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Discipline was strictly enforced in what was left of my family. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” was the given motto. Not that I wasn’t the perfect child, but I did occasionally try to push things as far as I could get them to go. There was that fine line of antagonization that meant I’d finally went over the edge and was going to have to take a trip to the silverware drawer to retrieve the wooden spoon that years later I hid to see if it would make the punishments go away.
The boundaries between “God” and my mother were closely intertwined into my conscience. If she said I was forgiven I felt a lot better than casting up multiple prayers and not hearing anything back. It saddened me that I could not take my dog to heaven when we all had to leave. She wasn’t fortunate enough to have a soul but I was told that I wouldn’t care because we don’t even recognize family in heaven like we do here on earth. Needless to say that didn’t make me feel much better and I had episodes of sadness, knowing that eventually everything that I knew and clung to would be taken away from me when we walked through the gates of paradise.
My family believed that to live a good Christian life there was no sin in our lives. That meant NO sin at all. Where Catholic beliefs as well as others were based on forgiveness and that sinning was inevitable I was taught that you just didn’t sin in the first place. Yes, there was forgiveness, but sin was “knowing to do the right thing, and not doing it” or “willfully committing an action that we know is wrong”. This left a lot of room for paranoia when taken literally, which I did. I would constantly question myself as well as bare extreme discipline in all aspects of my life upon myself. If bad thoughts were to creep into my brain it would be the death of my soul if I did not kick them back out before they resided there too long. As if reading the Bible and praying on a daily basis wasn’t enough, I was put into Junior Bible Quiz. This required much study and memorization to which other children my age would eventually get together and compete to test our knowledge. Later on, as a teenager, it got to the point where I memorized four books of the Bible, word for word, in hopes of ranking on top but I eventually became frustrated and and tired of the constant discipline to the point of giving up on the idea all together.
I have always thought on broad terms. Where something applies to one area of your life, it should also follow suit in others. So, if one part of the Bible tells me to “do everything as if it were unto God” and sin is “knowing to do the right thing and refusing to do it” then that means that if there is a piece of paper on the floor, and I don’t pick it up, knowing that I should, I have just committed a sin. Imagine living every moment with constant choice of right and wrong, in extreme detail, and you’ll begin to understand the plight that I had going on inside my head. I was told that I could avoid this constant anguish if I became “sanctified”. What this means is, if you’re a Christian, you’re still quite capable of sin and will not have the capability to avoid sin unless you have “locked in” to the Holy Spirit, thus sanctification provides a way to prevent yourself from ever sinning again. I must say that I cannot remember how many times I was sanctified. As much as I tried, I’d still mess up eventually.
I was the kid in school who carried the Bible. We lived in a Protestant area, but of course, I was always the one who took the extremes. From day one religion put a divider between myself and my class mates. But Vanlue School was well prepared for me in that my older sisters had already passed through its doors. They were the ones with home made shorts down to their knees in volleyball and basketball because the regular uniforms were too short and indecent to wear in public. I was a trooper tho. I did everything I could to set myself apart from the sin of the secular world and did it very effectively. We were to “remain in this world, but were not to BE of this world” so that was a good thing I suppose. So this meant that when my friend Mike had his birthday party and all of the kids that went were watching Friday the 13th, I sat in a separate room alone because there was a scene that showed nudity in the movie.
By the time I had reached my teenage years I actually had no clue as to how to relate to other people but I did, however, have a keen ability to “see” through them. Why not? Most of my life was examination of myself in such detail, why wouldn’t I recognize such things in other people? So I felt very uncomfortable when the kids in my Sunday School class were talking about the latest “secular” music. Uncomfortable? Yes. It was the first time where I saw the human need to “fit in” blatantly displayed. “You like Michael Jackson? Oh I love that song where…”. These kids were using their likes and dislikes to find a way to relate and be accepted; being something that their friends wanted them to be accomplished this as opposed to following their own instincts. It bothered me.
Since of course everything in my life was church related I was put regularly each summer into church camp. This meant girls! And of course spiritual emancipation.
This year’s church camp was nestled on many acres of wooded land, complete with trails, sports facilities and the works. There were bathroom facilities attached to each of the tattered dorm rooms and a matching dorm directly across a long cement porch. Since all doors opened inward of course it was the perfect scenario to tie the knobs of the neighbors to their bathroom doors, thus making it nearly impossible to leave unless someone felt guilty enough to untie them.
Upon arrival the main objective was to unload the weeks worth of clothes onto the graffiti-ed bunk beds and scope for girls. It didn’t take long before I saw her. Long, curly, light brown hair, with full lips and lots of makeup. Vikki Frase had to have been the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. She was by far the most attractive female on the grounds and, later to become my best friend, Aaron, was convinced that she liked me. I being shy, could not fathom the possibility, so much so that it took me the entire week to finally get up the nerve to hold her hand. For some reason, I’d gotten it into my head that spending every waking and allowable hour with this girl was not enough of an open door that it would be okay to make a move. I just knew that she would scream at me if I did and it wouldn’t be long before I had a pervert warrant out with my picture on it.
I spent the entire week with a voice in my head telling me, “Do it! Do it!” I’d blame it on the fact that I was stubborn but I think deathly scared would be more applicable.
But time was running out, it was Sunday afternoon and with one service left it would all be over. Did I really want to walk away on those terms?
So halfway through the afternoon service I, as nonchalantly as possible, reached for her hand as she took mine. Relief gave way, almost as much as the beads of sweat and the burning sensation throughout my face did. But I was in.
Vikki sent me on my way home with a picture in hand. I thought of nothing else during that long bus ride home. I stared at that class picture for many, many hours and many, many days and months thereafter. We kept in touch for quite some time. Some times two letters a day in the case that something had been forgotten or more likely the feeling of expression experienced in putting it into words how much I still cared about her and dreams of next year. To this day, every time I smell “Impulse” it reminds me of the smell of her letters. But next year never came and I never saw her again.
I had known of Aaron but had never personally spent much time with him until that week at church camp–his girlfriend and mine. We became friends. Aaron seemed to have a way with women. He was the smart sensitive type with an evil streak and a lot of talent.
The first time that I heard him playing the piano during off hours at the chapel I presumed it was a tape.
As I neared closer to the door girls were standing nearby watching this guy play. And he could play!
I had been forced to take piano lessons for quite a few years but had put a prompt stop to it by barring a chair against my bedroom door and refusing to go to the farm where my piano teacher lived.
The gold medal winners then had the honor of playing at the general assembly held at Mount Vernon Nazarene College each year. Having been struggling with “Mary Had A Little Lamb” I left church camp that year with the gold medal title in mind for next year.
I began practicing piano for easily 6 to 8 hours each day. My family had always been musical and I had been considered the untalented one up to that time. This would change. My sister Chris at the time was perfecting a composition that seemed highly advanced for even seasoned players. That one song was my goal.
Surprisingly enough, Aaron only lived about three miles from me. We became best friends and shared common interest. His competitiveness rubbed off on me to which we found many ways to rival each other.
Since he had a liking for tennis I figured I’d learn to beat him at that too. So between piano and tennis my summers were more or less entirely booked.
Aaron seemed to have more experience with girls so in many ways he brought me out of my spiritual imagination and into the real world where people were human beings.
In less than a year I had accomplished my goal and my song was ready to take into competition. As I began progressing through the levels I began to feel recognized throughout the area. It was probably the first time I had experienced popularity and I felt good about the fact that it had been earned as opposed to following someone else’s dreams. The pain and nervousness of performing in front of people began to feel overshadowed by feelings of accomplishment where a year earlier I had nothing.
One of the college guys once gave me a hard time about the fact that “I would get up there, blow everyone in the place away, then quietly stand up with my hands in my pockets, stare at the ground like I’d just done something horrible and walk out.” In reality I was obsessed with being humble. I was not one to think I was significant because I had expended so many hours and knew only one song.
Aaron and I both won the gold that year and the next two as well. My claim to accomplishment was to play at the college gym to a soundtrack in front of probably thousands of people.
I later was asked to give a concert in Fostoria, Ohio comprised of the eight or ten songs I’d learned over the past few years to which I bought my first pair of contact lenses with the proceeds. No more glasses!
The following year at church camp I met up with a girl that I had competed against many years ago in Junior Bible Quizzing. The week we spent together turned into an entire summer in that her parents took to me like I was one of their own. It seemed they wanted very badly for their daughter to find a strong christian boy and to take a liking to him. Looking back I think that their children would have had to have a played a major priority in their life considering the extent to which they arranged for us to get together, all the activities they had planned, all the gifts they’d showered me with as well as talks over sandwiches and chips. I think they were worried that she was at a crucial pre-teen period in her life and were doing everything they could to steer her away from the reality of school social life.
Between the arranged visits we would correspond daily. Rarely a day went by that each of us would not receive at least two letters in the mail from the other one. Without the existence of the internet it was a tedious task to keep in touch but I found that I could not express my philosophies and affection adequately enough to correspond on a weekly or monthly basis. Eventually she became distant and I believe she eventually did head into the direction of her school mates and the social life therein and I heard a few years later that she had become pregnant.
Years later, out of sentiment I guess, I revisited her and her family and we sat on the couch going through her boxes of letters that I had written her and laughed about the fact that I never even kissed her because my mother did not believe I was old enough, nor ready enough, to get that personal with a girl. I think we both laughingly concluded that I was indeed an uptight fruitcake during those years.
Aaron had a wild domestic side to which he of course polluted me with. Having been easing away from my religious background I stood half in and half out of the ‘holy’ water before finally getting out altogether. I had never so much as seen a woman nude until he snuck a Hustler magazine into the house. Needless to say I was shocked by the blatant sexual orientation of the pictures.
I guess I had expected that the women would be naked, but I had no idea as to ‘how’ naked they’d actually be!
I had taken a strong liking to one of the school girls in a nearby town that I had met at the mall. She had been dating a guy that played first string on the state champion basketball team and as much as I tried to convince myself that she did not hold any candles for him I knew I was swimming upstream. Having spent a few nights out on dates with her and her girlfriend who Aaron was seeing in some way, I fell hard for what I could not have. Where I saw time spent together as meaningful, she, being a normal teenager that was used to social life, saw them just for what they were and nothing more. The night that her team played ours I invited her over to my mother’s house for a little while to talk.
Now my mother, having been divorced, was always very tight on money and kept the heat turned down to barely a livable level to save money. It just so happened that this night just HAD to be the night were poor old “Fonzie” the blue parakeet simply couldn’t stand the cold any longer and fell over in his cage and died. I stared at the poor bird in disbelief and grasped for words to explain just how this kind of thing happened when the girl I so wanted to impress arrived at my house for the first time.
I diverted the situation to the kitchen were we stood and talked for a short time before I felt that if I kissed her she would let me. Feeling so inadequate about the situation I was confused by the fact that her eyes were indeed locked into mine and inviting me to make my first advance ever. As I moved to take her lips she took mine and put her tongue down my throat, obviously far more experienced than I was–I mean, she HAD experience. It was not exactly what I expected and for some reason I was not foreseeing the tongue action. Her lips were warm and full and looking back now I’d say as far as kissers go I’d banked on a pretty high quality one for my first choice. But due to the paranoia that I would be discovered by my mother in the next room, and somehow thinking that I was doing something that would be considered wrong, I pulled away abruptly.
It was common for me to spend weekends at Aaron’s house and vice versa, which fell perfectly in accordance with the fact that his parents were away and he’d been allowed to throw a party for the rival community friends of his. This is where I basically became corrupted.
Of all beers, I was offered a can of Old Milwaukee, the first beer I ever had. Upon taking my first sip I was warned that it would taste like piss; not that I’d know what piss would taste like but I understood entirely afterward. Yet it was strange and unfamiliar and the excitement of experiencing what a “buzz", as Aaron called it, was like. At that point I guess I figured I should be drunk. I had no knowledge of how much it was supposed to take and how I was supposed to act as a result of getting drunk. I think I imposed half the feeling on myself out of expectation.
Fortunately there were coolers in the fridge and after hearing Motley Crue’s “You’re All I Need” at least a hundred times (the “DJ", or more so the guy who took over the stereo, was a Vince Neil look-alike) I grew to love the song.
Debbie, my first kiss, had shown up to the party as well, so I assumed partying went hand in hand with sex, right? After spending in the neighborhood of 45 minutes in the dark bedroom I managed to get to first, second, and almost third base before she gently stopped me. It was not the time, nor the right person.
Later in the evening I smoked my first cigarette as well and of course coughed my lungs into oblivion.
After word had gotten out the following Monday that we’d spent some time together my computer class teacher jokingly asked me if she was a bimbo. I replied that indeed she was and he laughed hysterically though I had no idea why, but then again, I didn’t know what a bimbo was either.
Debbie eventually broke my heart although hers was never mine to begin with. She became increasingly indifferent and as time went on I became more and more aware that I was not in her deck of cards. I feared her because she was not as easily impressed with me as I was with her. She’d had what she’d called a long term relationship and was far more ahead of the game while I was doing what I could to live an upright path. Knowing this, I vowed to myself that I would refrain from being so naive and I knew that if I was ever to gain the upper hand with girls that I would have to learn the game and find a path out of the naive world I was brought up within. She did teach me the value of indifference as a social weapon.
Having no feelings at all is much worse than love or hate could ever be. It would later become a key tool in my repertoire of female negotiation.
About the Author
Currently a Lakewood Ranch, Florida resident, Philip has authored various interactive blog websites since the early 2000’s. Most content will be based primarily on matters of opinion as usual.