Life Begins

by Jack Gunthridge

  Jack can try to pass off our not getting together at that time on me caring more about my own feelings than his, but he withdrew from me during this period. We were still friends, but he had changed. He was turning more to Melinda for comfort. He said nothing was happening between them. I believed him. And it wasn't just that I was losing him to her. I was also losing him to his obsessive studying. He did nothing at this time, except eat, sleep, and study comedy. Whether it was intentional or not, he was shutting me out of his life. I can’t really tell him this. It would hurt him to know that I cared for him and he wasn’t there for me. He would apologize and try to make up for it. He would never forgive himself. It was so long ago now that it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care. I have him now. That is all that I really care about.

  There is a part of me that understands this period of his life better now. I have gotten him to talk about it during one of our couple’s exercises. It was not just that his father died and I wasn’t there to comfort him. It was also that he had to take care of his mother. He was taking care of his father’s estate. He had to be present at the trial and deal with the media. He had to try to deal with me being me while not wanting to be with me because I reminded him of the guilt that he felt for his father’s death. He escaped into comedy and the studying of comedy. He was going to emerge from this time period with the ability to make others laugh. He was going to take his academic, legalistic mind and apply it to the science of comedy. This is typical Jack behavior. Whenever he has a problem, he escapes into studying. He doesn’t believe that there is any problem out there that you can not reason out by studying it closely. Although it felt like he was withdrawing from me, he was withdrawing into himself as he always does until he can think his way through a problem.

  For the record, though, I did try for over a year to get together with him, and he showed no interest in me. I don't think he has ever thought about what it felt like for me, and I don’t want him to know what it felt like for me. But I had the boy I had always loved rescue me from the Catholic school. He then is about to show me the most wonderful romantic experience of my life before we get interrupted. He then shows no interest in me other than being my friend. He has no idea what it felt like for him to see me naked and to go as far as we almost did that night to then have him then not pay attention to me. I don't care if his father had just died. I could have helped him through it. I wanted to. He just... He will never ask for help. This is almost more of a sin for him than admitting that he has a heart.

  If I had known that he was hurting and not just rejecting me, I would have done a lot of things differently. I wouldn’t have spent an entire year trying to get Jack to pick up where we left off at when his father died. I didn't even look at other boys. I was faithful to him while he found excuses to not spend time with me. I knew that he was going through a difficult time. I tried to be patient, but while I was sitting by the phone waiting for him to call me, he was studying comedy or spending time with Melinda. That hurt a lot.

  When I complained to him about this, he tried to make it better by inviting me over to watch stupid old comedies. It was him, me, and Melinda. Why would I want to watch a bunch of stupid black and white old crap with him and another girl? There was no way for me to put the moves on him with her right there. I couldn't snuggle up to him and make him hold me. I tried once. It was awkward. And Jack seemed upset that I was trying to disturb him while he was studying.

  Well, Jack and I had a conversation about my behavior. Okay. It wasn't really a conversation as much as it was an argument. I yelled at him for not wanting to spend time with me. He countered that he did spend time with me and reminded me that he had invited me to watch all of the crappy movies with him. He might not have called them crappy, but... Anyway, I got really angry and started to really yell at him. I know that I said, “And how in the hell do you expect me to blow you with her in the room sitting beside you?” I then stormed out of the room.

  Jack just stood there. Melinda shot me a dirty look. I don't know what happened after that. I don't want to admit it, but I spent the rest of the night in my bedroom crying. Jack doesn't know that. He would feel awful if he did. That's why I have never told him. I can say it here because I know that he will never read this. And I can say it because it helps to explain another event better.

  You see... I know that Jack could tell that I was upset about our relationship, but since he wouldn't do anything, except psychoanalyze everything. I got really tired of it, and that's when I started to go out with Brian Metzger, the guy that ended up abusing me.

  I don't want to justify the abuse, but you have to understand that... Okay. For the first time in my life, I am going to be truthful about this event and everything that was going on with me and Jack. It is a complex issue that I don’t think Jack, or anybody else, fully understands. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. I grew up in a household where my father verbally and emotionally abused my mother. She had retreated into alcohol and was absent from me. I knew that my father never wanted me because I was a girl. The only good thing about me was that I could one day marry a guy and give him the son that he had always wanted. Jack's father was dead. I had no positive parental force in my life. And Jack... And for the first time in my life, the one person I had always depended on to save me and to tell me that everything was going to be okay was absent. Even though I was the most popular girl in school, I was alone. Even with my great skills of pretending that I had learned over the years could not really cover up everything that I was feeling at the time.

  I loved Jack. I mean, for the first time in our lives, I was honestly and hopelessly in love with him. I was trying to be understanding of him needing to get over his father’s death. I could tell that he was depressed and just wanted to be alone. Despite how I might have acted the night his father died, I did try to be there for him. I made sure that I was with him every day at the trial. Even my father said that it would be a good idea if I went to the trial to be there for him. And I tried to give him the time and space that he needed to get over everything, but the more space I gave him, the more he ended filling it up with Melinda. There just eventually came a point where I thought that we had grown apart. We had grown up and lost everything that was our youth.

  Well, Brian came into my life at this time. He was handsome and a couple of years older. He wasn't like Gene. He knew how to kiss and taught me a lot about... Well, he was comfortable with girls. It made it nice. I just had to follow his lead and stop him when he started to go too far.

  And Brian made Jack jealous. I don't want to say that is one of the main reasons that I dated him. It was an added benefit. I mean, I know that Jack knew what it felt like for me to see him with Melinda. And while I was pretending to like Brian to make Jack jealous, I kind of forgot that I was pretending and started to feel something real for him. I started to forget about Jack. It felt kind of good. The pain that I had been feeling for over a year started to disappear.

  I know why my mother drank and why she now sleeps with some guys. There comes a point in your life where all you can see is the pain that you are feeling. You look for something to ease the pain, even if it is a little self-destructive. It helps give you some sort of self-worth, even if it is just momentarily. Those small moments are still better than the constant pain that you had been feeling. You just hope that those small moments will soon last longer and longer until you don’t feel the original pain anymore. I think Brian helped me to get over Jack.

  But then, after I had been dating Brian for a few months, Jack came over one night. He came over as an old friend. He seemed kind of shy at first. You know, awkward, like he was ashamed to be talking to me about something.

  He then started to ask me about Brian and said that he was very happy for me. He sounded sincere, which kind of surprised me, but I was still glad to hear it. Even if I didn't want to admit it, I had moved on. I was glad that he had moved on as well. It meant that we were growing up.

  He then asked
if he could ask me a question. I told him he could. He then told me about his relationship with Melinda and how he was really beginning to like her. He was thinking about making it clear to her how he felt about her. She was just a non-sexual creature I didn’t doubt he wouldn’t know how to put the moves on her. Sorry. That was mean.

  Anyway, I told him that he should feel her out. While they are watching some of those boring movies together, he should just put his arm around her and see what she says. If she leans in towards him, then it means that she likes him. He could then start to try other moves like sneaking in for a kiss.

  He asked me how he would do something like that and asked me to show him. So we sat on my bed and pretended to be watching a movie. He then... Okay. We ended up kissing, but it wasn't... After I ended up kissing him back, I... I just looked at him, and said, “You don't love Melinda at all, do you? You were just telling me that so you could kiss me.” But I... I wasn't even upset about it. I didn't even get mad when he gave me that sly smile of his. I have known lots of guys who have tried various tricks on me to get some from me, but Jack Allen Gynapsy is the guy I have never minded. I kind of wish I would have slapped him when he leaned in and said, “What can I say? I learned that little trick from you when you were dating Gene Roos.” But instead of slapping him at using my own trick on me, I kind of caught him off guard by kissing him some more.

  I know that it wasn't right, but we ended up making out for about three hours after that. But to be perfectly honest, we did a lot of talking while we were making out. It's actually kind of amazing the deep conversations you can have with somebody when you aren't really paying attention to what they are saying. That was some of the best conversation I have ever had, except for the naked conversations I have with him now.

  Jack and I... Jack wanted me to break up with Brian long before the abuse started, but we... I liked being with Brian because he taught me things that I could later teach Jack. It became more fun for me to have Jack come over secretly and do things to him without having to worry about what we were. I don't want to say that this was an extremely moral thing to do. I know that it hurt him. He knew what I was doing. And as much as he complained about it, he also kept coming back for more. After he had hurt me, I wasn’t going to let myself be hurt by him again. It kind of made dating Brian easier. Plus my father liked Brian. My personal life was good. I didn’t want to mess it up.

  I know why Jack's friends think that I am a bitch. They spent four years hearing about how Jack's heart was aching over how I was treating him. They never once considered why I did the things that I did. They only saw Jack pining for me and heard the stories about how I was... Well, I wasn't leading him on. I was kind of leading Brian and the other boys on, but they were... With the other boys, they were trying to take advantage of me. I knew that and used them in return. But with Jack, it was mutual, consensual relationship-esque behavior without the benefits of an actual relationship.

  I know that it isn't going to make sense, and I know that I probably can't ever really get you to understand. Jack and I... We're...

  When I was dating Brian, I found that my father actually enjoyed having me around. He may not have actually liked me like I would have wanted him to, but he at least saw me as a worthwhile person to have around. That was a vast improvement from the way that he usually thought of me. I'm pretty sure that it was because of Brian.

  But I also liked having Jack around. Let's face it. He is better at the emotional aspects of a relationship. I can talk to him about stuff I actually care about without having to pretend. I have never faked laughter or a smile with him. I have with a lot of other guys that I have gone out with. And I wouldn't have dated them, but they fit an image of the type of man I should be dating better than Jack did.

  As for the abuse, I wish that I could say a lot of things about it, or at least make sense of it. But I have never been like Jack. I can't rationalize my thoughts and feelings and then make a game plan as to what is the right thing to do. I generally just tend to act on what I am feeling at the moment without ever really thinking about what I am feeling.

  You should know that Jack didn't want me to talk about it in his autobiography because he doesn't... It's not that he wants to hide it. Jack has a way of acting as if something didn't happen if he feels guilty about it. He is very forgiving of others, but he can never absolve himself of his own guilt. Like he feels responsible for his father's death, I think he thinks that if he hadn't been secretly doing things with me while I was dating Brian that I would not have been abused.

  I don't want to justify the abuse. I might not be the smartest person in the world, but even I should have realized that what was happening was wrong. I knew that it was at the time. I just... Regardless of my family history, I felt that I still deserved it. As much as I hated all of the emotional abuse my father gave my mother, I still felt that somehow it was okay for Brian to hit me when I showed any sort of free thought or opinion.

  When Jack and I used to play house when we were kids, I swore that I would never let a man talk to me the way that my father talked to my mother. No man was ever going to make me feel the way my father made my mother feel. But then I... It's a lot easier to say that you are never going to do something before you find yourself in a situation than when you are actually faced with the situation.

  Of the things I was feeling at the time, I remember feeling that I did care for Brian. Jack and I were just fooling around on the side. I had Brian, and Jack had Melinda, even though he still denied that there was a relationship between them. He ate lunch with her, Arthur, and Leopold. They looked like a couple. Even if Jack was messing around with me, he was doing it without the benefits of a relationship. I was doing it without Brian knowing about it. I felt kind of like how my mom must have felt when she found out that my dad was cheating on her, except that this time I was the person doing the cheating. If Brian hit me, I did feel as if I deserved it. He had been nothing but a perfect boyfriend. It was me who decided to sneak around with Jack. That's not an excuse for Brian's actions, or for me putting up with it. I'm just telling you something that I felt at that time and why I put up with it. It made perfect sense at the time.

  After the first few comments and slight roughness, I did try to talk to my mother. I asked her what love was like and how you knew that you were in love. I told her about my relationship with Brian. She said that Brian sounded an awful lot like my father. She then told me almost everything that had ever taken place between her and my father.

  Jack made a comment earlier about how we are trying to escape our parents' pasts as well as ours. I knew everything that went on in my parents' relationship from my mother's point of view, and yet I still felt that somehow I still deserved to end up like her. Even as a small child, I knew that my mother was f#cked up beyond all reason. I knew that I never wanted to be like her. I knew that I hated my father, and yet there was a part of me that still loved him and wanted to make him happy. No matter how much I have hated him at certain points in my life, I still sought his approval.

  My father knew about the abuse before Jack did. I... With Jack's father gone and my mother a mess, I did turn to my father. He may not have been much of a father, but he was still my dad. I told him about the abuse, and he...

  I have never known if he ignored it because of Jack. My father will do anything to keep me from being with Jack just because he thinks that Jack deserves somebody better than me. He will put Jack down to his face, but he is really doing this out of a love for him. Jack doesn't know this. Even if he did, I don't think he would understand it. Jack just doesn't think that way. He would never understand that my father respected his father more than anybody else in the world. My father doesn't want Jack to lose the kindness and greatness of character that he inherited from his father by hanging around with me. I can’t really blame him for this.

  If I am a mess like my mother, I share my father's inability to say what I really feel for somebody. I have been terrible to Jack becau
se I didn't know of any other way to treat him. If I said that he was gay, I did it because I knew that it would hurt him. I knew that it would hurt him in the deepest part of his soul and that he would take it without saying a word. And if I am being honest here, I might as well say that the abuse did not really start with Brian until I think he suspected that something was going on between me and Jack. Although I knew that it would hurt Jack, I also knew that it would keep my fooling around with Jack a secret. It kept Brian from wanting to beat up Jack. Jack doesn’t know, and he doesn’t need to know, that a large part of the abuse was from me covering up my relationship with him from Brian. No matter how discreet we were, Jack just couldn’t hide his feelings for me. Although it got me in trouble at the time, it has always been one of the things I have loved about him. It doesn’t matter where we are, I can almost always look over and catch Jack looking at me like I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that it is the first time that he has ever seen me. Those looks are worth me getting into a fight with a man if it meant protecting another man that I loved.

  Jack's strength has never been physical. He was a troubled pregnancy and was born small. He won't tell you this, but he is currently 5'9' and 112 pounds. He weighs less than me, which I partly hate him for. He can't gain weight, even though he wishes he could. I know that he feels like less of a man because of this. I have done things to continually insult his manhood as he was going through puberty. Just when he was feeling awkward, I felt that it was best to make him feel worse about himself. Again, that made perfect sense at the time that I was doing it. I'm not sure why.

  Although I didn't start out dating Brian because I knew that it would make Jack jealous, I did find this aspect useful once Jack and I started to mess around. I don't know what he was expecting to happen the night that he wanted to practice kissing with me. He didn't seem to want a relationship, but yet he...