I was in my last year of high school and I was working part-time for Red Apple Supermarkets in thier Ravenswoods, LIC, Queens, New York store. Ravenswoods is a district near Astoria where I grew up. Ravenswood is known for the infamous Ravenswood's Projects. A series of government-funded apartments where lowlifes and honest, low-income families lived.

It was the mid-seventies, and I enjoyed working at Red Apple. I was never into the High School scene. My family was going through some tough times and work was my escape.

I hung out with the guys that worked there; they were slightly older (early twenties) and they were a cool bunch. Most of them had their own apartments. Some were going to college; others were "dropping out" for a while. I like hanging out with them because they had booze, no parents to bug them, and women: not high-maintenance, high school honeys. These were real women, and what horny teen-aged boy wouldn't want that set-up?

This was back in the for "real day" when cash registers were mostly mechanical, price guns instead of barcodes, and our pay was a tangible piece of paper called a check. And we were allowed to cash our checks in-store on payday, which was every Friday.

One Friday night, I was bagging for Maryanne. She was a cute, perky, Italian blonde with brown eyes and pale skin. She was warm and friendly. Around eight o'clock, four very loud black guys walked into the store waving guns. For clarity, I will label the robbers Shotgun #1 & #2 and Handgun #1 & #2.

Shotgun #1 blocked the doors. Handgun #1 went down the aisle shouting for everyone to get on the floor . The other two stayed in the front. Shotgun #2 went to each cash register and ordered us down on the floor and to open up the e'ffing registers. Handgun #2 grabbed the manager and told him to open the safe. Great! I thought. I just got paid. Hopefully, these guys won't ask us to empty our pockets.

Maryanne and I crouched down between our cash wrap and the one next to us. Shotgun #2 approached us, tapped my head with the barrel of his gun and said, "Open the register, M-F-!" I did not know how to do it. So I turned to Maryanne and said, "Open it." She shook her head. I repeated myself. She froze. She was sitting to my right; I grabbed her left arm, squeezed it and pushed up. She stood. Like a squirrel standing in the middle of the road with a huge semi- coming at her,  she froze. She looked down on me and whispered, "I can't... I'll be short"; meaning her register will be missing money at the end of night. "Who cares!" I mouthed.

I pushed Maryanne's butt in an attempt to nudge her towards the register. She resisted. I pushed harder; she got the message; she opened the register and froze again. I grabbed her by her jeans' beltloop and dragged her down and wrapped my arm around her. "Good job," I stammered. She buried her head in my chest.

In the meantime, Handgun #2 was roughing up Joe the manager. H#2 wanted the manager to open the safe. Joe' hands were shaking so much that he kept messing up the combination. Finally, he told H#2 to stop kicking him and maybe he'll be able to open it. By now, H#1 returned to the front of the store. He and Shotgun #2 cleaned out the registers.

Throughout this time all I could think of was that if things got out of hand that I would not be able to finish high school and go into the Air Force. I had already passed the written tests and physical exam. Now, I was just waiting for graduation, my last summer vacation, and then off into the wild blue yonder.

As I held Maryanne, I started to realize that I had a raging hard-on. Was I nuts? I quickly realized why I had wood. I was cupping Maryann's right breast. Not feeling it or kneading it, just gently cupping it. My erection would not go down. Nor would I let go. I guess I figured that if I was going to die, I might as well die with a pocket full of cash, a hard-on and holding onto some tit.

The stick-up men left. Joe ordered the store locked, and he called the cops. Slowly, everyone stood.  A black woman commented how nice they were. I shot her a glance. The cops came and took statements. We cleared the remainding customers and closed early. Joe ordered me and another stock clerk to get some beer. We drank it all.

Maryanne came over to me and thanked me for "beign there". I said, "It was nothing."  You would think I would have pursued Maryanne after that, but it was completely different.

Whenever, she would approach me in the store, I would brush her off. Eventually, she stopped tryng to reach out to me. She thought I had a girlfriend.

She was wrong. I could not face her because I felt a great deal of shame and revulsion for what I had done. Here we were about to die, and all I could about was copping one last feel.

Two months later, the robbers were caught. They were robbing supermarkets and diners throughout Queens. Two were brothers; one was wanted for killing an old man in a diner.

Maryanne left the supermarket; I left for the skies.

©JRA, 2009