Riding in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good
Beverly Donofrio
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0140156291
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Denied college, Beverly Donofrio lost interest in everything but riding around town in cars, drinking and smoking, and rebelling against authority. She got married and divorced and finally ended up in an elite New England university, books in one arm, child in the other. A book about the compromise between being your own person and fitting into society.
You Can't Fire Me, I'm Your Father
two hamburger buns on each of our plates, and warmed some Green Giant corn. Sometimes Ray and I sat in front of the TV and ate off snack trays, but tonight I thought we’d sit on the back stoop, where it was cooler. When Ray hadn’t shown up by five-thirty, I sat on the stoop with my plate balanced on my knees and tried not to get too worried. The first few times Ray was late I let my imagination run away, picturing him in his car wrapped around a tree or swallowed by a machine at work or simply
I was willing, I was chomping at the bit to personally fight for the rights of all women, with the help of my best friend and fellow victim, Fay. Since they wouldn’t listen when we talked, we took action. On our list, we made columns headed: name, age, astrological sign, penis size, and performance, rated one to ten. Then we dressed up in our hiphugger jeans and skimpy jerseys that left our belly buttons exposed and strutted into the club to lure men home (never the married ones) to lay, fuck,
he might cry, so I said, “What’s the matter? I was just asking you what you want to be when you grow up, and you wouldn’t answer.” “You were talking stupid.” “I know. Sorry. But answer me. What do you want to be?” “A cop.” “A pig! What do you want to be a pig for?” “So I can shoot people.” This coming from a kid who never had a toy gun in his life? This coming from a kid who’d been taught, make peace not war? Then the obvious dawned on me. “You want to be one because Pop is.” “No sir.”
sick to death of boys having all the fun, so we started acting like them: We got drunk in the parking lot before school dances and rode real low in cars, elbows stuck out windows, tossing beer cans, flicking butts, and occasionally pulling down our pants and shaking our fannies at passing vehicles. But even though we were very busy showing the world that girls could have fun if only they’d stop acting nice, eventually it troubled us all that the type of boys we liked—collegiate, popular,
the window seemed louder, seemed to make a hysterical racket, because the neighborhood was so silent. I envied Jason and all the kids. First days of school were exciting. My mind crowded with pictures of Jason’s beginning: playing ring-around-the-rosy, eating a graham cracker and drinking milk through a straw at snack time. The teacher telling some kid, who definitely would not be Jason, to stop blowing bubbles. While I imagined him learning to raise his hand to ask permission to go to the