Life Begins (17 page)

You see... I know that Jack could
tell that I was upset about our relationship, but since he wouldn't
do anything, except psychoanalyze everything. I got really tired of
it, and that's when I started to go out with Brian Metzger, the guy
that ended up abusing me.

I don't want to justify the abuse,
but you have to understand that... Okay. For the first time in my
life, I am going to be truthful about this event and everything
that was going on with me and Jack. It is a complex issue that I
don’t think Jack, or anybody else, fully understands. I was
thirteen or fourteen at the time. I grew up in a household where my
father verbally and emotionally abused my mother. She had retreated
into alcohol and was absent from me. I knew that my father never
wanted me because I was a girl. The only good thing about me was
that I could one day marry a guy and give him the son that he had
always wanted. Jack's father was dead. I had no positive parental
force in my life. And Jack... And for the first time in my life,
the one person I had always depended on to save me and to tell me
that everything was going to be okay was absent. Even though I was
the most popular girl in school, I was alone. Even with my great
skills of pretending that I had learned over the years could not
really cover up everything that I was feeling at the
time.

I loved Jack. I mean, for the
first time in our lives, I was honestly and hopelessly in love with
him. I was trying to be understanding of him needing to get over
his father’s death. I could tell that he was depressed and just
wanted to be alone. Despite how I might have acted the night his
father died, I did try to be there for him. I made sure that I was
with him every day at the trial. Even my father said that it would
be a good idea if I went to the trial to be there for him. And I
tried to give him the time and space that he needed to get over
everything, but the more space I gave him, the more he ended
filling it up with Melinda. There just eventually came a point
where I thought that we had grown apart. We had grown up and lost
everything that was our youth.

Well, Brian came into my life at
this time. He was handsome and a couple of years older. He wasn't
like Gene. He knew how to kiss and taught me a lot about... Well,
he was comfortable with girls. It made it nice. I just had to
follow his lead and stop him when he started to go too
far.

And Brian made Jack jealous. I
don't want to say that is one of the main reasons that I dated him.
It was an added benefit. I mean, I know that Jack knew what it felt
like for me to see him with Melinda. And while I was pretending to
like Brian to make Jack jealous, I kind of forgot that I was
pretending and started to feel something real for him. I started to
forget about Jack. It felt kind of good. The pain that I had been
feeling for over a year started to disappear.

I know why my mother drank and why
she now sleeps with some guys. There comes a point in your life
where all you can see is the pain that you are feeling. You look
for something to ease the pain, even if it is a little
self-destructive. It helps give you some sort of self-worth, even
if it is just momentarily. Those small moments are still better
than the constant pain that you had been feeling. You just hope
that those small moments will soon last longer and longer until you
don’t feel the original pain anymore. I think Brian helped me to
get over Jack.

But then, after I had been dating
Brian for a few months, Jack came over one night. He came over as
an old friend. He seemed kind of shy at first. You know, awkward,
like he was ashamed to be talking to me about something.

He then started to ask me about
Brian and said that he was very happy for me. He sounded sincere,
which kind of surprised me, but I was still glad to hear it. Even
if I didn't want to admit it, I had moved on. I was glad that he
had moved on as well. It meant that we were growing up.

He then asked if he could ask me a
question. I told him he could. He then told me about his
relationship with Melinda and how he was really beginning to like
her. He was thinking about making it clear to her how he felt about
her. She was just a non-sexual creature I didn’t doubt he wouldn’t
know how to put the moves on her. Sorry. That was mean.

Anyway, I told him that he should
feel her out. While they are watching some of those boring movies
together, he should just put his arm around her and see what she
says. If she leans in towards him, then it means that she likes
him. He could then start to try other moves like sneaking in for a
kiss.

He asked me how he would do
something like that and asked me to show him. So we sat on my bed
and pretended to be watching a movie. He then... Okay. We ended up
kissing, but it wasn't... After I ended up kissing him back, I... I
just looked at him, and said, “You don't love Melinda at all, do
you? You were just telling me that so you could kiss me.” But I...
I wasn't even upset about it. I didn't even get mad when he gave me
that sly smile of his. I have known lots of guys who have tried
various tricks on me to get some from me, but Jack Allen Gynapsy is
the guy I have never minded. I kind of wish I would have slapped
him when he leaned in and said, “What can I say? I learned that
little trick from you when you were dating Gene Roos.” But instead
of slapping him at using my own trick on me, I kind of caught him
off guard by kissing him some more.

I know that it wasn't right, but
we ended up making out for about three hours after that. But to be
perfectly honest, we did a lot of talking while we were making out.
It's actually kind of amazing the deep conversations you can have
with somebody when you aren't really paying attention to what they
are saying. That was some of the best conversation I have ever had,
except for the naked conversations I have with him now.

Jack and I... Jack wanted me to
break up with Brian long before the abuse started, but we... I
liked being with Brian because he taught me things that I could
later teach Jack. It became more fun for me to have Jack come over
secretly and do things to him without having to worry about what we
were. I don't want to say that this was an extremely moral thing to
do. I know that it hurt him. He knew what I was doing. And as much
as he complained about it, he also kept coming back for more. After
he had hurt me, I wasn’t going to let myself be hurt by him again.
It kind of made dating Brian easier. Plus my father liked Brian. My
personal life was good. I didn’t want to mess it up.

I know why Jack's friends think
that I am a bitch. They spent four years hearing about how Jack's
heart was aching over how I was treating him. They never once
considered why I did the things that I did. They only saw Jack
pining for me and heard the stories about how I was... Well, I
wasn't leading him on. I was kind of leading Brian and the other
boys on, but they were... With the other boys, they were trying to
take advantage of me. I knew that and used them in return. But with
Jack, it was mutual, consensual relationship-esque behavior without
the benefits of an actual relationship.

I know that it isn't going to make
sense, and I know that I probably can't ever really get you to
understand. Jack and I... We're...

When I was dating Brian, I found
that my father actually enjoyed having me around. He may not have
actually liked me like I would have wanted him to, but he at least
saw me as a worthwhile person to have around. That was a vast
improvement from the way that he usually thought of me. I'm pretty
sure that it was because of Brian.

But I also liked having Jack
around. Let's face it. He is better at the emotional aspects of a
relationship. I can talk to him about stuff I actually care about
without having to pretend. I have never faked laughter or a smile
with him. I have with a lot of other guys that I have gone out
with. And I wouldn't have dated them, but they fit an image of the
type of man I should be dating better than Jack did.

As for the abuse, I wish that I
could say a lot of things about it, or at least make sense of it.
But I have never been like Jack. I can't rationalize my thoughts
and feelings and then make a game plan as to what is the right
thing to do. I generally just tend to act on what I am feeling at
the moment without ever really thinking about what I am
feeling.

You should know that Jack didn't
want me to talk about it in his autobiography because he doesn't...
It's not that he wants to hide it. Jack has a way of acting as if
something didn't happen if he feels guilty about it. He is very
forgiving of others, but he can never absolve himself of his own
guilt. Like he feels responsible for his father's death, I think he
thinks that if he hadn't been secretly doing things with me while I
was dating Brian that I would not have been abused.

I don't want to justify the abuse.
I might not be the smartest person in the world, but even I should
have realized that what was happening was wrong. I knew that it was
at the time. I just... Regardless of my family history, I felt that
I still deserved it. As much as I hated all of the emotional abuse
my father gave my mother, I still felt that somehow it was okay for
Brian to hit me when I showed any sort of free thought or
opinion.

When Jack and I used to play house
when we were kids, I swore that I would never let a man talk to me
the way that my father talked to my mother. No man was ever going
to make me feel the way my father made my mother feel. But then
I... It's a lot easier to say that you are never going to do
something before you find yourself in a situation than when you are
actually faced with the situation.

Of the things I was feeling at the
time, I remember feeling that I did care for Brian. Jack and I were
just fooling around on the side. I had Brian, and Jack had Melinda,
even though he still denied that there was a relationship between
them. He ate lunch with her, Arthur, and Leopold. They looked like
a couple. Even if Jack was messing around with me, he was doing it
without the benefits of a relationship. I was doing it without
Brian knowing about it. I felt kind of like how my mom must have
felt when she found out that my dad was cheating on her, except
that this time I was the person doing the cheating. If Brian hit
me, I did feel as if I deserved it. He had been nothing but a
perfect boyfriend. It was me who decided to sneak around with Jack.
That's not an excuse for Brian's actions, or for me putting up with
it. I'm just telling you something that I felt at that time and why
I put up with it. It made perfect sense at the time.

After the first few comments and
slight roughness, I did try to talk to my mother. I asked her what
love was like and how you knew that you were in love. I told her
about my relationship with Brian. She said that Brian sounded an
awful lot like my father. She then told me almost everything that
had ever taken place between her and my father.

Jack made a comment earlier about
how we are trying to escape our parents' pasts as well as ours. I
knew everything that went on in my parents' relationship from my
mother's point of view, and yet I still felt that somehow I still
deserved to end up like her. Even as a small child, I knew that my
mother was f#cked up beyond all reason. I knew that I never wanted
to be like her. I knew that I hated my father, and yet there was a
part of me that still loved him and wanted to make him happy. No
matter how much I have hated him at certain points in my life, I
still sought his approval.

My father knew about the abuse
before Jack did. I... With Jack's father gone and my mother a mess,
I did turn to my father. He may not have been much of a father, but
he was still my dad. I told him about the abuse, and
he...

I have never known if he ignored
it because of Jack. My father will do anything to keep me from
being with Jack just because he thinks that Jack deserves somebody
better than me. He will put Jack down to his face, but he is really
doing this out of a love for him. Jack doesn't know this. Even if
he did, I don't think he would understand it. Jack just doesn't
think that way. He would never understand that my father respected
his father more than anybody else in the world. My father doesn't
want Jack to lose the kindness and greatness of character that he
inherited from his father by hanging around with me. I can’t really
blame him for this.

If I am a mess like my mother, I
share my father's inability to say what I really feel for somebody.
I have been terrible to Jack because I didn't know of any other way
to treat him. If I said that he was gay, I did it because I knew
that it would hurt him. I knew that it would hurt him in the
deepest part of his soul and that he would take it without saying a
word. And if I am being honest here, I might as well say that the
abuse did not really start with Brian until I think he suspected
that something was going on between me and Jack. Although I knew
that it would hurt Jack, I also knew that it would keep my fooling
around with Jack a secret. It kept Brian from wanting to beat up
Jack. Jack doesn’t know, and he doesn’t need to know, that a large
part of the abuse was from me covering up my relationship with him
from Brian. No matter how discreet we were, Jack just couldn’t hide
his feelings for me. Although it got me in trouble at the time, it
has always been one of the things I have loved about him. It
doesn’t matter where we are, I can almost always look over and
catch Jack looking at me like I am the most beautiful woman he has
ever seen and that it is the first time that he has ever seen me.
Those looks are worth me getting into a fight with a man if it
meant protecting another man that I loved.