Life Begins (14 page)

You see, my parents are messed up.
My father has an extremely large ego. He knows that he wasn't a
good father. He doesn't really care about that. He wasn't going to
put time and effort into me to be an actual parent. So he bought me
things to give the appearance of being a doting father. I have
never figured out if he was buying me things out of guilt for being
a terrible father or because he saw me as an extension of himself.
If I had the best stuff, then he would be the best father. I still
do not have the answer for this.

And my mother... I don't know when
my mother started drinking. I don't remember her being sober when I
was between the ages of about 5 and 10. She always spent a lot of
time in her bedroom crying. I would go to her because I had no
doubt that she loved me. It felt good to just be held by her. It
made me feel needed and loved. But I found that I couldn't spend a
lot of time with my mom. She didn't do anything, except stay in bed
and drink for those years of my life. And when she started to get
out of her alcoholic phase, she then entered into a slutty phase
where she would sleep with any man that paid attention to her.
There was alcohol involved during this phase, too, but she was more
sober. I think she likes being coherent enough to feel like these
guys actually care about her. She kind of has to be sober enough to
feel that, but yet drunk enough to go along with everything that
the guy wants to do to make the relationship last.

I love my mom, but I honestly wish
she would have stayed in her alcoholic phase. She unfortunately
entered her slutty phase just as I was starting to become
interested in boys and wanting to date. She's a little
embarrassing. Do you know I have had guys at school come up to me
and ask me if I was anything like my mother? I don't care if their
dad was banging my mom. That doesn't give them the right to
approach me. I do wish I would have handled that situation better.
I shouldn't have told them that just because their father will
screw anything desperate for attention that it doesn't mean I will.
I meant it to be an insult at their father, but I think it really
ended up insulting my mother. At least I ended the insult by
telling the boy that as long as I had fingers I would never be
desperate enough to ever do him.

I think it is fairly safe to say
that I did not have the greatest childhood. My childhood was spent
pretending, but not in the way that other kids did. My family
pretended to be happy. My parents had their parts all planned out.
All I had to do was learn my part. We put on this great show
whenever we would go out in public. I liked it whenever we would go
shopping or have company over. It was the only time that I felt
like a real family. I wondered why we couldn't always be like
that.

If I spent the majority of my
childhood with Jack, it was because I loved his family and how he
would play with me. He made all of the bad stuff about my family go
away. He made me forget that the only person that loved me was my
mother that would smother me. She needed to hug me and kiss me to
get a feeling of self-worth. That is not what a child needs. I
needed to feel loved, instead of making my mom feel like she was
loved.

I don't want to say that my mother
is selfish. She's not. She had just been abused emotionally by my
father so much that she was not capable of loving anybody else or
thinking about anybody but herself. She would have done anything
for me. She still would, but her issues back then prevented her
from really being there for me. Instead, I had to be there for her.
That's not the way your childhood should be. That's why I escaped
into the world that Jack presented to me. He had everything I ever
wanted in a family.

If I played house a lot with Jack,
it was because it gave me the chance to have that perfect family.
And Jack never argued with me when we played house. I think I tried
to start a fight with him one time. He stopped and told me that
there is no fighting, name calling, or walking away in playing
house. Looking back at this now, I have to laugh at him and his
naivety. He has this pure vision of life that has never matched my
reality. I think that is why I love him so. He can make you believe
his ideal version of things even if the past has taught you that
life is something else. When I was a child, it was his imagination
that captivated me. He could make you believe anything that he was
imagining.

We were able to keep this up until
we entered kindergarten. You see, the public school system is a
public space. As the daughter of my father, I had a role to play.
Everything I did in school was a reflection on him. My father
didn't want me to look like Jack's lover. It would look like he was
a terrible father. And Jack...

Jack's father has always told me
that Jack was born with an old soul. He knows things and see things
that others his age would miss. He enjoys learning, likes hanging
out with older adults, and doing adult things. He has always been
childlike, but he has never really been childish. That's why he can
get me to believe the most absurd things, even if I know that they
aren't possible. He is one of those people who can make you believe
that world peace is possible and that you can actually help to make
it a reality. He is too smart and well-spoken to properly be
labeled naive or a dreamer, and yet those are some of the very
words that I would want to use to describe him. I don't think they
have ever come up with a word to describe a dreamer that makes you
believe his dreams that eventually become reality.

Well, when I started school, there
was this conflict between the years that I had spent with Jack in
our own private little world and the public space I was required to
perform in because of my parents. Jack did not have this problem,
but then again he is always the same whether he is in public or
alone. I have always envied this aspect of him.

Out of a desire to have the family
life that I had always pretended with Jack, I tried to play the
part that my father wanted me to at school. This meant that I had
to break Jack's heart. I don't want to sound like I am being cruel
here. I was six at the time. And it wasn't like I just decided to
break his heart in order to please my parents. I actually talked to
Jack's father about it before I did anything.

That's when Jack's father told me
that Jack was born with an old soul. Even if I denied being so
close to him at school, Jack would still love me and want to be
with me in the private moments. And as much as I hate to admit it,
I enjoyed this new arrangement. I felt like my parents were getting
along better. Plus I was still able to escape into Jack's world. If
anything, it gave me more control over Jack's world. More than just
a participant, I was actually the one that dictated the when and
how we should play. And he was so in love with me that he would
consent to anything I wanted.

I am thinking now that maybe I
shouldn't have been so cruel to him at that age. I think we might
have gotten together a little easier than we did. I'm thinking that
I might actually be able to get him to have sex with me right now,
too. I have done some horrible things to him over the years. I have
hurt him on purpose because I found some sort of joy in knowing
that he wanted to cry because of something I said or did, but he
would never cry. He just kept coming back to me with the faith that
the past could be forgiven. He called his chapter about this time
“As Cruel as School Children”. I think he should have named it “As
Cruel as a Concentration Camp”.

If I ever went to confessional,
the majority of the sins I have committed would have involved Jack
in some way or another. I can’t say that they would be sexual sins.
I don’t think anything that we have done together was a sin. The
Church would probably think otherwise. As much as I would enjoy
telling a priest everything I’ve done with Jack, I don’t really
feel guilty about it. I only feel guilty about the stuff I have
done to hurt him. There’s no fun in telling a priest the terrible
things you’ve done to another human being. It’s only fun to tell
them the fun things you’ve done that they can’t do, like having
sex. Jack thinks I’m horrible for this. I told him it would only be
horrible if I described in detail how he has the body of a thirteen
year-old boy to the priest. He kind of shot me a disapproving look,
but I think he also thought that this was funny. He just couldn’t
say that it was funny because I was also kind of insulting his body
at the same time. It’s not that Jack really has the body of a
thirteen year-old boy. I mean, he did at one point. It’s just that…
Never mind.

It’s just that I don’t need to go
to a confessional to confess sins I’ve committed against Jack. Jack
has already forgiven them for me. There’s no point going to God for
something that doesn’t really concern Him. I mean, the night that
Jack wrote his Declaration of Independence, I could not refute any
of the claims that he had put in there. If anything, I felt that he
would be justified in never talking to me again. I don't want to
excuse my actions, but I was loving like my mother loved me. He was
there for me, even if I could never be there for him. And he held
on with a simple faith that I would eventually become whole enough
to love him in return.

And to be fair to me, I was not
entirely cruel to him through those years. I mean, I made sure that
he was the “first” for any romantic thing. That was always
important to me. I couldn't make him my first official boyfriend,
but he was my first boyfriend before we were old enough to really
have boyfriends or girlfriends. And if you look at the fact that we
were able to make it through everything and become a couple today,
I think that counts for something.

And just so you know the extent
that I went to to make him my first at everything, I started dating
Gene Roos when I was eleven. Okay. It wasn't really dating. Our
parents had to drop us off at the mall and pick us up, but we held
hands and were an official couple at school. We had lunch together
and everything.

Anyway, I knew that Gene and I
were becoming close enough that I would have to do more than just
hold hands with him. But I couldn't kiss him without letting him be
my first kiss. So I devised a plan where I would feel insecure
about kissing a boy. I got Jack to make out with me so that I could
kiss Gene perfectly.

Jack was reluctant at first. I
can't blame him for that. I don't think I would like it if I knew
that somebody liked me and they wanted to kiss me so that they
could kiss somebody else perfectly. The worst part is that I think
Jack knew that I really liked Gene. He was hot in a way that Jack
wasn't. Although I'm not sure now what I found attractive about
him. His hair was long and a little bit feminine. He looked a lot
like a girl, actually. He was fun to hang out with though. And he
had a pretty smile. Plus he was one of the first guys in school to
wear cologne. That was a major turn on to a girl of
eleven.

Anyway, typical of my relationship
with Jack, he knew that I was playing him and playing Gene as well.
He wasn't going to kiss me.

“I don't think I'm the right
person to teach you how to kiss”, he said. “Why don't you get one
of your girlfriends? I'm sure that will approximate what kissing
Gene is like more than kissing me will.”

“I'm not kissing a girl. That's
just gross”, I countered. “Plus, you're the closest thing I have to
a girlfriend anyway.”

That may have been a cheap blow. I
know it was. Plus, I know that Jack has always hated it when I have
said that he is more of a girlfriend than anything else. But I have
found that if I pissed him off enough that he would do what I
really wanted just to prove that he was right. That's the biggest
complaint I have about him having an old soul. He knows that he is
right and will generally go to great lengths to prove it. It’s just
that I don’t always get to use it to my advantage. Sometimes I have
to intentionally be wrong to trick him into being right to get what
I want.

Anyway, as he moved in closer to
me and looked me in the eyes, he pierced my soul and said, “You
couldn't handle a kiss from me.”

As he stepped away from me, I
gently exhaled and tried to act like I didn't really want him to
kiss me. I don't know what it is about being a young girl, but it
is kind of fun having two guys. Jack was attractive to me because I
knew that he really loved me and would always love me. He has a
passion about him that other men lack. Other boys will put their
hands all over you and call that passion. Jack puts his entire
being into loving you. His mind, body, and soul work as one to
where you just forget about everything else. Gene was just a hot
boy. That's what made him fun. I don't know if he really liked me
or not. He was a sexy little plaything to me, although he is one of
the few boys I've gone out with that I actually did
like.

Anyway, I found myself saying,
“Try me.”

I held my breath as Jack walked
closer to me full of determination. I don't know at what point I
closed my eyes. I know I didn't see him put his arms around me, or
actually come in for the kiss. I felt his lips on mine for a slight
moment before I heard him say, “You know, if you're going to be
kissed properly, you're going to have stop being so
frigid.”

I smacked him on the arm. “I'm not
frigid.” My dad used to tell my mom she was frigid whenever she
turned him down for sex. Even when my parents were not getting
along, they still had sex. My father had needs. Sometimes my mother
refused him. Other times she allowed him entrance in her bedroom.
It was more out of a physical need than a desire.