I’m not sure what else to call this time of my life.
In March of 1984, I was with girlfriends at the local arcade. Going to the arcade in my neighborhood meant we were going to a complex that included a movie theatre, a pizzeria, and arcade, with all of the most popular video games. My game was Galaga, and I was good at it. Maybe not high score on every machine good, but I was pretty good. If my quarters went into a machine at the arcade, it was that one.
Minding my own business, my girlfriends and I were talking in the courtyard area as a group, and this strange guy walked up and started talking to me. If I think of what he looked like then, he really wasn’t my “type”, if I had a type at that time in my life. My first thought was probably, who IS this guy, ‘cause he is freaking me out. He was talking fast and was terribly insistent that I talk to him some more. I relented.
I had to leave; my ride was there. He followed me out and insisted on seeing me again. Standing there by my friend’s parents’ car, I gave him my phone number and left. I wondered for a long time what caused me to set aside my intuition; to give him my number. What happened to me that I would soon need to hear his voice? To soon feel the need to be with him every minute, and to be depressed when he wasn’t there. This was a defining decision in my life, and I fell hard, without thought of consequence or logic.
Don’t get me wrong, I was on a rollercoaster ride in my own life and I no longer blame him fully for what happened between us, but being with him would mean navigating one of the greatest trials I had experienced by then, in my 14 years of life. He was 16, and somehow that seemed much older and wiser than me. He went to a different high school, but it was in a suburb next to where I lived, and we frequented some of the same places. Not that we spent much time in any of those places once we were together, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Within a few weeks, we were celebrating his 17th birthday, and my 15th birthday, which incidentally were 5 days apart. By the time we were celebrating my birthday with my family, we were well on our way to having sex. I don’t think it was that night, but I would guess it was within the week. So, in a parking lot of some apartment complex near his parent’s house, in the back seat of his parent’s Seville, I lost my virginity to him. The only thought I can recall having is that I hoped we could get the spot out of the seat from where I had bled. It was a little painful, but by that time he had told me he loved me, and I wanted to believe it so badly, I believed it.
I knew he wasn’t new to sex. Not only did he explain to me that he had completed treatment for an STD a month or two prior, but in retrospect, he knew far too much for me to even think he was new at this type of relationship. Red flags everywhere and I ignored every single one. What he told me, I believed. What he talked about, I listened and absorbed. What he drank, I drank and whatever drug he took, I took. It seems I was ripe for the picking.
By that June, two months into our relationship, I missed a period.
We carried on like we didn’t know what that could mean. It’s hard to put into perspective as a grown woman, how I felt at 15, but I don’t think either one of us were equipped to deal with the consequences of our actions, so we just put it in the back of our minds. It was easier to just keep carrying on in our lust bubble and not think about the future.
We did some normal stuff; I went to his Junior prom. Went to the mall. Had dinner with my parents. Had dinner with his parents. Had couples portraits done. In the in-between, we drove around a lot, looking for places we could hang out and drink, or smoke, or trip. Went to rock shows and talked about going to a Grateful Dead concert together when they were on tour. He had his tonsils taken out and I sat in the waiting room like a worried girlfriend. I had Driver’s Ed scheduled that summer, but when we weren’t together, we talked all night and I could not get up in the morning to go. I didn’t care.
For the July 4th holiday, his family was going to the lake. They had a home on a lake about five hours from our home base. I remember the two of us fighting our families relentlessly that I be allowed to go along, which we succeeded to convince them. He had just had his tonsils out and was under strict instruction to limit any exertion. We weren’t allowed to sleep in the same bedroom, but we found ways to spend time together.
One day we took a walk along the winding roads surrounding the lake and found a spot we could be alone, away from other people, and had sex. Immediately afterwards, he began coughing and spitting up blood. I helped him back to the cabin, and by that time, he was throwing up blood. His parents took him to the hospital immediately; just in time to save his life. He ended up requiring 3 or 4 pints of blood to replace what he had lost. Of course, his parents knew what type of exertion had been going on to cause him to break his stitches opened, and I’m sure felt a deep sense of disappointment.
By this time, my mom and stepdad were finally getting concerned with the amount of time we were spending together and encouraged me to spend time with friends. I had a girlfriend in a town a couple of hours away and was convinced to spend a week with her, later in the month. It felt like such a surreal time for me, looking back on it. I had been feeling nauseous and was hungry all the time. Somehow, during that visit, I came to the full realization that I might be pregnant.
When I returned from my visit, my mom asked me if she should take me to the Dr for birth control, and it felt like I had just been stabbed with a bright light.
It was too late...
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