The Phone Booth
It’s past midnight and we are all crammed into a tiny phone booth. There are three of us. The only way to explain our ability to overcome the laws of physics to squeeze three full-grown people into this small box, is fear.
At 18, I’m the eldest in the group, consisting of 3 high-school aged Persian girls. It’s the mid 80’s and we are dressed to the nines. Hair teased, skin-tight leopard print tops, neon tights, leg warmers, the latest look perfected. We look good. To be honest, we think we look amazing.
We are dressed up and on our way to an amazing party, fake IDs secured the night before, but as luck would have it, our 1972 Datsun suddenly died on us in some God forsaken place near downtown LA. Even the most optimistic wouldn’t think it’s a good place for 3 teenage girls, dressed like hookers to break down at midnight.
Thankfully, the Datsun got us to a gas station. Unfortunately, the gas station seems closed and the only place with a small light is this phone booth, which we’ve managed to cram into.
The Guys
Outside are two guys talking to us. They drove up on a motorcycle just as we exited our car at the gas station. For some reason, our first instinct upon seeing them was, not to return to our car, but to run to the phone booth, cram in and shut the door.
One of the guys keep gesturing and yelling something that sounds like “wheat.” It’s hard to hear him through the closed doors, especially since all three of us are pressing our entire weight against the door, hoping to prevent these guys from opening it.
My friend Roza says, “Maybe he’s asking us to go eat with him, why else does he keep offering us wheat? But why would we eat breakfast at midnight?”
My other friend and I shrug. I frankly have no idea how things work here. I haven’t lived in the US that long and the time I have spent here I’ve been trapped at home because my mom has been too afraid to allow me out to do anything other than go to school and back. I turned 18 a few days ago and to my utter delight, my mom’s sources have told her that at 18, parents in the U.S. can no longer tell their kids what to do, so she has very reluctantly finally allowed me out of the house. But somehow, ending up in this phone booth for my 18th birthday celebration was not what I had in mind.
Roza opens the door a crack, squeezing us even further back than we thought possible, sticks her head out and says, “thank you, we already had breakfast.”
The two guys bust out laughing. “Breakfast?” says one of them in between bouts of laughter. “We don’t want you to eat with us, we want you to smoke with us.”
Smoke wheat? Is that what they smoke here? Well, I reason, people smoke tobacco where I come from so maybe instead of tobacco, people smoke wheat in the U.S. That’s plausible.
The guy standing at the door of the booth, sees the confused look on our faces through the door, which Roza immediately shut behind her, smiles and says “A joint, we wanna smoke a joint with you.”
I gasp. The word joint I definitely know. My English is better than my two friends. I can hold my own in most conversations and I am certainly familiar with the word joint. It’s a body part. This is not good. They want to kill us and dismember us. My friends are staring at me in anticipation.
Seeing the look on my face, one of them says rather apprehensively, “just tell us, what’s a joint.” I stare at them in disbelief.
“It’s a body part,” I mumble.
My friends start screaming. Really, really loud. I cover my ears and join in. I’ve spent the last few years of my life, trying to get to the U.S. only to be trapped by my mom inside the house. On the first night I’m set free, I’m going to be dismembered. This really is too much to handle.
The guys at the door have bemused expressions. They look at each other and shrug. One says to the other, “these chicks are crazy, let’s get out of here.” They start up the motorcycle, climb on and ride off.
We’re so relieved we start crying. We survived an attempt on our lives by two murderous thugs.
We call my mom and after listening to repeated “I told you so’s” she says she’ll come get us. So my first night out is a total bust.
“Well, at least we know we look good,” I tell my friends trying to make us all feel better.
“Why, cause two guys tried to kill us?”
“You heard the guy. Before he left he called us crazy but he also called us chic.”