Life Begins

by Jack Gunthridge

  I know that if I turn out to be a girl like that it's probably not going to matter much if Jack was my first. I just think that he should get to claim that I was his first. He has been there enough for me throughout everything that he just kind of deserves it. Plus it makes me feel better about myself. If nothing else, I figure he might never want to sleep with me if I have sex with somebody else. Other guys won't care who I've slept with, but Jack... Jack is different. I think that is the only thing I could ever do to really hurt him. I think he would still be friends with me if I slept with somebody else, but I don't think he could ever forgive me. It would ruin everything that we have.

  Anyway, back to the story. Jack and I didn't kiss that night. I ended up breaking up with Gene a few weeks later. I think he got upset that I only kissed him with little pecks. I can't really blame him. I would have probably dumped somebody who kissed me with their teeth clenched. It would be like trying to kiss a pit bull. Who wants to kiss that? I never really did Gene properly. He moved away a year or so later. I saw a picture of him a while ago online. He’s still a pretty good looking guy. He’s a little more masculine looking now, but he still has a beautiful smile.

  Anyway, Jack and I didn't have our first kiss until the night that I left to be sent to the Catholic school. I don't know what was different about that night than the night that I tried to get him to kiss me and he wanted to slip me some tongue. Maybe it was how we had grown closer together after my breakup with Gene. Maybe it was the extra months of maturity that I had gained. Whatever it was, it was a full mouth, tongue infused kiss of amazingness that came at the right time in my life where I could properly enjoy it and not be grossed out by it.

  I hated the Catholic school with a passion that you could not believe. Jack was the only person to ever write to me there. He kept all talk of my parents out of the letters.

  I didn't understand then why I had to go to the Catholic school. My parents were never really Catholic. I mean, they had been brought up in the Church, but they never attended. And I had never been to church in my life, except when I was baptized. I mean, we went a few times at Christmas and Easter, but I don't even really remember those times.

  My parents were never extremely moral people, and I didn't see the need of going to a school that taught morality as well as everything else that you are supposed to learn at school. I mean, my dad cheated on my mom while they were still on their honeymoon. My mom was an alcoholic. All they had ever taught me was to lie to keep up appearances and to be extremely materialistic.

  I hated the uniforms. What girl wants to dress like every other girl? Jack thinks I hated the school so much because I was never one for religion, education, or large groups of girls. Jack likes the first two, but we are similar in that we can't really spend a lot of time with people of the same sex. Jack doesn't have a lot of guy friends and can't stand most guys. I'm the same way with girls, except that I don't even really have a lot of female friends. I just never saw the point of hanging out with girls. They always talk about you behind your back and try to steal your men. I mean, I could hang out with a slightly heavy girl, but that would be a pity friendship. I would just end up saying how pretty she really is, even if she is a little heavy. But frankly, I don't want to be seen with a slightly heavy girl. And it's not because I am vain. I have no problem talking to chubby girls. I don't even make fun of them behind their backs. It's just that... Well, you tend to become like the people that you hang out with. I could get fat. I don't want that. So you see, it has nothing to do with vanity. I just don't want to get fat because of a friend.

  Jack is my best friend. For a large part of the time that I have known him, he really has been more like the type of friend that a girl should be friends with me than a boyfriend. And I can't ever really tell him that without him getting upset. And it's not that I mean it in a bad way. I know why he gets mad at me saying it. I have teased him for a long time about being gay-ish, but Jack is... Well, he's not a normal guy and never has been. He listens. He's sensitive. He doesn't fight, like sports, cars, or anything typically male. He has never gone hunting or fired a gun in his life. He says he doesn't see the need to kill an animal for sport when he is not going to be eating its meat or using its hide for clothing.

  He knows that he's not a typical man. I actually respect him. I can't say that about a lot of guys that I have met. Most are stupid manipulators that say and do things to just try to get into your pants. And it's not that Jack doesn't try to get into your pants. It's just that when he tries to get into your pants, he makes sure that he has permission to approach before he even starts to do something. Not that he has gotten into my pants. Not that I haven't given him enough permission. I once signed an actual permission slip giving him full access to any part of my body that he would ever want to make love to. I even had my mom sign it. She was drunk at the time and didn't really know what she was signing, but it was still a permission slip. Jack has just never taken me up on my offer. As much as I might find this frustrating, it is still something that I secretly love and admire about him. I like that he is not with me for purely sexual reasons. It makes me feel like I have some sort of self-worth.

  I have always known that I was good looking, but that was all I ever had going for me. I don't care about being smart. My grades are average. I just have never been able to get interested in anything that they teach you at school. I care too much about what other people are wearing, what they are doing, who's dating who, and stuff like that. I mean, that is what is really important in life. Who cares what a bunch of dead people did? And what good is math or science? I'm never going to use that stuff, except to balance my checkbook. I already know enough to do that. And I can read, even if I never read for enjoyment. The point is that I can communicate by writing and then understand what another human being said when they write back to me. I know everything that I ever could possibly need to know in life. The social skills I am more interested in are going to be infinitely more valuable than what they are teaching me at school.

  Jack doesn't see it this way. Jack can talk about things and think about things that I could never begin to understand. And while I can get him to talk about fashion or the latest gossip, I don't think it gets him as excited as it does me. Sometimes he smiles when I am talking to him about this stuff, but I can’t tell if he laughing at me or not. He says he’s not. He says he just likes to see how my mind works.

  I wish I could be smarter just so I could talk to him better. I have always been afraid that my beauty will fade and that he will see me for the stupid little girl that I am. He says that he will never think of me that way, but I think he is still under the spell of my beauty. Once I lose this enchantment, he will lose all interest in me. And since Jack isn't like most boys, I can't really offer him sagging breasts and a loose vagina and expect him to get turned on by it. Other guys will still jump on it because they are just that horny, but Jack has standards. I can't even seduce him now with everything being perky and tight. Right now I meet his standards of beauty. What is going to happen later in life?

  Jack tries to reassure me that my beauty will never fade for him, but I have seen my parents' relationships. I know that I am going to end up like my mother, even if I have a bit of my father's cruelty in me. I am still a girl, and this is a man's world. There has never been any hope for me, except to marry well. And if I am able to find a guy that is rich enough to support me and any kids I might have with him, I know that he is probably going to cheat on me. I'm okay with that. All I really want out of a marriage is a guy that I can somewhat get along with. I don't want to be treated like how my mother was treated. The emotional abuse would be too much. I'm far too independent to put up with something like that, but I think I could be perfectly happy if my husband at least cared enough about me to put up a front of a happy marriage while cheating on me. It may not make sense to you, but it would at least show that he cared about my feelings.

  I can never tell Jack any of this. He's just... You know, fo
r somebody that has an old soul, he's not very practical. He's too much of a romantic. I have never been able to figure that out about him. He's an incurably hopeless romantic that refuses to accept the fact that we can never be together. If I try to tell him that he is naïve, he acts like I am the young one without any life experience. I don't know how many times I have broken his heart, and yet he still believes that our love is going to last forever. He still believes that I can never do anything to him that will forever crush his heart. And it's not that I am planning on doing anything that will intentionally harm him. I mean, I did sort of do that sort of thing when I was younger, but I have grown a lot since then. It's just that I am being realistic. I know that I can never keep him fully satisfied. We can never last as a couple.

  I have to say that Jack confuses me. I think he always has. He seems to hold extremely differing points of view at the same time and be able to reconcile them without any problem. He is extremely consistent in an inconsistent way. I think he should have gotten over me by the time that I had broken his heart in kindergarten, but for some reason he still held on to this fantasy that he had about us. Even when I was with Gene, he could still hold on to the notion that we could somehow be together. I mean, we were starting to become more of a couple by the time that I left for the Catholic school, but I think it was more because we both knew that our time together was coming to an end. I know that I was more willing at that time to start something because I knew that it couldn't last. I just never expected Jack to...

  He is an extremely cunning and conniving man that I don't think anybody has ever fully realized yet. I mean, I can be pretty manipulative with what Jack calls my feminine wiles, but he messes with your mind and gets you to do things that you wouldn't normally do. I think he thinks of people as pieces on a chess board. He is simply brilliant, but he hides it behind his charm. I mean, look at how he was able to get my parents' divorce deal. He is the only person who would ever think of me getting the house and my parents sharing custody of it and me. I know that he used the logic that constantly moving from house to house would upset my lifestyle and make me a troubled individual, but that was all just a false pretense to keep me near Jack. Since I was the thing he wanted most in life, he was going to use my parents' divorce as a way to keep me close by. I don't think anybody has ever thought of it this way. He comes off as far too innocent to ever to be suspected of something as selfish as this. I don't know if even his father was able to see through his act or not. I have a feeling his father went along with it because he saw the brilliance of it and would appreciate his son more for it.

  Jack had a very unusual relationship with his father. Jack and I both grew up with a lot of freedom when we were children. The difference was that Jack's parents gave him the freedom with the belief that he would use it for intellectual and spiritual growth, which he mostly did. His father, especially, believed that with freedom comes responsibility. While most parents wanted to hinder what their children could do, Jack's father wanted to give him freedom so that he could learn how to be responsible with it. His father believed that once dictatorships had been removed that the newly freed people didn't know what to do with the freedom that had been granted to them. To be brought up in a free society meant teaching the people how to handle their freedom so that anybody trying to take that freedom away would cause the people to rise up and take that freedom back. This was the whole mindset of Jack's father when he was growing up.

  Jack was allowed to do anything that he wanted as a child (within reason). Nothing was denied to him as long as there was an intellectual, artistic, or spiritual element to it. I know that he got in trouble in the fifth grade for doing a book report on The Color Purple. The teacher couldn't believe that he had been allowed to read such a book. His father was brought in to have a conference with Jack and his teacher about the appropriateness of the book. Jack's father then began to have a discussion with Jack about the book in front of the teacher. Jack was able to discuss the mature themes of the book in a mature fashion. His father then turned to the teacher and said, “My son seems to be able to comprehend the material that he is reading. I do not see the point of dumbing down his reading material to match that of his classmates. I don't think that would be beneficial to him and his education.” And that was the end of the discussion.

  I don't know if it was his old soul, or his advanced education, but Jack... The night I returned home from the Catholic school, I never would have expected me and Jack to have gone as far as we did. It's not that I minded. I would have probably gone all the way had other events not happened. It's just that... Well, Jack has always been the more romantic one of us. I can't say that he was exactly romantic that night, but he was everything I could have wished for him to have been that night.

  That is what I find interesting about him. He likes sappy sweet romantic stuff. He says and does things that are so sweet and make him really adorable. I don’t think he means to be. In fact, he hates it when I make a comment about him being really cute. It makes him feel like less of a man. But the night that I returned home from the Catholic school, he was trashy romance novel material, and I kind of liked it. And I can't even begin to explain why I would have liked for us to have gone all the way that night. I know that I was probably a little too young. I had just turned twelve. Looking back on it now, I know that I was definitely too young. I won’t openly admit this to Jack. He knows that we were too young. You won’t hear him say this. This is one of the things that he doesn’t discuss.

  I have never been one to fantasize about Jack, or any other man, rescuing me. I have never been the damsel in distress type. And I don't think of my time at the Catholic school as being locked up in a tower that Jack was able to free me from. I know that Jack thinks about this time of our lives and thinks that was the reason I think that night was so perfect. He can never understand that for me that night was nothing but the wild, unadulterated passion that I have always wanted from him and have always enjoyed from him. Well, I haven't enjoyed that from him lately.

  Jack changed the night that his father died. I don't want to say that his passion for me disappeared that night. It didn't. If anything, he loved me more than he had before. He just loved me in more of a hands off fashion. I think he was just so confused by everything that he didn’t really know what to do. I mean, when he was comforting me, he was really wanting to be comforted by me. Jack is just one of those people that will put my needs above his own. It doesn’t matter how great his own needs might be. He loves me to the point of ignoring himself. It makes it hard for me to realize that he has feelings sometimes.

  Maybe I should have been more attentive to Jack's needs that night, but Jack has never been one to deal with his emotions. He sees emotions as a weakness. As long as he doesn't have a heart, you can't hurt him. I don’t know if he wants to act like he doesn’t have heart in an attempt to be more of a man or not. Here’s the thing. He has a heart. He has a very large heart. He just wants to think that he doesn’t. I’m glad he does. If he didn’t, I’m sure that he would have broken up with me a long time ago. His mind would have taken over and told him that I am bad for him. His heart never let him. His heart made him keep giving me more chances, even though his mind was keeping track of everything I had done to him. If you look at everything I have ever done to him over the years, I have hurt him in every way, except physically. No amount of abuse from me will stop him from loving me.

  Jack didn't list my not comforting him that night in his Declaration of Independence. Did I hurt him that night? I think I did, but he had been hurt so badly by his own guilt that night that my thoughtlessness was not high on his memories. Five years later, when were seventeen, he still had that night blocked out of our official history. He was not going to deal with us almost having sex or with his father's death. Since he was going to act like none of this had ever happened, he was not going to be hurt by me not paying attention to his feelings that night.

  I wanted nothing more than to be with Ja
ck after his father died. I mean, I wanted to be in a relationship with him. If I mourned his father, it was because he was the closest thing I ever had to a real parent. But Jack... Jack has issues. Some would say that he has a crucifixion complex. I don’t think he does. He is not willing to die for any cause, except possibly me, which I don’t think he would ever do. I mean, he might jump in front of a bullet for me, but it would be more of a secret service thing than a crucifixion thing. He would do it without thinking. He doesn’t want you to know this, but he is deathly afraid of dying and anything that might cause death. He has a fear of falling, sharp objects, guns, drowning, choking, and any other thing that could possibly cause death. That is why I can say that he doesn’t have a crucifixion complex.

  On the other hand, I can also say that he has some issues with his father. It’s not that he didn’t love his father, but Jack is… Jack has certain rules. His biggest rule is the “No Other Gods Before Me” rule. He is a very jealous man, but not in a bad way. He is not one of those guys that is like, “if I can’t have you, then nobody will have you.” He is an odd case where he wants me to choose him above all other men, even his father. If I hurt him the night that his father died, it was because I showed that I cared about his father while ignoring what he might be feeling.