Drive-ins were a dying breed, but the Highway Star was still going strong. We thought it was named after the Deep Purple song, but it had been around long before that. The marquee had a large white face with a flashing blue neon star in the top right corner. "Highway Star" was scripted in an elegant red arc above the movie title in black block letters. It held the same allure as old Coca Cola wall clocks we sometimes saw in bingo halls. Vandals occasionally re-arranged the letters so the title went from vague silliness to dirty gibberish. HOT STICKY BUNS became TIT HOCKY SNUBS.

None of us -- me, my brother Floyd, and our friends Stymie and Pick -- had been there, but once Floyd was old enough to drive, it was only a matter of time before we pulled off at the Highway Star's winding dirt road. We enjoyed speeding by, pointing at the sign, wailing "Highway Stuhhh" in our best heavy metal voices, then making the sign of the devil with our fingers. Pick pointed out that the sign of the devil was the same as the rally hand signal for the Texas Longhorns football team.

Floyd had no nickname -- he was just Floyd. Stymie was white but liked to go around in a derby hat just like his Little Rascals name sake. Pick was so named because he had a penchant for grinding his hand into the seat of his pants and then smelling his fingers. They called me Taxi. One day, Floyd had challenged me to a fight for some long-forgotten reason, and I backed down. He called me Taxi, and when I asked him why, he said, "Because you're yellow." Two weeks later, when I realized the name was going to stick, I broke a Pepsi bottle over his head.

Floyd had passed his driver's test after two attempts -- he flunked the first time because he parked too close to a strategically-placed fire hydrant by the testing station. Our father had warned him about this and had taken him on countless dry runs of the course on Sunday afternoons. But that was like Floyd -- he may have been a year older than all of us, but he wasn't too bright.

The important thing was he had his license, and our father was willing to let him borrow the Hornet station wagon on Saturday nights to go cruising. The car was the antithesis of cool, and we liked it for that reason. It was canary yellow with a luggage rack on top. The previous owner had plastered on a "Honk if You Do-Si-Do" bumpersticker that our father neglected to scrape off. (Rednecks in cowboy hats were constantly honking and giving the thumb's up sign as they passed us. All of us would wink, leer back and throw "seig hiel" salutes at them.) The interior was black vinyl. In deep summer, sitting on the seats in a pair of shorts could be considered an act of contrition. The steering wheel had a hornet insignia on the horn cushion. Our favorite detail was the glow-in-the-dark dashboard Jesus our mother had crazy-glued above the AM radio. The car whistled and shook when it got over 55, which Floyd loved. He said he felt like he was in the opening credits to The Bionic Man, and he'd yell out the same thing every time: "She's breaking up! She's breaking up!"

We lived for the day we could go to the Highway Star to see our first porno flick. Sexually speaking, we were all self-service and out of our heads. I couldn't vouch for the others, but I was jerking off like a chimp in the zoo. My only regret was that I couldn't use my feet like those chimps. At the time, it seemed like the only option. There were guys who had girlfriends. If they weren't smug, moon-eyed zombies, they gave off either the unbelievable impression that they were having sex every night or doing no better than we were, which seemed even more maddening to me. Most weekend nights found us driving around town trying to get cars with girls in to pull over. It never happened. Sometimes we'd see girls hanging out on the street corners, and since Floyd was driving and the oldest, he took it upon himself to be our leader.

"Hey, you sweet little bitch," he'd yell out the window at two teenage girls.

"Asshole, learn how to count," one of them would yell back. Inside the car, we'd harangue Floyd, who based his philosophy of life on songs like "Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo."

"What's wrong with you, man," Stymie would ask, a bottle of beer hidden between his legs, "you don't treat women like that. We're not going to get laid like that."

"How are we going to get laid?" Floyd would fire back, genuinely perplexed. No one could answer that one. If Floyd took too much flack, he'd invite Stymie, who generally rode shotgun, to try.

"Excuse me, ladies," Stymie would shyly call to a bunch of girls on another corner, "I know this is kind of sudden. But would any of you want to ride around town with us?"

"Fuck off, you freak," one of them would yell back.

We were losers. They were losers, too, but we didn't know that at the time, and they had the moral high ground. But there was nothing else to do. So we drove around in circles, being turned down by the same girls, who seemed to go for drop-outs in souped-up Novas. And the girls in cars were simply doing what we were doing, only they had no urge to communicate with anyone else, beyond teasing.

So we were over-joyed with our mutual decision to sneak into the Highway Star. It had been years since any of us had gone to a drive-in movie. The last one I had remembered seeing was Patton. Pick recalled seeing a double bill with The Love Bug and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. It was a childhood thing. Cans of cream soda in plastic coolers and pajamas. Dozing off after George C. Scott cursed out the movie audience. Our father smiling, and saying, "Goddamn right, George, Goddamn right," while our mother tried to shush him.

Our only exposure to sex was through a few copies of Playboy Pick had stolen from his brother at college. They were wonderful, although I understood immediately that no one really looked like that. I couldn't make the connection between the occasional buck naked native in National Geographic and the bare-ass goddesses in Playboy. The natives had floppy breasts, or really small ones, and they could be odd-shaped, like torpedoes or tear drops. That was reality. And the greater reality was we'd rather stare at air-brushed visions of unreality. If these women existed, we weren't meeting them. Had we met them, we wouldn't have known what to say, beyond, "My turn-off's are air pollution, rude passengers, rainy days and Mondays, too."

The plan was simple -- get the car on Saturday night, and instead of driving around town, make a beeline for the Highway Star and spend the next two hours in skinhound heaven. Since Stymie and I looked our age, and Floyd and Pick were cultivating peach-fuzz mustaches, they would take the car in. Before that, they'd drop off Stymie and me in the woods along the highway, and we'd sneak down to the far edge of the drive-in's field, where Floyd would pick us up. If we had anything else but a station wagon, we could have simply hid in the trunk, like normal people did at family drive-ins. But we weren't even certain Floyd and Pick could pass for 18-year-olds.

"We better watch out for that bear," Stymie said right after Floyd and Pick dropped us off at sun down. We were standing just inside the woods along the highway and letting our eyes adjust to the gloom setting in among the trees.

"What bear?" I asked. Stymie pointed at a sign in a yard across the highway that said, "Natasha, the Dancing Bear." It was the first time I had seen the sign. Beneath it was a large, chain-link enclosed pen, the kind we'd associate with a dog pound. A gaping hole the size of both us put together was in the middle of the fence.

"What kind of moron would keep a bear in a dog pound?" I asked. Stymie and I looked at each other and realized that most adults we knew would walk a bear on a leash and wear a hat made out of ground beef. We slowly picked our way through the sticker bushes and low branches. The summer night was coming down slowly, and it was much darker in the deep woods. We made our way by keeping the sound of the highway directly behind us and veering to the left, where we knew the drive-in was.

After a few hundred yards, I could make out the enormous white screen rising over the woods. It looked like a monolith, and I could see the cars pulling in along the rutted dirt road. Some of them had their head lights on, and they moved slowly, as if in a funeral procession. My only thought was, "All this for a decent hard-on." Any minute, I expected a dancing bear to rip my head off. And if that didn't happen, then I had to sneak into the Hornet, where we'd all sit fearfully for the next two hours, waiting for some weasel-faced attendant to stick a flashlight in our window and bust us for being under-age.

"What was that," Stymie whispered in an urgent tone. I hated when guys did that.

"Don't play that game, man, now's not the time," I said. I turned to look at him, and he wasn't joking.

"I didn't hear a thing," I said.

Stymie's breath rushed out.

"Shit, man, it's Natasha!" he screamed, pointing to our right. I glanced over, and there was something about fifty yards away, maybe a shadow, but the shadow was slowly fading toward us. Twigs and leaves were gently snapping under its movement.

We took it she wasn't dancing in the moonlight. We dropped all pretense of sneaking quietly and broke into a mad dash for the green grass of the clearing. I thought of Spanky in the episode of the Little Rascals where he dreamed of being chased by the giant in the cave, from whom the gang had just stolen a treasure of gold coins. I could picture myself getting out of the situation and telling my mother, "I'll never ever have another erection again as long as I live," while she playfully ruffled my hair and said, "That's my boy."

In a matter of seconds, we were out of the woods. No longer worried about blowing our cover, we tore off through the half-full lot, searching for the yellow Hornet. At the far end, I saw Floyd guiding the station wagon over the hilly speed-bumps on the way in. I grabbed Stymie's arm and pulled him in that direction. As we neared the station wagon, Floyd and Pick stared straight ahead, trying to act like adults, although I could tell Pick had seen us making our mad dash. While the car was moving, I jimmied the back door open and threw myself in, with Stymie close behind.

"What's wrong with you two assholes!" Floyd exploded. Pick put his head in his hands.

"Hey, man," Stymie sputtered, "we nearly got eaten by a bear!"

We were both breathless and sweating. I noticed Stymie was grinning involuntarily, ear to ear, as if he were about to go insane. A thin band of perspiration had formed around the brim of his hat.

"What do you mean, bear. You mean Natasha, the dancing bear?" Pick asked. Stymie nodded, his eyes still unfocused.

"Assholes, my baseball coach told me that bear was shot dead ten years ago when he broke out one Fourth of July. The only reason those goobers keep that sign up is they have the bear stuffed in their living room. When people pull over, they knock on the door, ask about the bear, then get given a tour of the place. They got the bear on a rotating bar and play circus music then charge those losers five dollars for seeing the dancing bear. There is no bear."

"Well, we saw something, and I don't regret running for my life," I blurted out.

"We're going to get busted for sure," Floyd said, "I'd bet right now people are getting out of their cars to rat us out to the ticket-taker."

But Floyd over-estimated the civic-mindedness of the audience. Nothing happened -- we couldn't believe it. But then again we weren't in church or the Kiwanis Club, and these people were there to do what we wanted to do -- watch sex. I scanned the cars in the dying light and saw that the crowd was 99% men. I saw one woman in a Cadillac with a man, and they sat close to each other. Every other car was filled with guys, most older than we were, some as old as our fathers. No one tried to make eye contact. Each carful minded their own business, listening to the Top 40 on the rail-box speakers hooked on the car door. We goofed on the songs in lounge singer croons. "Devil Woman." "Undercover Angel." Stymie noticed that each song was about "bad" women. "Evil Woman." "Witchy Woman." "Rhiannon." Was this supposed to get us in the mood, I asked myself.

"How was it getting in?" Stymie asked Floyd.

"No problem," Floyd said in that tone of bravado special to guys with peach-fuzz mustaches.

"Yeah. You guys owe us two bucks a piece," Pick added.

A few minute after darkness fell, some of the cars honked their horns and blinked their lights. Floyd laughed and joined in. The hit parade snapped off the speakers, replaced by fuzz, and white light illuminated the screen. It was beautiful in and of itself, flickering in the darkness, in rhythm to the crickets, but it lasted only seconds. Music that sounded like a cross between the themes from The Love Boat and Shaft started up on the speaker. We hunkered down in our seats, excited and expectant, as the title Ass Master of the Universe flashed on the screen. We all laughed.

"I thought this was Campfire Girls," I said.

"It's a double-bill," Pick said, "they told us at the ticket booth they couldn't put up this title."

"Ass Master -- this should be right up your alley, Pick," Stymie joked.

Words slowly flowed up from the bottom of the screen, a clear rip-off of Star Wars, and the plot seemed to be about an evil force -- the Ass Master -- taking control of the universe, and how a good force, led by Luke Thighknocker and Hand Solo, was trying to wrestle away his power.

In terms of plot, that was the whole movie right there. The Ass Master was a short, beer-bellied man who looked like our school librarian wearing a cape, go-go boots and a silver flower pot on his head. Wherever he went, he'd bellow out, "Bow down before the Ass Master" in a heavy English accent, and it seemed he only ran into attractive women, whom he'd hypnotize then have anal sex with.

"Man, that's got to hurt," Stymie said, shaking his head, "I had my temperature taken like that last year in the hospital, and I damn near cried."

"Aw, these are pro's," Pick said, "they must do it every day. Do they look like they're in pain?"

They looked bored. We could tell that some of them were laying it on thick, calling out "Oh, baby, baby, don't stop, ooh, king of the universe" in voices dripping with sarcasm. Needless to say, I had a raging hard-on -- we called it wood at that point, and I always remembered a picture in one of our physics books of a scientist hammering a nail with a frozen banana. I didn't like being in this state in front of the guys. None of us had been in the Boy Scouts or owned livestock, so we had no nutty stories of circle jerks or animal husbandry. It was a private thing, and I felt embarrassed knowing Floyd was in the front seat. I didn't want to acknowledge to a family member, even if it was only Floyd, that I had an urge like this.

So I tried to will it away. I thought of our grandmother. Then Florida from Good Times. No luck. Julie Newmar as Catwoman would come slinking back into my imagination, and the visual impetus on the screen, no matter how mechanical, was too much. It made no sense to me -- why drive myself crazy like this? I wanted to be alone with a box of tissues more than anything else in the world.

The movie got stranger as it went on. Luke Thighknocker was a surfer type with a handlebar mustache who had as much luck with the ladies as the Ass Master. He tried every position imaginable, but the ladies seem just as bored. All the while, Hand Solo, a middle-aged Asian man wearing only a Timex, black socks and a huge two-headed strap-on dildo, stood by watching Luke and stroking his fake penis. He looked like an accountant who wandered onto the set and had no lines. Seeing him in the corner of each shot made it a little easier to hold back.

All through the movie, we sat silently, not even looking at each other. No one moved. I knew this was because we all had erections and didn't want to let on. The movie ended with Luke and Hand conquering the Ass Master by having their assistant RU469, a wise-cracking vacuum cleaner with a hot-air popcorn machine for a head, zap a laser beam onto the Ass Master's skimpy genitalia, thus immobilizing him. The final scene was Luke and Hand standing in the kingdom of the universe, which looked suspiciously like an abandoned shopping mall swathed in blue sheets, surrounded by their joyful minions, all naked, cheering women. The Ass Master was brought out by two women and made to get down on all fours in front of Hand, who broke into a goofy grin. The End.

"Well," Stymie said, "now I know what I want to be when I grow up. Ass Master of the Universe. When the guidance counselors or my parents' friends ask me what my future plans are, I can now honestly say, 'I'm torn right now. I might want to be a tax attorney. Or Ass Master of the Universe.'"

"I need a beer," Floyd said. We all could have used a beer, especially Stymie and me. No one had wanted to tempt fate too far and bring a six-pack. There was a concession stand by the ticket stall, but they surely wouldn't have beer, and we weren't leaving the car anyway. We noticed no one got out of the other cars, not even to stretch. My mouth was dry, and my ass hurt from sitting so still.

Before we could complain, Campfire Girls started, quite spontaneously, with a naked woman in a brownie beanie whipping a middle-aged scoutmaster on the floor of a forest. By this time, we were all zoned out and bored. While I found myself with a hard-on that was working over-time all through the first movie, I no longer felt any inkling of passion. We had seen every conceivable sex act mechanically performed at least twice, in between dialogue so bad it wasn't funny and even worse acting. The campfire girls made their way out of the forest and started banging random men they met -- a chef, a bank robber in a sombrero and a school crossing guard. We started to ignore the movie and goof on each other.

"Pick's got a hard-on," Floyd said in a sing-song voice.

"No, I don't," Pick said in the same voice, almost like an altar boy answering a priest in mass. Floyd snickered.

"Stymie's got a plank," Floyd sang again.

Stymie shot him a strange look.

"I hope so," he answered, "you don't?"

Stymie had neatly deflected a potential put-down and threw the insult back on Floyd, whose face turned beet red.

"Sure I do, sure I do," he barked back.

"That's what we're here for, isn't it?" Pick asked.

"What are we here for?" I asked.

"Knock this shit off," Floyd said, "They made me read Waiting for Godot once and that was more than enough. We're here to watch skin flicks."

"Yeah, but, is this supposed to be fun?" I went on, "I mean, we can't play with ourselves, and those campfire girls aren't going to come running out of the woods to fuck us. Why drive ourselves even more crazy like this?"

"You think too much, you always did," Floyd snapped.

"All this talk about masturbation seems to be making Floyd a tad bit uptight," Pick said. I could feel everyone closing in on him, which was a mistake, because he was driving. I knew Floyd, and I knew he'd have no qualms over kicking us out of the car or busting all of us, himself included, to save face.

"I have a hard-on, all right," Floyd barked, "you don't believe me? Look."

Stymie and I glanced over the seat at Floyd's lap.

"I don't see no hard-on, Floyd," Stymie said, winking at me.

"It's there! I swear it! I swear on my grandfather's grave and The Beatles' White Album."

Floyd worshipped our dead grandfather and The Beatles -- he meant business. I could see where this was leading -- Stymie insisting that Floyd pull his erect penis out to prove his point. I didn't want it to get that far. I could picture them breaking out a ruler to see whose was bigger. On top of all the sexual frustration already festering in the car, a nasty edge of one-upsmanship and petty bickering was quickly growing. I could feel it like the tension in a pre-test classroom.

"Ah, I can see it," I said.

Floyd stared back at Stymie.

"Where's your hard-on, Stymie?" Floyd asked accusingly.

"I left it at your mother's house," Stymie snapped. For weeks, they'd been sniping at each other, and Floyd came over his seat, slapping the hat from Stymie's head and calling him "bitch" and "faggot." Stymie stopped smirking and fought back, tears forming in his eyes. Pick and I wedged our arms between them and forced them back into their seats. I could see Floyd crying in the rear-view mirror. I wasn't mad at Stymie -- I knew what he said about my mother was a harmless joke to get a rise out of Floyd. We did it to each other all the time. Amazingly, no one seemed to notice the flurry of punches in our car.

"You're a dick, man," Floyd hissed. He wasn't looking at anyone, but we knew he meant Stymie.

"Blow me, man, blow me," Stymie replied in a quivering voice.

On the screen, the campfire troop mother, an overweight middle-aged woman with a flaming red beehive and cat-eye glasses on a chain, was riding a Joe Namath lookalike in a fireman's hat. Floyd unhooked the moaning speaker, turned the car over and started to guide the car out of the lot. We didn't argue. As we passed in front of the other cars, I studied the faces in the windows. Not unlike ours, some our age, others older and harder, all staring straight ahead dully, the blue light of the screen washing over their blank expressions. Once I had stayed up late to watch a John Wayne movie with my father, and he had dozed off before the end. The look I saw at the drive-in was like his sleeping face, immobile and senseless, while the American flag unfurled on the black-and-white screen and the National Anthem echoed in the living room. When we passed the Cadillac, I noticed the man was sitting alone and gripping the steering wheel, his eyes wide and his mouth shaped into a silent "o." It was like seeing a dandelion in an otherwise perfect lawn.

Stymie and Floyd became friends again a few weeks later, but that night we drove home without a word, no smart-ass comments or put downs, everyone watching the dark countryside. All our windows were open, and the sound of the wind whipping its cross currents through the car filled the void. Floyd had enough good graces to drive Pick and even Stymie home, but no one said good bye. They courteously closed their doors and walked off alone up their driveways. From then on, every time we passed the Highway Star, things got strangely silent, as if we were paying homage to a fallen friend.