Then I felt a hand on my knee. At first I forgave him because I thought maybe it had slipped. After all, I didn’t know him very well and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But then the hand wasn’t on my knee any more. It was way up under my dress. I didn’t want to destroy the mood, so I sort of pulled away from him and whispered in his ear, “Don’t do that.” After all, it’s not really bad if a boy wants to put his hands on you. It means you’re attractive anyway. So I just whispered, “Don’t do that.”

But he didn’t hear me or maybe he’d heard me but didn’t want to destroy the mood by moving away like he’d been shot. Anyway, his hand was still there, so just for good measure, I said again, “Don’t do that.” But this time I made it a little more definite.

“Shhhh, be quiet,” he said. “Don’t destroy the mood.”

Don’t destroy the mood! Golly! All of a sudden I felt my garter undone. Now I knew he’d heard me, so I had to do something else. I decided to get mad. I pulled away from him altogether and said, “That isn’t very nice!”

I wasn’t really angry, but you have to pretend sometimes to keep boys in line. I glared at him and he just sat there smiling, almost like he thought I wasn’t serious about him stopping. So to make certain I repeated myself. “That isn’t very nice!” I tried to make it sound really fierce.

“What isn’t?” He just sat there smiling at me.

“You know. What you were doing. That isn’t very nice.” I was getting really scared, so I added, “Listen, if you want to get in trouble, you can. Tomorrow, I’ll get my father to have you arrested. And he can do it too!” Later, I thought that was a sneaky way to get out of there, but at the time I couldn’t think of anything else.

He grabbed the wheel very tightly. “Boy! boy! You girls! you want to come out here and then you scream papa as soon as something happens. Boy!”

“You just take me home this minute,” I said. So he started the car, took me home and let me out. And to show you what kind of GENTLEMAN he was, he wouldn’t even walk me to the door.

I ran inside and closed the door and locked it. I was relieved, but then I just started to shake all over, and then I started to cry. I must have been scared as anything because I just stood there leaning against the door, shaking and crying.