Chapter 6
"Sex With The Devil Cult"
"Steve was a funny guy. He had started out wanting to go into the clergy Can you imagine that? When he got off that kick, he went pretty wild. He tried pot, booze, and finally LSD, and he was still taking a few 'trips' with LSD, but he had learned enough about it so that he wouldn't 'freak out' by himself. He always had some friends there, to see that he didn't hurt himself.
"But he had found something new. I had never been down to Sunset Strip, in Hollywood, although a few of the kids at school had raved about what a 'gas' it was. I just never had to get away from my own neighborhood to have a ball or to get sex or any kicks that I had wanted. I guess that was why Steve kept telling me that I was 'fresh' and 'ripe' for the new thing that he had discovered.
"He was strange because he wasn't well-educated, yet he really had a good mind. He had read so many books -not the ones they make you read in school, or the ones they call the classics, but books on things that he wanted the answers to. I guess at first he made me feel dumb - I mean real dumb, because I couldn't talk about any of the things that he wanted to. I got thinking one night: the only thing I really knew much about was sex, and how to turn on.
"I still hadn't found the guts to give my father the money, so I had it hidden in my room. I played around with the idea of going back and making another fistful of dollars, but I hadn't really liked Burke, and I didn't like either of the other dames I'd had to work with. One, I was sure, was a real, roughneck Lesbian and I'd had my fill of that.
"I was really at a standstill. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt as if I were half-toasted bread - and I didn't know whether to try to get back to being pure white, or to go ahead and do the job up right. Jerome had offered - or I should say hinted - that I could make a damned good living by going to his kind of parties - the violence orgies, but that was out. Dale Mason had once told me that if I ever decided to do it for money, to let him know, and he could send me some out-of-town guys that would pay up to a hundred bucks for a good fuck and suck job. But I didn't want any of that. I didn't know that it was love and attention I wanted, until Steve happened to me.
"Steve had two hang-ups: speed and oil painting. He had fooled around with water colors, doing a lot of psychedelic posters and drawings, but he was really interested in some serious art. He made his living working in a darkroom for a photographer. In fact, that's how I met him, through the photographer, Burke.
"I had left my phone number with Burke, and he kept bugging me to do some pictures for him, but I really didn't want to. I was doing real bad in school and I thought I had better cool it on the outside and concentrate on school. And, I think I was getting a little bored with too much sex all in big lumps. Any time I wanted any, I knew that I could get plenty from my father, the Masons, or Moira and the gang.
"I guess that maybe I was tired of just being a sex toy, with nobody really caring about me as a person. In all my life, I don't remember anyone really taking any time to talk to me, not even my mother and father. Oh, they asked me about my school, or if I needed or wanted anything, but there was never any real closeness. It was always the same - people seemed interested only in what I could give them, and it was always a feel, or a kiss or a fuck or a suck. I don't remember any of the men ever telling me I was pretty, or sweet, or nice. Oh, they told me what a sexy, beautiful body I had, but hell, I imagine a guy tells that to a bar tramp if he's trying to get her in bed, or trying to get her to go on for more fucking.
"Anyhow, Steve got the number out of Burke's files, after he had developed the pictures I'd posed for and he called me and explained who he was. I thought it was just a guy who was setting me up to screw him. Why not? He'd seen my wide-open pussy and my titties, and he could have been just turned on when he saw how young I looked.
"But he told me that he was an artist, and really wanted to paint me in the nude. He said I had too beautiful a body and face to waste on men's magazine pictures. He also told me that he couldn't pay me, but that he'd give anything in the world for the chance.
"I liked his voice and the way he used words. He wasn't smart-alecky or too 'hip,' and he sounded like he might be nice to know, even if it was just for a change from all the sex sots that I'd been going around with, so I told him I'd at least go on a date with him and we'd see what happened. Know where our first date was? The art gallery, so help me!
"Steve rode a motorcycle; a big, powerful one, loaded with chrome. It was my first time on one, and it was a real kick. I had always liked speed, but riding with the wind whipping your face, and feeling as if you were in real danger did something else for me. Lots of people won't believe it, but I've talked to other kids about it, and it's true that sometimes you can get a real sexy feeling from speed. It's almost like having somebody feel you up or kiss your nipples or stomach. Not a real 'come' thrill, but a sort of 'warm-up' kind of feeling.
"Steve wore a moustache and beard and had long hair, and he wore tinted driving glasses half the time, but he was a clean guy. He kept his clothes clean and neat - even the leather jacket and dungarees he wore most of the time. He told me that he had once belonged to a motorcycle gang, but that he couldn't waste his time on the things they did, so he just quit. He liked to enter races and hill-climbs, but he often had to skip them because he sometimes had to work Saturdays and Sundays, when the events were always held.
"Lately, he had been hanging out at a Sunset Strip club where a lot of hippies met - the more serious ones, not the ones that just went down there to give the cops a bad time or to show off. There's a difference, you know. A lot of the kids head for The Strip just to be able to get away from strict parents, so they can be free - be with their own kind for a few hours - wear their kind of clothes and do their own thing.
"The ones who hung out where Steve did were mostly serious ones, and they were older. They were honestly trying to find something to believe in. They didn't hate the older people, or 'the establishment,' but they just didn't want to get caught in the same old trap.
"Steve also had his own apartment. It wasn't much of a place, just one big room with a bed and a stove and refrigerator, but all one wall was glass, so he could use it as a studio. On our first date, he took me up there after we came from the art gallery, and I really dug the place. He showed me a lot of his paintings, and I thought he did have a real good knack with figures and faces. He had a whole bookcase full of books on religion - all the different religions of the world, and he told me about wanting to be in the clergy, and how he had studied the Bible, then began to read about other religions and had changed his mind.
"He mentioned that he had been digging into something new, and said that maybe he would take me to one of the meetings, if I wanted to go. I didn't think much about it then, because I never had really dug anything religious. I think I had been to Sunday School a few times when I was little, but that was with my grandmother. My parents never did go to church. They were married by a Justice of the Peace, I think, instead of by a minister.
"Anyhow, Steve got so interested in showing me his paintings and talking about this new religion he was digging into, that I began to wonder if he was ever going to ask me to take my clothes off, or make any kind of a pass at me. He had some sketches of a nude woman, but she had big breasts and a fat ass, so I asked Steve if that was the way she really looked, or if that was just the way he had drawn her.
"He told me that it was some pig that he had picked up, and she had been drunk. She wanted a piece of ass, and didn't want to pose for him. He said that he had kicked her out, but that he had sketched her from memory, while she had laid there, trying to get him to screw her or eat her pussy. It was funny, but when Steve used the words, they didn't sound sexy or dirty. I suppose that was because he was so disgusted. He was so wrapped up in what he was talking about that he didn't even see that I was leading up to some sex with him. Finally, I said: 'Well, I'm here, and you did ask me to pose -' "He acted as if I had just reminded him, but he said that he wanted to really do it right, and he wanted me to pose in the daylight so he could catch all the beautiful little curves and shadows of my body, so we set it up for the next day, early. The more stand-offish he was, the hotter I got for him, and for the first time, I came right out and asked a guy for it. I asked him what he had seen in the photos that had made him pick me, and he said, 'The curve of your breasts - the way they tilt up, saucy and proud... the way your fanny curves in... the shape of your mouth and lips... a hundred things... "He still didn't get it, so I began to take off my sweater - I didn't have any bra on. When I stripped it off and he stood there looking at my breasts, he finally warmed up. He came over and caressed my breasts, running his fingers over the taut nipple, and saying how beautiful they were. He was like an artist, though, not a hot-pants lover, until he finally saw that I was taking off my skirt. When I dropped it and he saw that I had no panties on, he grabbed me and began to kiss my neck and ears. I'd never been kissed by a man with a beard and moustache before, and I wondered how it would be if he went down on me.
"I didn't have to wait long. He pulled me to the bed and I laid down and spread my legs. He began to kiss my stomach, sticking his tongue into my bellybutton and into the creases where my legs met my body, near the hair. His beard tickled and turned me on pretty good, and when he spread my legs and opened my pussy with his fingers and began to lick my knob, it was really something else.
"With each upward stroke, he would end up by rubbing his beard inside me and it covered a lot of the inside of my pussy. I was ready to come and I reached down and grabbed his long hair and pulled his head in closer, while I wound my legs around his neck. He stepped up the tempo and I came in another few seconds, and by then, I wanted him inside me - all he could give me of his prick.
"He had already started to take his pants off before he thought to ask me if I could 'take care of myself.' I giggled and told him I'd been on the BC pill for a long time, so he took his pants off. He was already hard, but not real big and stiff, so I just tolled him back on his back and went down on him. I held his balls in my hand and licked his shaft from one end to the other, nipping the head of it a little, and he began to squirm around and shove it deeper into my mouth. When he was good and ready, I climbed up on top of him and inserted his cock into my pussy, then I rolled over and pulled him on top of me and let him go to work.
"He was like my father - tender, gentle, as if he was grateful - or as if he cared about me as a person, and after all the wild fucking I'd been having, he was extra good. We came together, and I asked him if he wanted me to suck him until he was ready again. Instead of answering, he positioned himself so he could do a sixty-nine, and doing it this way, he could really spread my cunt and get a lot more of his mouth inside, and that meant more of his moustache and his beard. He took long strokes with his tongue that covered my asshole, too, and I came real quick. He was only a few seconds behind me, and afterwards, he turned around and pulled me close and kissed my mouth and eyes, and told me that he was in love with me.
"That was the first time - or at least, it was the first time that I believed anybody - except my father. It was a new, warm feeling for me, and it made me feel like I was a real woman. Then Steve really knocked me off my feet: he asked me to marry him!
"I was so surprised that I blurted out that I was only 15, but he said that in the religion he had decided on, age didn't enter into it. It was the souls of the people involved that determined who should belong to each other, he said. I told him I'd have to think about it, and besides, I didn't see any point in marrying now. We could just have sex any time we wanted it, or live together.
"He said that it mattered in his religious beliefs, because only couples of the same beliefs could have intercourse. He told me that he had been wrong to even do it to me, but that he would find a way to atone, after he had talked it over with the High Priest.
"All I knew was that he was different from anyone I'd ever been with, and that as much as I knew how to, I loved him. "I called my parents and told them I was staying with a friend and I stayed all night with Steve. He didn't have any booze, but I gave him some money and he went and got me some scotch and soda, and some beer for himself. He said that was all he ever drank.
"We drank while he talked about all the things he liked: his 'wheels,' his painting, his parents and how they wanted him to go ahead and be a minister, all sorts of things. I began to get pretty loaded, and I had left my clothes off, hoping to turn him on again. He had been so good before - so different. I could see that he was getting a hard-on, and I spread my legs wide so he could see how wet and ready I was. He took off his pants again and climbed on top of me, kissing my mouth and my neck and breasts, turning me on even more with his beard brushing against my skin and my nipples.
"Just when he put the tip of his cock in between the lips of my cunt, the door opened, without any knock or warning, and this tall, skinny kid stood there just inside the door. Steve was mad, but he kept his cool and just told the guy: 'Well, Pete, for God's sake, shut the door.' The guy shut it, and Steve got up, trying to shield me from the guy's bug-eyed stare. You'd think that he'd never seen a girl's cunt before, or a pair of tits.
"Steve put his pants on and tossed me my clothes, and I went around a little bend in the room and slipped them on. I could hear plainly what they were talking about. Steve was saying that Pete should knock or make some noise, before he walked in like that. Pete had a whining voice and he grumbled that he had never had to knock before, and what was so special about me. Steve told him right out that he was in love with me, and that maybe we would get married.
"Pete wanted to know if Steve 'had the stuff for tomorrow's meeting,' and Steve said he did. He gave Pete a little package of something and told him to get the hell out and give us a break. When Pete had gone, I asked Steve if that was LSD, and he said it was, and that a lot of people that met with them took it. I asked him if I would like it, and he said that maybe I would, but he didn't want me to try any yet.
"We fooled around for an hour or so, and I was belting the booze pretty good, so Steve said we should have a quickie and then get to bed because he wanted to be up early and begin some sketches while the light was good, then take me to the meeting in the afternoon.
"I don't know if it was the booze, or the different kind of feeling that Steve had given me, but I never slept better in my life, with his arms around me and his prick pressed in between my legs, and his beard brushing against my cheeks.
"In the morning, we had cornflakes, then he had me pose sitting on a chair and then laying down on the bed, and he did some rough sketches of me. I thought he caught the shape of my face and my body real good, but he said that it was only the rough beginnings, and wait until I saw the finished paintings.
"We didn't have any sex, and I guessed it was because of what he'd told me about 'two souls and the same beliefs,' and he wanted to talk to the 'High Priest,' and all. I was happy, so I didn't bug him or try to turn him on. It was just good, being there with him, having all his attention, and not having him just interested in fucking me. And he really raved about my body and face being so beautiful.
"A little after 12, we got dressed and went out to the beach on his motorcycle. We had a good ride. He took some winding backroads through some wooded canyons, and I got that sexy kick again when he took some of the turns and I thought we were going to spill. He was like a wild, young colt that I'd seen on a ranch once. I just hugged him tight all the way, glad that I had somebody to hang on to, at last.
"We ended up at a place right on the beach, but it wasn't anything like the place that Tom had taken me to. It was really a fishing shack. It was long and low, and there were some other motorcycles and some souped-up hotrods parked in the sandy drive leading out to it.
"When we walked inside, I thought I was going blind. All I could see was a big, flickering light that changed color every few seconds, making things in the room seem to jump around and distort themselves. It was one of those psychedelic things, and some of the things in the room had been painted in certain colors that caught certain other colors and gave weird effects.
"It took me a couple of minutes before I could see clear enough to get any idea of what was going on. There were several persons there, but they were in the shadows, and I couldn't see their faces. Steve led me to a couch and we sat down next to another couple, but I couldn't tell if it was two boys or a girl and a boy, only that they both had long hair, like Steve's.
"I figured I was at an LSD party, but it turned out to be a lot more than that, although Steve told me that most of the people in the room were already 'on a trip.' He told me not to be scared, that he was going to take care of me, and he told me that he was going to shoot some LSD into my arm, because he could control the dose better that way, and he wanted me to take a 'short hop,' the first time. I'd always thought that people took LSD on a sugar cube or something like that, but I trusted him, and I wanted to please him.
"He went to a cabinet in the back and came back with a hypodermic needle and some cotton that he'd dipped in alcohol, 'so I wouldn't get infection,' he told me.
"When he shoved that needle in the big vein in my wrist, it stung like hell for a minute, but then I began to relax and I felt as if I was floating. My mouth began to taste funny and I couldn't identify the taste, but it wasn't pleasant. But then I began to feel light as a feather, almost as if I were stepping outside my own body and standing there, watching a hollow Savvy beginning to laugh, for no reason at all. I began to watch the lights and the things they were doing to objects in the room, and suddenly, I realized that Steve wasn't beside me. But it didn't really matter. I could take care of myself, anywhere, anytime - and especially now. I felt as if I wanted to say, 'To hell with Steve. To hell with the whole goddamned world. I'm okay. I don't need anybody - ever!' "Then I saw Steve - or at least, it looked like him. He was standing at one end of the room, beside a table. On the table was a vase with black roses in it. I remember thinking how funny that was: black roses! But right away, it seemed all right. There was a crucifix hung on the wall behind the table, and it was upside down. And standing beside the table was Steve, only he was all red, and his eyebrows were slanted upward, like pictures of the Devil that I'd seen, and he had some horns on his head like the Devil's!
"He was stark naked, and he was holding his cock in one hand, jerking it a little to make it harder than it was. I could hear his voice, but it sounded as if it were coming from a long way off, and it had an echo to it. He was saying, 'It is only the flesh. Only the body that lives. There is no soul. Only the present pleasures of the flesh matter. There is no tomorrow. There is no heaven, nor a hell, except those we enter here on this earth. The flesh passeth, and we pass with it, so live, live, live - for the flesh alone!' "He pointed to where I was sitting, wondering if I was having a nightmare, and said, 'Satana has chosen a new bride. She is ready to be tested. If her flesh is acceptable, then she will become the bride of Satana this day!' He walked to me and took my hand and led me to a long, bare table. He told me to strip, and I felt as if I couldn't do anything else. I was helpless, yet I felt as powerful as an elephant. I didn't feel sexy or hot, even looking at Steve's hard-on. I just took off my sweater and skirt, and laid down on the table. I did notice that when I laid down, I was red, like Steve, but I couldn't think clearly enough then to realize that I was under the glare of a red light that was being directed down on the table from somewhere above.
"Steve waved toward my body with his hand and spoke to the others in the shadows. 'Judge this body - this flesh, male and female alike!' "I saw them begin to come out of the shadows. They formed a rough line and passed by the table where I was lying, and they all did the same thing: they bent and kissed each of my nipples, then spread my legs and licked and sucked my cunt! Most of them had long hair, but I thought that some of them were girls.
"When they had all kissed my breasts and cunt, Steve pointed to a doorway, and I looked. In the weird, flashing whirling lights, stood something out of a horror movie. He was painted black, with the outlines of the skeleton bones painted in white all over his body. He had a black hood over his head, and in his hand he had a big, metallic-looking prick, that was painted gold. It must have been over a foot long, and as big around as a baseball bat and it had two golden balls at the base of it.
"Steve said, in that echoing voice, 'Since none has found this flesh unworthy, Satana, the final test is to be yours!' I watched the monster walk over to me, holding that ugly, phony prick out with both hands, like he was carrying a flag, and I screamed. I was already getting cold. I know I had been shivering for ten minutes, but now I was shivering in terror! When I screamed, two shadows came toward me and one held my arms and the other my legs, and Steve disappeared for a moment and came back with a needle full of the junk he'd shot into my wrist before.
"I stopped screaming because I was actually choking in fright, and he inserted the needle in my other wrist and gave me another blast. Somehow, in my mind's deepest spot, I knew that what he'd given me wasn't LSD. It was morphine! I knew for sure, when I began to feel at ease again. I began to float, and I wondered if I were conscious or unconscious. I couldn't feel a thing. I couldn't even feel fear anymore.
"The black monster stepped over, and I knew that the men had let me go, but I couldn't move. Then they spread my legs wide - one from each side - and the black thing was standing at the end of the table, looking at my wide-open cunt. He was poising that big, ugly metal prick at the lips of my cunt, edging it inside the lips, then he plunged it in, with all his weight behind it! The last thing I remember was trying to scream, then it all went black.
"I must have been out for two hours, and when I finally roused up, I thought I was in hell. I knew I was bleeding, and my whole body felt as if it were on fire, starting with my cunt and going all the way to my temples. I was cold, yet I was on fire. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't. Then I felt something down by my cunt, and a voice said, 'Better put another icepack on it.' I felt the hot mass leave my cunt and. in a minute, a new hot flash hit me. It numbed me for a minute, then it began to hurt again.
"I was in such pain that I wished that someone would give me some more of the stuff in the needle, to make the hurt go away. I didn't know where I was, but I knew I wasn't on the table where I'd passed out from the pain.
"I kept seeing the sketches of me that Steve had made, and something kept hammering at my brain, over and over. Something had been missing. I was too tired to think any more, but I was scared and hurting. I wondered if I were really alive, but I know that dead people couldn't feel pain like I was feeling it. I tried to focus my eyes, but I couldn't. All I could do was concentrate on the goddamn pain that was coming from between my legs. And then it hit me - what was missing in those sketches! My cunt! Steve had not drawn anything there! At the time, I guessed that he would fill that in later, but now I knew that for some reason, he'd done it deliberately.
"Somebody gave me a pill and some water, and in a few minutes, a needle was put into my arm again, and then I just drifted off. I was on a sea of titties and pricks, and all the pricks were hard and they were all trying to shove themselves into my aching cunt. No bodies or feces - just big, hard, hurting cocks!
"The next hours were bad. I regained consciousness a few times and remember hearing voices. They sounded worried, but angry. When I finally opened my eyes and was able to focus them, I saw that I was in a sleazy bedroom. My eyes burned and my head felt like it was going to blow off. And standing at the foot of the bed, glaring down at me, was a fat, ugly woman with scraggly hair and big, ugly-looking breasts.
"'Well, our sleeping beauty is back with us,' she said in a sarcastic tone. 'Ain't that nice?' "I felt dead between my legs and all over my stomach. I was aware of a pain, but I just couldn't locate it. All I could manage to say was: 'Where am I?' "She sneered down at me and answered, 'You're goddamned lucky you ain't in the morgue, kid, fucking around with those goddamned hopheads and queers!' I tried to adjust my mind to what she was saying. One part of it made some sense: hopheads. I was sure they had dosed me up with drugs, from the way I had kept drifting out of the scene. But the part about 'queers' was a little fuzzy. How could Steve be a queer?
"She brought me some soup - chicken broth, I guess - and she said her name was Anna, and that one of the guys had brought me to her to take care of. I was too sore and tired then to wonder why, but I found out later that she was an abortionist, and that she had performed abortions on several girls, so someone had thought that she'd know how to take care of me. I panicked when I remembered that ugly thing shoving that big, metal cock into me. I knew I must be all torn up inside, and I wondered why anyone would do a thing like that.
"I went back to sleep for a long time, and when I woke up, and felt my head clear a little, Anna told me I'd been there two days, and that she was getting worried.
"She asked me if any of those 'queers' knew my name or where I lived, and I told her that only Steve did. I wondered if he would have had the decency to call my folks, or if it was even him that had brought me here. I asked Anna what she had meant by 'goddamned queers and hopheads,' and she told me, in her own way. She started by sneering at me, and at everyone like me. 'You goddamned punk kids. You all think you're so fuckin' smart. You're going to change all the rules and run the world. But you're dumb - all of you, and you're all twisted in the head. Those fucking guys that grabbed you are homos - queer as three-dollar bills! And they're all hopheads! How the hell could even a dumb bitch like you get tangled up with them and let them do this to you? You make me want to puke!' "I tried to tell her that Steve couldn't be a queer - that he had sucked and fucked me, like any man. But even while I was telling her, I remembered what he had said - all that shit about 'checking it out with the High Priest,' and all, and I began to see that I had fallen for a gag. They were all woman haters - queers! That must have been why they shoved that goddamned phallic symbol up my cunt like that, to rip me apart because they hated women and their cunts!
"I was scared then, and I asked Anna if a person could get hooked on dope after maybe three or four injections. She said she didn't know, but that if I felt the urge for any, to fight it.
"I laid there a long time wondering what I should do. I didn't know if my parents would have the cops looking for me, or what. I also didn't know whether they would kick me out or turn me over to the juvenile fuzz, if I went home. I hit a low spot, when I realized just how few persons in this whole crummy world were close enough to help me, or cared a goddamn about whether I lived or died.
"But Anna said I couldn't stay there. She'd already been in trouble with the cops, even though they couldn't convict her. She told me to call somebody - anybody, and get my ass to hell out, as soon as I could - and the sooner the better.
"I couldn't walk. I tried, and I couldn't. It was as if I had pieces of sandpaper or a board with nails, shoved up inside me. Every move I made made me want to throw up or pass out cold. I didn't have any choice. I called my father.
"He cried on the phone, then he got mad, so I had to tell him that I was hurt. I made him promise that he'd come and get me alone, and not tell anyone the address, then or later. I told him that the woman who had cared for me had nothing to do with what had happened, and I didn't want her hurt.
"He swore and called me a lousy slut, and told me to go to hell and take care of myself or go to whoever had hurt me, but when he heard me crying, he pulled a switch. He cried, and said, 'Just wait there, baby. Just take care. Give me the address and I'll be there inside an hour. We'll work it out, baby - we'll work it out. I - I love you, Savvy - I still love you.' "Anna left me alone. She didn't want to have anyone even be able to identify her. I tried to thank her - and later on - I sent her 50 bucks, but she just kept on calling me a dumb little whore, and she left. When Daddy walked into the place, I thought he was going to cry again. It was dirty and smelly, and I couldn't get up off the dirty bed. All I could do was cry. And, do you know - I don't remember crying since I was about six, when I fell off my bike and skinned both knees?
"He had to carry me to the car, and for the first time, I had an idea where I was. We were in a dingy, beat-up joint near Venice, California. There's a big amusement park there, and a lot of hippies and weirdoes shacked up there for a while, before the people and the police ran them off.
"When my father put me in the back seat of the car, my dress came up and he could see my crotch. I guess it must have really shook him up. I was still bleeding. Anna had tried to patch me up, but all she had used was peroxide and some sort of antiseptic powder, and I was a mess. My father took one look, and told me he had to take me to a hospital. You know, at that point, he didn't know what happened and I suppose he thought I'd been gang-raped, or something like that. I tried to tell him I couldn't go to a hospital, that I was scared of the police, but he wouldn't listen.
"He took me to a hospital near our home and checked me in. He had to answer some questions, but he told them that he didn't know what had happened, nor where, so they notified the police. He had reported me missing, and he called to tell them to cancel the report, that he had found me, but the police came anyway. I wouldn't talk to them, and the doctors said I was in no condition to talk, but they placed me under some sort of a protective custody or partial arrest, or something. They ordered the hospital to notify them when I was able to talk, or before they released me.
"Before they performed surgery, I told the doctor about the drugs, and asked him to use ether or gas, and he did. They had to cut and sew me up good - over 150 stitches, they told me, and - I don't have to take any birth control pills again - ever.
"My mother came, and she was mad as hell. All she could babble about was 'How could you do this to your father and me?' She didn't give a fuck about me; just thought about herself. The goddamned fucking, lousy slut! At least, my father worried about what was going to happen to me. He talked to the cops and he told me that maybe the best thing would be for me to tell them exactly what had happened. He couldn't, because I hadn't even told him.
"Lying there in the hospital, I had time to think, and I wasn't about to fink to the fuzz. I'd find a way to get even with those rotten bastards - and especially weirdo Steve! I got out of it easy with the cops. I just told them that I didn't remember a thing - that I'd been walking down Sunset and somebody had hit me, and that from there on, I didn't remember one thing.
"I know they didn't believe me, because there wasn't a mark on my body - except for my cunt - but they couldn't do anything.
"There was a war going on at home. I felt a little guilty, because my stupidity had brought it to a head. But when I thought it over a little more, I knew goddamned well that they had brought it on themselves. My old man raved at my mother that it was all their fault - he didn't try to blame her alone. He said we were all going to move to a different town, and make a new start; that they were going to be parents, for a change, and knock off all the horseshit about sex and mate-swapping.
"I didn't find all this out until later, but he beat the shit out of her, and later, he even went over and decked Dale Mason!
"But my mother told him to go fuck himself, and she headed for the divorce courts! Imagine that! With me lying in a hospital! Ain't that really 'mother love*?
"When it came time for me to go home, my dad told me that he had moved into a small apartment, and he was fair - I'll give him that. He asked me if I wanted to go with my mother, or with him, and he gave me a third choice of going to live with my grandfather. He told me that his attorney had warned him that the courts wouldn't be very hot on the idea of a 15 year-old 'promiscuous child,' as he put it, living with her father - especially since my mother was naming a dozen dames in the divorce suit.
"But as it turned out, I didn't have to make a choice: the State made it for all of us. One night, after midnight, when I felt I could make it, I just split!
"I went home, got the money I had stashed, packed a small suitcase and some cosmetics, and cut out. I grabbed a bus for San Diego - but I knew I wouldn't stop there! I was going to a place where nobody knew me, but where I could make my own way, as long as I had something to sell. And, the last few days in the hospital, I knew I still had it, because one nurse and two interns had made passes at me! Oh, they didn't want any right then, but they wanted to have my name and address and phone number, so they could 'dig me later.' Fuck them! Fuck the world! And - fuck you too, buster!"