Chapter 3

One of the nicest things about January is that it is my birth month. This one was a very important one for me. I turned sixteen on the tenth, and took my test for my driver's license the following day. My father took the entire morning off from his work, even allowing me to cut all of my early school classes on that cold Monday morning following my birthday.

With me driving, courtesy of my learner's permit, the two of us traveled over to the DMV, where he then signed all of the financial responsibility paperwork necessary for the state to allow me to take the driving test. I managed to pass the actual driving test after practically acing the written quiz.

On the driving test I got marked down for not checking my rear view mirror on a change of lanes. I did check the side view, but he marked me off anyway. My parallel parking cost me another three points because I had to make three attempts before I finally managed to park without hitting any of the rubber cones that they had set up. I got my license!

After we were done at the DMV, my father then took me over to his friend's car lot, and he and his friend, Mr. Michaels, started talking about which used car on his lot would be just right for me. It was like I wasn't standing right there in front of them, or that I didn't need to be consulted about the car I'd be driving for the next few years.

The same thing had happened to Walter though, and that's why he was driving a brown Buick four door sedan, and had been for the past three and a half years. I started walking around the car lot by myself, leaving the two of them to do their talking and negotiating.

I was going to accept whatever car they decided on, but I had hoped to have a little bit of input into the choice of car. It wasn't that I wasn't grateful that my father was going to buy me my first car either, because I really was.

Most of my friends, the ones who drove, had been forced to save up and buy their own. A lot of them worked part time jobs just to pay for their gas, repairs and insurance. I was going to have pretty much a free ride, including being given a credit card to buy my gas with. My father called me back over to where he and Mr. Michaels were standing. They were both looking at a green Oldsmobile sedan. A hideous shade of green too.

"You want to hop in and take this little beauty for a test drive Barry?"

Mr. Michaels was all smiles, and he had slipped into his salesman persona as soon as he reached out to hand me the key ring. My father gave me a nod to take the offered keys. The three of us piled in, with my father sitting in the back, and I drove us off of the lot, and out into traffic.

The car drove fine, the odometer showed just a bit less than eighty thousand miles. The first thing I noticed was that the radio was the standard model, with no cassette or anything. The speakers were standard as well. The heater worked really well though, and both of them commented on how important that was.

"It drives fine dad, but I wish it was some nicer color, and maybe looked a little sportier too. I don't think this looks like a high school kid's kind of car. Mr. Michaels, do you ever get in any used Miata's or BMW's?"

"You ever hear that old saw, 'never look a gift horse in the mouth'?"

I pretty much had known that he'd react in that way. Children lacking in proper gratitude was a conversational topic that came up frequently in our household. In truth, I knew that he had a very good point too. I was lucky, as were my brothers and sisters.

My father made good money at his job, and he provided well for all of us. We got to wear good clothing, we had nice toys, and we always enjoyed two or three week vacations every summer, at some nice resort places too, the kind of places that young people wanted to go to. He didn't stint on food or anything else that we needed.

It wasn't that I didn't know all of this, and, at least most of the time, I really did appreciate it. A car though, wasn't it supposed to be a reflection on it's owner, letting people know something about him? Did my dad think that I was a green Oldsmobile kind of guy?

"I'm sorry dad. I am grateful, and I appreciate you doing this, I really do. This car will be fine. Thank you."

"I told you Frank, Barry's different than Walter. Barry drive on back to the lot."

I didn't know what he meant by that comment to Mr. Michaels, but I did what he'd told me to do. Mr. Michaels told me to park over by the little shack that he used as an office. We all got out and went inside. I figured that they'd get the paperwork ready, and then I'd have my ugly green car, and drive off to school with it.

"Sit down Barry. You just passed what I call the 'thank you daddy' test. I gave it to all you kids when you turned sixteen. Do you remember Tony's first car? You were only about five then."

"Sure, it was that red Mustang. That was a neat car."

"That's right, he loved that car too. He passed the 'thank you daddy test'. Do you remember Karen's first car, that gray Plymouth station wagon?"

I did remember it, she had cried and whined all through her high school years about how shitty her car was, and how everyone made fun of her because of it. Karen had traded it in on a nicer car a month after she and Frank had gotten married.

"Karen didn't pass her 'thank you daddy' test?"

"No, she sure didn't, and neither did Walter. Diana did though, and now you did as well. So you get the same deal as Tony and Diana did Barry. You can choose any car on this lot, and I'll buy it for you today. If you don't see something that you like today, you just tell Frank what you have in mind and he'll see if he can find you something that you'll like, and be happy with."

"I wonder how come none of them ever warned me about the test, or warned Walter and Karen at least?"

"I never told any of them about there being a test Barry. But you're the last one. Now there won't be any more. You can tell Karen and Walter about it if you feel like it. I've wanted to, especially Karen, because she made such a big deal about the car that she was stuck with for so long. She could have had the same deal that you, Tony and Diana got though, if she had just reacted the same as all of you."

I had seen this great Toyota truck outside. It was black and had an all black interior too. I asked my father if it would be all right if I went out and looked it over. It looked like it might be only a year or two old. The Oldsmobile was at least seven model years old.

I didn't want him to think that I was taking advantage of him by trying to get him to spend too much of his money for my high school transportation needs. He just laughed, and then he told me again that any car on the lot was just fine with him.

We took the Toyota out for a test drive, just my dad and I. Mr. Michaels told us that he was pretty sure the mileage was accurate. It was a repo that he had just purchased from the bank. It had a 5 speed manual transmission, and a great stereo system, including a cassette, and some great speakers that had been nicely rear mounted. Sixteen thousand miles the odometer read.

The truck had no problems. There was a tiny paint chip on the passenger side door, but it was hardly noticeable. Whoever had owned this truck had taken great care of it. I asked my dad again if he was sure that it wasn't too much money to buy it. Of course, I hoped that he wouldn't say that it was.

He just smiled and told me that it was fine. I'll bet I must have thanked him at least twenty times on the drive back to the car lot. I didn't know if there was possibly a second part to the 'thank you daddy' test, and I sure didn't want to fail it if there was. In addition to that, I really was thankful and grateful. The truck was much better than I'd ever dared imagine that I'd be getting.

I drove my new 'ride' over to the school and parked it way in the back, away from all the careless assholes who don't watch out when they open their car doors. Until I got my new Toyota, I hadn't always been that careful either.

My dad had written me a note to excuse my absence from my morning classes. After I had shaken Mr. Michael's hand and thanked him for all of his help, my father had given me my own oil company credit card and a AAA tow card as well. I was mobile in style.

I made a mental note to get a couple nice blankets out of the linen closet to put behind the truck's passenger seat, just in case I ever got myself a chance to do some making out in the truck bed behind. I didn't want to put on a camper shell, but I thought a plastic bed liner might be a nice touch.

After school, Jimmy, and a couple other friends of mine, came out and checked out my new truck. All of them told me that I was one lucky fuck to have gotten over so well for my birthday.

Jimmy told me that with that truck he'd be getting so much pussy he wouldn't even know what to do with it all. He then told me that even I might be able to get laid with it. I had thought that I might be able to too. I was certainly going to make every attempt to christen my truck as soon as I could.

We were all standing around talking about cars and girls when Brenda and Audrey came walking over. Brenda had come because Jimmy was going to drive her home, but I figured that Audrey had come with her just to see what everybody else was looking at. When I proudly told her that it was my new truck, and that I'd just gotten it for my birthday present, I could see that she was impressed.

"So do I get to have the first ride in it?"

"You can have the first anything you want to in it, my pretty."

I gave her my best lecher smirk as I said it. She gave me another crinkle nosed smile and walked around to the passenger side door. Luckily I remembered that I had the automatic door release on the key ring, and popped the door unlocked as soon as she got to it. She hopped up into the seat and I went around and got in on the driver's side.

"Will you give me a ride home too?" I told her that I sure would. "Brenda, Barry's going to drive me home, so I don't need you to ask Jimmy if it's okay to give me a ride. I'll call you later okay?"

Brenda nodded that it was, and I started the truck up and pulled forward, moving out towards the street. I didn't have that much experience with a manual shift yet, and I kind of screwed up shifting and made a terrible noise and the truck jerked a little when I finally got it back into gear.

"Never drove a stick before, sorry."

She just nodded. Why the hell not, it wasn't her transmission gears being chewed all to hell by my clumsy shifting. When I was out on the street, I had no further embarrassing mishaps.

"So my amazon beauty, where shall we go? My chariot is yours to command."

"Do you think I'm too tall Barry? I wish I was shorter. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a big freak."

I remembered reading somewhere that even the prettiest women have insecurities about their looks. Audrey was gorgeous to me. She was a lot taller than the five feet eight that she admitted to though. I'd say at least five ten and a half.

I was five eleven and she was at eye level with me and she wore flat shoes with almost no soles or heels. I thought that barefooted she was probably as tall as I was barefooted. She stood tall though, not trying to slump over to look shorter like some tall girls did.

"I think you're just about the perfect size all the way around. I wouldn't want to change a single thing about you."

"You aren't just saying that to be polite to the freak?"

"Are you serious? You can't be Audrey. If you could see yourself through my eyes, you sure wouldn't be asking that kind of a question."

"Really, I wouldn't? What kind of question would I be asking?"

"Well, if you were looking at yourself through my eyes, then you'd be me, right?" She nodded that she would be. "If you were me, then you'd probably be asking yourself whether Audrey had noticed that you had a really embarrassing hard on right now? You'd be knowing that it was brought on just from thinking about having her fine body sitting right next to you."

I got a double nose crinkle and a soft push on the outside of my thigh. I noticed that she looked down at my crotch when she pushed me too. My father wasn't the only member of the family to devise tests for people. I had developed what I called my 'dick fear' test.

Audrey was the first girl I'd actually used it on, but my theory was that girls who were afraid of boy's dicks wouldn't be good candidates for me to pursue. So far, Audrey had passed the first phase of my 'dick fear' test. She wasn't afraid to look.

"I've always heard that most teen boys were like that all the time, when they were awake, anyways."

"Not true my sweet. Totally false in fact. Boys require stimulation to become erect. Mental or physical, self induced, or from outside sources. In the case of my own noble boner, the boner in question as it were, it is a product of our joint collaboration. Your fine body, and my filthy thoughts concerning that aforementioned sweet frame of yours. I don't want you to get the wrong impression though, your body is certainly capable, all by itself, of inducing stiffies. My own lascivious thoughts just add that last element of firmness to the mix." She seemed to pass phase two of my 'dick fear' test, listening to hard on conversation.

"Has anyone ever told you that you were a very strange lad Barry?"

"Yes, in fact, to be completely candid, most of the people that have made that observation about me, have possessed advanced degrees in clinical psychology. I've been diagnosed with the 'Beautiful Women Make Me Horny Syndrome'. There's no known cure I'm afraid, and the only way I've found to get even temporary relief, is to get lots of bed rest with a small supply of wet paper towels close by my night stand." Phase three, discussing uses for the hard on.

"Eew, now you're just being gross, not at all funny. Maybe you should just take me home now."

Oops, I guess she wasn't quite ready yet for my masturbation humor. I shut up and listened to her directions on how to get to her house.

"I was just kidding around Audrey. I didn't mean to be offensive to you. I thought we were both kidding around. Sorry if I overstepped your line of acceptable topics."

"Do you talk that way to other girls?"

"Sometimes, with girls who know my sense of humor. I should have waited until we knew each other better before saying something like that to you. I apologize."

I was done with the apologizing now. She better just let it drop. I didn't need to be reduced to grovelling.

"You'd have to know me way better to be allowed to get away with saying things like that to me. I don't think I'd ever let you know me that well though. I don't appreciate crudeness."

"Well then, fuck you Audrey! It's not like I farted or something, is it? You can just get that stuck up, prudish, snaggle toothed, Sasquatch sized ass of yours right out of my truck, Bitch! You've got a lot of nerve coming on like little miss righteous with me when the whole damn town knows that you were sucking Ritchie's dick and humping him whenever the two of you had the chance to. I heard he dumped you because that snaggle tooth of yours made your blow jobs too painful for him."

Did I mention that I'm a prick? There are times when even I don't like myself. This wasn't one of those times though, and I was rather proud of the snaggle tooth and the Sasquatch references. I had pulled my truck over to the curb and had stopped.

I was just waiting for her to get her ass out so that I could drive away. I was a little mad, but not really that mad. I figured that I'd already blown it with her anyway, so I had nothing left to lose. Partly, it was that I didn't like her calling a double technical foul and an automatic game ejection on me so quickly.

I thought I should have received at least one warning first. My favorite basketball players were Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman, so I may have a different definition of what constitutes playing dirty, at least different from what most other people have.

She just sat there with a stunned look on her face,. She was making no move at all to get out of the truck. I waited for her to either leave or else say something to give me some indication of what was causing the hold up.

"That isn't very nice Barry, what you said. I'm not stuck up at all. And if I was a prude, then how could I have done any of what you said I did with Richard? I can't help it about my tooth either. If we had the money, I'd get braces and have it fixed."

For some reason I found what she was saying to be amusing. It was almost like she was apologizing to me, the way she was explaining things.

"Well what about that Sasquatch ass of yours then?" She started crying then. Real tears, not those fake, manipulating, girls tears.

"All the women in my family have wide hips Barry, I'm sorry." Did I mention that she had a perfect body before? Because she did. Her hips were in perfect proportion to the rest of her body.

"I could overlook the wide hips Audrey, nobody's perfect, and I really wouldn't mind it that much if I got bit just a little sometimes from the blow jobs, but I just can't stand it when a girl trys to pretend that she's different from how she really is. I heard that you are a real hot slut, and that you just love to be fucked. Why are you trying to pretend that you aren't?"

"We haven't even gone out yet Barry. How am I supposed to act when I have no way of knowing yet what it is that you want me to do?"

Bingo! Game, set and match! Talk about your lucky guesses, I'd just struck gold in a cesspool.

"Well if you don't want to get out of my truck right now, then you better come closer so I can at least see if you have as nice a pussy as Ritchie said you did. Either that or get out."