Life Begins (22 page)

I think this is one of the things I do that
really pisses Christine off. She really wants to be mad at me, but
she can’t really be mad at me when I start touching her a certain
way. I think she thinks I do this just to get her to shut up. I
just can’t help myself. And it’s not like we don’t discuss what we
were fighting about later. Sometimes it is just better to talk
about serious issues when you are half-naked, completely naked, or
on your way to becoming naked.

We once had a fight in the shower. It was
right before we had actually gotten together. I had spent the night
with her, which was not unusual for us. In the morning, she wanted
to make breakfast for me before we went shopping for clothes. I
tried to resist her. I told her that I didn’t have clothes at her
place. She then told me that she had plenty of my clothes that she
had borrowed over the years, which she had. I might as well lose my
virginity to her. I’ve already lost half of my clothes to her. I
don’t mean that. That was just a random joke that I thought
of.

Anyway, she had clothes of mine, except
underwear. I was going to use this as a reason why I should leave.
She then goes to the closet and pulls out a box wrapped in hearts
and stuff. It was part of my Valentine’s Day presents, even though
we weren’t a couple. She told me that I could have it early since I
was in need of them. It was a pair of boxer shorts.

She has been trying to get me to wear boxers
for a while now. She knows that I don’t like how they feel. I don’t
like to just be flopping around down there. The boxer-brief is the
only way to go. You get the comfort of the boxer with the support
of the brief. It’s perfect. She seems to think this will somehow
harm my goods and that I need the freedom of the boxers. She says
that it is because she cares about my penal health, even if I
don’t. She also uses this as a reason to check me for testicular
cancer every few months. She fills up the bath tub with warm water.
We soak in there for a little bit. She then gives me a screening. I
would object to such things, but I can’t really find a logical
reason to do so.

Anyway, now that I had underwear, I couldn’t
find a reason to not have breakfast with her before going shopping,
until I felt the stubble on my face. I told her that I would have
to go home and shave. Um… We ended up… She ended up shaving me that
morning. When she finished with that, she then asked me to shave
her legs for her. She then left me to shower while she made
breakfast. I ended up taking a cold shower. It’s not that I meant
to. Christine kind of got in the shower with me and started to
molest me. The only way to get her out of there was to turn on the
cold water.

It was before we were a couple. There was a
lot of sexual tension. And sometimes Christine just pounces on you
in a dirty sexual way. She makes you feel like she is just using
you. I have generally tried to avoid making her feel that way, even
when I was really horny.

The point is that Christine and I have had a
lot of fights naked. I also have the disposable razor that
Christine used to shave me with that morning. It still smells like
the girly shaving cream she used on me. I told her that it had
better not make me smell like a girl. She said that it wouldn’t. It
would just make my head smell like it had been between her legs all
night. I do love that woman, even when she is terrible.

So you see, I can spend hours with my little
shoebox and going over all of the memories. It doesn’t matter what
is going on between me and Christine. The memories that come back
to me always bring me clarity.

I don’t know what Christine wrote in the
section that I’m not supposed to read. I’m not going to read it. I
promised her that I wouldn’t. I know that she has been a little
weird lately. She keeps telling me that we may not be together
after high school. She says that she just wants to open me up the
possibility that things will be changing.

Christine is young, naïve, and flighty. She
has a habit of underestimating me. We are not going to be breaking
up after high school. I don’t know what is going to be happening
yet. That is the future. I haven’t quite decided everything yet. It
will take me a lot of soul searching with my box of memories to
know what I am going to do, but we are not going to be breaking
up.

And I hate to tell Christine this, but we are
going to be having sex one of these days. I just haven’t decided
when yet. I’m not going to tell her this. She would jump me right
now. I just need to figure out some things first.

I think Arthur said it best when he said that
I always get what I want. Christine and I are going to be staying
together for a very long time. We have gone through too much stuff
during our years together for me to worry about something stupid
like graduating from high school.

I have already seen my future with her. I have
seen our children. We aren’t breaking up. I just don’t know how
everything is going to play out. Things will change for us, but we
will get through it. That is what we do. Our relationship evolves
to meet our surroundings. It is always just enough the same to make
it comfortable without ever getting boring.

Chapter Eight

Back to the Future

Since this assignment is supposed to be about
where I have come from and where I am going, I guess it is only
natural that I look now to the future.

I don't know what I want out of the future. I
would like to be a comedian. I enjoy doing that. But if I look back
on everything that I have written here, I see that my life has been
defined by Christine. That should count for something. There has
also been a preoccupation with sex. So if the purpose of this
assignment is to see where I have come from to see where I am going
to, then I am going to be having sex with Christine. That is my
future.

Sex is the biggest problem that Christine and
I face now. I know that she wants to have sex with me. It's not
that I don't want to have sex with her. I still feel a little
scared. I am still reminded of the night that we almost had sex
when my father died. If I slept with her, would somebody else
die?

Maybe there is also a part of me that doesn't
trust my heart. Christine and I have actually been together now for
almost a year, and it has been marvelous. There is still a part of
me that thinks it may not last. If I slept with her, it would only
hurt me more in the future.

Our relationship is the best that it has ever
been. We were in bed one night, and she was running her fingers
over my chest as her head was resting on my shoulder. I just laid
there enjoying the moment. I was totally at peace. She then looked
at me and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was listening to
our melody. She was running her fingers over me in rhythm to the
beating of my heart. We were even breathing in unison. We were
totally one with each other. I told her that that was what sex
would be like with us. What we were experiencing now was what the
afterglow would be like, but more so.

I don't want to screw this up. I love her too
much. If I ever experienced true oneness with her, how could I go
back to being alone and not feeling hollow and incomplete? How do
you explain this to a woman that you love? I don't want her to
think that I am still holding a grudge for what she has done to me
in the past. As far as I am concerned, that is all in the past. It
has been forgiven.

But there is still this scared little boy that
I can't quite get rid of.

~~~

I think Jack is still a scared
little boy. He has been that way ever since his father's death.
Like I said before, I think he became his father. That part that
was Jack retreated deep inside of him. I only see it when he is
alone with me.

I don't know what to do to get
that boy back and to make him grow up. Jack does not like to talk
about his feelings. It's like he doesn't want to share his feelings
because it is a way to hurt him. As long as he doesn't let you know
what he is feeling, then you can't hurt him. It goes back to him
being a god. Feelings are a weakness he can't afford if he is going
to be great.

He has also probably buried all
memories of his father's death. Our actual first date was on the
fifth anniversary of his father's death. I have always considered
that day our anniversary because it was the first time that we
almost had sex. There was no denying our feelings for each other
that night.

Jack didn't even think about it. I
had reminded him before that date that it was our fifth
anniversary. That night, he took me to the tree house for a candle
lit dinner from a picnic basket. He says he picked the tree house
because it was where we used to play house. When I brought up the
time that we almost had sex there the night that his father died,
he withdrew from me. He became so quiet.

I think he had seriously
forgotten. It was the only way that he could deal with his father's
death. He was so busy at that time of his life taking care of other
people that he didn't have time to take care of himself. Once he
was through with everybody else, he had moved on to other things.
He just never went back and dealt with his father's
death.

I don't think he has dealt with
his sexual desires either. I know that I have been the one
pressuring us to have sex, but I am not the most sexual of the
couple. Jack has me beat.

Jack has always been a sexual
person. That is what scared me in kindergarten about him. He was a
true lover back then. The other kids started talking.

He has always been able to look at
you like you were the only person in the world. And he can just
touch you in a way that makes you just want to give in to him. He
awakens you and puts you at ease all at the same time. He is just
so natural as a lover that I can tell when he is holding back. He
has been holding back pretty much since puberty.

I don't doubt that he is afraid to
re-awaken his sexuality. I think it took a lot for him to repress
it. And if it is awoken, it would be a great monster.

He has told me this a few times.
He said it would be like releasing a genie that could not be put
back in the bottle.

Am I ready for such a force? I
don't know. I would like to have the old Jack again. I miss that
part of him.

~~~

There are other issues for us as well. I have
always felt like Christine has wanted to sleep with me to get back
at her father. That man hates me. What better way to rebel than to
sleep with the man that your father hates.

And I’m serious that he hates me. I have never
been over at her house when he has not said something derogatory
towards me. When were in our early teens, he would accuse me of
being gay. I think it was because I never dated. I couldn’t really
date, though. I was waiting for Christine to be single and for us
to work everything out.

When we did finally start to date, he gave me
a lot of grief. Well, the grief didn’t really start until I turned
eighteen. Christine was still seventeen at the time. I was told
that if I slept with her, he would have me arrested for sex with a
minor.

And it’s not that he doesn’t like the boys
that Christine dates. She once dated a guy that hit her. Her father
went along with her excuses of falling down the stairs. I seemed to
be the only one that got upset. He was real buddy- buddy with that
guy.

And I’m pretty sure that he hated me as a
child, too. I just remember not feeling wanted around him. I don’t
know what I ever did to him.

~~~

My father is an asshole. I don't
deny that I hate him. I don't want to sleep with Jack to get back
at him. Sleeping with Jack would be taking me away from my father.
Another man would now have me and be able to call me his
own.

And I think Jack is wrong when it
comes to how my father feels about him. I think my dad actually
likes him. He sees in him the son that he should have had. It makes
it hard for him to look at Jack and not hate me for what I am. I
think he is mean to him to push him away.

I’m sure that our father’s talked
about stuff. There are secrets that we don’t know. Our fathers were
the best of friends. Jack’s dad was my father’s closest confidant.
He was the only person my dad could trust. That is saying a lot. My
dad doesn’t trust anybody.

Jack’s father was an extremely
brilliant man. He probably made my father promise that Jack and I
would only play outside. We were never allowed to play in my house.
It would be a protection thing. His father always wanted to protect
him.

I don’t know if that was a smart
thing to do or not. Jack has a lot of questions he wants answered.
He can’t go anywhere now to get them answered.

My dating patterns have been a
rebellion. I want somebody to love me and take care of me in a way
that I have never been able to before. That is kind of why I dated
the guy who hit me. I mean, I wanted somebody to love me. I thought
the guy was okay at first. I thought he loved me. Then he started
to hit me. I saw how it made Jack mad. I kind of liked that. It was
back when me and Jack were not together.

I was fourteen at the time. He was
my first real boyfriend. It was a hard time for me. I don’t really
want to talk about it. It’s in the past. Part of me felt like I
deserved to be abused. I mean, I had seen my mom get smacked around
by some of the guys that she went out with. And I saw what it did
to Jack. I enjoyed that. Part of me also liked it that my father
liked this boy. In some sick way, I wanted my father to love me. I
have gotten over that at this point. I just think that he is an
asshole now. I think he is more of an asshole every day.