Life Begins

by Jack Gunthridge

  What were we fighting about again?

  ~~~

  I don’t know. I like it when you are typing though. I get to hug you from behind. It’s like you are a little teddy bear. I just get to hug you, and you can’t go anywhere.

  Did you forget to shave today?

  ~~~

  I overslept. I decided to skip shaving and eat breakfast instead.

  ~~~

  I bet you would be hot with a little stubble. You should grow it. Then you could be like a sexy handyman who comes to work on something with just a plain white T and jeans. That would be really hot. I would totally do you.

  ~~~

  Would you like kissing me with stubble?

  Nsfadvcm,jnmhuynuhbgnmbgygfvtbyvftvfhugcdtbhyumu,ok.;[../[pp,mojinubvtfcdrsdxezaaaaaaacvbyunh j iumio,trhnm,./[;jbfgtvdrtcvdbygdcbmgmi,,.p../[

  Sorry. Christine sat on the keyboard.

  She is now sitting on her stud of a boyfriend’s lap as she begins to… Ow! Did you just hit my hand? What did you just write about me getting abused?

  It was a gentle tap. I did not abuse you. I was just trying to get you to stop writing profane things in my book.

  So I had it coming?

  Don’t joke about that, Christine. If anything ever happened to you, I would… I would rather be in a prisoner of war camp in an Islamic country and be tortured with fire and the cruel removal of my body parts than to see you be hurt.

  I bless every day that I have with you. I love you more than anything else in this world.

  Step away from the computer, Jack.

  What are you going to do?

  Do you trust me?

  Not especially right now. I’ve seen what you do to men.

  You know, I have you in chair that swivels.

  Oh, big girl. What are you going to do? Spin me around until I fall over? What would that accomplish?

  Actually I thought we could [censored].

  Stop censoring me. You know you just erased some of my best writing. I want people to know how I feel about you.

  I don’t care. You are writing very bad things.

  Try it before you condemn it. It’s not like I wrote anything freaky, prude.

  Get up.

  Why?

  I’m going to show you a prude.

  Oh, are you? You haven’t been able to show me one in all of the time that we have known each other.

  Bring it!

  Oh, it’s been brought.

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  Sorry. I’m going to save this and close out of it now. We’re not doing anything, though. I just hit a series of wrong keys. Seriously, we’re

  I was going to erase this, but I thought that it captured our relationship. It was a lot like how our IMs are. I do love that woman. She just does something to me.

  I would be lost without her.

  What did she get on my keyboard? Seriously, that woman.

  I think I covered everything the best that I could in terms of that part of our life. There has been an effort made to make this book as truthful as possible without exposing a lot of dirty family secrets.

  The abuse incident was not an area that I wanted to revisit. I just felt like it needed a slightly more narrative clarification. We didn’t get together at that point because of complicated reasons.

  Chapter Five

  Check Mate

  After my father's death, Christine and I were not the greatest couple. Had my father not died, I think we would have actually been a couple. We had gotten over our childhood romances and failures as we were going through her parents' divorce. My father's death presented new challenges.

  I admit that I felt a bit isolated from Christine that night. She was not there for me emotionally. I was there for her that night. I wonder why that is now. I would have rather have had her hold me that night. But somehow holding her brings me comfort. I don’t know why she wants to hold me.

  We flirted heavily during the next couple of years. It was a game of chess. Neither one of us was going to be the first to admit that we loved the other. That was a sign of defeat. So we didn't get together and made it our goal in life to make the other miserable. We only ended up hurting ourselves, though.

  Christine hurt me usually by dating other boys. She would then come to me as a friend and tell me all about her dates. I don't think she ever knew how much this really hurt me. I have always felt like I did not deserve her and that I did not match up to other guys. It made me feel completely worthless. I listened to her as she went on about other men and how great they were. I listened and was a good friend. On the inside, I was comparing myself to them and seeing what they had that I didn't. It is hard enough going through puberty. It is even harder to be in love and to realize that you will never stack up.

  ~~~

  I never meant to hurt Jack. He became emotionally distant after his father's death. I couldn't exactly wait around for a guy who would not make a move. The boy saw me naked for Christ's sake. What does he want from me? He undressed me, kissed me, and caressed me. He then was afraid to touch me as anything other than a friend. He can talk about puberty and feeling a certain way, but it is the same thing for a girl.

  I know that I have always been considered the most popular girl in school. I know that I am one of the prettiest girls in the school. I still feel ugly at times. I feel fat some days. I know that I'm not obese. I still feel fat. Does he expect me to not go out with other boys when they made me feel like I was worth something to them? They made me feel good about myself.

  And it's not like Jack ever made me feel ugly. I just wanted him to touch him like he had before. The man is good with his hands. Hell, the man is good with his entire body. He got me off one time just with the anticipation of what he was going to be doing. So I don't want to hear him talk about me being a tease.

  And I don't want to hear him talk about me going out with other boys. I didn't start going out with other guys until he had started his little tryst with Melinda.

  Oh, yeah. While I was away at Catholic school, he was back here at home writing me letters telling me how much he missed me. He was also becoming friends with Melinda. They were actually planning on getting married. Don't believe his innocent victim act.

  ~~~

  Melinda and I were never an item. I was planning on marrying her because I didn't think Christine and I were ever going to be anything. If I couldn't be with the person I truly loved, I thought I might as well marry somebody that I am friends with.

  I have always found it funny that Christine has been jealous of Melinda. They are nothing alike. Melinda is very plain looking. She's not ugly. She's just average. I don't think I would pass her on the street and even take a second look at her. I don't even think I would notice her in the first place.

  Melinda has a brilliant mind. She is one of the greatest comedic minds and talents that there is. Truth be told, she is probably greater than I am. That was what kept me hanging out with her. She is a comedian's comedian. She thinks funny.

  Christine never understood that her real competition came from comedy and not from another woman. She missed me finding my goal in life while she was away at the Catholic school. I had walked into the local video store. I was just wandering around. I saw a couple of Marx Brothers’ movies. Something inside of me told me to watch it. I watched At the Circus, and it changed my life. I started to write comedy. This is amazing. And if anybody has seen At the Circus, you will just how amazing this is. This is not one of the best of the Marx Brothers’ films.

  From that moment on, I studied comedy. I watched everything that I could. It started with the Marx Brothers. It expanded to Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Jack Benny, George Burns, Bob Hope, Lucy, Mae West, and others. It has been said that I didn’t jus
t watch the films. I studied them. I don’t think I laughed. I was absorbing technique.

  Melinda was somebody that I could watch this stuff with. Christine never would. So while Christine would have dates on Valentine’s Day, I was having a Jack Benny marathon in honor of his birthday. Comedy was something that I could share with Melinda. I could share my love of something with her.

  For the record, I never kissed her, held her hand, or did anything romantic with her. She was just a woman that I could talk to. I was never physically attracted to her or loved her as anything more than a friend.

  And seriously the marriage was just because she was a safe bet. I figured that marriage was something that I would have to do to keep people from thinking that I was gay. Since I probably couldn't marry Christine, Melinda satisfied the public role.

  I don't know how to explain it. I am only turned on by Christine. Nobody else does anything for me. When I was telling Melinda this one night, she eventually sold me out to Christine. I was talking about marrying her, and she asked me what our marriage would be like. I told her that we might have sex after we had been married awhile, but I didn't see it being a big part of our marriage. We would adopt kids. I figured people would want to see me have kids. I was going to be a famous director/star. I would have the money to support a family. I might as well help kids who are already here.

  I think I told Arthur and Leopold that I would need Viagra to have sex with anybody besides Christine. It's true. Nobody does anything for me, except Christine.

  Melinda and I just always kind of had that understanding. Our marriage would have been a marriage of convenience. We would just be friends who were getting married. It was not going to be one of the great romances of the world.

  ~~~

  Jack is the love of my life, but he is so stupid when it comes to love. Melinda was in love with that boy. She hung around him just with the hope that someday he would learn to love her.

  I can't blame her for loving him. And I have to give her credit. She was the only woman to ever get close to him. And I have to thank her for being the reason that Jack and I eventually did get together. If she wouldn't have given him up, he would still be holding out.

  I do feel bad about hating her for so many years. She was the competition, though. And I never knew what Jack saw in her until after she handed him over. There is a beauty to her. It's not a stunning beauty. It's a quiet beauty. And there is a smartness to her. She puts you at ease when you talk to her.

  I guess I should be glad that Jack is so stupid when it comes to matters of the heart. By all accounts she had me beat. She did it all without any of my feminine wiles. She was able to get him as a human being and not as a woman.

  I still won him, though. That is all that really matters. It doesn’t matter how I won him.

  ~~~

  Christine never won me. I was never a trophy or a prize to be fought over. And I never used Melinda as a pawn in the game of love. She was a friend. I admit to my stupidity at the game of love, but I was never intentionally cruel. If I had thought that Melinda had actually loved me, I would never have suggested that we get married.

  If you want to talk about cruelty, you should hear what all Christine did to try to make me jealous. I watched her date the captain of every team at school. She was playing every boy in school in an attempt to make me jealous.

  She would come home from dates, kiss the boys goodnight on the front porch right where I could see it, and then spend the night with me. Everybody at school knew it.

  And the things she said about me. If anybody asked about us, she would lie. She once told people that I was gay. We spend so much time together because I'm like her best girlfriend. She was just the cover so that people wouldn't know that I was gay.

  ~~~

  He is leaving out that part where he said that if he ever did turn gay, I would be the first ass that he would pound. I'm still waiting for him to come out of the closet.

  ~~~

  She is going to have to keep waiting. I have no intention of turning gay. I have found nothing attractive about men. I don't even know what women see in us. If I ever did turn gay, I would be a lesbian.

  Seriously, the amount of abuse I have taken with this woman.

  ~~~

  I have never abused him. He must be talking about the amount of self-abuse he has inflicted upon himself because he wasn't smart enough to get with me.

  ~~~

  That's right. Most women tell a man, "Do you know the number of tears I've cried over you?" I tell Christine, "Do you know the amount of sperm I've lost over you?"

  So if there is anything to be learned by this, it is that for the majority of our teenage years Christine and I were at war with each other.

  ~~~

  We are still at war as far as I'm concerned. I'm still waiting to yell, "Fire in the hole!"

  ~~~

  I don't know if she thinks that is sexy or not. I can't even decide. While I see it as a sex reference, it is also slightly disturbing. I don't know if I want to have sex with a woman who is burning. I suggest she goes to the doctor and get a cream for that. I might be more receptive to her advances.

  ~~~

  If he is so worried about my vaginal health, I believe he has a cream to cure all of my problems. I will even squeeze the tube for him.

  Intermission

  I have not really talked to Melinda since I have been dating Christine. It would just kind of be awkward. I don’t want to ruin what I have with Christine. Melinda and I had to stop talking to each other. There has been the occasional e-mail. And if I get stuck writing, I still call her for help. I still consider Melinda one of my best friends. She knows stuff about me that no other person knows. It is out of this respect for one another that she has agreed to write a short piece here.

  I first met Jack when we were twelve. Christine was away at the Catholic school. I didn’t get to meet her until after his father’s death. I knew her before from school, but I never really hung out with her crowd or Jack for that matter.

  A lot has been said about me and Jack. He is quite possibly the greatest human being on the planet. He is charming, funny, intelligent, and beautiful in spirit. He is an easy person to love.

  I did love him and would have liked our relationship to have been more. I also knew that he loved Christine. He never led me on. I want to clear that up right now. He wasn’t playing me. He’s not that type of man. It just isn’t in his character. He is just really bad at love. He honestly didn’t know that I had a crush on him. I think everybody else knew, but Jack was oblivious.

  In his thinking, there is only Christine. All other women just happen to be women because of biology. He doesn’t see them as sexual creatures or objects of desire. This has to be one of his most endearing qualities as well as one of his most irritating.

  A woman could love him madly, and he wouldn’t see it. He would just befriend the woman. He would listen to her story, comfort her, and show genuine interest in her. Unfortunately for her, his interest in her is as another human being. He has this odd philosophy that we are put on this planet to help each other out.

  I’m not sure how Jack cannot know that a girl likes him. He’s a brilliant man. He knows human emotions and can express thoughts and feelings like nobody else. He can listen to any problem and ask questions so that you know that he is actually listening.

  When I first met Jack, Christine was out of the picture. We spent most of our time together in those days talking about comedy. When she came back into the picture, I know that Jack did spend more time with her. But there was also a tension between them. By the time we were about fourteen, the entire Jack and Christine relationship had cooled off. Jack was more of a love sick puppy chasing her around. She was as cold as ice. I think she still is. I don’t know how he can be around her without having major shrinkage or frost bite. She is the only woman I know who could give a man frost bite and have it considered an STD.

  Anyway, Jack and I started to become an ite
m when we were about fourteen. Jack started to talk about us getting married. And I can talk freely about this because Christine knows about it. Whatever happened between them was serious enough that I don’t think he saw her as a viable marriage option.

  For Jack that means that you make other plans for life. Since society tells you that you need to get married, he chooses somebody that he is friends with. He doesn’t care about the woman being beautiful. If he can’t have the woman he loves, he’s going to spend the rest of his life with a woman whose company he enjoys.

  So Jack and I spent three or four years as friends who were going to be getting married. We never dated during this time. We never kissed, held hands, danced, made out, or did anything else that would make a girl think that he was interested in her. He just listened to me and was the greatest friend I have ever had.

  As for my involvement in the scheme to get Jack and Christine together, I did not sell Jack out. She had him confused about what he was feeling. I came over as a friend to talk to him. Somehow we got onto our supposed future marriage. I think that was when I realized how foolish I had been.

  Jack didn’t mean to be cruel. It’s not who he is. He just doesn’t know how to love. And it doesn’t enter into his consciousness that somebody other than Christine might actually have affections for him. So when I was talking to him about our married life, he responded with a brutal honesty.

  He did not see our marriage as having sex. We might have sex after a couple of years of marriage, but that would just be to experiment to see if it is what people really say it is. But we would not be having sex for reproductive reasons. We would just adopt children.

  When I asked him what his marriage to Christine would be like, I had to hold back my tears. He spoke of it in such beautiful terms. It was better than any fairy tale girls grow up hearing. And like how he didn’t mean to be cruel, he didn’t mean to make his marriage to Christine poetic.

  So I did not sell him out. I did something to make it possible for him to be happy. He loves comedy, but there is something that he loves more. I did what I thought would make him happiest.