My business

As promised....Back Then (its a lil late...)

As a young person, I made some pretty stupid things. But I really think we all did.

I was a little over a month into my tenth grade year. School was kind of getting to me. I was thinking that it was just a big waste of time. But I loved my art class and my drama/stagecraft class, too. Somehow, I convinced myself that those two classes were worth going to school for. In both of these classes is where I met D-friend (silly nicknames we had for each other) aka, the Crayola Queen. She was one of the maybe five or so Goth kids at our school. Seriously, she was Goth before Goth hit mainstream. I didn't know it was possible for a human to be that white and still be alive.

In my efforts to change the path my life was on, I decided she would be a good friend to have. Meaning...she was clean, no drugs.

BM didn't do drugs either, so I was spending more and more time with her. LG knew her too and we would all hang out together after school. Actually, LG was kind of clinging to me...now that she noticed I was spending more time with other people. And when she would hang out with me and BM, drugs seemed to be foreign to her. Maybe it was because BM didn't think they were cool. Get it.

Anyway, I was doing much better and staying away from everything seemed to be getting easier.

Rich and I, well...he was kind of clingy too. At first it annoyed me, then I just got numb to the fact. There was purpose behind me dating him, I would keep reminding myself. But Sam sightings were few and far between.

Honestly, as I look back now, I remember being so confused. Confused about her and confused about Rich. Both were amazing kissers but when I kissed her, I felt something more, more than I ever felt with him. I really didn't understand when really, I should have. But I never took any of it seriously anyway. I was only fourteen...I figured that I would figure it all out when it actually became important to me. And at that time in my life the only things that were important were art and music and skateboarding.

BM had to work the weekend and I ended up hanging out at the theater with Rich, LG, and RM. There were others hanging out too but, like RM's brother and another of our local drug dealers and his latest fiend. Just because I was hanging out with them didn't mean I had to talk with them and I was doing great ignoring them for the most part. But then...

"So, have you met Fred yet?" RM asked over my shoulder.
I was busy playing Galaga and I really didn't want to answer.
"Well?" he asked again.
"It's really none of your fucking business," I told him without turning around.

By this time his brother had walked up too. He asked me the same thing.
"Leave me the fuck alone. And again, it is none of your business." I turned around and Rich and LG were standing behind me against the wall. Both of them smiling at the questions I was being asked. I glanced at RM and JM and asked, "Why? What did he say?" I nodded my chin in Rich's direction.
RM laughed and leaned against the side of the arcade machine. "He said you've been giving him blue-balls."

Truthfully, I had kissed more than a few guys and a couple of girls by this age. I'd seen more body parts of both than most girls my age. I knew about sex and the mechanics of it all. I wasn't innocent. BUT, I had never in my life heard anyone say that they had blue-balls. My first thought...he's diseased.

"Blue what?" I asked, trying to hide my confusion.
JM put his arm over my shoulder. "He's saying that you've been getting him all worked up and horny and then sending him home."
That kind of pissed me off. "Well then, he deserves his blue-balls if he is telling you guys that much."
And they thought it was funny. At least it kept them from staying on the subject.

Later, as LG and I were walking home (actually, I was riding my board and she was walking), she brought it all up again.
"I can't believe you haven't slept with him yet." She was a bad actress and I could tell that whatever she was going to say, she was asked to.
"LG, it's not my thing. Besides, there's no rule that says that just because he is my boyfriend, I have to sleep with him." Out of all the people in the world, LG wasn't the one I would have chosen to have this conversation with.
"Are you scared? Like you'll get pregnant or something?"
I looked at her like she was 90 degrees of crazy. "No. I just don't want to. I have no interest in meeting Fred."
"You don't know what you are missing," she said, kind of laughing.

It was no secret that she had slept with KK. Even less of a secret that she had slept with RM and maybe a dozen or so other guys.

"Actually, LG, I know that I'm not missing a thing. What makes you think I'm a virgin?"

This knocked her off balance a bit. For a few minutes, she didn't know what to say.

"Well, then why don't you just fuck him and get it over with?" she asked.
We stopped in front of her house and I slapped the tail of my board against the ground making the board jump up in my hand. "Because I just don't want to. And I'm not going to change my mind for any of you. If I ever get the feeling like I want to sleep with him, I will but until then, all of you need to stay out of my business."

I left it at that and headed home.
Here's a laugh for you all...I slept with Rich less than a week later. And of course, it sucked. BUT, I did sleep with him because I wanted to. I had finally gotten to hang out with Sam and when she left, he was there.
Stupid reasoning, I know but... And if he ever knew....hahaha...

Ignorance is a kiss

Here we go.  Since Starr is bugging me about it and I can deny her nothing...Back Then...

School started and I started off tenth grade with a boyfriend.  A boyfriend I didn't really lke.  He did surprise me that night at the party.  He acted kind of normal.  He didn't ask me to meet Fred or really show off in front of his friends.  He just acted like a guy that was genuinely interested in me and like he was trying to make a good impression.  I will admit, I did start to doubt my first assumptions of him.

At school, I stopped hanging out with LG so much but we still hung around each other after school.  I guess you can say that I just tollerated her.  She wasn't an individual, she was what she thought everyone around her would think was cool.  I didn't like that.  I always thought that if your friends didn't like you for who you were then they weren't real friends anyway.  (Hypocrite pops into my head here and later you will see why.)

I started hanging out with BM instead.  She wasn't much into school and we ended up skipping more than a few days together.  Once, we skipped school on my mothers birthday.  I had completely forgotten that my mom would take half a day off on her birthday and go shopping.  We went down to the Broward Mall which was real close to where my mom worked and as we were walking through, we came face to face with my mom.  To this day, I have no idea how she didn't see me.  Anyway, BM was cool because she was always herself and I really liked that about her. She had a twin brother too.  A very hot twin brother I might add.  Back then, I always thought it was strange how that fact didn't really have an effect on me.

Rich worked during the day, sometimes.  But when he wasn't working and I didn't feel like staying in school, he'd come pick me up and we'd go to Tradewinds Park or out to lunch or whatever.  He was becoming nicer and nicer and I actually started to like him...a little.  Not in a "I wanna jump your bones" way but more like "we could be friends" way.  I should have took that as a sign.

On the weekends, we would all - and I mean all, like the entire party crew - hang out up at the 99 cent movie theater.  We became friends with the manager and would pretty much stay there the entire day watching movies (they only showed four) and playing video games (they only had two and Galaga was my fave). 

"Earth Girls are Easy" was playing and I will tell you that I've seen that movie so many times that I can recite the dialogue.  Rich and I were sitting in the back row of the pretty much empty theater.  I hadn't kissed him since he the last party of the summer.  I just didn't feel interested in him that way.  Another sign I ignored.  But Rich was a little fidgety and he was starting to annoy me.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked.  I figured he was high on coke because that was his drug of choice but this was a different kind of fidget.

He started acting shy but he put his arm around me.  "Nothing really."

His leg was jumping and finally, I draped my leg over it to stop it.  It was driving me nuts.  "Liar.  What is it?"

I guess by this time, we had been dating for a little over two weeks.  I still wasn't thinking of it as dating though.

"I, uh," he looked over at me with a nervous grin, "was wondering if I could kiss you?"

Rich knew me better than I thought.  I didn't realize this until much, much later.  He knew that the way to get to me was to show me respect.  And he was playing the game well.  And since he asked, I started to feel nervous. 

I smiled and stared at him for a moment.  He had asked instead of just doing it.  Not like him.  And he hadn't tried anything since that second to last party.  He was being nice and not being his usual man-whore self.  Then I thought, there might be something here.  I kissed him and I think we made out for the rest of the movie until our friends started showing up and throwing popcorn at us.  We were a bunch of silly asses back then.

You would have thought I would have put it together.  He asked to kiss me because I was sober.  I guess he figured I was easier when I was fucked up.  Like I said, I didn't figure any of this out until much later.

Another thing...the reason I hadn't broke up with hm that night was because Sam asked me not to.  LG didn't want me to either.  LG was using me for reasons that I knew...to be able to spend time with RM.  I couldn't figure out any reason for Sam to be using me, so I went along with it.  Her lips made me blind.  But in those two weeks or so, I only saw Sam once and we never got a chance to be alone.  It looked like our plan wasn't working.

It would have been the best time for me to walk away...but I didn't.