling. But let's not lose sight of the facts. You have no witnesses."
Trish pointed to Acid Head. "He saw the whole thing."
Her mother cut in. "All he saw was you on the floor with your pants down. Of course the president had his penis exposed. But that doesn't make a case that will stand up in court." Jerking a thumb in the direction of the freakout, she added, "And no court of law would believe him, anyhow."
The president maintained, "I had the full and willing consent of the girl. So my flesh is weak. Is that a crime?" he asked with utmost seriousness. Trish whirled towards Fowler. Her fists were clenched, her eyes smoking. Her father leaped up and planted himself between Trish and her would-be seducer. "I seduced you?" Trish asked the president. "Dirty old man!" she screamed at him. "Liar!" And to her parents: "Are you going to bring the truth out about this old reprobate?" she asked in a way that demanded a clear-cut answer.
The clear-cut answer was quickly given her. "No!" both of her parents replied in unison.
Amos Lovejoy explained, "I can't publicly humiliate the president. It wouldn't do a bit of good." As he spoke, Lovejoy caught the eye of the president, who nodded approvingly. The country club membership was not in jeopardy after all, not as long as Lovejoy protected the president.
But Acid Head caught that look of understanding between Lovejoy and the president. For the first time, he offered a comment. The comment was made in the form of a question. The question was directed to Amos Lovejoy, the millionaire, and his wife Brenda. "Did you two affluent members of the upper middle-class Establishment contrive to have your daughter fucked by this lecherous old goat for the sake of a crummy country club membership?" And when he was greeted by stunned silence, he added, "No wonder I trip on acid all the time. What I see in the square world makes me want to puke!"
Lovejoy's face puffed out and turned a color that was slightly darker than crimson. With clenched fists, he turned to confront the freak-out. "How dare you address me and my wife in such a filthy manner? And what gives you the right to stand in my own home and make such an accusation to my face?"
Acid Head placed an arm around Trish. "The right of friendship. True friendship. Trish is a freshman in my college. I kind of adopted her. No." He cut off their question. "We're not lovers. I'm not the type for Trish. And I respect her wants. But us two have got empathy. I've got the same kind of asshole parents who would sell me out for five cents if it would make them look good. And in the same breath, they'd tell me it was all for my own good. My own good," he smiled mirthlessly. "Shit!"
"Get out of my house!" Lovejoy ordered with a rage that he could hardly contain.
"It's gratifying to know," Brenda Lovejoy put in with a stricken look, "that my daughter consorts with such high-class friends in the college that is costing us a small fortune to send her to."
Trish folded her arms. She looked calmly back at her parents, and in an even voice said, "Just answer Acid Head's question. Did you or did you not agree to let the president get into my pants in exchange for a membership in the country club?"
Brenda Lovejoy was about to answer, but her husband silenced her with a severe look and shake of the head. Trish was too intelligent to be conned any longer. At seventeen, it was time that she grew up and faced life as it existed and not as she hoped it could exist. "Darling," he began in a soft voice, "what your mother and I did was as much for your benefit as ours. I'm just a former hod carrier who struck it lucky. Money, I've got. Social contacts, I haven't got. And those contacts mean a lot to your mother and to me. And they'll mean a lot to you."
"Such as?" Trish asked evenly. She was playing it straight, marking time in much the same way as the fighter who intends to land the one big punch at the exact psychological moment.
"Such as taking your rightful place in Park Avenue society. The rewards can be tremendous. And by circulating with the right people, you'll find the right kind of a guy for you."
"And to attain this goal you were willing to let the president get into my pants. Right?" Trish asked. Her voice was so soft and pleasant that Amos Lovejoy warmed to his daughter and felt safe with his answer.
"Yes," he said. "I saw my chance for success and grabbed for it."
Acid Head grimaced. "Grabbed for it," he repeated the words with distaste. "The whole lousy Establishment stinks with those kind of people."
Brenda Lovejoy turned to the freakout, her eyes spitting venom. "Why in hell don't you just drop dead?" she asked with a most un-Park Avenue inflection in her voice.
Amos Lovejoy shrugged. "A freaky copout is criticizing me, a big success."
Trish said sadly, "It's the other way around, father. Maybe he's the success and you're the copout."
"Are you on acid, too?" Lovejoy asked with disbelief in his face.
Trish shook her head. "Acid Head doesn't sell out people he loves. He doesn't grab for things at the expense of others because the time is right." And turning to the president, she said, "A while ago, you asked what young people want. I'll tell you. They want less grabbers in the world and more helpers. Maybe then, with more people helping each other, there won't be rioting, or wars, or people who are hungry." Turning to her father, Trish said, "And without grabbers, there won't be any excuses to humiliate others."
Amos Lovejoy said nothing. His wife and the president were also silent. Trish took hold of Acid Head's hand and led him towards the door. "Let's go," she told him. "I haven't anything more to say."
"Where are you going?" her father finally asked.
Trish turned and faced Amos Lovejoy. "Acid Head and I are going into the ghetto. We want to reach out and help people for a change. Maybe it'll be contagious. And maybe I can convince those people that not everyone up here is a grabber."
Amos Lovejoy turned white. "The ghetto?" he echoed foolishly. "That's where I came from, what I fought all my life to get out of. And you want to go back?"
"I have to, father," Trish said, simply. "I have to help people. Not destroy them."
"You don't know what you're doing, or where you're really going," Lovejoy said, and the distress in his face and voice was very real.
"Let her go," Brenda Lovejoy said with contempt. "Our Park Avenue ghetto girl will come running back soon enough. And she'll become like all the rest of us."
"Never!" Trish and Acid Head replied in unison. Then they turned and walked out the door, with no intention of ever returning.
The elder Lovejoys and the president watched the departing couple through the window. Amos Lovejoy muttered, "Poor kid. She led such a sheltered life. We humiliated her when we let the president make a try for her ass."
But Brenda Lovejoy was still scornful of her daughter. She had once lived in the ghetto, and the stink and feel of the place was still very much with her. "Humiliation?" she sneered. "She'll find the real meaning of the word in the ghetto. Then she'll wake up to the fact that the president's prick would have tasted real sweet in comparison to all the ghetto fucks she'll have to endure."
Fowler's eyes remained fastened on the retreating form of Trish in her hot pants. His tongue flickered over his thin lips. The thought of her perfectly shaped lips over his cock still made him shiver. "I wanted to get to know her," he complained peevishly.
"You will," Brenda Lovejoy assured him. "Our Park Avenue ghetto girl will return!"