THE ONLY GIRL IN THE CAR

A singular story of a girl who, when she discovered boys in the spring of her 14th year, set her sights on having sex with as many as possible.

Dobie was the well-brought-up oldest of six children in a loving Catholic family in a small Connecticut town. But from the day she parked herself on her front lawn waiting for someone to take her virginity to the day six months later when she whispered “okay” to sex with four boys in the back seat of a car, the author was on a search for “bad” boys, “confident, aggressive, dirty-minded.” She found them in the nearby Teen Center, hanging around the pool tables, with their girl friends clustered on couches against the wall. Dobie didn’t want to be one of the girlfriends, she wanted to be like the boys, wild and vital. Her entrée was sex, of course, as she made herself available to one after another, hopping in the car—the only girl—as the boys went off for a beer run. At first, Dobie thrived on the recognition she received for being the town’s designated bad girl, promiscuous and proud of it, even when it manifested itself as gossip and mockery from schoolmates. Though some kindhearted acquaintances took her aside to warn her that her “rep” wasn’t that of the powerful femme fatale she imagined herself to be, and that she was putting herself in real danger, she ignored the warning and all the other portents of disaster that she in retrospect sees all too clearly. One night as she enjoys her status as the only girl in the car, her current flame tells her that he’s promised she’ll have sex with the three other boys riding with them. The demand makes her miserable, but she has no practice saying “no,” and so she suffers through the painful, humiliating experience—with no idea how long the pain and humiliation will last. Her ordeal remained secret from her family and teachers, but her peers—including the boys in the car—taunted, reviled, and threatened her in the most base and cruel manner for the next two or three years. Ostracized, in a black hole of shame, she turned to writing. Now 20 years older and an established writer, Dobie offers an unsettling and unsparing recounting of an incident that she could not examine until now. It is relieved by stories of loving relationships between her and her siblings and by parents who supported her even when they knew something terrible was being hidden.

Strong stuff, but an authentic picture of the emotional fog and urgent needs that sometimes leads teenagers to self-destruct.