The Volvo Wagon

I'm a huge fan of Kevin Smith. He and his movie making soulmate, Scott Mosier have a podcast called SModcast. In SModcast Episode 6, titled “Inverted Nipples”, they discussed their adolescent conquests in automobiles among other things. The discussion came around to a time when Kevin Smith was in his car going down on a girl with his finger up her butt, which was of course, previously uncharted territory for him. As the gods have a sense of humor about timing and whatnot, sure enough, the police came by and busted them for fooling around in the vehicle. Everyone was uncomfortable and embarrassed. Hey, it was his story and much funnier as he told it. But it brought me back to 19 years ago, when I was at the tender, wistful age of 18 years…

I like this story because a) its totally true, this can’t be made up, and b) I come off as a filthy dirt bag pig in it. I figured I’d have no choice but to share with all y’all.

With that, I give you The Volvo Wagon:

When I was a teenager, most kids couldn’t wait to drive. Perhaps that hasn’t changed in 21 years but I was not one of those kids. I didn’t much care about driving as I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunities to drive, my bicycle was usually a faster mode of transportation in my little town, and suffering the indignities of drivers training with an uptight physical education teacher and a carload of pimply-faced teens… forget it.

The general protocol for teenage driving starts with going to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) at 15 ½ years to get a learner’s permit which you must have to begin the aforementioned indignities of training. Then the first thing to do on your 16th birthday is attend the driving test at the DMV and walk away a legal driver... provided you pass. Fuck it. I learned to drive on my own when I was 18. Once you are 18 in California, you can saunter in, take all the necessary tests and walk out with a ticket to drive. So that’s exactly what I did.

I learned to drive on my mother’s beater 1979 Volvo station wagon that had a standard transmission without power steering or brakes and to start it you had to take a wrench to the manifold and give it a couple of whacks. Yup, tomboy.

At the time I was in L-O-V-E love with my first serious boyfriend. I was taking him home after band practice (he was the drummer in a punk band and that got me Chernobyl hot) one night and we decided to stop at a dark and lonely park in the posh neighborhood he lived in and do what teenagers with teeming hormones do. Since we had the Volvo wagon and there was a mattress in the back we laid down the back seat and had a little love nest. People complain about sex in cars, but the boxy Volvo has a lot of room and being blessed with long legs, the roof provided some traction that worked out well for me. So there we were, buck nekkid and both of us with our heads in the game, in “the zone” if you will, when a barrage of floodlights cascaded upon us. Boyfriend valiantly lay down upon me to cover my nakedness as he draped a piece of clothing across his pasty white rump. The sheriff asked us what we were doing. To which I replied that it should be pretty obvious and made comment that he can’t possibly be so naïve as to need to ask. Then the sheriff told us to get out of the car. Again I had to be the voice of reason and asked to be allowed to put our clothing back on. Princes that they were, they said that would be fine… uncomfortably, looking at them while they have the lights trained on us, finally I asked if they would divert their lights. I had no problem giving all the goods to Boyfriend, but inbred yay-hoo sheriffs… I think not.

Upon pulling ourselves together, we were subjected to the standard questions and produced the standard documentation… which is where things got sticky. I gave them my brand new license and Boyfriend gave them his learner’s permit. You see, Boyfriend was 15 years old. You could have tipped those sheriffs over with a feather. They said they don’t often see an older girl with a younger boy and they threatened to bring me up on statutory rape charges. I made sure that they took note that he was perfectly grown man size and acted like more of a man than most of the “certifiable” adults who were my age. Boyfriend explained that nothing we were doing was against his will and that he was under no circumstances being taken advantage of. I assured them that his momma knew damned well that we were rutting like animals and why the hell did they think we were here and not snugly tucked into one of our beds. No parent wants to hear their kid going at it! Somehow, that convinced them that we were on the up and up and they let us go but not before admonishing me for my perversion and telling me that if I was a boy, I’d be taken in. I think they gave Boyfriend a wink and a thumbs up when I turned away from them. I resisted calling them sexist pigs since I was smart enough to know when to resist poking a bear with a stick. Off we went to the next darker and lonelier spot and finished up the task at hand.

I’ve always had a thing for younger fellas. Or so it would seem from my dating history. Boyfriend was one of several boys who were deflowered in my loving arms. What can I say, I was a sexually adventurous girl. Most of the others were before him and there was one virginal takedown after Boyfriend was history. It seems that I might have had a thing for defiling tender innocence as well. But Boyfriend was the only one who I didn’t cast away right after the sweat dried.

I’M BACK!