My Friendship with Ray Haney
CHAPTER EIGHT
A couple of days after the “incident” Ray and I were eating ice cream sundaes at the drug store and overheard the town clown cops, Wimpy and Jigs, bragging about the “big bust” they’d made the day before when they hauled in some homeless disorderly drunk who’d been seen hanging around down by the railroad tracks. Turns out, too, the old geezer had warrants out in other states for his arrest on a variety of charges, including armed robbery and forgery — even rape and murder! Jesus, to think!
Well, the months and years, they rolled by, idyllic for the most part, but we were both growing up, becoming older, and I’d like to say wiser, but in truth we were growing apart. And where all that would have taken us, beyond our teenage years, is forever unknowable, because it all came to a sudden, crashing end one day when Ray committed an egregious act, an unspeakable transgression, that he had the gall to blame on me!
You see, all this time, the innocence of youthful serial masturbation had given way to viler urges and baser desires as adolescence gave way to incipient manhood. To escape his dysfunctional family, Ray had frequently spent nights over with me, especially when my older sisters’ cute friends would also be staying over. I never thought anything of it, never put two and two together.
Sometimes, the girls would host a pajama party sleep-over, and if Ray got wind of it, he’d always make a plan to spend the night. What he was most interested in at this stage of his life was not sneaking out in the middle of the night or watching old episodes of Batman and The Twilight Zone until past midnight, or whatever it was we used to do together when we stayed over at one another’s place. Ray was now into sneaking around in the dead of night when the girls were all asleep in the fold away cots or on the couch and gingerly approach them as quiet as a church mouse so he could . . . feel them up.
When Ray first told me about his derring-do middle of the night antics, feeling up my sisters’ girlfriends, I was like, “Uh, Ray, are you kidding? That’s not right.”
But he persuaded me to set aside my chickenshit reservations and accompany him on one of his furtive feel up missions one night when Cheryl Brown, who was sixteen, hot and sexy, and her tantalizingly nubile friend, Janet Cummings, who was fifteen, were invited over to spend the night.
Ray asked, “Hey, do you mind if I sleep over at your place with you tonight?”
Though I was older and growing weary of sleeping in my little bed with Ray, I consented, thinking maybe we could set up the tent and sleep outside. “Sure, Ray, no problem.”
I was leery of Ray’s intentions, his blatant ulterior motive for wanting to spend the night. I harbored a deep conviction — against my better ethical judgment — that it just wasn’t right, but I went along with it anyway, ’cause Ray always held sway and convinced me it would be cool, “and just you wait, you’ll see.”
At around one in the morning, Ray jostled me awake out of a weird dream and I followed him guiltily as we snuck out of my bedroom and tiptoed out to where the girls were sleeping. I hung back a little out of deference to Ray’s expertise in these matters, watching him stealthily approach the two sleeping girls. Janet was clad in just her skimpy panties and was braless under a tee shirt. She was lying there so tenderly, lightly snoring, like a kitten, when she momentarily gave Ray a start appearing to open her eyes. Ray froze for a second in the muted dark, before feeling emboldened to make a move.
Ever so cautiously, he began to pet her thigh and lift up her baggy tee shirt to try to get a peek up in there, but that was too risky, so he bent over and sniffed her longing crotch, then turned and looked at me and licked his lips, flashing me a grin and a wink. I cringed, I really did.
Then, Cheryl stirred and moaned in a dreamy state as though she was half-aware of what was going on. Titillatingly, by accident or design, I’m not sure, one of her delectably budding little breasts slipped out from beneath her loose tee shirt, and her legs “inadvertently” opened wide to expose what Ray later called her “pulsating camel toe.”
It seemed she was onto the charade and didn’t mind one little bit. It was hard to tell if the girls were faking sleep, but now, after a few silent cautious moments, it appeared both girls were indeed sound asleep. I dared not hone in on Ray actions or make a move to touch one of the girls myself, even though I was starting to feel something tingly down there at the thought of it all and the near olfactory sensation of sweet-smelling armpits and crotches, despite my best efforts to quash this clearly wrong lustful emotion from surfacing and unleashing upon the girls.
I could see now, with a mixture of surprise, amazement and disdain, that Ray had taken his pecker out of pants and had a hard-on and was starting to jack off right there on his knees. That did it for me, shattering my prurient reverie and fantasies. I turned away and went back to my bedroom, not before urging Ray with frantic waves of my arm to knock it off and come quickly before he got caught red-handed. How different this was from back a couple of years ago when Ray was floggin’ it on the toilet to Pussy Galore’s picture in Dad’s Private Black Book when I thought that was bold!
Well, these lewd shenanigans persisted every so often for a couple of months. Then one day Ray hatched a demonic plan to spend the night, having gotten wind that a new sexy friend was staying over — seventeen year old Beth Mansfield who was, hands down, as hot as they come, and just innocent and flirtatious enough to make you think she wanted you, but it was pretty obvious she was a virgin and had zero intentions of “putting out” as she came from a very nice family, she was a “good girl” and a cheerleader at school.
Ray had confided to me one day that he was infatuated with Beth to the point of stalking her. He was determined to be the first to “pop that honey’s cherry.” I was taken aback at his crude language and bold assertion. This no longer sounded like the Ray Haney I knew and admired and respected, but what the hell . . .
“Ray,” I pleaded, “That’s ridiculous, she doesn’t want anything to do with you. Besides, you’re a fucking virgin yourself!”
I was half-joking, not really knowing, but figuring it must be so because Ray told me everything, so if he’d had intercourse with a chick, especially with Beth Mansfield, then believe me, I’d know about it!
“Look, I’ll bet you twenty dollars I can get into her panties! Tonight,” Ray bragged.
The bet seemed a ludicrous proposition and gross exaggeration of Ray’s sexual prowess and appeal to Beth, because Ray Haney was decidedly not Beth Mansfield’s type, and besides, rumor had it she was already in a relationship with Tim McGonigle, the basketball team captain.
“Ah, screw that fucker,” Ray told me. That only served to embolden him to follow through on what began to seem to me more and more like a twisted revenge fuck.
Still, I was pretty clueless and passed on the bet, and blew the whole thing off, because I knew Ray too well, and knew he could not ever, would not ever, do anything untoward or bad, or purposely hurt anyone. Harmlessly feeling up my sister’s friends, and jacking off at the altar of their bed, that was one thing. But a revenge fuck? Nah, no way. Still, I was curious if and how Ray intended to plumb the depths of Beth Mansfield’s aromatic, virginal bush, but I dropped it.
Come that fateful night a couple of weeks later, we all hung out together and enjoyed snacks and sodas and played some card games together with my middle sister and her friend, Beth Mansfield. I couldn’t believe my sister actually let us hang out with them, but the mood was convivial and my sister liked Ray, and Beth thought we were both “cute” and fun, too, so things were looking up for Ray and his plan.
At one point, I saw Ray go fetch Beth another Diet Tab from the kitchen and didn’t think anything about it until a few minutes after that. Beth began complaining about being “soooooo groggy” and then her words became slurred. She said she felt “dizzy” and “off” and had to go to bed. Poor girl, I thought, what’s that all about.
Beth ended up barely making it to the couch, and nearly passed out on the floor and had to be helped put to bed by my sister, who thought Beth had just taken sick or something. We all ended up calling it a night, and went our separate ways to hit the sack. Ray and I fell asleep side by side in my junior bed, which was beginning to feel smaller and smaller by the second.
I had actually forgotten about Ray’s bet from a couple of weeks ago, regarding his lustful scheme, and even Beth’s sudden turn for the worse at the card game didn’t rouse my suspicions much, but the next morning, when we were woken up by a hubbub of loud talking and crying, I knew something bad had happened. It was Beth drowning in tears, explaining to Mom and my four sisters, all gathered about her, consoling her and trying to make sense of what she was saying, before finally realizing that the poor girl was telling them that something awful, inexplicably bad, had happened to her during the night.
Ray and I skulked out of my bedroom over to where the incident was unfolding in the living room. Beth was supine on the couch staring up at the ceiling blank-faced with swollen eyes. I was incredulous and highly disturbed by the scene, and thought it very odd (suspicious) how Ray was looking so hang-dog and sheepish. Beth turned over on her side and between near uncontrollable sobs, looked at us and blurted, “Which one of you creeps did this to me?”
The collective look of astonishment and consternation on my Mom’s and sister’s faces in their half-formed putative belief that perhaps it actually was ME who was the culprit, made my head spin, my heart ache and flutter, and my stomach and guts turn upside down and inside out, all of which made it appear like I actually WAS the guilty party.
Ray was just standing there hanging his head, nodding, pursing his lips resolutely, his steel trap of a mind spinning a web of deceit, figuring out how to implicate me and get him off the hook. After a long dramatic pause, he looked up at my Mom and eyed Beth, and pointing directly at me said, with emphatic conviction, “It wasn’t ME! It was HIM!”
Beth, my Mom and sisters all looked at me disbelievingly. I was overcome with a mix of uncontainable emotions seething up from deep in my bowels with volcanic fury. I was simultaneously aghast, flabbergasted, and gobsmacked by the utterly false smear, the blatant, patently dead wrong allegation. Initially, I stuttered and stammered in an aphasic state of angst and horror that such an incomprehensible turn of events was actually happening, that Ray had actually pointed his finger at ME and blamed ME for the atrocious act committed against Beth!
My senses returned and I launched into an eloquent defense of my honorable self, and didn’t hold back one ounce besmirching Ray’s flawed moral character, making known his many sexual proclivities and perversities and how he’d been sneaking down over the months to feel up all the girls who’d been staying over. Audible gasps filled the air and eyeballs near popped out at my revelations, but it seemed that I was winning my Mom, sisters and Beth over to my side as the more truthful version of events unfolded.
But Ray was never one to back down. I could not believe my ears! He continued to categorically deny everything! He said I was the one lying, I was the ringleader and instigator, I was the rapist, I was the one with the purple pills! (Oh, my God, how could I have forgotten about Buford’s purple pills he’d given to Ray?) Ray insisted convincingly and passionately, wanting to know how could he, being an upstanding Christian, possibly be responsible for committing such a monstrous and heinous act? My jaw dropped at the realization that I was in the presence of someone I no longer knew. Ray Haney: prevaricator, sociopath, sick individual. How had it come to this? Given he himself had been abused and raped since he was seven years old, perhaps that explains it. Will I ever know, really?
But there we were in the moment, caught in a he-said / he-said situation, but obviously my Mom believed me, and I think so did my sisters and Beth, but Ray was doing his best to hornswoggle them with clever lies and gaslight them with counter-punching alternate scenarios, it was all so confusing. Mom wanted to hear more about the “feeling up episodes” and how long they’d been going on, and I told her, and she scolded me for not having told her sooner about Ray’s lascivious midnight forays. In HER house! Under HER roof! With HER daughters!?
But Ray didn’t budge. He just stood there and continued with his bald-faced lying sack of shit defense. “I’m telling you,” he insisted, pointing squarely at me with a scornful look of deprecation and anger, “It was him who did this to you, Beth. I respect you too much to ever think about doing such a thing. I’m a Christian, you know that!”
I stopped him short, calmly refraining from a visceral urge to scream or punch him. “Ray, man, you’re sick! Once you get out of jail or the psychiatric ward, wherever they end up putting you, you’re gonna need more than God to help you.”
Then — no one saw it coming. Without warning, Ray dashed off in a stunning and sudden exit, darting out the door as fast as he could run. I was too emotionally overwhelmed to chase after him, and then Mom got on the phone and called the police and in ten minutes Wimpy and Jigs had arrived to file a report and then went off to corral Ray and bring him to justice.
Mom then called Beth’s mom to explain what happened, and then an ambulance came to take Beth to the doctor. It all happened so fast and everyone was in tears, even me now, because I felt betrayed by my best friend, and appalled by his actions, and felt real sorry for poor Beth who now might even be pregnant, and what a horrible way to have to lose your virginity. Luckily, it turned out Beth was not pregnant, but she was now “damaged goods” as her distraught mother told my Mom.
Well, as you can imagine, that was the final nail in the coffin that sealed the end of my friendship with Ray Haney.
Stay tuned for the POSTSCRIPT!