CHAPTER THREE: “The Escape”

Upon my decision to destroy the naive ignorance to how life was outside of the walls of my upbringing I decided that in order to accomplish this I would have to experience that which I feared and what was unfamiliar to me.

Without my parent’s knowledge, since dancing was not allowed, I attended my first and only high school dance. Apparently, the popular couple a year above me had parted ways and Larissa picked me out for reasons that I’ll never know. I had no idea how to dance so I spent most of the time socializing and took up momentary conversation with her. I was actually shocked that she acknowledged me at all since I was definitely not a school activist like she appeared to be. Upon returning home I received her phone call and we talked for hours. I was still confused as to where the sudden interest came from.

Since she was on the school basketball team we decided to attend a game in someone’s old upstairs, 2nd-level, makeshift basketball court in a barn. I suspected that her method of defense was not what they teach in normal practice since she basically made the most out of every opportunity to bump and grind, even when there was not a need to do so. After the “game” was over we ‘talked’ for awhile in a dark room down below. It was the first time that I had ever been touched in a sexual way. The next day, we skipped school, and I lost my virginity.

Over the course of the next few weeks I began to feel as if there was something about me that could be appreciated by someone outside of the circle of my enclosed past. For a time, I was no longer an outsider and developed friendships with people that started to see that I was human too. I was no longer the freak of nature that religion had made me out to be. We’d planned to attend prom together, attended parties, and she did what she could knowing that I was totally in the dark when it came to sex. Maybe she’d seen the shy person and inwardly wanted to rescue me from the apparent alienation.

My mother had learned of the parties and our involvement, confronted her, and made it very difficult on us both to the point where I’d left home and slept nights in a press box at the ball park and would have to take showers in the school locker room before class. Larissa would bring me blankets and a portable alarm clock because her parents would never permit my staying there either. I hated my mother for the embarrassment she’d caused me in front of the opposite sex. This was not the first time.

I had dated a church girl months before and upon her coming for an innocent visit my mother caught me sneaking out of the house to talk to her since she was only going to be in town for a few minutes and I was not permitted to see her. So I told the girl where to meet and ran to the location as my mother, in her bathrobe, got into her car. I caught up with the girl, told her I’d have to talk to her later and sent her on her way.

Mother, unknowing that I just went back home, pursued the girl down the highway, got out of the car, walked up to it and said “Do you have any idea how much trouble you are in?” I was not in the car although having heard the story second hand it did nothing more than add to my feeling of embarrassment.

On a repetitive basis I was being made a fool of and the issue with Larissa and I was the last straw. Larissa broke it off three days before prom due to the circumstances.

As I stood in the bathroom staring at the sink I looked at the bottle of aspirin for a count. I questioned if what I was doing was what I really wanted. I weighed my options, feeling restricted, embarrassed, and abandoned, with no hope of it letting up in the future I swallowed the contents of the bottle.

Cold and chilled, I do not remember if I called my mother after having second thoughts or if she just happened to come home but she drove me to the emergency room to have my stomach pumped as I already began feeling even more stupid for what I had done.

Now I don’t know if pumping my stomach was entirely a physical necessity but the experience itself was quite uncomfortable. I was forced to drink water as they put a plastic tube down my throat, filling my stomach with a charcoal substance. After hours of the process it was extremely painful to so much as move since the tube seemed to have my innards very sensitive from constant rubbing.

A counselor was brought to the room where my siblings and my mother stood, tired, quiet and angry. I told him that I felt trapped and that there was no way out. I felt isolated, restricted beyond what I believed was normal, and that as long as I lived in that house it would continue to remain that way.

This day has been long remembered in that my sisters sided with me against my mother and she would not hear of it. She did the best she could and I was to live a disciplined life and any other way would be letting down her responsibilities to me as a mother. I continued on with a few sessions of counseling before I realized that I was basically an object paying for a service and that there was no concern for my well being much beyond that.

I returned to school only to add to my shame. Being a small town it was already common knowledge before I so much as walked down a hallway what I had done. But I will always remember the letter that one of Larissa's friends wrote to me that met me right where I was at because she, too, had been there. I did not consider her a likely acquaintance in that I don’t think that we had spoken much more than a few moments in the entire time that we went to that school, but I’ll always remember the gesture.

Having to suffer through the recourse of my own actions I knew that I had to come up with a plan in order to deal with intense emotion as to not lose my head again. What I had done was not the answer, nor effective. I knew that I didn’t want to die, but I did not want to live at the time either, so I had to find a way of diverting pain, weakness, loss, and inadequacy. I decided that if I were to ever feel that way again that I would escape with alcohol since it was much more temporary and less dramatic. I found that it was also a great way to come out of my shell and leave second guessing myself behind; one solution for a multitude of issues and far less painful. I also swore that I would never put myself in a position of rejection again.

So the one time my mother left for a weekend retreat I prepared in advance. I put the word out to all the party people and surprisingly enough had a pretty decent turnout. Somehow a big, burly biker guy, which stood out like a sore thumb in Vanlue, Ohio, ended up sitting at my dining room table over glasses full of quarters. He mentioned something about the fact that he’d bitten off the tail of a cat and from sheer size alone I could tell that this guy was just one of those people ya just don’t want to mess with. After he’d mentioned something about my dog I proceeded to hide the knives in the kitchen drawer in the cupboard.

By the end of the night there was a layer of beer two inches thick on the linoleum kitchen floor. I was soggy all over but it appeared that everyone had had a good time despite the odd character sitting at my dining room table and his Mexican brother in the next room with his girlfriend.

The next day I pried beer caps off of my mother’s wooden furniture, washed floors, washed myself, took out the five bags of empty cans and beer bottles and shoved them in the dumpster in back of the school we lived next door to. I explained away the dark stain on the carpet where the trash bag had broken but I knew that my explanation was under suspicion.

Two days later, the creature’s brother, one of the only Mexican families in our town, died in English class. He had died from a heart malformation that he had had since birth.

At the beginning of that school year I had noticed a new girl in school that shared one of my study halls. She seemed shy and withdrawn; wore glasses when she read. Although she was fashionably homely as far as the way she dressed in my opinion but I found her very attractive. She had long shapely legs and the shyness made her appear vulnerable. It wasn’t until a few months after her brother had died in school that I made it aware to her friends that I had interest in her. We began hanging out together and and shortly thereafter we became somewhat intimate at the house of one of her friends. The next day I gave her an envelope containing the following lyrics:

Def Leppard
Love Bites

If you’ve got love in your sights
Watch out, love bites
When you make love, do you look in the mirror? Who do you think of, does he look like me?

Do you tell lies and say that it’s forever?
Do you think twice, or just touch ‘n’ see?
Ooh babe ooh yeah

When you’re alone, do you let go?
Are you wild ‘n’ willin’ or is it just for show?
Ooh c’mon

I don’t wanna touch you too much baby
‘Cos making love to you might drive me crazy
I know you think that love is the way you make it
So I don’t wanna be there when you decide to break it

No! Love bites, love bleeds
It’s bringin’ me to my knees
Love lives, love dies
It’s no surprise
Love begs, love pleads
It’s what I need

When I’m with you are you somewhere else?
Am I gettin’ thru or do you please yourself?
When you wake up will you walk out?
It can’t be love if you throw it about

Ooh babe I don’t wanna touch you too much baby
‘Cos making love to you might drive me crazy
Love bites, love bleeds
It’s bringin’ me to my knees

Love lives, love dies
If you’ve got love in your sights
Watch out, love bites

Yes it does
It will be hell

From that day on, having gradually lost all care for rules, restrictions, and order, we spent most of our days and nights together.

Her home life was an extreme entirely different than mine. She was somewhat younger than I and when you’re in high school it ain’t that old to begin with but I was not her first boyfriend that she’d ever had. She’d dated someone for at least a year prior to us meeting each other and her mother had no problems with it whatsoever when he practically had moved in with her. It became what I saw as my escape into adulthood. I could do as I pleased. I didn’t have to go home if I didn’t want to since my mother had basically given up any hopes of control over me; so much so that on the day I turned 18 I was requested to officially leave her house. I could experience sex as an adult would, we could party at will, and most of all, I adored her and the unrestricted lifestyle.

Still, at the same time, I always thought it very odd that her mother was actually happy to wake us up in the morning together with her not being as old as I was. I guess I finally decided that Mexican lifestyles married younger despite the fact that they were born American.

I felt a great deal of sympathy for the tragedy that encompassed her family. Her father had died five years earlier from heart failure and her brother had just recently died as well. Her other brother, who had attended my party and made threatening remarks in regard to my dog, was doing time in prison for drug dealing. Having never had an in-depth serious relationship in my life I went into it in full force. I held nothing back. I was romantic and untouched in the way of long-term relationships.