modernsex

Of course we ended up dating.

Virgil had only had one girlfriend before me, so save a few kisses I got to be his tutor.  I think some part of me needed his purity.  I felt safe with him because I knew he would never try anything I didn’t initiate.  It helped me feel clean again to be with him.  I quickly took him along the bedroom Olympics until all that was left was the Deed itself.  I was able to show him the female form and all the right ways to treat it, which he did with impressive skill.  Once he laid me down on a bed of pillows and kept me in ecstasy for hours to John Mayer’s ‘Room for Squares’ album.  I still get tingles when I hear those songs.  He was also deliciously endowed, so I was looking foward to finally learning what it would feel like in all the right places.

To my surprise he declined.  He wasn’t ready.  He didn’t feel like he could handle the final step and all the consequences that could arise.  It was responsible and mature.  I admired his resolve and courage.  It drove me crazy with desire and confusion.  I didn’t realize how rewired my brain was from Jay’s manhandling.  I was programmed to believe that sex=love.  The fact that Virgil didn’t want to have sex with me played havoc with my self-doubt.  Was it because I wasn’t a virgin?  Did I want it too much?  Was he loosing interest?  Am I too fat?  Logical thought didn’t enter in to it.  He never gave me any reasons to believe any of those things.  As a matter of fact, he kept me supplied with plenty of evidence to the contrary.

But I was damaged goods.

I was huge into the drama department in high school.  Specifically all the behind the scenes stuff.  My senior year we were working on Godspell when a certain new recruit caught my eye.  Virgil.  I was instantly attracted to him, but our meeting came during the death throws of my Jay troubles.  Friendship was all we could obtain for a while.  He was everything Jay was not.  Tall, toned, shy at first, young, considerate, inexperienced, openly geeky… it’s no wonder I was drawn to him.  As the nonsense with Jay was coming to a boil he became my shoulder to cry on.  He offered acceptance without judgement.  I had fears that after how used up Jay left me I could never expect any good guys to look at me again.  Virgil taught me otherwise.

Jay and I’s breakup had left one large problem.  I no longer had a date to my senior prom.  It was literally right around the corner and I was stressing because I had already bought two tickets.  Virgil made a surprising first move and volunteered.  I was thrilled.  We had been flirting for a few months by now.  The tv show Roswell became the double of our life.  Getting away from the rude guy, falling for the sweet one, wanting to be together but not being sure how to go about it.  There were so many similarities and it meant so much to us that he’d even bring me little tokens of affection based on what the characters had done in the show the night before.  Our flirting was so outrageous and obvious that all our friends were openly telling us to go out already.

Prom is like a dream.  He finds a tux in time, the villain is slain, my handsome prince dances with me to the Time Warp on the dance floor.  It was everything it should be, minus one detail.  No kiss.  In spite of how crazy for each other we were, nerves were still in the way.  It did lead to a lovely scene at school.  Virgil approached me saying there was something he forgot to do.  He then placed a perfectly chaste kiss upon my lips before running off to class.  It had been a long, long time since someone had made me feel that special.   I was downright giddy.
This is only the beginning of this story.  Virgil’s another long one, but much more fun to tell.  While going through my years of blogging to make sure I get certain things in correct order, I realized I’d gotten certain past entries here wrong in some important ways.  I’ll be sure to make a mention when I go back and fix them.   Some are tiny things like inserting a name where I couldn’t remember, some are big like the fact that I really didn’t sleep with Brandon until after Jay and I broke up.  We had just fooled around a little.  Silly memory, mushing everything up like that!

I apologise for my silence.  Things got really crazy all at once and on the few nights I’ve actually been home in my own bed all I’ve managed to do is sleep.  I’ve not even showered lately.  EW.   I won’t bore you with the excuses.  It isn’t all over yet, either.  Hopefully Tuesday night I’ll manage to get the next post up, but realistically it will be Wed.  Sorry again!  Blame the weather over here.

In the end I couldn’t figure out how to tell Jay in person.  All the scenarios I ran went sour.  I didn’t want to be near him when he got the news.  So, I gave him a call.  In the end I even chickened out so hard I didn’t admit the full story.  I told him I’d made out with someone, but that it hadn’t gone very far and it wasn’t very long.  At first there was silence.  Then there was a fight.  A long fight.  I remember doing a lot of apologizing.  I even remember begging him not to leave me.  I’d like to say it was part of the act to make him believe he was leaving me, but it wasn’t.  He was so angry that I lost my nerve.  Also, I’d been with him for two and a half years.  I think in some way I didn’t know how to define myself without him.  I’d have to start my idea of the future all over again.  It was scary in many ways.  Thankfully my original plan worked.  He decided we needed to be separated for a while.  He needed time to think.  Then, maybe, he’d see how he felt about taking me  back.

There were so many emotions after that phone-call.  I was free.  I was frightened.

Jay went on a camping trip of sorts for a weekend.  When he returned he contacted me for some food with him and a buddy.  He needed to see how seeing me in person would be.  He was no longer at my school, so meeting up had to be arranged.  I could have said no, but I believe he’d have just turned up anyway.  The meal was very awkward.  His friends were nasty to me.  He was cold, but not harsh.  I remember the relief when they dropped me off at the house.  I had survived.  Better than that, I stayed strong.  I didn’t want him back.  I had made the right choice.  I just hoped he could feel the same.

I was contacted randomly online by his friends, trying to tell me the right ways to beg forgiveness.  Then telling me how horrible I was to do such a thing to him.  Word got to me that Jay wanted to know who it had been.  I had to block them from contacting me.  I thought by being with a friend Jay didn’t know that Brandon was safe.  I was wrong.  Jay was certain it was a school friend I had grown close to named Virgil.  Suddenly I was afraid for Virgil more than myself.  I called Jay up in the pretense of friendly chatter and found a way to get the conversation where I wanted it.  I persisted that it wasn’t anyone from my school.  It was someone I had met at V:tM.  He seemed to accept it.

And then he and his cronies turned up at the game.

I was sick to my stomache.  I took Brandon, a GM I could trust, and a couple of friends on a walk around the area away from the main group.  I told them everything that had happened.  I admitted how afraid I was, and how Jay and his friends could not be allowed to join.  I didn’t want them there.  They had never shown any interest before.  The GM told me I was the one who had to ask him to leave, because they hadn’t broken any rules.  I was shaking, but I found the nerve.  I walked up and asked what they were doing there.  The response was nasty to say the least.  At that point I was done pretending.  I found it in myself to tell them to leave.   I told Jay I didn’t want him there, or anywhere he knows my friends and I hang out, and that I never wanted to see him again.

I think I must have surprised him, because he stormed off and didn’t come back.  I cried.  I hoped it was over.

I’m going to skip into the future a bit so I can wrap up this Jay thing and move on.  It has been really hard for me to write it all out.

It turns out it wasn’t over.  My parents came home from their usual breakfast spot a couple of years later to tell me their waitress was Jay’s girlfriend.  She had actually recognized them.  She told them he had shown her loads of pictures of my family and I.   That he talks about me a lot.  The weirdest part of all was that he referred to me as the ‘golden goddess.’  I got a horrible sinking feeling.  A couple of months later I was at work when I saw him walk by the store windows.  He had seen me.  I had to sit in the break-room and regroup.  I felt like a fool because he’d given me no reason at that point to worry, other than the creepy girlfriend.  A month later I am working at the checkout counter when the girl I’m serving informs me that she is Jay’s recent ex.  She had been the one to talk to my parents.  She admitted she had been in the store a few times since Jay found out I worked there.  She wanted to meet me.  She had hoped I would be ugly and miserable, but I was as sweet and infectious and beautiful as Jay had lead her to believe.  She didn’t know how to start a conversation with me while they were together, but now that they were apart she felt we could be friends.

I wanted to vomit all over her.  She went on talking about how Jay still believed it had been Virgil I had cheated with, but if I said it wasn’t then she believed me.  She said Jay accused her of cheating as well, and mentioned his mood swings.  She acted like she was going to just keep right on talking.  There was a long line behind her and a manager had come over to see what the problem was.  I finally found my voice.  I told her Jay had abused me and I cheated on him so he would leave me with someone Jay didn’t know.  I said I had work to do, this isn’t the time or place to have this discussion, and that I really didn’t even want to have it in the first place.  I remember being just as angry about her ignorance of my job and the people behind her as I was everything else.  She apologized and said she’d try and get hold of me another time.  Thankfully I never saw her again.  Someone else took over on till and I went back to the break room to cry.

Jay ended up working at a gas station near my house not long after that.  I stopped in to fill up and found him waiting.  I had just come from somewhere special; I remember being glad that I was looking my best.  I put on all the confidence I could muster and paid.  I don’t remember what was said, but it was the most basic of small talk.  After that I waited until someone told me he had moved on before I ever stopped there again.  Occasionally friends would say they’d seen him out and about, but I think that was the last time I saw him.  Between the girlfriend and the gas station I was really worried he was going to try contacting me again, but thankfully it didn’t happen.

It’s been a long, long time.  He never did anything to me after we broke up, so I’m not sure where this overwhelming fear comes from.  I just know that typing all this out has been really draining, and that’s why I could only do one every few days.  I don’t want to think about him.  I don’t want to think about what happened.  The further away it gets the blurrier certain memories are.  I know the fear was real.  I remember people being afraid for me when I told them what was going on.  But I can’t remember exactly why.  I’m just glad I got so lucky.  Many women aren’t able to escape unhealthy relationships so easily.
Just remember.  Just because he doesn’t hit you, doesn’t mean you aren’t being abused.  There are many types of abuse, and if you find yourself afraid of him, compromising your morals, making excuses, and doing a lot of crying… what are you still there for?

Kate took me along with her to a church lock-in she said would be a lot of fun.  She told me that the Unitarians don’t care what your orientation is, how you dress, or what you believe.  Just that you get along.  I loved the idea of it.  While there I ended up becoming friends with a boy named Brandon.  We had so much fun talking and getting to know each other that we ended up sleeping against one another on the couch.  I was worried I’d never see him again, but it turns out he went to the role-playing group I later joined.

Yes, I was a LARPer.  That’s Live Action Role Playing for you normals.  There was a Vampire: the Masquerade game at the college near my house and a bunch of friends took me along when they realized how into vampires I was.  I became super addicted to the game.  It gave me the freedom to explore sides of myself I was afraid to embrace in my daily life.  I met loads more people just like me.  I had a great time escaping reality.  It was just what I needed.

Brandon and I would keep in contact online when we weren’t at the game.  We would use our character names as cover for our forbidden flirting.  He wrote me a few sweet poems, and I told him a bit about my situation.  He went to a different school and was unhappy he couldn’t be there for me.  Eventually his birthday came around and I was invited.  It was to be a large coed sleepover with no chaperons.  For some reason my parents let me go.  Kate drove us there.  There was a big table laid out with everything delicious imaginable.  There was also a house rule that no one was allowed to feed themselves.  Instantly the party became something more.  Brandon had already had me hooked on a musical called RENT that I didn’t know existed.  I’d memorized the words to La Vie Boheme.  At the party I realized I was there surrounded by fellow bohemians who wouldn’t judge.  There were gay, straight, and bisexuals.  People from many walks of life who all believed in the same basic principles of truth and acceptance.  It was liberating.  And there, across town from my worries, I figured out how to free myself.

Brandon and I ended up making love that night.  It was wonderful in many, many ways.  There was a part of me that feared the fallout, a part of me that didn’t want to be a cheater, but overall I was happy.  Happy because I was giving myself freely.  There had been no begging, no sleazy advances, no hint of anything other than two kids with raging hormones.  I felt like I had won something back of myself.

Amusingly enough, later that same night I walked in on Brandon making love to a boy named Logan who was also at the party.  Brandon and I had made it clear before we’d fooled around that we weren’t going to try for any sort of relationship, so I wasn’t upset.  It was the next morning when Brandon tried to say they weren’t doing anything that I got upset.  I couldn’t understand why someone who had taught me about freedom and understanding would lie about something that didn’t even matter.  Eventually he admitted it and apologized.  Logan and I ran into each other again a few years later and he’s still one of my best friends.  More on that story when we come to it.  Brandon and I were never sexually together again, but the friendship remains.

After the party all that was left was to figure out how to tell Jay.

I think the last post was heavy on the bad things.  I feel I should stop and mention some of the good things so I don’t look completely pathetic for staying with him so long.  Like, sex outdoors.  Once an outside romp got interrupted by the angry ant nest we had been laying on.  I was covered in horrible bites for a long time, many in horrible places.  Once we were in the soft grass during a lightning storm, no less.    It was wild and passionate and liberating.  Sex in public.  Once at a mall and  a few trips to a couple of major theme parks I won’t name for fear of lawyers.  That got the adrenaline going!  He introduced me to various classic rock bands I didn’t know much about.  He made a real effort to get along with my family, even after they forbid us to be together.

Yes, that happened.  At one point I was cornered into admitting I had been having sex.  They were furious.  For a while they tried to deny us contact entirely, and then reduced it to supervised meetings.  They never managed to stop us from anything.  We’d often manage quickies in my room with the door open.  We even arranged it a few times so he’d go out to ’smoke’ and I’d go to the bathroom for ‘number two.’  Only, there was a door to the backyard and he’d come in and screw me.  I admit that after one incident my parents had good reason to hate him and be upset with me.  I’m still so upset by it that I won’t even tell you here in this blog.  Yes, there’s at least one secret I still have.  Not many.  My family took him with us on a trip to visit relatives for the weekend.  My one-legged great-grandfather offered to shoot him for me.  At the time I was horrified.  Now I wish I’d taken him up on it.

Jay also was the one who helped me aquire a good deal of the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles.  My mom and aunt had read them when I was young, but I’d never actually gotten to read them myself.  The movie came out, I fell in love with it, and got the first book.  He had most of the others and happily handed them over.  Books are a big deal to me.  This was really nice.

We would spend time together not having sex, too.  Sometimes.  We’d go for walks in a local park.  We’d hang out with his friends and listen to music.  We would watch movies together.  We did normal relationship things.  But mostly there was the sex.

It was my longest relationship and it was completely wrapped up in the fact that he was my first.  Leaving him would make me just another girl who’d had sex.  Would anyone else even want me?  After all, now I was used merchandise.  And what would happen to him?  He depended on me.  He was possessive of me.  He loved me.  I was afraid he’d lose himself completely in all his destructive addictions and not come out again.  It would be my fault.  At this point he and his friends weren’t at the school anymore so I didn’t have to worry about running into them in the halls.  But there were a lot of mutual friends.  And as I’ve said, I had done a lot of bragging about how great it all was.  How could I explain to people why it was suddenly over?  How could I admit how completely foolish I had been?  Do I dare rat him out to everyone as the lying lowlife I knew him to be?  I didn’t want to make him angry.

He was a lot like the Hulk.  When he got angry he became another person.  He would break things.  Storm about.  Get real quiet and real scary.  He had told me stories of things he’d done to people who made him angry.  Once we were joking around and he said something I didn’t like, so I play smacked him on the face.  Not hard.  Not seriously.  He went from laughing to Hulk in an instant.  Warned me to never, ever do it again.  He didn’t say what would happen if I did, but I wasn’t going to tempt fate.  I knew he was capable of things.  I had seen his temper in action.

And I was no dummy.  For all my blindness through my relationship, I was not ignorant to what abuse was.  I was a rights activist already.  I watched Lifetime movies and payed attention in classes and learned all about what kinds of abuse there were.  How many women end up in destructive cycles.  How men become stalkers and attackers.  How the law is flawed and unable to protect women until it was just about too late.  I also learned how easily women were made out to be liars and whores.  I didn’t want to go through all that.  And because he had never actually hit me, I didn’t feel I had any sort of case against him.  I had no proof of anything, while there was plenty of proof to the contrary.  No, I would just settle for a clean break.  I think the problem stalking exs have is that when the woman leaves they feel like they’re not good enough.  This hurts their childish pride.  Jay had lots of pride.  I needed to find a way to make him want to leave me.  Make it his idea.

The only way I could see that happening was if I made him believe I cheated on him.  I remembered how offended Randy had been.  I knew it would work.  And thankfully, I had met someone who was going to help me out.

I don’t like clothes very much.  I’m much more comfortable in the nude, especially in a hot climate such as Orlando.  I do not suffer embarrassment for many things.  This gave me the ability to wear pajamas to school on many occasions when I just couldn’t be bothered to get dressed.  I had a nightdress I particularly loved.  It was old fashioned and covered me from neck to foot, long sleeves and all.  It was made of a heavy green material so I didn’t have to worry about it being see-through or being blown about.  I got away with wearing nothing underneath.  Very Comfortable.  It was on a day wearing this that Kate took me to visit some of her older friends at the school.  My plan was to smile and not say much on this first meeting.  After all, I was only a freshman.

There was a wolf in the pack.  Short.  Stocky.  Native American.  Long black hair.  Piercing eyes.  Wore denim jeans and jacket.  His name was Jay.  He took notice of my strange attire.  “whatcha got on under there?”

“Nothing.”

Silly me.  That was the beginning.  We got closer.  He was exotic.  Mysterious.  Troubled past.  A bad boy with a good heart.  Sweet little twin sisters.  An evil stepfather.  A mother that does her best.  He listened to classic rock and liked to skip class.  I started wearing his ring around my neck.  Everyone at school knew him, or of him.  He was a legend.  I was his girl.  He even gave me a name.  Suneagle.  My hair was the sunlight, he said.  He was Blackhawk.  We were a pair.  He was interested in me.  He took his time with me.  He smoked.  Smelled of tobacco and Aspen.  I tried to get him to quit, but knew it was a lost cause.  He had a guitar that he’d play for me from time to time.  I was enchanted.

Eventually he persuaded me to get to know him better.  I started learning about the male penis in earnest.  I got to examine it, not just a picture.  Feel it.  Eventually taste it.  I learned how to grip, pace, tease, pleasure.  And he worked on getting to know me.  When I would finally let him go down on me I was so embarrassed I would have to cover my face.  It was too awkward and strange to fully enjoy it for a while.  As time went on I became more comfortable with him.  We had been together for months.  He was possessive of me, but not in a scary way.  I loved it.  He helped my confidence in leaps and bounds.  He made me feel pretty.  Made me feel important.  He made me feel I loved him.

One day I went over to babysit his sisters.  He ended up not having to work after all.  We were unsupervised.  He stripped me naked and took a long look at me.  Made me turn around for him.  I was beet red, as I often was.  The flush covers a good deal of my body.  He asked why it bothered me so much.  He thought I was gorgeous.  I heard everything I needed to hear.  Even though I had told him many times I wanted to wait until marriage, I finally consented to be with him.  We went to his bed and he took me slow and gentle.  Afterwards I went to curl up in a ball.  He was worried about me, asked if I was okay.  Took me in his arms and held me.  Said many sweet and kind things that made me feel better about what had happened.  I had made the right choice.  I thought.  I loved him.  It was okay that I hadn’t waited, because he wanted to marry me anyway.  He would tell me about how we would go back to New York upstate and get a cabin in the woods somewhere.  He’d show me how to follow animal tracks.  I’d have our children.  It was a nice dream.

It was a facade.

He was a liar.  He was into drugs.  He wouldn’t stop.  I couldn’t get past that.  Every time we’d argue about it, though, he’d manage to win me over again.  I wish I could remember all the ways he had hold on me.  The elaborate story of his past that he’d woven around my heart so that he could easily make me feel guilty for upsetting him in the slightest.  How any time I’d rock the boat he’d make it seem like I didn’t love him.  He would have crazy mood swings.  Once I found a strange kit in his bag.  He said he was diabetic.  Those were his insulin shots.  This was part of the reason for his craziness.  That made sense to me.  My dad was, too.  But Jay liked to drink.  A lot.   This also bothered me.  But now for a new reason.  How could he handle all that sugar if he’s diabetic?  That should’ve killed him by now.  Turns out it was heroin.  He was always out of money, in debt, and now I knew why.  I couldn’t believe how lied to I’d been.  I couldn’t understand why.  He told me about his pot and acid use.  I guess he knew it was a step too far.

Still, I didn’t leave.  We’d been together almost two years.  A lot had happened between us.  He convinced me he wanted to quit.  Was trying to quit.  He needed me to be strong for him.  That wasn’t the only time I caught him lying.  Once he ‘went to work’ and ended up out with an ex girlfriend all day.  He had a secret tattoo he would never let me see.  Said it was something to do with an incomplete Native induction he didn’t feel worthy of.  It was her name.  Lie after lie.  And through everything, I stayed.  My family didn’t like him.  My father hated him, with good reason.  My friends hated us together.  I cried more than anything.  I was really in love with him.  I believed it.  I wanted him to be the good person he was inside.  I couldn’t just leave.  Something about him made me not want to leave.  Besides, every time I’d tried he had turned it around on me.  Made me feel like I was the bad person.  I was starting all the trouble.  My doubts and nagging drove him to some of those things.  Silly me.

He disappeared for three days after an important parole meeting.  I was worried out of my mind.  When he resurfaced I found out he’d been at a friends lost on drink and drugs the whole time.  The fight was epic.  I was at my wits end.  Somehow the topic of my first time came up.  I mentioned the babysitting night.  He contradicted me.  That wasn’t the first time.  Surely, I would know.  No, he said.  Then he proceeded to remind me about a much earlier night.  We were in his room watching Zorro.   I felt like I had been punched in the gut.  The night came back to me, then.  He didn’t have to fill in any other details.  I did remember.  I remember we started to fool around a bit.  I remember us being in the spooned position and him begging to let him have me.  No.  No.  No.  Just the tip.  He wouldn’t let up.  He was rubbing himself against me.  I was upset that he was pressing my boundaries so hard.  I gave him a bit of the silent treatment.  He took this as permission, and took me.  I was in too much shock to say anything.  I couldn’t feel it.  It was too late.  Remembering it now still makes bile rise in my throat.

It was at that point on the phone that pieces started to fall together.  That hadn’t been the only time that I’d been pressured.  That he interpreted my giving up as a sign of willingness.  But I wasn’t sure what I could do about it.  After all, in all our time together I’d willingly spent the night with him, lying to my parents about where I had been.  I was his girlfriend.  I had bragged to friends about the great sex we had.  About how happy I was with him.  I thought about all the fights we’d had.  How often I’d bring a legitimate complaint up and in the end I’d be begging forgiveness.  He had me on a leash.  I’d been manipulated.  Intimidated.  All sorts of nasty things that all added up to me wanting out.  But with all this came the knowledge that he wasn’t going to let me go.  I was afraid of him.   Hell, I still am.

More tomorrow.