Go West Young Man

by Robbie Michaels

  “You should be a preacher,” the one woman said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, then a motivational speaker or something. You’re really good at making a case and selling it.”

  “I’ve been telling him that for a long time,” I said, finally joining the conversation.

  Much to all of our surprise, we had no interruptions to our meal. The hotel staff started to serve the salad course, followed quickly by the entree and then the dessert. When the band started to play again, we returned to the dance floor, this time accompanied by lots of other dancers as well.

  I stood behind Bill and wrapped my arms around his torso. He leaned his head back onto my shoulder. Barely moving, we danced like that in one another’s arms for a few minutes. I realized that he was blowing his standing completely out of the water with this dance. His jock buddies had always seen him as one of them, another tough guy, another jock. With this dance, he was allowing another man to hold him. He almost looked vulnerable.

  After so much food earlier and such mellow dancing, we needed a break. Bill wanted to spend a few minutes with his fellow jocks, although I wasn’t sure how that was going to go over. He and Jeremy went off together, leaving me with Jeremy’s date, whose name, I had learned earlier, was Carl. Really, I wish I wasn’t so bad about people’s names. Everybody has one; I needed to learn them and use them.

  Carl and I chatted, even though it was difficult going for us. We had nothing in common other than that we both liked dick. I asked him about where he was from, what he was studying—things like that—and then we were sort of out of things to talk about. It was gratifying to know that even someone who looked as good as this guy was as much of a failure at conversation as I was.

  Across the room, we could see Bill and Jeremy talking with some of their buds, or at least they had been buds until they saw the two guys walk in with male dates for the prom. Who knew what was happening now. I would very much have liked to know what was being said. I turned to Carl and said, “I wonder what they’re talking about?”

  “I was wondering the same thing. You know some of them; I’ve never met them before.”

  “I don’t really know them. They kind of run in a different circle than I do. You probably have more in common with them than I do—you both speak ‘jock’, and I don’t.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, darlin’, it’s all a big stage show. You just have to learn your character and learn your lines.”

  His comment made me laugh too. I didn’t know what our dates were talking about across the room, but I doubt that it was as entertaining as our conversation had turned out to be.

  “So when do we walk over there to check on them?” I asked.

  “We don’t—unless someone throws a punch, and then we go in like gangbusters.”

  “But damn, I really want to know what they’re saying.”

  “Nobody has been yelling or throwing things, so they’re doing pretty well. Notice how many of the guys have their hands in their pockets.”

  I hadn’t actually noticed it until he pointed it out. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I guess it’s good that they’re not holding their hands over their butts.”

  “Usually a sign of stress in straight men when they do that.”

  “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

  “Best they not find out. We don’t need the competition.”

  Bill and Jeremy came back.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “For the most part,” Bill answered.

  Fortunately, our conversation was interrupted by the principal taking the microphone. “Can I have your attention, please. Attention. We come now to an important part in our evening. It is time to reveal the results of the voting for Prom Queen and Prom King. The votes have been tabulated and verified, and it gives me great pleasure to announce that, by a wide margin, you have elected Bill Crowell as your Prom King.”

  Bill looked shocked, but pleased as well. We all congratulated him. I leaned over to Carl and whispered, “Does that make me his Queen?”

  “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “Damn. Wouldn’t you know. Hey, wait. Does that mean that he’s no longer my date if… oh, crap. They wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  But they did. When the principal announced the name of the Prom Queen it was none other than Sue, the cheerleader who had been pursuing Bill so relentlessly for so long. Who knew what his coming out tonight would do to the entire situation. Both Bill and his queen were called to the front of the room, where they were formally crowned with their respective crowns.

  Music played and the crowd applauded. And I swear that Bitch Queen—it was official, that was what I was going to call her—smiled at me. But I’m sure it was not a friendly, “I’m so happy for you” smile. No, the bitch was pleased that she was finally at Bill’s side.

  After the applause stopped, she passed her flowers to one of her ladies-in-waiting—or whatever they called her bitchettes—and then she and Bill went to the center of the dance floor for the traditional dance of the king and queen. She was supposed to let him go when the song ended, but she had no intention of doing that, and Bill was being entirely too much of a gentleman. I knew immediately what she was doing. Turning to Jeremy and Carl, I said, “Quick, get out there and stick close to him. Make her aware of your presence.”

  “Got it,” they said and immediately headed out to the dance floor. They took up post right beside Bill and Bitch Queen while I stood off to the side, fuming. Finally, I reached a conclusion. I marched right across the floor and interrupted them. “May I cut in?” I said ever so sweetly.

  “No,” she answered.

  “I didn’t ask you.” Turning to Bill, I waited expectantly.

  “Um, sure,” he said, looking glad to step away from the scheming woman’s grip.

  I stepped in and took his place. Smiling as sweetly as I could, I said, “Congratulations on your selection. I’m so pleased for you.”

  “You’re just jealous that I got him,” she said with what could only be described as an evil smile.

  “You got a dance, darlin’,” I said, borrowing Carl’s favorite word, “but I got his heart… and his glorious lips… and those legs… and that chest with those two perky nipples and all that chest hair… and his abs… oh, his abs, let me tell you, you don’t know what you’re missing. When the man gets naked, it is a true wonder to behold. And when he’s lying on his back beneath me, all hot and sweaty, well, there is no other more glorious thing in the world to behold.”

  As I expected, she was turning red with anger at that point. But at the same time she didn’t want to lose face in front of her peers. She pasted a fake smile on her face. I didn’t give her a chance to say anything, just continuing on with my monologue.

  “And when I kiss him each night when we crawl into bed together, naked, oh, let me tell you, it makes my toes tingle. The man knows how to kiss like no other man I’ve ever kissed. He holds a PhD in how to use his tongue.”

  The song to which we were dancing ended. She immediately started to pull away, but I held her tight and said, “Don’t mess with me or my man, sister. I play for keeps, and I take no prisoners.” I smiled a disgustingly sweet smile at her and said, “Have a lovely prom,” as I stepped away to return to Bill.

  Carl and Jeremy had stuck close to me while I danced with queenie. When I left to head to Bill, they were behind me immediately. When we got back to our table, Carl and Jeremy looked at Bill and practically purred with delight. “You should have heard him! Oh, it was wonderful!” Carl mimicked me while he repeated, “You got a dance, darlin’, but I got his heart.”

  Bill laughed which made me happy. He hugged me, and we danced again. Those around us seemed perfectly at ease with two men openly displaying affection in their midst—or so I thought.

  The band played a couple of faster songs that had everybody on the dance floo
r moving at a frenetic pace for a good ten minutes. When we took a break, a jock buddy of Bill’s handed him a bottle of cold water, which he drained. It had been hot out on the dance floor from all of the body heat as well as the vigorous dancing.

  Jeremy and Carl were still dancing. I had to pee, so I left Bill alone at the table for him to catch his breath while I went off to tend to business. When I came back, maybe four or five minutes later, there was no sign of Bill. In fact, there was no sign of anyone at our table. The dance floor was still crowded so I assumed that maybe the bitch queen had reappeared and dragged him back out onto the dance floor.

  When Carl and Jeremy reappeared not more than a minute later, they asked if Bill was still outside.

  “Outside?”

  “Yeah, we saw him leave with a couple of the guys. They had their arms around one another, which seemed a little odd to us.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Maybe two, three minutes ago.”

  “Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong. Come on! We’ve got to find him!”

  The three of us raced out of the building and into the parking lot—where I found new evidence in the existence of a deity. The first thing I spotted when we exited the building was our limo driver facing down four guys younger and in better shape than him. He was giving them major attitude and demanded that they tell him what was going on. He told them that he had seen Bill earlier and knew that he had not had a drop of alcohol then. He told them to put Bill into the back of the limo and he would race him to the hospital, because something serious must be wrong. But the four guys, two holding onto Bill and two guiding the others, were adamant that they would take care of the problem. The limo driver, as he explained to us later, as a father with teenage daughters, was well versed in the drugs of the street and immediately suspected that Bill had been drugged.

  Carl, Jeremy, and I raced over, evening the playing field so that it was four against four. Without waiting for a second I demanded, “What the hell is going on here? What have you done to him?”

  Carl was bigger than me and made an intimidating presence, which he was using to its fullest advantage. He was not doing just that, though, but was also dialing his cell phone. He hit three keys before pressing call. He had the call on speakerphone so we all heard, “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

  “I need police and an ambulance at….” He gave the name and address of the hotel. “And please notify hotel security that there has been an assault at their property. I’m looking at the four assailants right this minute, and while I may not be able to restrain all four of them, I can assure you that at least one of them will be here when the cops get here—even if I have to sit on the punk to do it.”

  “What is the nature of the assault?”

  “A friend of ours has been drugged with something. He was fine, walking, talking, dancing, and now not more than ten minutes later he’s unconscious and unresponsive.” Turning his attention to the four guys holding and guiding Bill he said, “What the hell did you give him? Huh? What did you give him?”

  For nearly thirty seconds they held their resolve, but then one of them started to bolt. I reacted immediately and took off, tackling the son of a bitch to the ground. I heard cloth rip, and I wasn’t in the least concerned about whose it was.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked as I pulled his arm behind his back and did my best to keep him on the ground. “What’s the hurry?” And then I started yelling at the top of my lungs, “Help! Help! I need help! Help! I need help!” I kept repeating the same words, over and over again at the top of my lungs. The hotel was busy that night, so someone heard me yelling, and before long a security guard from the hotel was racing toward us.

  Another of Bill’s “buddies” decided to try to make a break for it, but he didn’t get any farther than the first when the limo driver took that one down. Staring daggers at the two remaining, one on each side of Bill, Carl said, “Don’t even think about it! You two, put him down and get on your knees—now! Do it!”

  By that time we all heard sirens in the distance. Wherever they were coming from, they closed the distance between them and us very quickly. Within a minute, the parking lot was filled with flashing red and blue lights and a surprising number of cops, along with two EMTs and a couple of fire trucks.

  I was relieved of my captive, as was our limo driver. The other two were also taken into custody. I raced to Bill’s side where the last two had dumped him. Did he have a pulse? Was he breathing? Yes and yes. Okay, so far so good.

  The two EMTs gently but firmly displaced me and started checking Bill over as well. While they did that, I stormed over to the four idiots in custody and started yelling at them: “What the hell did you give him? Huh? What? Talk, you morons! What did you drug him with?”

  Three of them stood silent, but one spoke—it only takes one. “She told us it was just some G.”

  “G what? And ‘she’ who?”

  “GHB.” But the talker wasn’t saying anymore as his three buddies silenced him. At least we knew what had supposedly been given to Bill.

  “How much?” one of the cops demanded. “How did you give it to him?” When he saw that no one was talking he upped the ante. “You do know that an overdose of GHB can kill someone, right? By withholding information you are impeding his care. And if he dies, that ups the charges even higher. It would be premeditated murder.”

  Another one spoke that time, clearly scared. “She put it in a bottle of water. I think she emptied two capsules into the bottle before she gave it to us.”

  “Who?”

  “Sue.”

  “That fucking bitch!” I screamed. “Where is she? Sue, you bitch! Where the hell are you? I know you’re here somewhere.” Turning back to the guys, I demanded, “Where were you taking him?”

  Another one spoke. “To my car. We were supposed to drive him over to the motel.”

  The cops intervened to question those in custody before radioing for back-up at the location of the motel. With a room number in hand, one cop raced off to the nearby motel to join the others and hopefully take the scheming bitch into custody. Certainly not a very queen-like act on her part.

  We had just covered GHB, Ecstasy, and other similar drugs in a health class the week before, so I knew that GHB could be deadly, but that chances of an overdose were fairly remote. Still, Bill was exhibiting some clear signs of being given too much. He was unconscious, for one. Too much of some drugs could lead to overheating that can cause serious damage.

  The ambulance crew loaded Bill onto a stretcher and got him into the ambulance, immediately starting two IVs, and injected medication into both IVs. I could only guess that they were trying to counteract the effects of the GHB that had been slipped to Bill.

  The rest of the evening was a bit of a blur for me. I was fully aware of everything that was happening, but the time factors involved were a little confusing. It seemed like only a moment after leaving the hotel parking lot that the ambulance was at the hospital and Bill was being taken into the ER. And then another moment after that, Jeremy and Carl were joining me in the ER.

  I called my mom and dad and alerted them to what had happened. By the time they arrived at the hospital a short while later—really, how had they gotten there so quickly?—the cops from earlier had arrived as well, reporting that they had taken the person in question at the motel into custody and had ascertained that she had indeed drugged the water with GHB mixed with a little Ecstasy, or what she assumed was Ecstasy. She didn’t know the person who sold it to her, so all she had to go on was his assurance that it was the real stuff. She had several additional capsules of each that she hadn’t used. The police turned one of them over to the hospital for immediate testing to determine what exactly had been used to drug Bill.

  I wanted to ask more, but I honestly didn’t know what to ask.

  We waited. We walked. I was numb. We walked some more and waited some more. Finally, a doctor alerted us that Bill was awake and was as
king to see us. Several of us raced into the exam room, to see him looking awake but a little tattered and battered by the whole experience.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?” I asked, taking his hand in mine.

  “Like I just ran a marathon,” he answered very honestly. “What happened?”

  “Your queen drugged you. She spiked the bottle of water that your buddies gave to you after we came off the dance floor. You were hot and drained the bottle. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back you were gone. We raced outside and caught up with four of your nearest and dearest friends carrying you to their car.”

  “They were trying to help me?”

  “No, darlin’,” Carl said. “They were gonna haul your sorry ass over to the motel, where the Bitch Queen was ready for you. She was gonna get you naked and try to do you. She gave you a date rape drug.”

  It looked like Bill was going to be physically sick. Carl continued, “I guess she didn’t know that when you give a date rape drug to a man, in addition to loss of consciousness you also turn off the hydraulics that are sort of important to what she wanted to do. She was gonna have to work really, really, really hard to get you hard.” He chuckled a little, which helped to distract Bill so that he didn’t look quite so green.

  When a nurse popped into the exam room to check Bill’s vitals, he asked, “When can I get out of here to go home?”

  “You’re not going anywhere anytime soon. We’re trying to get a room for you right now.”

  “No. I want to go home and sleep in my own bed,” he said decisively.