Passion, pursuites, and I should remain silent. . .

Diary - Entry 22


I am tired tonight, been when am I not these days?  I am listening to Meatloaf, drinking vodka and remembering times when life was so much simpler and the worst thing that I was concerned about was my cheerleading uniform being clean and oiling my clarinet.

My mother at this point in time, had remarried a man 10 years her junior and only 8 years older than me (why anybody would be stupid enough to do that is beyond me. . .), which certainly made for interesting conversation.

For a while, things were somewhat normal.  That is when my brother Michael was born.  It was 1975 and that summer, my entire life changed.  I fell deeply and irrevocably inlove with a local boy, who was several years older.  They say you never forget your first love.  I believe that.  The imprint that our relation, which spanned. . .(as lovers) over a 15 year period, left me with certain standards which were hard for anyone else to compete with.  He was my first boyfriend, first real companion, first kiss, first lover and first to break me into a million pieces that never really got glued back together.  Even when he married his first wife, we continued to be lovers.

The raw intensity of what we felt for one another was unlike anything I or he for that matter, had or have ever known.  We could not stand to be away from one another, one touch set each of us on fire.  We tried desperately to get inside one another's skin when making love, because we could not get close enough
as our bodies would become one.  When we babysat his siblings or mine, we did not care, we would sneak off to the bathroom, the closet, it did not matter. . .  At school, we would go down into the basement and in the corner of the boiler room, we would spend our lunch time screwing our brains out and clinging to one another till the bell rang.  During basketball season, as I was a cheerleader, we would ride the bus to away games and sit all the way in the back with his letterman jacket draped over us while I sat astride him, letting the motion of the bus, do the work.

My brother Todd adored him.  Because of his speech problem, Todd had adopted the name for him that his own siblings called him, which was much easier for Todd to pronounce and that was 'Toy'.  He was always kind, loving and considerate of Todd.  He never rushed ahead of him to try and finish his senstenses as so many other people in his daily life did.  You see, Todd kept all my secrets, just as I kept his.  When my mother found out that Todd had been helping me sneak out to see 'Toy' and watching the kids when we were together, she beat both of us, but he got the brunt of it. 

It was after that last beating that Todd called our father, whom we had not seen in many years, and asked him to come get him.  I was lost when Todd went to Arkansas.  My mother divorced her second husband and we moved back into town.  She also broke us up.  She sat up dates with other boys and told me that if I ever had any hopes of getting back with 'Toy', then I must widen my dating circles to include the local gentry.  I felt like I was being pimped out.  Each date was disatrous and each time, 'Toy' had been watching and would come to my window and I would cry, sometimes, so did he.  The pain of seperation that I felt from him, was like a hot knife splitting me in two. 

He and I were so attuned to one another that you did not know where one started and the other stopped. He had picked me up from school one afternoon early (he had already graduated), we talked, made love for the first time in a long time and he took me to work.  He said, "I love you" and I said, "not as much as I love you",  I went in to work, grabbed my apron and I thought. . .'we are going to be ok'.  Five minutes later, my heart was beating wildly in my chest and I saw him flash in my mind.  I screamed and dropped the glass coffee pot I had been holding.  Everyone starred at me, then I fainted.  I had seen, in my minds eye that he had been in a very bad wreck just moments after dropping me off.  I went to the hospital.  Waiting in the corner of the hallway, not speaking.  The other girl that he had started dating was there along with members of his family and our friends.  When he came out of the exam room, he searched for me, came to me, hugged me and through his tears and mine, we were whispering  'I love you'. . as we clung to one another. 

We stood there for what seemed like hours, but was, in reality, only minutes.  Once again, my life was altered in a inescapable way.  Once again, I fought with my mother, once again, I not only lost the battle, but the war as well.  Several days after the accident, he came to me and said that he did not want to see me anymore, and that he was moving on and that I should too.

The trouble with moving on is that paths cross, passion re-ignites and the silence of three decades has not dimmed the height of what we experienced together.