We left the bar and went to another which for some odd reason would
not allow children in even when our new sorta cousin begged in her
most pouty voice. We were hanging out on the road thinking where to
go next when a procession of low-riders – ten or so- rolled up to
the curb. They were outfitted with curb feelers, purple under lights,
spinning rims (which were kinda new at the time), some rather robust
sound systems and were chock full of big black men that poured out
onto the sidewalk that we were loitering on. It was very intimidating
for a small town boy who had never seen a spectacle like that I
didn't know what we were going to do but our newly minted sorta
cousin was unphased she just started asking the new arrivals if they
had any pull into getting us into the club. They did not, but they
did say we should go home because we were in a bad neighborhood for
this time of night. I thought that sounded sensible and was ready to
call it a night. We did leave but about a mile away we drove passed a
park that had the sprinklers on and we stopped to run through the
sprinklers. Well, the car stopped and my sister and her new
cousin-ish friend disrobed down to their nakies and ran through the
sprinklers whooping and screaming, a little loud in my opinion, for
naked teenage girls at midnight in an area that a big local man just
told us was unsafe. I was standing by the car under a yellow
streetlight not joining in and not having fun. I was looking all
around to see where our murderers where going to come from. A group
of about ten guys came walking down the street and I could hear them
talking loudly about the girls in unreasonably deep voices. When they
got closer they yelled over at the girls and told them to come over.
The girls ran up to the car and got a few skivvies on before they
went to talk to the boys. I was imagining ways in which I could run
and get help before were were all killed. But all of the houses
around looked dark and not readily helpful. Our cousin-in-law ran
over and started talking to the boys who she realized that some of
them she knew from school. We were 10 miles across town from where
this girl lived and went to school but by some magical coincidence
the one group of people we meet in the middle of the night in a
parking lot was a couple of boys she knew. They asked what we were
doing and then to a boy commented that we were in way to bad a
neighborhood for white kids to be out goofing off in the middle of
the night. We kept hearing that so I was starting to believe it. We
talked with the kids for a minute and then I finally got the girls to
relent to calling it a night. When we got back into the car our not
related cousin got in the backseat with me instead of riding in the
front with my sister. She cuddled up against me and tried to start
kissing me. I don't think making out with a distantly related cousin
by marriage would be strictly illegal but I was not really
comfortable with the idea so I gentle deflected her advances and just
gave her a chaste side cuddle instead. We went back home and dropped
off our new friend and never saw her again.
