My Boy Scout Summer: Big R's Collapse

We got back from the high adventure just in time to get back to school.  My Boy Scout Summer was over, almost.

School meant football practice and other before and after school commitments, so I wasn't paying attention to the tragedy unfolding in Lisa's life, until she cornered me in the library one day.

“I need to get out of my house for a while,” she said.  Looking confused as I must have, she continued, “Can you please ask me out on a date?”

Well, I remembered Big R's bulging biceps and not-so-subtle threat.  “I don't think your dad would like that,” I began.

“He's not there.  Mom threw him out of the house.”

Scandal is like the lifeblood of the Mormon church and gossip is the tissue that holds the body of membership together, but this was stuff I hadn't heard.  Of course I was on permanent avoidance from my father and my mother was barely able to say two words to me without getting frustrated and crying, so there wasn't much communication going on in CV Rick's house.  Ah, the joys of being a teenager.  If I had been speaking to them, I'd have gotten the scoop for sure.

I asked her to the movie and made arrangements to double date with my friend Terry and his girlfriend. It's usually a requirement among Mormon kids to double date and I wasn't taking any chances.  Double dates were supposed to keep the one-on-one situations minimal and keep a girl's virginity protected. What it really did was provide double make-out sessions where the front seat and back seat of the car were treated as isolated rooms of encounter.

We went on the standard Mormon-kid date.  Pizza at Pizza Hut, movie at the theater, and then groping at some isolated lookout point.  It was a nice night, so Terry and his girlfriend went to make out at a picnic table nearby while Lisa and I stayed at the car.

We started talking.  Big R, an icon of the church community, a MWM (Mormon WITH Money), a Vietnam vet and father of two girls, had done something unbelievable.  At least it was unbelievable to me.

Lisa's older sister was Mary as you recall.  Mary was going to college at Idaho State University which was only 30 miles away in Pocatello, Idaho.  So, Mary was home a lot and when she was home a lot so was her best friend, Gretchen.  But Gretchen wasn't just at Big R's house when Mary was home from school. Gretchen was over there when Lisa's mom wasn't home and when Big R was.

Lisa had come home one day from her job at the Arctic Circle where she was the drive-in girl and had walked into the basement where Big R was having sex with Gretchen right in the basement on the weight bench.  She told me that she saw Gretchen straddling her dad and Gretchen's long red fingernails, painted with designs of silver lightning in the red, were digging into Big R's back.  And the screaming and moaning. 

She went to her mom's office.  Mrs. Big R was some kind of secretary for a Realtor or lawyer or something.  I don't really remember.  But she didn't try and keep it a secret. There was a grand confrontation and the scratches across the back were undeniable proof.  One of the most amazing things to me was the Big R, caught red-handed (so as to speak) by his own youngest daughter, tried to deny it to his wife. 

Mrs. Big R had suspected some kind of affair and they'd been fighting badly for months before the truth was revealed.  But she didn't know that it was going on in her own house, and she didn't know that it was with the best friend of her daughter. No one knew that until Lisa walked in on them.

This was all the stuff that had gone down.  Some of it before and the horrible discovery during our High Adventure trip, and it was the reason Big R couldn't go and Sir, Yes Sir had replaced him.  Me, being a self-absorbed asshole didn't have a clue as to any of it until it was told to me, slowly, syllables annunciated.  I'm not quick on the uptake.

So there I was with Lisa by my car and Terry a ways off with his girlfriend.  I listened to the story of Big R's monumental collapse told through streaming tears.  There was going to be a divorce.  Lisa's mom had already thrown his stuff out of the house.  Lisa didn't know what to do.  She didn't want to be at home, she didn't know if they were going to stay in town or move, she didn't know if they were even going to keep the house.  So, what did she do?  She asked me to have sex with her.

What was I supposed to do?  Here she was . . . coming out boldly and saying what she'd been hinting at since before the High Adventure trip.

Let's get one thing clear . . . I wasn't a good boy.  I was a dog, a lecherous creep, the kind of boy that fathers don't want prowling around, and if some kid like me comes calling for Medium I'm just going to have to find someone to help me hide the body.  I say this so we're clear about what happened next.

I could have.

She wanted me to.

Because she had nothing else in her life right then that made her feel anything.

And I didn't.  Because even I couldn't take advantage in that way.

I held her and told her that everything would work out just fine.  And I told her that I wanted to have sex with her, but I just couldn't when she was this vulnerable – that I didn't want it to be something she regretted and hated me for later.

Big R ended up moving to California and living with Gretchen until she took off with a younger guy.  I never heard from him, or about him after he got dumped. 

Lisa stayed in Blackfoot for the rest of high school.  She moved in with her Grandparents because she didn't want to change schools and even though they lived in a different church ward, she kept coming to ours.  Her mom moved to Idaho Falls which wasn't very far away.

Mary dropped out of college and became a fixture at the parties I went to.  She was the one who was always falling down drunk near the beginning of the night.

Lisa and I never did have sex.  We dated off and on through the rest of high school, but it never went to that stage. 

I stopped going to scout meetings and stopped being interested in anything scouting related.  I'd earned my Eagle after all, and for me that was it.

- rick, still disbelieving Big R's ultimate stupidity

The beginning post of My Boy Scout Summer

All of them

Comments

[a rose is a rose]

holy heavens batman. what a giant DOPE big r was/is. the holier thou art, the bigger the crash

(even though you've pointed out some idiotic things you've done - AND i ONLY mention them because YOU did - you are quite the noble eagle scout)

[mark]

I was wondering when that shoe was going to drop...from the sublte hints you dropped in earlier posts, I figured there was an affair on the horizon...as for him being dumped by this Gretchen chick...not suprising either. That kind of chick is only in it for the thrills, not the long haul.

But bravo for you my friend. You did the right thing.

[Cherise]

Absolutely fascinating, poor Lisa, I feel her pain. You Rick are a babe. :) You better start searching for plots of deserted land for Mediums boyfriends now. We ladies like to have at least one complete asshat on our dance card. I wish you luck pointing them out to her before she has to discover it herself. ;)

[Success Warrior]

I know a few places where a body will never be found.

[Sister Mary Lisa]

Wow. This story was great...right up to the part where I imagined I was Lisa and I superimposed the image of my own dad doing that and having me walk in on him. Then I got sick.

You did the right thing not taking her up on her offer.

Great writing.