Doing Time

The rest of the evening saw a mixture of dancing, laughing and drinking.  The latter was being carefully calculated by Carl, as he wanted Annabel Lee to drink enough to be open to his advances, but not so much as to pass out.  The foursome decided to leave at 11.30 p.m...The two men helped Sherri and Annabel Lee into the back... For once, Carl took his time.  He was volubly telling Darryl about his big plans for his and Annabel Lee's future.  Sherri and Annabel Lee chatted tipsily together, laughing at just about everything --most of which would be less than amusing when sober.  For her part, Annabel Lee wanted to fill the space both within her and outside her with words --words which would somehow relieve her of the mounting pressure within her chest...Throughout the evening, Carl's eyes had slowly, but surely, filled her with the pressure she now felt within herself: eyes that leered, winked and lusted for her.  Eyes that had begun to remind her of her father's eyes.  Eyes that peeled off her clothing.  She now realized that she had been undressed dozens --maybe even hundreds --of times by men --not just by Carl and her father, but by boys at school, teachers, and shopkeepers.  Something finally clicked for her and began to make sense.  For years --since she had begun to develop as a woman --she had felt there was something wrong with her --and that this was why her father had looked at her the way he did; and that this was why he had hit her and her mother; that they had somehow been doing something wrong and needed to be punished, that they had broken rules which weren't written down and could only be discovered once they were broken.  In her mildly inebriated state she began to feel elevated.  She breathed deeply and now it seemed that the heavy pressure of air had been replaced by something lighter than air --perhaps helium --yes, that was it, she was a helium-filled balloon floating over her past and could clearly see the topography of her life-land below.  But then she remembered that her father had hit her even when she was tiny --long before she reached adolescence, long before he began to look at her in that way, long before that night.  At this realization, her balloon-self began a rapid descent, but before crashing into the terrain of her memory below, it was lifted aloft by the lighter-than-air truth of her realization that men's stares had nothing to do with something in her, but something in them.  Secure in this revelation, she felt that perhaps she could figure out why her father had beaten her so often at another such `elevated' time.  She would hang on tightly to the truth that men looked at her in that way because of who they were, and not because of her.