girl scout perv

I loved our girl scout house. It was behind the board of health on a little dirt path. It smelled of earth and paper mache. The building itself was sort of decrepit - with two large rooms and a small kitchen. There was a large tree outside that we would climb and jump rope beneath. Meetings were held on Tuesday nights at 7. If we had nothing scheduled, our scout masters would just let us play and run around. Our favorite thing to do was to shut off the lights in the back room and play hide and seek.

One night, with only a few of us at the meeting, we were playing in the dark. A light flashed on and off through our window. We started screaming and giggling. Crouched beneath the window, we held hands and wondered who, or what, was shining a light in the window. The back of our building faced the back of a run down tenement. At first we could only see fire escapes and a bright light peeking at us. Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we were able to make out a hairy, pink....thing. We squealed and threw ourselves on the floor beneath the window. Some girls covered their eyes. (I covered my ears. I always did when I got scared). We weren't sure what we had seen, so we held hands and stood up defiantly to face our fear.

It was a man. A big fat hairy man. He was naked. His "thing" was poking straight out from his body. He stroked it and licked his lips. We all screamed in revulsion and ran around in circles in the dark. We collided into one another and fell into a heap on the floor. Each girl looked stricken and confused. The light continued to cut through the dark, searching for, or signaling us. Our screams were relentless. Finally, the scout master Marge came in, flipped on the light and asked why we were screaming. We all remained silent. Marge glared at us. She asked a second time, but none of us could meet her eyes or confess what we had seen. She gave up after a moment, saying it was time for us to go home.

I got a ride home with my friend Lisa and her mom. We were uncharacteristically quiet. Lisa and I stared at each other in the backseat. We were sullen. When her mom asked what was wrong we said nothing, then burst into a fit of giggles. She shrugged and dropped me off at home.

All week at school we whispered about the naked man. What did he want? Would we see him again? Why was his thing out like that? Could we get pregnant if we looked at it for too long? We avoided everyone who hadn't seen "it". No one else could understand our intense preoccupation. We somehow felt older, wiser, too mature for tag and recess.

We went straight into the back room and shut the lights off when we got to the girl scout house. We sat clustered beneath the window, waiting for his signal. After several minutes, there was no movement. We decided to laugh and yell to attract his attention. Still nothing. Finally, Lisa began flicking our light off and on. Within seconds, he answered us with his light.

We peered through the window and stood transfixed. The man was again fully naked, with his thing sticking straight out. This time, he was lifting a barbell. He let his thing rest on the barbell and lifted it along with the barbell. He did this several times, huffing and puffing, his face red and contorted. I felt cramps in my stomach, and I feared that I would vomit. The hair on the back of my neck prickled and I wanted to tell someone. But I could not look away.

We heard Marge call us from the other room and ran away from the window. Our faces burned with shame and excitement. The next several weeks passed in a blur. Every week the man would shine the light in our window. Every week we would stand there, watching him naked, lifting weights, stroking himself, smirking into the darkness at us. One week Lisa even taunted him by lifting her shirt and exposing her belly button. He dropped the barbell as if he were in pain.

I became more and more uneasy and withdrawn. I felt we were doing something wrong and I was afraid. The man had become more animated, pleading with us to come outside. He would gesture wildly and when we would refuse, he would bang on the wall angrily and point a threatening finger at us. Several of the girls stopped coming to meetings altogether. Our mothers were becoming suspicious.

One night, Lisa and I were the only two at the meeting. We walked into the back room reluctantly, keeping the light on. After a few minutes of Monopoly, the light searched us out. Lisa and I looked at each other with dread. We dragged ourselves to the window and looked out. Again, he was fully naked, grinning at us through the darkness. He held up a magazine that had naked pictures of women. The pictures shocked and scared me. The women were bent over in some, tied up in others. The man looked at the pictures, licked them, and pointed at us. We ran away from the window and hid in a closet.

On the drive home, Lisa and I were both shaking. Her mom pulled over and asked what was going on. The dam burst. We told all about the man, his thing sticking up, the barbell, the magazine. Her jaw tensed and her eyes narrowed at us. We cried and shook, expecting to get into serious trouble. Instead, Lisa's mom assured us that everything was okay, we weren't in trouble, and the man would never bother us again. I wept with relief.

A few days later, Lisa and I accompanied a few police officers to the girl scout house. They asked us to point to the man's window, which we did. We cried and held hands. The officers told us we were brave. I did not feel brave.

The man never shone a light in our window again. The girl scout house lost some of its charm for me. It felt cold and bright, exposed, uninviting. We didn't play in the back room so much after that. Sometimes, though, we would dare each other to go in there alone, flicking the light on and off, on and off. We would then crouch by the window, breath drawn in, waiting for the light to shine in on us again.