Cries in the Night

First Boyfriend’s therapist gave me a huge lecture on why I needed to end things. He implied that I was either lying about all of the drama or that I was an idiot for staying in spite of the drama. I’m not sure what he went on to tell the parents, but they concluded that I was the source of all the trouble. They no longer liked me, if they ever had, and they would speak blatantly of his ex-girlfriend and how fond they were of her. In fact, they even invited her back into their lives by setting up dates between the two. I didn’t mind, really, except that often First Boyfriend still had my money in his wallet. I even had to go to his home to retrieve my money one day on my way to work, and his family treated me as though I were intruding in their lives.

And no, we hadn’t even broken up yet. Not officially anyway. I figured it would be ok for me to date too, as long as I was still screwing First Boyfriend on the weekends. But he was no longer welcome in my home, and I was no longer welcome in his home, so we would have to spend weekends at his friend’s apartment. This meant during the week, we hardly saw each other at all.

So, I was in my senior year of high school. I decided that although I had screwed up a bit in my freshman year that I could focus all of my energy into kicking butt and making killer grades. I had signed up for all the AP classes. I was an honor student, a proud member of the NHS, and I tutored math during lunch. Class A nerd.

As luck would have it, I was a lab partner of one of the cool kids in school. She was reputed to have the coolest parents, and teens loved to hang out at her house drinking and smoking and such. She and I became best friends through our lab work, and soon I was sleeping over there almost every night. Sure I was smoking and drinking and all that, but I was still maintaining awesome grades.

The best part to me was that Japanese Boy had failed miserably in transitioning back into his home, so he was living in the party home. He and I would often sit up late at night discussing psychology and the weighty, idealistic things kids imagine. Before I knew it, we evolved into a delicious sexual relationship. I can still remember all these years later everything about it – how he felt inside of me, the feel of his breath on my neck, the tickle of his hair on my face, his smell – somewhere between peppermint and vanilla. To this day, I believe it was the closest I’ve ever felt to love.

Soon, my friend discovered what was happening, and she decided that she wanted to start sleeping with his best friend so that we could have this weird parallel thing going. Nevermind the fact that she was engaged to be married upon graduation to someone else. Nevermind that his best friend had grown up down the street from her his entire life and was like a brother to her. They were completely incompatible. She was a smoking, drinking trainwreck, and he was a clean-cut, hardworking perfectionist. Still, the year was a blast with us staying up all hours of the night screwing our brains out and partying while going to school by day like good little soldiers cranking out the As.

One night, Japanese Boy decided we should all go for a joyride in Best Friend’s mother’s car while the family slept.  He and I were in the front seat; Perfect Boy and Best Friend were in the backseat. We drove to an old warehouse area to go fool around yet again. As we drove through the streets, I decided to perform oral on Japanese Boy – just for fun – and he hit a curb blowing out a tire. We replaced it with one of those tiny donut spares and went back home. The mom was furious when she discovered what happened the next morning. Someone ended up telling her what had happened, and she no longer approved of me. She had threatened to tell First Boyfriend of my exploits. Damn that childish woman.

For some reason, shortly afterwards, First Boyfriend came to visit me at Best Friend’s house. I was concerned that her mother would rat me out so I decided to tell him about my affair. I figured I would take all of the blame, suggest Japanese Boy really had not provoked anything. I also told Japanese Boy that we were done. I remember having such tremendous fear as First Boyfriend and I  stood on the sidewalk. I knew he would likely kill me, and I imagined the story getting back to my parents of their whore daughter causing her own demise. I told the story as innocently as I could, implying it was short and meaningless, and he just stood there. He stared down at the sidewalk expressionless with his head cocked just slightly to hear me better. He never looked back at me. Instead, he nodded and mumbled, “That’s ok.”  That was it. It never came back up again. I can only conclude his own guilt of sleeping around cancelled out my behavior in his mind.

All of these years later, when I speak to Japanese Boy, even after his recent marriage to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, we discuss what could’ve been. I know we would’ve never worked out, but it still makes me cry to think about what I lost. It was so nice to be treated with respect.

The senior year ended pretty successfully. Perfect Boy graduated as Salutatorian and had met his soulmate whom he later married. Japanese Boy managed to graduate, too, in spite of his personal setbacks. Best Friend got enough doctor’s excuses for all her absences on the last day of school to barely eke out graduation, which was better than anyone thought she could do. I graduated only 7th in my class of 350+, but I had achieved Student of the Year. I received many scholarships, but I set my sights on LSU. First Boyfriend was still in the picture – technically as my boyfriend athough we were both screwing around.

Best Friend did go on to get married immediately after graduation to her insane, drug-addicted, bisexual loser guy. He had joined the military and they moved out-of-state together. In just a few months, she was back home. He had gone AWOL due to getting caught in all sorts of illegal activity. He ended up going into therapy resulting in an affair with the therapist. She, the therapist, also had an STD which was passed on to him which in turn was contracted by Best Friend.

That last summer before going away to LSU, I worked in yet another restaurant in New Orleans. The restaurant agreed to let me stay on working weekends-only once college started. I decided that I enjoyed Isaac Asimov’s explanations of binary math so much that I wanted to study engineering – specializing in digital logic and Boolean algebra. The plan was to go to school all week and then return home on the weekends for work and screwing First Boyfriend. Piece of cake.

Yep. I had seen a lot in my first seventeen years, and I was ready to get on with becoming an adult. I figured I was mature enough and smart enough for the world. The only thing holding me back was the flipping of the calendar. But no one had prepared me for how difficult college really was. I was served a big ol’ helping of humble pie.