running with the devil

My best friend through all four years of high school was Maggie (Mag for short) She was also my best friend through college and she is still one of my best friends today. By the time I had crashed the car, I was finally hanging out with the popular crowd. I was not one of the most popular but I had entered into the upper echelon. I was sort of B list, which was fine with me really because the A list wasn’t very interesting to talk to. Maggie was B list too and she is very interesting to talk to. She comes from a really big Catholic Family (10 kids) and she grew up in "the Claw". She was a good tour guide. Also, she is super cute and funny and she was really crazy. We both liked to drink and we both liked to do things that could get us into trouble. During our four years in high school together my mom told me on several occasions that she didn’t want me hanging out with Maggie any more. Maggie’s mom said the same thing to her about me. We scoffed at them. We were glue.

Mag and I were rarely allowed to go out because we were always in trouble. Towards the end of my grounding, my mom let up a bit and I would be able to stay at Mag’s house, with the understanding that we couldn’t go out and do anything. For some reason, my mom thought that we were watched really closely over there, which was so not the case. Mag’s mom was a labor and delivery nurse. She was often working nights, delivering babies at the hospital. Mag’s dad was a commercial airline pilot and his route took him to Japan. He would often be gone for weeks at a time. Mag’s house had a big rec. room in the basement with a T.V. and a pool table. Even when her parents were home, it was pretty much a free for all down there. Maybe every once in a while and adult would yell something down like, “everyone okay?” You could be doing keg stands, as long as someone could say “fine,” you would get away with it. Obviously, Mag and I preferred to stay at her house.

We especially preferred to stay there during our freshman year because she had an older brother who was a senior and we worshiped him. Mag's brother was the lead singer of a band and they played original songs but also did covers of Van Halen and other equally awesome bands. They played at a pep assembly that year and Mag's brother fronted this totally killer version of the Van Halen version of “You really got me now” by the Kinks. Mag's brother really had me going with that song. He had every girl in all of EHS going with it. He was so freaking hot, doing splits and writhing around on the Gymnasium floor, we could barely contain ourselves. I couldn’t believe that I was best friends with his sister and that I got to hang out in his house and could even possibly have an opportunity to talk to him.

Almost every Saturday night we would hang out in Mag’s rec. room and wait until her brother and his friends would come home and watch Saturday Night Live, which was funny then. We would sit around and drink and watch it and laugh and reenact the skits for each other. My favorite was when Mag's brother would play the “Wayne’s World” theme on the guitar – replacing the “Wayne’s World” with “Your Name Here’s World, Your Name Here’s World, Party Time Excellent…. Etc. etc…..” When he did it with my name, it was heavenly.

Around the time that Mag's brother was graduating from high school, Mag and I were grounded again for the second big thing I did that got me in huge trouble. I will tell you about that in a second. We were really restless and decided that we should do something for him, as a gift for graduation. Mag’s family had a video camera and we were always goofing around with it, making funny fake movies. So, we decided to make a music video for him.

Mag has a little sister who at the time was in the fifth grade. She called me a couple of days ago to tell me that she is pregnant and getting married. God, we’re old now I guess. Because Mag's little sister was only in the fifth grade, she wasn’t allowed to go out either. We employed her as our camera man (woman, er…little girl). Then we proceeded to get dressed up like little prostitutes. We put on bikini bathing suits and over them we put on Maggie’s little sister's clothes which were literally five sizes too small. We teased our hair up beyond belief and put on tons or trashy makeup. Then we got some old guitars and we made up a dance routine and set it to the Van Halen recording of “You really got me” but we sang over Sammy Hagar, replacing the word, “Girl” with “Mag's brother's name” “Mag's brother, you really got me now, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doin…. Yeah.” We danced and sang to this song in a really sexy way. And then, (I still can’t believe we did this), then, (I think we did it because we had only choreographed the first half of the song) we striped. We didn’t strip down all the way, we had bathing suits on but my bathing suit was sort of peach colored and Mag’s bathing suit was very small. We were practically naked and we were fourteen years old, super skinny, just getting our boobs and it was extremely child porn like. We did not consider this at the time. We thought it was funny. We worked on the video all night. We couldn’t wait to give it to him. When we sat down to show it to him finally, he laughed at first and then as it went on, he got quieter and quieter, jaw sort of starting to hang open. When it was over, he was like, “wow that’s so funny you guys, thanks so much,” popped the tape out of the vcr and took it with him.

Mag and I were not so quick to catch on to what he had seen in the video that we hadn’t. Until one night when we came down in to the basement and he was sitting there, drinking with a huge group of guys, watching it over and over again, practically beating off to it. They might as well have been watching a porno. In a flash we both realized what was going on – what we had done. WE FREAKED. We tore down the stairs and ripped the tape out of the machine. Her brother chased us around the room, “give it back, it’s mine, you made it for me!!” Now you might think this is a little sick, he was her brother but I was in it too and he was getting a lot of attention from this. Also, this is "the Claw" we’re talking about…we were lucky we weren’t sheep. We might not have gotten off so easily. (click that link, you won’t regret it)

Luckily, at least as far as we know, no copies were made. We kept the tape for a long time and every once in a while when we got drunk enough at college, we would tell the story and pop the tape in for people. It got similar reactions even then. People would laugh then the guys would get quiet and have to leave the room. Eventually, I lost the tape completely, in some move probably. If I still had it, I’d post it here. On second though, maybe I wouldn’t.

I didn’t set out to tell this story though. I was going to tell you about the second time I got in big trouble which was before all this. It happened right after I totaled the truck, when my family went on vacation and I was staying with Mag and we were waiting for her brother to come home like always. But he didn’t come home until late that night and we got really bored waiting for him. So we decided to sneak out of Mag’s house, go to my house, break into it, call everyone we knew and throw a party…