He looked like he used to be a surfer. When I got to know him, I found out he'd tried it for a while. He'd tried a lot of things, not just surfing. He'd been a rock climber, and he'd crewed on a private yacht across the Atlantic. He'd bummed around the Far East. He'd worked on an oil rig. He'd been in Peace Corps for a year but got so sick they sent him home. He was very calm, and he had those fantastic smile wrinkles at the corners of his eye, and unruly blond hair, and a little bit of gray in his mustache. I thought he was the most interesting guy I'd ever seen.

He came to all the parties. I thought he was best friends with Daddy, until I found out Daddy could barely tolerate him. Gary liked to sit at the far end of the table and listen to everyone, and drink. He drank a lot. I was too young to know what a problem this was. Too young to see the importance of it. He didn't get loud or obnoxious. He just drank himself into insensibility. One morning, after a party, I found him passed out in our bushes, next to his own vomit. I shook him awake.

"Gary?"

He looked up at me and blinked. "Too bright. Less light," he said.

"Come on," I said. "I'll help you home." I tried to pull him up, but I couldn't. He was big.

He pulled his knees under him, all fours, his hands under his shoulders, and then sat back on his heels for a minute. He covered his face with his hands.

"I'll help you," I said.

He looked up at me from under his bushy blond eyebrows. His hair was a mess. I felt so sorry for him.

"Just a minute," he said. He looked down at the ground for a while, then stood. His motion was strong and smooth, the way it always was. He didn't look hung over at all. "Thanks. I'll go home now."

"I'll come with you."

"No."

"It's okay. I just want to help."

He sighed and touched his forehead and set off on the little path through the bushes at the corner of our yard. We crossed 15th and then went down New York, and crossed 11th. He rented a little house that sat on cinder blocks. The outside had white asbestos shingles; one or two had fallen off, and the green paint underneath showed.

He opened the front door. It wasn't locked. "Thanks," he said. "You'd better go home."

"I'll make you some tea."

He looked at me. "I don't have any tea."

The front door led right into the living room. The only things were a couch, an armchair, and a television set. On the left was a fireplace, with a large photograph of a mountain hanging above it.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The Diamond. Long's Peak. In Colorado."

There was a brown cliff in the middle. It looked steep. "Have you climbed that?"

"Yes."

I walked over, to look at it more closely. "Show me."

He sat in the armchair. "It doesn't matter."

There were two doors at the back of the room. They were both open. The left one led to the bedroom, the right one to the kitchen. I looked through the cabinets -- a few cans of corn and beans, a big bag of rice, some spaghetti. Cooking oil, salt and pepper, tobasco sauce, chili pepper and vinegar. No tea. I opened the refrigerator. Nothing but a dozen eggs, butter, and beer. I went back in the front room. Gary had tilted back his chair. He was asleep.

I closed the door quietly behind me and went home. I took a few tea bags, a pound of hamburger, three potatoes, a tomato, some lettuce and onions, and a loaf of bread. I put them in a mesh bag and headed back.

The door was still unlocked and Gary was asleep. I unloaded the bag on the kitchen table. He had an iron skillet and a big pot, and I started water boiling while I cooked hamburgers. The meat had browned on one side when he came in the kitchen. A skinny cat followed him and rubbed against my leg.

"What are you doing?"

"Cooking."

"Are you nuts? You shouldn't be here."

"I thought you'd be hungry when you woke up."

"I can't eat that. I'm hung over."

I looked down at the meat. "I hate to waste it." I expected to see a tear drop into the pan and sizzle. I blinked them back, and rubbed my wrist across my eyes.

"Get out of here. Go home. You could get me in a lot of trouble."

"I'm just cooking!" I shouted. "I didn't do anything!"

"Baby, you don't have to do anything to get me in trouble. I've had this before. This is the last thing I need."

"What do you mean?"

He reached past me and turned off the stove burners. "I did a year in jail. I was 22. She was 17."

I looked at his shoes. Scuffed desert boots. I looked up at his face. God he was big. A big sexy teddy bear. I wanted to snuggle up with him.

"You're a freshman, right?"

I nodded.

"Fifteen?" he asked. I didn't answer. "Baby, I'm almost forty." He waited. "Look, every so often some girl thinks I'm really cool, for some reason. I'm not. I drift. That's it. You understand? I'm not cool. I just look like I am. 'Cuz I'm not connected. Understand?"

"No. What about all that interesting stuff you did?"

"Like climbing the Diamond? It doesn't mean anything. I was looking for something. That connection. I gave up."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"You will. Give it twenty years. You will."

He took me by the arm and pushed me out the door.

"Don't come back."

I knocked, but he wouldn't answer. Finally I poked my head in and said, "My bag. I need my bag. The mesh one in the kitchen."

He handed it to me and shut the door without a word.

I don't remember when I noticed that men didn't look at me the way they looked at other girls. They looked longer, and they looked hungry, and they smiled at me. They weren't just looking and smiling -- they wanted something I didn't understand. I liked that. I didn't figure out until later what it was they wanted.

It started early. They thought I was sexy, although I didn't have a word for this. I didn't know the word. What I knew was that I could get what I wanted from them, if I gave them what they wanted. And later I decided I could get anyone I wanted, if I was persistent.

I knew he managed the Juice Stop downtown, so I started going there after school and on weekends. He'd see me coming and make the other person wait on me, except when he was the only one there. Then he'd make my drink, and give me my change without saying anything, or even looking at me. He'd stare over my head until I said what I wanted, make the drink, take my money, all in silence. Then I'd sit in the tiny front area, unless it was full and I had to sit at one of the tables out front. I'd watch him. I did this for a week or two and one day we were the only ones there. I'd been sitting at the table long enough and I finished my drink and got up to put it in the trash. He was looking at me but his face wasn't moving. At least he was recognizing my presence.

" 'Bye," I said.

He just went on staring.

He did that for a couple more weeks -- staring instead of ignoring me. He was making me nervous and scared. The day I decided not to come back any more he crooked a finger at me as I was leaving. I stopped. I didn't know what to do.

"Come here," he said. When I didn't move, he repeated, "Come here."

I went. He leaned on the counter. His face was so close that I felt his breath. He had a bump on one eyelid, and big ropy veins in his arms and hands. The stubble on his face looked like sandpaper; I wondered what it felt like.

"What do you want?" he asked.

I hadn't really thought it through. What did I want? I said, "Just to be around you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I just like you a lot."

"Why?"

I didn't want to say he was like a big fuzzy teddy bear and I wanted him to hold me.

"You want to fuck me?" he asked.

I stared at his hands. They looked huge.

"Are you a virgin?"

I shook my head no.

"I'm too big for you," he said. "You couldn't take it." He stepped back a foot and unzipped his pants and fished inside and pulled out his penis. Even with half of it in his pants, it was huge, way bigger than the boys I knew. "See?" he said. "Think you could handle it?"

I looked up at his face and nodded yes.

He sighed and pushed it back inside his boxers, making a little almost-jump to get it in. "You've got guts, anyway. You don't scare easy. Now get out of here. And don't come back."

I cried myself to sleep that night. I thought about him all the time, the way he looked, the slow way he moved, his big body and muscles and his hair. And his penis. I wondered if he was right. I wondered if he could get it in me. I wondered if it would hurt. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. My feelings weren't exactly sexual. I wasn't sure what they were.

I stopped going to the Juice Stop, and I started spying on his house at night. Usually he came home around eight and cooked whatever he brought home in a grocery sack -- a frozen pizza or a TV dinner or something like that. Then he'd go in the front room and drink beer and watch the tube. The picture was good, and he had a black wire running into the back, so I knew he had cable. Mostly he watched action movies, but sometimes he watched the History Channel, if the program was about World War II. He'd drink five or six beers, or more, and get up a couple of time to go to the bathroom, which was off the bedroom. Then he'd come back and sit down and drink more beer. He led a boring life. I wondered why he never went anywhere or had any friends over. Two or three nights a week he'd get dumbbells and other weights out of the closet and exercise before he ate and drank. His arms were huge. He was ripped on his chest and back, too. He had a rubber thing he attached to the bedroom door frame, and he'd use that after he'd finished with the weights. He did crunches and stretching exercises on the floor. Then he'd put everything away and eat dinner and watch the tube until he either fell asleep in the chair or turned off the TV and went to bed.

He always slept soundly. I knew because I threw sticks at his windows and he didn't wake up. Since he didn't lock the door before he went to bed, one night when he turned out the lights and went to sleep I threw sticks again and waited. I didn't hear any movement, so I went in the front door. I figured it was safe, because he'd had more than a six-pack. He would be hard asleep. I was right outside his bedroom door and a board creaked. He stopped snoring, then rolled over on his side and a minute later was breathing deeply again. I wasn't sure I could take my foot off the board without it creaking. I might wake him. I stood there so long my legs started to tingle, until I decided to lift my foot. The floor creaked. He was out of bed in a second and grabbed me by the wrists.

"That hurts."

"There's more," he said. He threw me on the bed.

I tried to fight him. He was taking off my clothes and it was what I'd wanted, but he was too rough and I didn't want it that way. I wanted to be the one to take off my clothes, or encourage him to. This felt like rape. But everything I did was futile. He held down one of my hands, and he ignored the other one pounding on his shoulder and hitting his face. He was at least twice my weight, and whatever I did, he ignored. I twisted, I tried to free my hand, I kicked, but nothing helped. I know more now. I know how to stick a finger in an eye with just enough pressure to almost pop it out. That will send any man howling in the other direction. But this was my first attempted rape, and I didn't know anything, and I was in a panic. I flailed. Flailing does nothing.

When he had me naked, he held both my wrists above my head while he pulled down his boxers with the other hand.

His penis was limp. He put me on the bed and spread my legs and rubbed his penis against me, but his cock never came up.

"Too much beer," he muttered. His breath stank of it. He was crushing me, lying on top of me. I hit his chest.

"Off," I said. "Can't breathe."

He rolled off and lay next to me. I took a great sobbing breath. I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Don't leave," he said. "Are you okay?"

I couldn't believe he would ask that. I wanted to get away as fast as I could. I wanted to be in my own room, snuggled up under the covers and clutching my old brown bear, all soft and shapeless with the black nose rubbed white. I wanted to creep down the hall and listen at my parents' door for Daddy snoring. I wanted to crawl in with Gabe and snuggle up until I fell asleep and he woke me and sent me back to my own room.

" 'Okay?' " I echoed.

"Yeah. Are you okay?"

I wanted to kill this creep. He tried to rape me, and then asked whether I was okay.

"What's wrong?"

He touched my back. I jumped out of bed and started gathering my clothes.

"Where are you going?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to say anything and maybe get him started again.

"Come on," he pleaded. "Talk to me."

"I want to go home."

"Wait." He rolled out of bed and I ran but he already had a hand on my shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me up and carried me back to the bed, where he sat with me on his lap. He had his arms around me, and he was being gentle, but no matter how gentle he was I couldn't get free. He was crooning and holding me like a baby. He kept on like that until I was too tired to fight.

"Now talk to me," he said. He pushed my head up with his thumb under my chin. "What's wrong? Are you disappointed? Sometimes it's like that when a man has too much to drink." His words were slurred.

The idea that I'd be disappointed that the rape had failed was so ludicrous I started to laugh.

"That's better." He smiled. "Not so bad, is it?"

"No," I said, "but I have to go home. What if my parents notice? It's past my curfew." I didn't have a curfew, but he wouldn't have known that.

He pushed me down on the bed. "I'll do this. Then you can go." He kissed me between the legs.

I was still revolted at him, but no one had ever done this to me before. I tried to get up, but the most I could do was sit up part way. He had his hands around my waist. I lay back again, hating this, and hating him, and then unable to move. I was at his mercy again, this time at the mercy of the things he was doing to me with his lips and tongue, until finally I gave up struggling and lay back, filled with the hot swelling until I came, hating him, hating him.

He let me go then, and I dressed. He smiled and kissed me, but I turned my head at the last second so he kissed my cheek instead. He looked puzzled.

I crept home, and quietly up the stairs and into my room, where I curled up in a ball under the sheet and clutched my old brown bear. I wished Gabe would come in, but I was afraid to go into his room because I might tell him what had happened and that would start a lot of bad things. I wanted to keep this secret, even from him, my best friend.

Gary came to the party the next weekend and I stayed upstairs in my room. There was a knock on my door and I didn't answer until my Daddy said my name and knocked again. I went to the door and grabbed him and held myself to him.

"Why aren't you downstairs?" he asked. "You're the party girl, even when you're sick. You're acting like Clover."

Usually I wouldn't have cared one way or another if someone compared me to Clover. We were so different I would have just thought it was silly. That night it annoyed me and I snapped at him, "I'm not like her! That stuck-up bitch." I never talked like that to Daddy.

He said, "Something's bothering you."

"No."

"It's better if you talk about it."

"I can't. Please, Daddy, I can't."

"What can I do, if I don't know anything?"

"Nothing."

He hugged me again, for a long time. A song ended downstairs and I heard a whoop; it sounded like Buzz. I wanted to be there, dancing and enjoying the party, but I couldn't, not with Gary in the house.

I wrote a letter that night and sealed it in an envelope:

Leave me alone. If you come near me I'll tell my father what you did. I mean it. Don't come to the parties, either.

Monday, after school, when I knew he'd be at work, I pushed it through the letter slot in his door and ran home.

A week went by. My mother said, "You got a letter today."

"Me?"

"It's on the table." She waved at it and went down the basement stairs.

The postmark said Chicago. No return address. We'd been to Chicago on vacation the year before and I'd made a friend during the trip, a girl we met at the Field Museum who spent several days with us. I'd written her, but she'd never written back until now. I read it in my room.

I tried to tell you it was a mistake but you wouldn't listen. You had to keep going. You had to keep teasing. How many times do you think you can do that before a man gives up and does it with you? I mean, have you looked at yourself lately? How long do you think a man can resist that? I'm just a man. I'm sorry you got scared. I'm sorry you changed your mind. But how was I supposed to know? God damn you. I don't trust you. Now I had to leave Lawrence. I liked Lawrence. But I couldn't take the chance. You could turn me in and they'd put me back in the pen. Fuck you. I hope you get what's coming to you. Somebody should rape you good. A whole bunch of guys. I'd like to see that.

I tore the letter into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then at dinner I pretended the letter was from my Chicago friend, and Mom asked what she'd had to say, and I said, "Oh, you know. Stuff about her parents and her brother. School. Nothing special," and she nodded and the dinner conversation switched to Gabe's baseball practice. I was glad I wouldn't have to hide anything now; I could go back to telling little lies, about things like the letter. I was especially glad Gary wouldn't be at the parties any more, or even in town. I stopped going the long way to avoid his block. A couple of weeks later a boy and a girl, students from the University, rented the house. They were grad students. They had a little baby and sometimes I babysat for them.