Then how did I become so conservative, so wrapped up in what everyone thought of me, in what everyone believed I should do and should be doing? Other children were being abandoned in front of their televisions, watching a variety of teenage shows that promoted heterosexual relationships and women as stay at home mothers who lived to please their husband and children.
I was never granted that opportunity in my own house. My father never watched television. He harboured a deep-seated hate for, what he called, “the trollop that has the nerve to center itself in every living room in our country”.
He would spend his time reading, listening to music, playing his piano, or watching films. He would tell us about the different types of love and relationships that people can have in their lives. He would encourage us to read, to write, to ask questions. He would remind us that we could be whoever we want, and that caring too much about what others think is all that would stand between us and who we wanted to be.
My oldest brother left for college when I was nine and the next one left when I was eleven, so for a long time it was just my parents and I in our house. The years after my brothers left were the years that strengthened the relationship between my dad and I. My mother had gotten promoted and worked out of town from Monday to Thursday. I remember on the first week of her new job my dad took me out for dinner and promised me he would work hard on not making me socially awkward. He laughed and told me I was doomed on account of there being nobody else in the house to listen to him ramble on. Little did he know I was thrilled to not have to share him.
My early-teenage years were bizarre. I struggled to relate to anyone in my school and found socializing tiresome. The girls my age were completely obsessed with attracting boys and created a battlefield in order to win the affections of the most popular ones. Skirts got shorter and tops got tighter as we aged, and we became more and more dependent on what males thought of us. I felt uncomfortable, not just at being surrounded by girls who craved the attention of males so desperately they were willing to physically and emotionally abuse their friends, but at knowing there was more to life than this. Perhaps I wise beyond my years, but I had read enough and been taught enough by my parents that grappling for sexual justification is not the secret to finding happiness.
Valentine’s Day was carnage at school. The build-up would start not long after New Year’s, (another day which you dare not be single), reaching its climax somewhere around February 10th. If you weren’t successful at finding a Valentine by then, the chances of finding someone by the 14th were slim to none. Valentine’s when I was 15 was the start of my social solitary confinement. A number of things occurred that did not fit within the realms of the schoolgirl psyche.
When confronted in the corridor about who I hoped to receive a gift from, my response sent shivers down the spines of my peers. “Nobody, I don’t care about Valentine’s at all”, I told her. Her jaw, quite figuratively, hit the floor. Realizing she had no retort to my statement, she left. With every step she took down the corridor she spread the word that I didn’t care about Valentine’s. Within minutes, the popular girls had gathered around me, vying for information. I explained to them that loving yourself meant much more to me than depending on other people’s perceptions.
“You are a COMPLETE freak”, the Queen Bee told me, laughing and looking towards her minions for reassurance. “Yeah”, they jibed, “you are total freak, who would ever love you?” they said, cackling at this point.
I tried to ignore it, to not let their words sit in my head. I wanted to stick to my guns, stick to my beliefs. School is a tough place to be when don’t follow the crowd, but I didn’t want to let them win. I maintained my stance that I didn’t think Valentine’s was a big deal, but my internal monologue was calling me freak, much like the Queen Bee, and I could feel myself cracking. Valentine’s Day came around, the school was decorated with pink, red and white love hearts.
Girls began streaming in, also dressed in various shades of pink, red and white, some wearing quite an intense layer of fake tan and foundation, bounding towards their lockers to see if their Valentine had arrived. Keeping my head down amidst the jeers of “freak”, I walked to my locker where there was a little white card sticking out of the side. My heart dropped.
The popular group who had been so repulsed by my lack of Valentine’s participation must have planted it there. My hesitance had been noted by the Queen Bee, who began marching in my direction.
“A card, freak?” she asked, her head hung to the side, rolling her eyes, disgusted at my very existence.
“Very funny, Millie. I know it’s from you”, I responded, urging my voice to keep calm.
She frowned, and glared at me, “why would I send you anything?” she laughed.
With that, she came over to my locker, looked me up and down and grabbed the card before I could stop her.
Ripping the card out of its plain white envelope she began to cackle, “This is good. This is so good”.
My cheeks began to burn, had my father sent me a card, my mother, maybe one of my brothers?
“To Katie, I really admired how you stood up to those girls and told them that Valentine’s is ridiculous. I completely agree, but I’m going to take this opportunity to let you know I think you’re beautiful. Mai. MAI. You don’t like Valentine’s because you’re a dyke!”
That was when I became so cripplingly overwhelmed with worrying about everyone else’s opinion of me.
Mai never left my thoughts. I never thanked her for the card, in fact I was incredibly cruel to her about it. I implied that she was obsessed with me, that she craved me, and I chanted along with everyone else who called her a dyke and belittled her for her sexual orientation.
Behind it all, I longed to tell Mai that her card, her declaration, her honesty had stirred sensations in me that had been lying dormant, waiting to be uncovered. I fought so hard against these sensations, against my curiosity, against feelings that felt so natural to me. Wanting to be liked, I went against my better judgement and fell into exact path of life that my father had tried so hard to steer me away from.
I abandoned books for excessive amount of clothes and makeup, spent as little time as possible with my father knowing that he could talk sense into me. My evenings were spent lingering around public spaces with other girls, vying for male attention and belittling the uglier of our peers.
The girls I made acquaintance with shared the same goals as the women on the television shows my father had forbidden me to watch. These girls cared very little about their academic careers and more about finding a man to please and a man who could buy them a nice house, and a nice car. Their goals soon became my own.
Chapter 2
One Friday night, at the tender age of 17, my father asked me if I would stay in with him and my mother and watch a film.
“I don’t enjoy the person you’re becoming, Katie”, he told me.
My heart crushed, but I rebelled against him. I felt that the person I was, the person I could have become, was not a person who would succeed in life.
“You don’t need a man to live a happy life, Katie. What happened to your dreams of going to college, your wanderlust, your self-preservation? Look at you! Look at what you’re wearing. That’s not who you are. That’s not my little girl”, tears were filling up in eyes and my own.
Perhaps it was the certainty that my father would always love me and the uncertainty that my acquaintance would that made me say what I said. I’ll never truly know why, but I will always regret it.
“I’m not your little girl, Dad. You made a promise that you wouldn’t make me weird, but that’s all you did. I was weird, now I’m not. Now I’m normal and have a chance at living a normal life”, I screamed.
He turned away and closed the door to his study behind him. Our relationship from then became nothing more than pleasantries.
I met Robbie when I was 18. He was in his final year of Law and tipped to graduate top of class. He was, as my acquai
ntances called him, a Grade-A Catch. Getting Robbie to marry would mean a nice house, a nice car, a nice wardrobe and nice circle of acquaintances. He would create a comfortable existence for me and I would create a beautiful home for him.
Millie, the most vocal of all my acquaintances was so impressed with my catch that she asked me to ask Robbie if any of his friends would be interested in her. Such was my success that she wanted to mimic me, the freak. I was so elated at the prospect of being considered a success that I worked harder on suppressing my desires for Mai and convinced myself that I would much prefer a sexual relationship with a man.
My mother was insistent that I get a college degree, regardless of what the degree was in. She told me that finding employment would be impossible it I didn’t have one. I laughed in her face, in such an obnoxious manner, and informed her that getting a job was not an issue for me.
I would marry a wealthy man and never have to worry about having a job, a career. My mother, the woman who had carved a path in a professional vista traditionally dominated by men. Who acknowledged that she wanted love, family and a career and made all three work harmoniously.
The woman who never thought she would have to convince any of her children that they needed a college education and career aspirations. Infuriate, she lashed out, hitting my across the cheek. “We have done everything for you. We created a balanced environment for you and your brothers to ensure that you never succumbed to what society expected of you and that you would become your own person.
“We put a roof over your head and food on the table, and this is how you repay us?” she shouted, every bone in her body shaking.
I had my hand cupped to around my cheek. It pulsing from the sheer force that went into her slap. I didn’t say anything to her, and much like my father had done the previous year, my mother turned her back to me and walked away. That night was the first night I had sex with Robbie.
Chapter 3
I went to the house he shared with some of his college friends. I asked him if he had any alcohol, hoping for something strong. He came back into his bedroom with a bottle of wine.
“I’m not sure about this, it could be awful”, he laughed handing it to me.
I poured a bit into my glass, swished it around the glass to open it up a bit. I brought the glass up to my nose taking in what the wine had to offer.
It smelled fantastic, “Dark cherries on the nose with a faintest hint of vanilla behind it. Exactly what you would expect from a Rioja”, I told Robbie before taking a sip.
“Oh, a connoisseur are we?” he asked with one eyebrow arched.
“Well, not particularly, but my dad has a big interest in wine, so he taught me a lot. Taught me mostly when to know a bad bottle”, I told him, feeling a pang of guilt at the mere mention of my father.
“Well”, he started sitting down on the bed, “you’re not as common as I assumed. There won’t be much training you in, will there?” he laughed.
The guilt inside me was growing stronger. I realized now that I was as much of a game to Robbie as he was to me. It suited Robbie to marry a little below him and to marry a woman who would simply be a housekeeper cum mother to his children.
At that point I should have bolted, run for the hill, begged my family for forgiveness and applied to any college that would have me. But I didn’t. I was so consumed with what the rest of the world thought of me that I didn’t allow myself to accept my family despised me.
I should have defended myself, and my family, when Robbie said I wasn’t as common as he had thought. I should have told him how fantastic my parents were, how intelligent they were, how successful my brothers had become in their chosen fields. I stayed quiet.
I gulped the first glass of wine at record speed. Sensing my motives, Robbie refilled the glass and sat somewhat closer to me. I heard a cackle downstairs.
Millie. She had been successful with Robbie’s friend, housemate, and soon to be business partner when they graduated. Owen seemed somewhat similar to me; a lamb in sheep’s clothing. I had walked in on Owen having a heated conversation with another man a few weeks previous to his first date with Millie. Both men had tears in their eyes, and the part of the conversation I overheard was, “we can’t hide this forever”. Something inside me knew what was meant by that. I related to that sentence and to the tension on an ethereal level.
When I had asked Robbie whether he knew someone who might be interested in Millie, Owen sprung to his mind immediately. Within days of their first date, Ashely and Owen became inseparable, much like Robbie and I. Everyone had a point to prove, a secret to hide. Robbie’s secret was the most simple of them all, he was a virgin and had lied to everyone around him about that fact.
He was incredibly overweight in school, which instilled in him a lack of confidence, so never approached any women. He only began to lose the weight in the last two years, but still didn’t know how to talk to women. The Big-V was hanging over his head, but every one of his friends had no idea it was there.
He opened up to me about on a night out after a few too many drinks, and I realized that I was as important to him as he was to me, in terms of personal gain. Millie’s secret was a little more complicated. She needed to marry well because her father had gambled away their fortune, leaving them with nothing. From the outside looking in, Millie seemed wealthy, but the majority of her expensive clothes and accessories were stolen either by her or by her sister.
The girls had been raised to look a certain way and didn’t know how to give that up now that the family’s money was gone. Owen and I, we had sensual demons that we needed to keep buried underground.
Chapter 4
After the second glass of wine, and a sip or two from the third, I began to feel brave. I looked into Robbie’s eyes and smiled before sitting up on the bed and taking my top off.
Robbie went to lean closer to me, but I stopped him, and moved back further on the bed. I took my bra off. I felt cold and exposed, but I mustered up the urge to keep going, to keep doing what I was doing. I unzipped my jeans and exposed my pubic region to Robbie.
He began to moan, creeping closer to me, but stopping when I told him to. What seemed like a strip tease to him was actually my way of hyping myself up, chanting “you want this” to myself in my head, over and over.
I put my hand into my jeans and started to play with myself, hoping that would arouse me enough to follow through. Robbie was groaning, begging me to let him touch me.
“No, no, I need to get you right on the edge of your seat”, I told him, smiling at him. Part of me was enjoying how turned on he was, enjoying how much control I had over the situation. The other part of me was scared of committing sexually to him in case I ruined my chances of getting him to marry me.
“You know it takes girls longer to cum that boys, Robbie. So I need to warm up and get myself going so that we can both enjoy the ride”, I told him, speaking low and seducing him with my words. His eyes were wide with excitement. Making the most of his arousal, I started to play with my breasts.
He had taken a pillow from his bed and was holding it up to his mouth, groaning loudly into it, biting it with frustration. Robbie had never seen me naked. He had never seen any woman naked, in this proximity. I stood up on the bed and took my jeans and underwear off.
Now entirely naked, Robbie’s legs were shaking with anticipation. I sat back down on the bed and spread my legs wide open, “you can look, but you can’t touch”, I warned him.
I continued to rub myself, feeling myself getting wetter and wetter. “Take your shirt off”, I instructed.
Standing up to take his shirt off, I could see the outline of his erection in his shorts. The voice in my head got louder, “you want this, you want this”. Catching where my gaze was, he put his hand on himself, believing that I lusted after it.
I smiled, “Take your shorts off”.
He did without hesitation. And there it was, his erect penis. “You want this. You want this”, the voice kept sho
uting. I kept rubbing myself to keep myself aroused. I moved my hands back up to my breasts, and Robbie groaned again. For some reason, his arousal, his yearn for my body became a turn on.
Though I was certain I felt no physical attraction to him, I was aroused by his want for me. I invited him over to my body. Like a dog in heat he lunged at me, cupping my breasts in his hands and sucking on my nipples. I continued to rub myself, knowing I would lose momentum for this if I stopped.
I wanted to want Robbie. I wanted to marry Robbie and I wanted to live a comfortable life the way everyone expected me to.
Wrapping my legs around his waist, I guided Robbie inside of me. After three thrusts, and a declaration of love, it was over. He had climaxed and I was left feeling unfulfilled. That was how the next number of years remained for me.
Robbie and I married after a few years of dating. My family warmed to Robbie on account of the fact that he is actually quite a nice person, but they never warmed to the relationship or to the path I had chosen to take. As such, Robbie and I eloped, not wanting to make a big deal, but mostly because I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask my father to walk me down the aisle.
Jack (Secret Revenge #1) Page 18
