I talked to my mom yesterday and it was good. She is validly worried about me doing this publicly. One thing that drastically changed the conversation around was letting her know that I am 14 days sober. In her southern drawl she exclaimed,
“Oh HONEY! That’s WONDERFUL! I thought you were just writing all this in a drunken stupor!”
“ Oh NO mom!! It’s exactly the opposite! I am sober and I am finally pissed for that girl I was.”
Something that she repeated that I know all too well and that breaks my heart, being a parent now, is,
“Once Joe came into the picture, we couldn’t tell you anything. We couldn’t get you to stop seeing him and what we said never mattered.”
I now feel especially bad for how this relationship must have made my dad feel. I know that my dad went to the pet store after I graduated high school and confronted Joe and told him to leave me alone “or else.” I can easily picture this in my mind. At the time that Joe told me, I was horrified. Now, I am horrified for different reasons. It made no difference to Joe.
Let us also sit and take a moment to process that Joe has two children MY AGE. His son is exactly my age and his daughter is just two years older. That was one thing that has always bothered me. Even though he had a daughter my age at the time, he found it acceptable. Would he have been ok if she were in the same relationship? Probably so, actually.
To get into the PetLand at Memorial City Mall, you entered next to the alley where the tire shop was. In that alley was the cardboard compactor (which i adored using) and the dumpsters for several stores. Our dumpster always had the secret dead animals that we had to find a place to toss. We had, at least, figured out to freeze them first and put them in the dumpster not more than 8 hours before it was going to be picked up.
Marching Day:
This day was a teenager’s common nightmare. I was a mess and I can barely remember why. I do know that my boyfriend of almost a year had broken up with me because he was headed to college and because I had tried to explore some rougher sex with him and made him very uncomfortable (y’all, now that I am an adult, what I did was no big deal and might even called vanilla.) I have the vague memory that I was also crying about something that happened at school and crying that my parents had perpetrated some horrible rule or infraction (see sarcasm).
I got in my car to drive from school to work. As I drove and cried, I was more and more resolute about my plan. This was the day I would let Joe know clearly and without question that I wanted him. I marched past the tire shop guys, past the dumpster of death, my behemoth compactor machine, down the fluorescent-lit hallway to the back door than entered the office where Joe would be sitting, probably waiting for me each day. I made sure I was sobbing when I opened the door to the office.
He stood up and said, “oh girl, what’s wrong?” I flew into his arms, pressed myself against him and blubbered about ALL the things that were just so terrible, probably making the biggest deal about my terrible parents. He held me tight the way he had wanted to for months. He pressed his groin into my stomach. I pressed my mouth to his neck. The exhilaration was deep. He said, “Let’s go get something to eat.”
I cleaned myself up enough to walk through the front of the pet store. At that point, we knew enough to not leave the store together. I left first through the front, past co-workers, telling them I had to get something to eat before i started my shift, and then he left a few minutes after me. This was our first mall-date of several hundred. In the mall, we were in another world, but were still careful that his other employees, some of them my friends at school, were likely to walk past at any moment.
I don’t know when we first actually kissed. I do remember the first time we had sex. I don’t remember how long it was between Marching Day and the first time we had sex. It seems like it must have been pretty quick, like within a week or two? I had to leave to go to my mom’s house in Ingram, TX for the summer by the end of the school year. Marching Day must have been not far from the end of the school year because my tears were mostly about end-of-year woes.
I am going to spend the rest of the day contemplating the possible time-line. I feel confused because I know I graduated high school at 19. I had a late start in kindergarten since I have a November birthday.
But the end of my sophomore year, I would have been 18. And I swear that the first time we had sex I was 17. But maybe not?
I have to step away and write a possible timeline. I know I was 17 when I got my car. I know I got the job at PetLand right after I got my car. My parents cant seem to remember the exact timeline either, I’ve asked. So maybe stepping back for a minute will help.
I’m sure you guys just want me to keep writing, but this is about accuracy for me because I have allowed myself to completely forget as much as possible about the entire time before I was 21 when I had my first child. If I don’t try now, even if I fail, I know I will never bother try again. But the rest of this time period may have to be covered vagueness and not so much what happened when.
Letting my mind rest… because also now it’s just stuck on the actual first experience of sex at his house.
Scarlet Pearl 