Charlie Decker and Dana Collette (failed sexual encounter)

Charlie Decker's failed sexual encounter with Dana Collette at a party near Schoodic Point, during a weekend trip with Joe McKennedy and his brother Pete, is a pivotal moment of humiliation and self-doubt that deepens his psychological unraveling. The incident, occurring in the summer before his junior year, leaves him feeling emasculated and questioning his own masculinity, directly linking his sexual anxiety to the violent rage that culminates in the hostage crisis.

The Weekend and the Party

In the summer before his junior year at Placerville High School, Charlie and Joe drove up to Bangor to spend a weekend with Joe's older brother, Pete McKennedy, who had a summer job with the Bangor Sanitation Department. On Friday night, Charlie got drunk for the first time in his life, along with Pete, Joe, and a few of Pete's friends, and was not even very hungover the next day. Pete took them to the University of Maine campus, and there they encountered a friend of Pete's, Scragg Simpson, who invited them to a party at a camp owned by Dana Collette's parents near Schoodic Point, promising "about forty million unattached ladies" and instructing them to bring dope. Pete procured an ounce of marijuana from a dealer named Jerry Mueller, a small man with a constant lemon grin and a collection of bluegrass music, with whom Charlie bonded over a shared interest in country and bluegrass. After smoking several joints and listening to Flatt and Scruggs, the three drove to the party, still very high. The cabin was packed with people, the air thick with marijuana smoke, wine, and loud rock music, lit by a single red and a single blue light bulb, giving the place the feel of a funhouse. Dana Collette, a short, almost pretty girl with bleached hair and the shortest dress Charlie had ever seen—a bright fluorescent orange—greeted them. She produced a large water pipe, and they smoked more marijuana, with Charlie getting very high. He found himself fixated on Dana, watching her cross and uncross her legs, and noticing a few filaments of pubic hair that had strayed from her panties. He felt an overwhelming, almost painful horniness, describing his organ as feeling "large enough and long enough to pole-vault on."

The Failed Encounter

Dana whispered in Charlie's ear, telling him to go out the back door, and gave him a little shove. He went out, carefully descending a flight of weather-washed steps to a small, crescent-shaped beach below the cabin. The scene was beautiful and lonesome—a slip of a moon, a ghost of a breeze, the Atlantic Ocean pinpointed with uncertain nets of light from the moon. He slipped off his shoes and waited. But as he waited, unease crept in, triggered by the shadow of trees on the wet sand, the sound of the wind, and the cold feel of the sand under his bare feet. By the time Dana put her hand on his shoulder, he had lost his erection. She turned him around, kissed him, and asked, "Are you nice? Can you be nice?" She led him underneath the back steps, where the grass was cool and matted with aromatic pine needles. As they undressed, Charlie's penis remained unresponsive. Dana touched him, sliding her hand inside his underpants, but his muscles jerked not in pleasure but in a kind of terror; her hand felt "like rubber, cold and impersonal and antiseptic." He tried to think of something sexy—looking up a girl's skirt, dirty playing cards, Sandra Cross in black underwear—but then, of all things, he saw his father with his hunting knife, talking about the Cherokee Nose Job. That image destroyed any remaining arousal. He reached down and took hold of his penis, shaking it as if to ask what was wrong, but it remained limp. He slid an exploratory finger into Dana, thinking, "This is the place. This is the place men like my father joke about on hunting trips and in barber shops. Men kill for this." He tried to have intercourse, but it was like the old joke about trying to jam a marshmallow into a piggy bank. He rolled off and apologized. Dana sighed, an irritated sound, and said, "All right. It happens." Charlie insisted, "Not to me," as if this were the first time his equipment had malfunctioned. The cold certainty that he was queer crept over him like rising water. Dana suggested it was the dope and said she bet he was a hell of a lover when things were right, but her smile looked manufactured. She told him to wait before coming back up, then zipped into her dress and left him there under the steps. He got his clothes on and went back upstairs, where Pete and Dana were gone, and Joe was making out with a girl. He sat and waited for the party to be over.

Aftermath and Dream

By the time the three of them got back to Bangor, dawn had arrived. Charlie felt tired and grainy, with a leaden feeling that more damage had been done to him than he really needed. He fell into a daybed and dreamed about the Creaking Thing, the same nightmare from his childhood. This time, the door burst open and it was his father, holding his mother in his arms. Her nose had been slit wide open, and blood streamed down her cheeks like war paint. His father said, "You want her? Here, take her, you worthless good-for-nothing," and threw her on the bed beside Charlie, who saw that she was dead. He woke up screaming—with an erection. The dream directly linked his father's violent, castrating masculinity—the threat of the Cherokee Nose Job—to his own sexual failure, and the final, ironic image of an erection upon waking from a nightmare of impotence and mutilation underscores the deep, unresolved conflict at the core of his identity.

Narrative Role and Significance

Charlie tells this story to his classmates during the hostage crisis, after Sandra Cross has shared her own sexual experiences. He frames it as fulfilling his promise to tell them about his sex life, but it serves a deeper purpose. The story is a confession of vulnerability and failure, a stark contrast to the violent power he wields with the gun. It reveals that his rage is not just a response to external authority but is rooted in a profound sense of personal inadequacy and a terror of being unable to perform the masculine role his father embodies. The failed encounter with Dana Collette is a direct precursor to his later violence; it is a moment where he felt powerless, and the memory of his father's words about the Cherokee Nose Job—which he later explicitly connects to his confrontation with Principal Denver—becomes a trigger for his destructive actions. The incident is a key piece of evidence in understanding that Charlie's "getting it on" is a desperate, distorted attempt to reclaim a sense of power and agency that was shattered on that beach at Schoodic Point.