I’M HOLDING BACK ON describing all the adventures, as the youthful and sometimes dangerous happenings of one kid are far more relevant to that kid than to anyone else. Yet I’ve hardly touched on the energetic vault of memories from my teenage years, that vault being mostly charged by the electricity of the opposite gender.

As stated previously, the desert was almost always unobserved, unsupervised, and delicious in its abandonment. The only reason for an adult to be out in that wasteland was to hunt for critters, but there was so little to hunt. And the ground we trod upon was owned by many different people, most of whom had the foresight to invest in it for the long term but never had reason to set foot there. It was a magnificent, quiet haven, the perfect place for sexually inquisitive teens, parties, and general carousing.

One fine, auspicious fall morning in 1973 before the first bell, I bragged to my friends that I had surreptitiously acquired and stashed a full six-pack of sixteen ounce malt liquor in the desert flats east of the high school. In those days, it wasn’t that hard for a high schooler to acquire alcohol of any kind in Arizona.

The drinking age had recently been lowered to nineteen, and you only needed a friend with a manly beard and a small pair of cajones to confront a barely drinking-age employee at the cash register with an air of extreme certainty. At least half the alcohol my friends and I imbibed was courtesy of one upper classman who looked the adultish part and knew an unquestioning young acquaintance clerking at a local convenience store.

Malt liquor, the lesser of all brews, was the easy choice for most of the guys. It got us tipsy quicker due to its higher alcohol content, was cheap, and tasted a little heartier than piss water. The girls, on the other hand, tended to go for sweet, cheap wine. Vintage it was not, usually running a buck or so per quart, though choking down that poorly manufactured swill tended to hammer down a worse aftereffect than the malt liquor.

In high school, most social actions I engaged in were done in some context of girls, and the intended purpose of this six-pack was no exception. My plan was to drive my girlfriend Elena to the desolate hiding place one evening after her pom-pom practice, drink the brew, loosen both of us up sufficiently, and pursue the usual follow-on events.

Elena. What a beauty! Unblemished olive skin, long black hair and the most perfectly kissable lips. At the start of our extended high school relationship, we’d kiss for hours in my car, often in the high school parking lot.

I couldn’t get enough of her. Here I was, this scrawny, lightweight, wimpy runner and wrestler. And there she was, a gorgeous Greek goddess in her ebullient, pom-pom perfection.

“Why pick me?” I’d wonder. “She could have any guy. Can you imagine what our kids would look like?” Of course, that’s a dangerous thought for any teenager to entertain, male or female, but it’s a natural one.

Her father was a full-blooded, robust, and friendly second-generation Greek-American. Although she indicated he worked a normal job, she constantly teased that he was also a silent member of the “Greek Mob.’ She always followed that tease by a laugh and comments about my needing to treat her with proper dignity, and to definitely avoid getting her pregnant under penalty of severe torture.

Setting aside the malt liquor desert adventure for a moment, you can imagine how I felt when facing her father and mother the night of ‘Wake-up, little Elena.’

Like the song about Suzie, Elena and I were at the drive-in, probably the best place next to the open desert for teenage sexual escapades. In the desert, you weren’t concerned about passers-by, though the drive-in was somewhat different. Kids and families might saunter by with sodas and buckets of popcorn, and the curiosity seeker might even inauspiciously glance inside your car to get a view of activities.

Devious males like myself prepared for such uninvited intrusions by stashing a few bed linens on the floorboards of the car’s back seat. If necessary, it doubled as alternate seat upholstery for our beaters. If it appeared the night might go as planned, you’d extend the sheets across the side windows, locking them up in the window cracks. This prevented onlookers from onlooking, and curious passersby were forced into considerable efforts to visually scale the trunk or front hood for a proper look at the goings-on within.

That night, we settled quickly into our privacy. Both of us had the clear understanding we were not there only for the movie, popcorn, and drinks. We were there for each other, and each other was what happened, starting at 8 p.m.

“Greg!” Elena screamed, bolting upward, her half naked body exposed in the windows. “My God, do you know what time it is?”

We were in the back seat of my Ford, splayed across the long, flat, blue vinyl bench seat. Not caring about onlookers from the few remaining cars in the lot, whose occupants were no doubt similarly engaged, I vaulted over the front seat with a minimum of clothing on and groped in the darkness for my watch.

“Shit! A quarter after one.”

I looked back. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she gave me that ‘I’m dead’ look.

We both knew what this implied since her house was forty-five minutes away. Getting her home, a sixteen-year-old, at midnight? On the hairy edge of acceptable and better have a credible excuse. 1:00 a.m.? Grounding certainly, though not for more than a week. 2:00 a.m.? Tortuous death via familial ties.

We had just recently seen ‘The Godfather’ movie at a theater, and my mind was racing. I imagined a few of her father’s friends would be outside her house in a dark sedan, waiting for us to pull up. While Elena might be allowed to slink indoors to her own fate, her dad’s friends would wrap their massive arms around me and suggest in a very threatening tone, ‘Greg, buddy, let’s go for a ride and get acquainted. We can help you understand the meaning of respect.’

That’s where my mind was after five hours of roughhousing in the Ford’s back seat. As a teenager, however, my thoughts were no longer about my love for her or those hours of pleasure. Instead, I was pondering how to sidestep her inevitable, forthcoming ask.

We began the long trek back, and Elena was very quiet with her head slumped down. She stared blankly at the glove box, wondering about her own certain punishment.

“Sorry,” I repeated when we pulled in front of her house at 2 a.m. I was relieved no unusual vehicles were out front and was thinking that my apology would be enough. She could tell her parents I was sorry, and I could get off scot free. I kept the car running to solidify my cowardly intent.

“The lights are on inside,” she winced, gazing toward her house with the remorse of a felon facing the hangman’s noose. “I’m sure my parents are still awake.”

“Have you thought of an excuse?” I asked, fully confident that I was now an unaffected party to what was about to happen.

Her head snapped back, and she stared me down. “Me?” she asked. “‘We,’ you mean. Have we thought of an excuse?”

My knuckles were frozen white on the steering wheel, and I didn’t want to let go. Since she had said so little during the drive home, I assumed she was planning to take the bullet and was silent only because she needed time to create a viable rationale for our tardiness.

That was how I would dodge the unpleasantness, I thought. Sure, her dad might make an off-handed comment when I saw him again in a week or two, but by then his legendary temper would have dissipated and most of the sordid waters of that late night memory would have long-passed under the bridge.

“Wha…what do you mean by that?” I replied, as stunned as a dove clipped by a speeding vehicle.

“You’re coming inside with me.”

It was a statement, not a question. A cold, courageous, appropriate statement.

“Are you asking if I will come inside with you?”

“No. We’re both going inside.”

I was shaking my head. Visions of a dark sedan, a ‘36 Chevy Standard, crossed my mind. ‘They’re hiding around the corner. It’ll be my last ride.’ I quickly scanned the periphery, searching for the sedan.

“Why would you want me to go inside? They’re your parents.”

Knowing I was relatively gutless, she had already developed the perfect come-back. “Yes, they are my parents, and you brought their sweet, Catholic, sixteen-year-old, virgin girl home from the drive-in at two in the morning.”

She had to remind me of that. Virgin. It’s not that we wanted to change this. At sixteen, I had no desire to impregnate any girl, despite my desire to do so in any one moment.

Stupefied, I mumbled, “Uh, what would we say?”

I thought using the conditional ‘would’ might not further commit me to her request or provide an indication that I was conceding.

To my good fortune, she used the silent ride home to actually think beyond her fear, to develop a workable excuse.

“Don’t worry. We’ll tell them we fell asleep. You just need to look sleepy, as if we haven’t been doing what we’ve been doing. Make sense? And even if it doesn’t make sense, you’re still coming inside with me. You may not have to say anything other than to agree with what I say. My dad and mom may be so angry at me that they’re not wanting to deal with you right now.”

That seemed unlikely. They might be equally mad at both of us but not willing to confront me?

Cognizant of my reluctance to budge from the driver’s perch at all, she first unbuckled my seat belt then reached beneath my locked hands on the steering wheel to release the latch on the driver’s side door. This ensured my first step to her house was completed.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shut the now open door, so I obligingly trudged out of the old blue Ford and met her at the edge of the sidewalk. Not thinking straight, I grasped her hand.

She shoved it away.

“My mom,” she whispered, nodding her head for me to glance upward.

And there was her Greek mother at the kitchen sink, staring intently out the window as we approached. A great woman, by the way. Friendly, warm, and kind, but she could yell at her kids like a first class screamer. My heart sank, awaiting judgment.

As we approached the door, it creaked open slowly as if the two parents inside were uncertain who the 2 a.m. visitors might be slogging up their sidewalk.

The doorway was not wide by any means, and it appeared much smaller to us as both parents stood like Praetorian guards at the entry, stern-faced and barely letting us advance. After jostling a dance around them, her dad’s deep, resonant voice boomed out.

“Please, sit you two.”

“Holy crap,” I thought, suddenly feeling like throwing up. “He’s going the polite route first. He’ll pretend he’s in full control of his emotions, even unemotional. Then we’ll see the eddy grow into a dust devil. The crescendo will be a full-fledged tornado. Couches, chairs, and books flying everywhere. Maybe even me.”

I was ready for death or anything near that. I felt he was at least justified to lay me out and punch me in the face. This was his girl, his first of three daughters. He was proud of her. And here was this puny hack she’d been going out with for so long, the hack he tolerated for months while donning a pleasant face, always wondering what the twerp was doing to corrupt his beautiful, innocent daughter. Worse yet, I wasn’t even Greek.

Her mother sat on a sofa seat, tight-lipped, shaking like an M-80 with a centimeter left of fuse. “What happened?”

At that point, I knew where the sixth-degree would come from. She was livid, less so than the father.

“We were at the drive-in,” I began, thinking I’d better do the manly thing and at least fess-up the obvious.

Elena’s face was frozen in fear, and she shook her head imperceptibly. ‘Stop there. Bad move. This is mine,’ she was signaling.

“We fell asleep, Mom,” Elena released in a valiant attempt to save my life.

Both adult heads spun around to stare at their daughter. The two had planned well enough to separate us, placing each at different sides of the living room. That way, they could quiz one, then quiz the other, as if we were actually confessing from separate rooms.

Her dad was a tennis buff, and maybe the left-right movement of his head seemed more natural. ‘We know what they were up to those six hours,’ they imagined. ‘Just get them to slip-up on each version of the story, and we’ll widen the cracks in their excuse.’ That was their parental plan.

Her mother rose from the chair with hands waving erratically in the air. She often used that expression-helper to get her point across. “How could you fall asleep at the movie?”

Bad question for the questioner. The answer was obvious and would only bolster our case.

Elena knew this was her hour to shine at the altar of mistruths. “It was a boring movie, Mom. Greg fell asleep before I did, and by the time we woke up, it was late.”

Her dad interjected. “Movie? What movie could be so boring that you’d both fall asleep?”

Again, another bad question. “Back-to-back Westerns. Three in a row. We were asleep well before the second one started. It’s been a hard week at school for both of us.”

“This girl is lying perfection,” I was thinking.

“You didn’t watch the movies at all, then?” her dad continued.

“A little of the first one.”

At this juncture, I became very concerned and gave Elena back that same look she had just given me. This was her parent’s opportunity to quiz us separately about the first movie, to see whether we actually both watched it or we were just saying we did. Yes, it was a sequence of movies, and I recalled hearing some music. But we were in the back seat with my makeshift curtains up ten minutes after the first movie’s initial credits.

I wasn’t even certain there were three separate movies or two, or whether they were Westerns or detective stories. I only knew neither she nor I could respond to any questions about the storylines or the actors.

Her mother turned to me, and my heart raced frantically. “Oh, God,” I thought. “Here comes the grilling. This woman with whom I get along so well, and now I’ve blown it all for one rollicking night of teenage sexual exploits. This might be the last time. No more sitting in their living room for that great Greek food or bit of steak her father so proudly places before me, his masterpiece of cooking.”

“Greg, you better get home to you mother.”

Perhaps the woman took pity on me. Father died young. Mother just divorced a devil. Either way, I took her comment as my queue and stood up immediately.

Her parents lined up again as door sentries, much as they had when we entered. As I walked by Elena, I dared to glance at her. She was head-down and rolling her eyes, anticipating the yelling and screaming that would certainly follow my departure. Shimmying carefully past them and out the doorway, I apologized and said goodnight, though that was not such a good night for Elena.