Just Between Us

by Mario Lopez

  Kids at school never told me that dimples were cool. They used to say, “Oh, you got holes in your face!” Holes in my face? Little kids in Chula could be tough. Or, because my dimples are really pretty deep, they’d call me “Pitface.”

  For all those years, if you want to know the truth, I was embarrassed enough by my dimples that I’d try not to smile too often. So you can imagine my shock to discover that girls thought dimples were cute. After that revelation, I started not to mind them as much.

  The tag to this anecdote is that many years later, as an adult, I was surprised to learn that dimples are actually birth defects. Turns out that dimples are a fatigue of the muscles that never really developed in the face, thereby creating a small cavity. No, mine aren’t small. They’re like the Grand Canyon of dimples. Some people just have small lines, like Tom Selleck, or tiny nicks, like Beyoncé, but mine are more akin to cereal bowls. That said, birth defects and all, dimples did seem to work in my favor. Lesson in point: sometimes the physical traits you obsess over can turn out to be a blessing.

  But as for the advice about what made girls like boys, when I was in the fifth grade and developed my first real crush on a girl named Sherry, I needed something more concrete than just having dimples. This was before the first kiss that I would share with Fergie aka Stacy Ferguson on Kids Incorporated, and I was convinced that Sherry didn’t know I was alive. She was a year or more ahead of me in school and—I’m not kidding—every time I was lucky enough to see her in passing, she took my breath away. So beautiful, Sherry was exotic looking with long dark hair and big brown eyes. Oh, and she was a twin. As a red-blooded all-American kid of Latino descent, I came to the conclusion that there could be nothing sexier than twins—two identically beautiful girls. But Sherry had that extra something, a spark that made her stand out. I was so enamored with her that I was too nervous to even go up to say hello.

  Cousin Victor pointed out, “You have the gift of gab, man. What’s the problem?”

  He was right. I was usually comfortable talking to everyone. But Sherry was so unattainable, partly because she was older and those age gaps do seem wider when you’re a child. Young and in love though I was, every time I had the chance to approach her, I became anxious and shy and overly self-conscious, worrying about what she would see in a fifth-grade peon like me. My answer? Nothing. Clearly, I was destined to appreciate her from afar. Every single love song that came on the radio—especially anything by Hall and Oates, the best singing duo of all time—and I’d mourn the loss of what never could be. But soon enough I forced myself to forget about Sherry.

  Probably it was at that point that I decided to try caring a little less and borrow some of the cool that helped me in the audition process. By the time I was twelve, I had enjoyed a few more fun flirtations along the lines of my behind-the-scenes kissing with Fergie. Without any guidance from my cousins, I found out that, along with being cool, if I was just myself, girls liked that. The other eye-opener was finding out that when the chemistry is there, nature usually takes its course. For example, at a dance competition when I was in the seventh grade, I sensed mutual sparks with Gina Giacinto, a gorgeous dancer of Italian descent who would later be crowned Miss Nevada, a real beauty queen. The flirtation was like a dance. With no deliberate agenda on my part, we ended up behind the dance studio alone, making out.

  After that, I became a bit of a natural with girls—maybe a little too natural. What do I mean? Well, when you are in the eighth grade and it’s the day before your thirteenth birthday and you are alone for the first time with the sweet young beauty, letting nature take its course is not always advisable.

  At this point, my sixteen- and seventeen-year-old cousins—also wrestlers—had yet to offer any specifics about how to advance from first to second base and so on. They talked like sex pros, but the whole process was still a mystery to me and I was gung ho to find out what the real deal was. Without question, hoping to go all the way with a girl at thirteen is too young, although no one in my circle was around to say so. Granted, everyone grows up fast in the hood. Too fast, if you ask me. Back then, though, given my surging hormones, I was not only curious but at the age of wanting to keep up and impress my cousins and neighborhood friends.

  Keep in mind that back in those days I did not appear to be your normal preteen. By the time I was about twelve, I looked like a little man-boy, like I was sixteen or seventeen, not twelve going on thirteen. In addition to wrestling all this time, I ate well and had already started lifting, so I had muscles. No doubt about it, I had a teenager’s body. Of course, I still had the maturity of a thirteen-year-old.

  But compared to how intimidated I was with Sherry, I was practically Don Juan when it came to breaking the ice with my next serious crush, Gina, a pretty, soulful gymnast who went to a neighboring school. Natural as can be, I walked right up to her on the football field after a big Friday night football game and introduced myself. She nodded with a little questioning look in her eyes. It took big cojones to approach a girl from the opposing side.Then I asked her out. She said, “Okay,” and, cool as a cucumber, I gave her a smile and told her I’d get back to her with details.

  Gina was two or three years older than me, half Greek and exotic looking in a potentially smoldering way. And hard of hearing—as she put it. Her impairment meant that she could talk a little but not very well. I remember when Gina called me we used this service for the hearing-impaired that involved a live operator on the call to translate. The operator would type whatever I said so Gina could read it on a display she had on her phone; for me, the operator would simply repeat everything Gina said so that I could understand. The operator might repeat by interjecting, “She says she really misses you. She says she can’t wait to see you.” She would then key in whatever I replied, verbatim, and we would converse that way over the phone.

  Sometimes it was weird to flirt over the phone with a detached translator. Just to push the envelope and get Gina to laugh, I decided to mess with the operator one evening and said to tell Gina, “The body’s in the trunk, but I’m going to get rid of it as soon as possible.” There was a long pause on the other end. Finally, I broke out laughing and said, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

  When I explained this to Gina, she thought that was hilarious. For those who are taking notes, girls do seem to like guys who have a good sense of humor. I should add that Gina and I were never officially dating. I was only thirteen and what we had was more like a flirtatious affair or juvenile infatuation. An amazing girl, Gina and I stayed friends all the way through high school. And even to this day, I sometimes still run into her—she is now married with kids and is still a beauty.

  There was never much of an opportunity to take our flirtation to the next level until one day when the rest of my family happened to be away visiting a relative and I realized that I would have the house to myself. After inviting her over, she arrived in record time. We started to kiss on the living room sofa and then became more physical. But then, thinking ahead—at least at that stage—we moved to the floor closer to an exit, in case I heard anyone coming home. That way, if our clothes came off, we could put them back on in a hurry and escape.

  What happened next was mostly a blur. I remember a lot of kissing and touching, but past that, I was clueless. I knew nothing about a woman’s body. All I could do was try desperately to piece together the fragmented and unreliable information that I’d heard from my older cousins and kick myself for never asking specific questions. The hotter and heavier it got, the less sure I was about what went where. For crying out loud, I was way off the mark!

  When I later talked to Cousin Victor, I asked him how guys knew what to do the first time they went all the way and he said, “Let me spell it out, man. If you wanted to put a key in the lock on a front door, you kinda figure it out.” Yeah, well, before I figured it out, I was about two inches above that.

  Even though I wasn’t suave in the least,
as nature did take its course, Gina and I were still so into each other. Her hair smelled incredible and her skin was so soft. We were both a little slick from perspiration and nerves—this was a first time for both of us. The blind leading the blind?

  To tell you the truth, I don’t know how making out and heavy petting got us to the point of having sex. We hadn’t fooled around that much before that fateful day, but it just happened—right at the moment that I was about to give up. Eureka! My eyes rolled back and I could not believe what I was feeling. Euphoria! Nothing like anything I’d ever felt before. Klondike bars, my favorite dessert, have nothing on losing your virginity.

  The reality check slammed me and Gina about five minutes after we were dressed. We were so caught up in figuring out what to do that I didn’t even use a condom! Which is crazy at any age, never mind at twelve years old. Much as I would like to excuse myself, I knew better. I’m not an absolute idiot. Even though I knew very little about sex, I knew enough about reproduction to have acted more responsibly. I knew that if I was old enough to have an orgasm, I was old enough to have babies. Can you imagine? At this writing, I could have a son or daughter in his or her thirties—or even be a grandfather! It would have been helpful if my cousins had gone over the issue of birth control more when they were talking about their sexual experiences.

  What’s a twelve-, almost-thirteen-year-old kid to do in this situation? Later that night, I called my cousin Victor, whispering so no one could overhear, as I told him what happened. That was when he gave me the key-in-lock analogy.

  “But I didn’t use a condom,” I went on. “What do we do?!”

  “Well, did you pull out?” Victor almost screamed what hardly sounded like a question.

  “What is that? What do you mean, ‘pull out’?”

  He was laughing, but I didn’t think it was funny at all, even though he was trying to be as supportive as he could. At fifteen, he was also the only person I could trust to give me answers to hopefully alleviate my anxiety. Finally, he said, “Well, Mario, it’s too late now—no sense stressing out over it. You’ll have to just wait to find out.”

  Waiting for those next thirty days was torture for me and Gina. What would we do if she was pregnant and we had to raise a child? We didn’t even talk about it, other than staying glued to a menstrual calendar and praying that she got her period.

  The day she told me we were in the clear, I literally jumped up and down. You would think that I would have learned a valuable lifelong lesson right there and then, but no. It’s very true: hormones rule the mind of a young teen. They rule everything. Or so it was with me. And once I had sex, I was hooked. As time went on, I’d say that sex became my drug of choice, as addictive as the strongest stuff out there. In most respects, I was Mr. Clean, staying away from drugs and out of any serious trouble. But when it came to sex, I might as well have been a junkie.

  So Gina and I continued having sex and I continued not to wear condoms, telling myself that pulling out in time would get the job done. Luckily, she and I never had a close call after that first time, but that doesn’t make me any less stupid. Much to my embarrassment these many years later, I look back now and realize how ridiculous it was to have taken those chances and to remain so ignorant.

  True, my parents had never sat me down and given me the sex talk. If I had gone to Mom, she would have openly discussed the realities and given me some guidance; I felt comfortable enough telling her pretty much anything. My dad was another story. The closest I got to having “the talk” with my father didn’t happen until 1990, when I was almost seventeen and the news broke that Magic Johnson had HIV. Everybody freaked out because of the lack of awareness about the virus in all communities and how it could be spread through unprotected sex. As it should have, Magic’s announcement made knowledge of safe sex a life-and-death issue.

  My dad was concerned and I know that his intention was to come to me with all of his tender father-son emotions bubbling over. Instead, he sat me down and was very cut-and-dried. “Hey, mijo,” he began. “You know, there’s a lot of that AIDS stuff going around right now. So, you know, if you’re going to do anything with, like, a girl or anything, just, ah, you know, put something on it.” And then he stood up and gave me an affirming “Job well done” slap on the back and walked into the kitchen to get a beer.

  That was it, unfortunately. No eye contact, no sensitive questions asked. My father did make some good points over the years, but usually we didn’t talk about intimacy issues. I could ask him for relationship advice and he’d go on and on about that, but when it came to sex, he’d just close up shop.

  The truth is, I was really lucky to come of age when I did and to experience a sexual awakening with a girl as special as Gina. And even with lots more to learn in the love and sex departments, I knew how lucky I was, especially compared to some of my friends. But my luck was about to run out.

  • • •

  “Oh, hey, Mario. Nice to meet ya,” said the cute girl with the pronounced Southern accent who caught my eye back in early 1989.

  I was fifteen at the time and Chula Vista’s wrestling team had gone to compete against another local high school. What stands out in my memory of this day is the echo of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses. At wrestling meets, that song was how our team was introduced, as the announcer would say, “Let’s hear it for the Chula Vista High School Spartans!” We’d hear the guitar, dah dah dah dah dah dah . . . and the hook, “You’re in the jungle, baby!” followed by, “You’re gonna die!” and then we’d come out. That whole Guns N’ Roses album, Appetite for Destruction, was a sound track for my wrestling days, always pumping me up before a meet.

  Known as a popular kid, I was having a great year, thanks to wrestling and other sports, as well as academics and various extracurricular activities. I definitely was enjoying the advantages of being popular and was still in the throes of high-octane hormones.

  Sex is, after all, such a natural part of being human, and I had so much appreciation for the young ladies at this stage that I had begun to accept aspects of la vida loca as part of who I was—an extremely sexual being. Maybe some of my drive was a form of rebellion, a way to be a bad boy, kind of, when I was basically so hardworking with my career and my schooling. Who knows? Again, I really had no teenage vices. Drugs were taboo for me and I didn’t even smoke. In my mind, if rock ’n’ rollers could have their addictions, I could have this pure and crystal clear interest in the opposite sex. Back in the day, Adam Ant had a song that asked if you didn’t drink and didn’t smoke, “what do you do?”

  In that stage of my teenage years, fueled by this crazy drive that had only begun to kick into higher gear, I was about to make one of the most painful mistakes of my young life. I’m blessed that the young woman in question was mature enough to make the difficult choice when we were both too young and too irresponsible to plan ahead.

  Her name, she told me that day, over the fading refrain of “Welcome to the Jungle,” was Patty Lynn. She was my age, and was the assistant to our athletic trainer at the high school, a precursor to what she was sure would be a big career in sports medicine. Boy oh boy, was she hot. And charming. And soon enough, I heard a sweet Texas drawl. With a name like Patty Lynn, I guessed she would have to be from somewhere below the Mason-Dixon Line.

  After introducing myself at the meet, I asked for her phone number and we started hanging out, immediately discovering that our infatuation was mutual. But we took it slow, relatively speaking. Then, after five or six months of being inseparable and caught up in our puppy love, we started sleeping together.

  Had I listened and learned from the mistakes of others, I would have known better than to believe the lie that I could pull out in time in the throes of passion. Because sometimes you can’t and don’t. Or other times you and your girlfriend have those moments where you think it’s the right time of the month so you don’t have to worry. But tha
t’s a real recipe for trouble.

  That mind-set is not unlike Russian roulette—if you play long enough, eventually one of the bullets will find its mark. Unless you are smart or not so cavalier, you end up making a mistake you can’t undo.

  Patty Lynn waited until she had been to the doctor before calling to give me the news that she was pregnant. The phone conversation was not easy, to say the least. She didn’t cry, but I think she was still too stunned to be overly emotional. Now that I saw the consequences of my actions, I was ready to make whatever sacrifices were asked of me. My mind raced with what this was going to entail: we’d get married, I’d help raise the baby, quit acting to get a real job, possibly drop out of school.

  “No, Mario,” Patty Lynn stopped me. She was one hundred percent certain that she didn’t want to have the baby and was adamant about taking care of terminating the pregnancy right way. This had to be her choice; that much I knew. And I accepted that this was the best decision for her, and probably for me too. But between my guilt at getting us into this predicament and the disappointment I knew my mom would have in me, I was devastated.

  At first, I did all I could to avoid Mom finding out. But it turned out that I couldn’t access my savings on my own. Even though I had money saved from my years of working, I couldn’t just withdraw it from the bank because of safeguards put in place early on to prevent anyone from using funds that were supposed to be for my future. Then I tried to borrow the money so no one would find out. But I was a kid who had money so everyone I asked—a few of my cousins, my uncle, a few friends—thought I was being greedy or off on some wild venture. The whole thing was suspicious. And of course, my mom caught wind that I was trying to borrow money.

  Mortified and scared, I went to my mother and first explained that Patty Lynn had made her choice and I was going to support that choice. At that point, I could have denied what was happening, but I had to man up. After I told her that it was my responsibility and I was never going to let it happen again, I went down on my knees to ask for forgiveness. If there had been a possibility that Patty Lynn and I were in love or had a desire for commitment, maybe we could have found another way, but the truth was that we had no business bringing a baby into the world. We were babies ourselves.