Anyway, Jack's father believed that Jack was born so that I could be born. If he made Jack think that was the end of the purpose of his life, he did this so that Jack wouldn't become conceited. He has a way of doing this on his own. While he is a gifted writer (He attended the Governor's Summer Institute for Writers the summer between our sophomore and junior years. He was the only screenwriter accepted. He says that means that his scripts are as good as the poets and novel writers of our generation. He says that is really significant because most literary people don't value films as much as literature. Jack has always enjoyed being looked down upon and then proving that he is the best at something.), his father doesn't think that is his true purpose in life. It is just something that he is good at like his father was good at being a lawyer.
According to his father, Jack is supposed to do more than just to make sure that I was born. He's supposed to save me. Here's the thing. I don't really want him to save me. I mean, I'm okay with him saving me in terms of giving me the Heimlich if I'm choking or something, but I think his father was talking about another kind of saving me. It was more of a salvation kind of saving me. As much as I love Jack, I don't want his salvation. We can't last as a couple. I know this. And I don't want Jack to give up any chance of a career he might have because he thinks his purpose in life is me.
I guess I'm kind of glad that Jack has never known what his true purpose in life is according to his father. If he did, he would try to marry me right now, or at least right after high school. I'm not ready for marriage. And I don't think I want to marry Jack, even though I do love him more than anybody else. I think I will always love him, but we aren't really compatible as a couple. I think we both know this. We're just too attracted to each other and know each other too well to not be together. We're like best friends that just want to f*ck each other, but we both know that as soon as we do, what is special about us will disappear.
I appreciate his father thinking that I need saving and all, but I'm a pretty messed up person. I will only end up bringing Jack down to my level. I think it is better if I let him go so that he can be the kind of man his father was. If he stays with me, I will only end up making him like one of my parents. I don't think I could live with myself if that happened.
You see, my parents are messed up. My father has an extremely large ego. He knows that he wasn't a good father. He doesn't really care about that. He wasn't going to put time and effort into me to be an actual parent. So he bought me things to give the appearance of being a doting father. I have never figured out if he was buying me things out of guilt for being a terrible father or because he saw me as an extension of himself. If I had the best stuff, then he would be the best father. I still do not have the answer for this.
And my mother... I don't know when my mother started drinking. I don't remember her being sober when I was between the ages of about 5 and 10. She always spent a lot of time in her bedroom crying. I would go to her because I had no doubt that she loved me. It felt good to just be held by her. It made me feel needed and loved. But I found that I couldn't spend a lot of time with my mom. She didn't do anything, except stay in bed and drink for those years of my life. And when she started to get out of her alcoholic phase, she then entered into a slutty phase where she would sleep with any man that paid attention to her. There was alcohol involved during this phase, too, but she was more sober. I think she likes being coherent enough to feel like these guys actually care about her. She kind of has to be sober enough to feel that, but yet drunk enough to go along with everything that the guy wants to do to make the relationship last.
I love my mom, but I honestly wish she would have stayed in her alcoholic phase. She unfortunately entered her slutty phase just as I was starting to become interested in boys and wanting to date. She's a little embarrassing. Do you know I have had guys at school come up to me and ask me if I was anything like my mother? I don't care if their dad was banging my mom. That doesn't give them the right to approach me. I do wish I would have handled that situation better. I shouldn't have told them that just because their father will screw anything desperate for attention that it doesn't mean I will. I meant it to be an insult at their father, but I think it really ended up insulting my mother. At least I ended the insult by telling the boy that as long as I had fingers I would never be desperate enough to ever do him.
I think it is fairly safe to say that I did not have the greatest childhood. My childhood was spent pretending, but not in the way that other kids did. My family pretended to be happy. My parents had their parts all planned out. All I had to do was learn my part. We put on this great show whenever we would go out in public. I liked it whenever we would go shopping or have company over. It was the only time that I felt like a real family. I wondered why we couldn't always be like that.
If I spent the majority of my childhood with Jack, it was because I loved his family and how he would play with me. He made all of the bad stuff about my family go away. He made me forget that the only person that loved me was my mother that would smother me. She needed to hug me and kiss me to get a feeling of self-worth. That is not what a child needs. I needed to feel loved, instead of making my mom feel like she was loved.
I don't want to say that my mother is selfish. She's not. She had just been abused emotionally by my father so much that she was not capable of loving anybody else or thinking about anybody but herself. She would have done anything for me. She still would, but her issues back then prevented her from really being there for me. Instead, I had to be there for her. That's not the way your childhood should be. That's why I escaped into the world that Jack presented to me. He had everything I ever wanted in a family.
If I played house a lot with Jack, it was because it gave me the chance to have that perfect family. And Jack never argued with me when we played house. I think I tried to start a fight with him one time. He stopped and told me that there is no fighting, name calling, or walking away in playing house. Looking back at this now, I have to laugh at him and his naivety. He has this pure vision of life that has never matched my reality. I think that is why I love him so. He can make you believe his ideal version of things even if the past has taught you that life is something else. When I was a child, it was his imagination that captivated me. He could make you believe anything that he was imagining.
We were able to keep this up until we entered kindergarten. You see, the public school system is a public space. As the daughter of my father, I had a role to play. Everything I did in school was a reflection on him. My father didn't want me to look like Jack's lover. It would look like he was a terrible father. And Jack...
Jack's father has always told me that Jack was born with an old soul. He knows things and see things that others his age would miss. He enjoys learning, likes hanging out with older adults, and doing adult things. He has always been childlike, but he has never really been childish. That's why he can get me to believe the most absurd things, even if I know that they aren't possible. He is one of those people who can make you believe that world peace is possible and that you can actually help to make it a reality. He is too smart and well-spoken to properly be labeled naive or a dreamer, and yet those are some of the very words that I would want to use to describe him. I don't think they have ever come up with a word to describe a dreamer that makes you believe his dreams that eventually become reality.
Well, when I started school, there was this conflict between the years that I had spent with Jack in our own private little world and the public space I was required to perform in because of my parents. Jack did not have this problem, but then again he is always the same whether he is in public or alone. I have always envied this aspect of him.
Out of a desire to have the family life that I had always pretended with Jack, I tried to play the part that my father wanted me to at school. This meant that I had to break Jack's heart. I don't want to sound like I am being cruel here. I was six at the time. And it wasn't like I just decided to break his heart in order to
please my parents. I actually talked to Jack's father about it before I did anything.
That's when Jack's father told me that Jack was born with an old soul. Even if I denied being so close to him at school, Jack would still love me and want to be with me in the private moments. And as much as I hate to admit it, I enjoyed this new arrangement. I felt like my parents were getting along better. Plus I was still able to escape into Jack's world. If anything, it gave me more control over Jack's world. More than just a participant, I was actually the one that dictated the when and how we should play. And he was so in love with me that he would consent to anything I wanted.
I am thinking now that maybe I shouldn't have been so cruel to him at that age. I think we might have gotten together a little easier than we did. I'm thinking that I might actually be able to get him to have sex with me right now, too. I have done some horrible things to him over the years. I have hurt him on purpose because I found some sort of joy in knowing that he wanted to cry because of something I said or did, but he would never cry. He just kept coming back to me with the faith that the past could be forgiven. He called his chapter about this time “As Cruel as School Children”. I think he should have named it “As Cruel as a Concentration Camp”.
If I ever went to confessional, the majority of the sins I have committed would have involved Jack in some way or another. I can’t say that they would be sexual sins. I don’t think anything that we have done together was a sin. The Church would probably think otherwise. As much as I would enjoy telling a priest everything I’ve done with Jack, I don’t really feel guilty about it. I only feel guilty about the stuff I have done to hurt him. There’s no fun in telling a priest the terrible things you’ve done to another human being. It’s only fun to tell them the fun things you’ve done that they can’t do, like having sex. Jack thinks I’m horrible for this. I told him it would only be horrible if I described in detail how he has the body of a thirteen year-old boy to the priest. He kind of shot me a disapproving look, but I think he also thought that this was funny. He just couldn’t say that it was funny because I was also kind of insulting his body at the same time. It’s not that Jack really has the body of a thirteen year-old boy. I mean, he did at one point. It’s just that… Never mind.
It’s just that I don’t need to go to a confessional to confess sins I’ve committed against Jack. Jack has already forgiven them for me. There’s no point going to God for something that doesn’t really concern Him. I mean, the night that Jack wrote his Declaration of Independence, I could not refute any of the claims that he had put in there. If anything, I felt that he would be justified in never talking to me again. I don't want to excuse my actions, but I was loving like my mother loved me. He was there for me, even if I could never be there for him. And he held on with a simple faith that I would eventually become whole enough to love him in return.
And to be fair to me, I was not entirely cruel to him through those years. I mean, I made sure that he was the “first” for any romantic thing. That was always important to me. I couldn't make him my first official boyfriend, but he was my first boyfriend before we were old enough to really have boyfriends or girlfriends. And if you look at the fact that we were able to make it through everything and become a couple today, I think that counts for something.
And just so you know the extent that I went to to make him my first at everything, I started dating Gene Roos when I was eleven. Okay. It wasn't really dating. Our parents had to drop us off at the mall and pick us up, but we held hands and were an official couple at school. We had lunch together and everything.
Anyway, I knew that Gene and I were becoming close enough that I would have to do more than just hold hands with him. But I couldn't kiss him without letting him be my first kiss. So I devised a plan where I would feel insecure about kissing a boy. I got Jack to make out with me so that I could kiss Gene perfectly.
Jack was reluctant at first. I can't blame him for that. I don't think I would like it if I knew that somebody liked me and they wanted to kiss me so that they could kiss somebody else perfectly. The worst part is that I think Jack knew that I really liked Gene. He was hot in a way that Jack wasn't. Although I'm not sure now what I found attractive about him. His hair was long and a little bit feminine. He looked a lot like a girl, actually. He was fun to hang out with though. And he had a pretty smile. Plus he was one of the first guys in school to wear cologne. That was a major turn on to a girl of eleven.
Anyway, typical of my relationship with Jack, he knew that I was playing him and playing Gene as well. He wasn't going to kiss me.
“I don't think I'm the right person to teach you how to kiss”, he said. “Why don't you get one of your girlfriends? I'm sure that will approximate what kissing Gene is like more than kissing me will.”
“I'm not kissing a girl. That's just gross”, I countered. “Plus, you're the closest thing I have to a girlfriend anyway.”
That may have been a cheap blow. I know it was. Plus, I know that Jack has always hated it when I have said that he is more of a girlfriend than anything else. But I have found that if I pissed him off enough that he would do what I really wanted just to prove that he was right. That's the biggest complaint I have about him having an old soul. He knows that he is right and will generally go to great lengths to prove it. It’s just that I don’t always get to use it to my advantage. Sometimes I have to intentionally be wrong to trick him into being right to get what I want.
Anyway, as he moved in closer to me and looked me in the eyes, he pierced my soul and said, “You couldn't handle a kiss from me.”
As he stepped away from me, I gently exhaled and tried to act like I didn't really want him to kiss me. I don't know what it is about being a young girl, but it is kind of fun having two guys. Jack was attractive to me because I knew that he really loved me and would always love me. He has a passion about him that other men lack. Other boys will put their hands all over you and call that passion. Jack puts his entire being into loving you. His mind, body, and soul work as one to where you just forget about everything else. Gene was just a hot boy. That's what made him fun. I don't know if he really liked me or not. He was a sexy little plaything to me, although he is one of the few boys I've gone out with that I actually did like.
Anyway, I found myself saying, “Try me.”
I held my breath as Jack walked closer to me full of determination. I don't know at what point I closed my eyes. I know I didn't see him put his arms around me, or actually come in for the kiss. I felt his lips on mine for a slight moment before I heard him say, “You know, if you're going to be kissed properly, you're going to have stop being so frigid.”
I smacked him on the arm. “I'm not frigid.” My dad used to tell my mom she was frigid whenever she turned him down for sex. Even when my parents were not getting along, they still had sex. My father had needs. Sometimes my mother refused him. Other times she allowed him entrance in her bedroom. It was more out of a physical need than a desire.
Anyway, Jack said, “Then loosen up. And part your lips a little. You can't expect me slip my tongue in your mouth with your teeth clenched like that.”
“Ewww! You were going to slip your tongue in my mouth? That's gross, Jack. I said I wanted you to kiss me, not stick your tongue in my mouth”, I said as I started to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“I'm going home. You're ruining everything. I want my first kiss to be something special, and you're trying to stick your tongue down my throat.”
“And what do you think your precious Gene is going to try to do? I have it on a very good authority that he is trying to French kiss you. No couple in our grade has done that yet. He's trying to prove that you are more of a couple than John and Cindy.”
“You have it good authority? You aren't even friends with him. Why don't you just admit it, Jack? You're the one that wants to French kiss me. You're just upset that I'm dating Gene, who is more of a man than you ever will be.”
“
My, God. You women are crazy. Just when I think I'm beginning to understand you, you come out with some new crap that makes you even more psycho than I thought you were.”
“I hate you, Jack Allen Gynapsy. And I'm sorry that I ever wanted you to be first kiss”, I said as I stormed away.
“Did you ever think that guys talk about what they do with girls when girls aren't around? I have it on good authority that he is wanting more than just a peck. I also know about the other night at the movies when he put his arm around you.”
And I don't know if it was the sadness in his voice, or the fact that I knew he knew about Gene getting a little fresh on one of our dates, but I turned back around.
“You're only eleven, Christine. You don't need to try to grow up so fast”, he said as more of a father than a lover.
As I accepted this, more because of the look he shot me than the words he had said, he held out his arms. I walked over to him and hugged him. And for whatever reason, I started crying.
“You don't really think I'm psycho, do you”, I asked.
“Honey, you're not psycho. I may not always understand you, but you're not psycho. Now, come on, stop your crying. I hate to see you cry”, he said as he wiped my eyes and kissed me on the forehead.
And although I knew he didn't want me to, I started crying even more. I couldn't help it. I just thought about how much it was going to suck to be a teenager. Jack and I weren't even there yet, and we were already acting differently towards each other. Fortunately he knew enough to just shut up and hold me. As I have gotten older, I have found few boys who have learned how to do this. They all want to fix whatever is wrong.
I'm glad that Jack never asked me what was wrong that night. There was no way to put into words everything that I was feeling. You see, my problem was that I liked two boys. And even if I was dating one of the boys, I wanted the boy that I wasn't dating to be my first kiss. Looking back, I think it was an extremely silly thing to be feeling, but it seemed very important and life altering at the time. I have kissed so many boys since that who was my first kiss was hardly seems important. I can kiss a guy now and not have it mean anything. I mean, I can make out with a guy and act like it's no different than shaking a stranger's hand. I wonder if I will become the same way with sex. I know that some girls can just sleep with a guy and think nothing about it. My mom does. And then there are some sluts at school that have been doing this. I don't want to say that my mom is a slut. She's just lonely and needs to be loved. She looks so hard for love that sometimes she doesn't act in a very smart way. I don't think you know what all my father did to her self-esteem. The emotional abuse was horrific. And that's really quite different than the skanks I know at school. They are sex addicts that will screw anything. I'm serious.
Life Begins Page 10
