Young Lust in a 1987 Ford Tempo

What a piece of shit. That car was a spoiled coffee color brown, had no reverse, a broken window and my friends had to push it to get it into gear and driving. For some reason or another that rusty bucket of bolts allowed an awkward looking fat kid from the bad side of town to take out one of the most beautiful girls in the school, Leah, on a weekly basis. It still amazes me to this day.

Leah and I had been dating for a few months; we met in history class in my freshman year, and started seeing each other regularly that following summer. By the beginning of sophomore year, I had a girlfriend, my driver’s license and a weak excuse for a car; I was the coolest kid in school.

As many High School Sophomores do, Leah and I awkwardly started experimenting with sex. We would take that tempo to the back alleys and trusted woods of our city and fumble around each other in the dark, with the Cubs game blasting off the car radio.

I can remember the sounds, the smells, the feeling of the cloth seats, and the pain of the jabbing seatbelts. Of course Leah and I grew out of each other. Different people became more interesting and we decided to end our wild nights of young lust in the Tempo.

We weren't in love, oh no far from it, just young and restless and bored. That’s how we found ourselves in the back seat of that car. I'll never forget the night I drove Leah home, and lost those awkward teenage blues. The tempo was in particularly good shape that night, meaning nothing had fallen off and the backseat yielded satisfactory results. Bob Segers ode to teen sex was on the radio, and I hung on every word, knowing that I had just experienced what Bob was reminiscing about, and I felt the lightning, and waited on the thunder.