Jessica Lipscomb: His first kiss happened long after sunset, illuminated by headlights and perfumed by exhaust fumes on a swath of land in Punta Gorda known as the Redneck Yacht Club. Ethan Arbelo had not yet turned 12; the blonde was 26.
The Redneck Yacht Club was a compromise of sorts. There’s an adage that if you want a dog, first ask for a pony, and following suit, Ethan, 11, had asked his mother if he could have a stripper for his birthday.
She thought it over for a while, wondering if she could pull it off without the Department of Children and Families showing up at their Lehigh Acres duplex. It was hard to turn Ethan down, not knowing how many birthdays he had left.
“Well, I can’t get you a stripper,” she told him. “But I can get you as close as possible.”
So this was Ethan’s early present, three months ahead of his August birthday. This was how Maria Maldonado and her son ended up in the back of a swamp buggy on Memorial Day weekend 2013.
As the two rode around the mud park, monster trucks blared a strange mix of Southern rappers and country crooners. Women with dirty feet flashed their breasts for beads. A tumor continued to silently invade Ethan’s brain.
Maria taught her son some basic redneck etiquette: It’s OK to look, but don’t stare. Throw your beads and get on with it.
The two rode with Timmy Mock, a 26-year-old from Lakeland they’d just met who was sympathetic to Ethan’s predicament. He sipped Busch Light from a koozie that read “IT AIN’T GONNA LICK ITSELF” as he carted mother and son around the mud park.
Ethan whipped his beads back and forth as they drove around the property. Before long, a girl on an adjacent buggy motioned for him to throw them over. Ethan pantomimed a lifted shirt, but the girl refused.
She did not earn Ethan’s beads.
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