They Were Rough and Smiling.
The guy wearing the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt was good looking in a macho-dude sort of way. He and his friends, who were all Springsteen fans, had stopped at The Hood on their way through Alliance.
That’s where they found me and some of my friends, all willing to visit their hotel room after the bar closed.
I don’t remember the guys’ names; they were young like us. Their hotel room was huge with at least three beds. The night seemed full of possibility.
I should have known better when the cans of beer were doled out only to those who agreed to play strip poker.
My friends and I joined, not everyone willing to fully undress, and we played until people randomly started passing out on various beds.
I wasn’t willing to give up, though, since there was still beer left to be drunk.
As the others slipped into oblivion, I started making out with the guy with the Bruce Springsteen sweatshirt, which had been tossed aside during the poker game.
By then I’d realized “Bruce” was kind of a jerk, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t yet passed out, so this was the logical next step. It didn’t matter that it was creeping up on 4 a.m. and that almost everyone else was snoring.
Bruce and I were rolling around in a bed when he noticed that one of his friends was still awake. The guy was sitting on the edge of another bed, staring at us and masturbating. It was beyond creepy.
“Hey Bud,” said Bruce, nudging me slightly. “Ya want some of this? C’mon over!”
This was not okay with me.
But “Bud” took a big swig of beer and sashayed up to our bed. He stank of booze and sweat.
This was the kind of “not okay” that still haunts me in nightmares – the kind of “not okay” that violently churns in my gut decades later. This is in my Top 10 list of “not okay” life stories.
The guys were bigger than me, stronger than me. They were rough and smiling, and the combination terrified me.
I didn’t want to wake my friends. I didn’t consider screaming. I didn’t even shake my head. In fact, I silently consented to this thing that I never, ever wanted to do.
To say that Bruce and Bud had their way with me would be an understatement. I was twisted and prodded and squeezed and shoved in gag-worthy, unimaginable ways.
Eventually everyone passed out.
Chilled and coming down, I donned that navy Born in the USA Tour shirt and, momentarily, I treasured it.
I was quite cold.
But that night was so scary and humiliating and horrible that I never told anyone about it. If no one knew what had happened, I reasoned, then it just didn’t happen.
Someone woke me in the morning at checkout time, which felt like ten minutes after I’d fallen asleep. I don’t remember how we got back to the dorm but I’d never been so happy to leave a hotel.
At the dorm, I took off the Springsteen sweatshirt and threw it on the floor. Then I crawled into my own bed, trying to forget. When the sun was almost down, I got out of bed, ate something from the school cafeteria, and started drinking again.
Since it represented a phenomenal worldwide event, the sweatshirt was probably quite expensive but I hated it with every ounce of my being. Still I was glad I’d taken it from him, even after I tossed it into a dumpster.
It almost made me feel like I had some power.