The Chronicles of Jason's Love Life
This is quite an undertaking to write, and in my estimation therefore, to read as well. Basically, I thought I would simplify this to go by girl, so it would be easier to begin from one point and continue on as needed. The later the girls get, the more complex the nature of the relationships, and thus the longer the narrative. They lead from one to the next pretty quickly (at least in the beginning), so bear with me. I have abbreviated everyone's last name for their privacy. This is not meant to be taken too seriously, it is more just a better way for me to remember things than anything else, but I do hope you find it amusing, enjoy!
Melissa S Nessa J Nikki S Cassie C Abby R Alyssa P Paige P |
Jessica B Brandy J Sarah G Jennifer C Krystal S Danielle G Melissa S |
In the beginning there was Jason, without love, or crushes or any of that nonsense. But it all changed in kindergarten as far I can remember. Her name was Tiffany L, and she was the hottest kindergartener in the school, well for a kindergartener that is, my taste has since changed. She was blonde, and had a pretty face, she always represented the fashion of the age to me, and that age of course is mostly the late eighties, the age of Paula Abdul and even MC Hammer, “He’s a Cold Hearted Snake” and “U Can’t Touch This”. Of course these were the years 1988 until 1990 or so. I first noticed my crush for her in the early part of the year. The one thing confused me at that time, was what are people who have crushes on each other supposed to do about it, especially Kindergarteners? Well it did not matter to me all the same, because I still wanted her, though I am sure should anything have happened, I would have been too frightened to take it anywhere, but then, what use would I really have had of it anyway? One day after about a year or two of I suppose you could say lusting after her, I all of a sudden turned it off, or rather it was turned off, not by me on purpose however. I simply looked at her, and thought to myself ‘she really is not that special is she?’ and with that, the crush was over.
I moved the summer from first to second grade to Thornton from Westlake. Of course I did not like the move, I was afraid and alone, and without any acquaintances save my neighbor from across the street, Aaron L, and his friend Scott C, Ryan A (my next door neighbor), and Mike P one of Scott‘s friends who lived in the neighborhood. I was enrolled into Mrs. Stanwyk’s second grade class, and there I sat next to a girl by name of Jessica B, she was a shy and seemingly simple girl, and that intrigued me about her, and thus I had my second crush. I find it interesting how my crushes, numerically at first tended to go in the order of the grade I was in. I remember not too much with Jessica, except for that every time I was around her as with Tiffany before her I had an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. Also as with Tiffany before her, and many girls after her, I was far too afraid to tell any of them about my feelings for them, in fear of being embarrassed or rejected, I suppose. Well, anyway, my crush on Jessica eventually faded, and the next year I started and had my third crush on Brandy J. I, of course, like most of the remainder of my crushes liked her, because she liked me. It was strange to me, or perhaps in retrospect, it is odd to me how people can have a great crush on one another, and yet they still try to make it seem to be the opposite. This last sentence was how she acted around me, because it was quite obvious that she did indeed like me, but later in the crush, she tried to attempt to not like and of course I knew better, because I did nothing to deserve her being mean, save that she liked me more than she felt she should have.
My next crush as far as I can remember did not happen until fifth grade, thus fourth grade was in a sense ‘crush-less’. My fifth grade crush has more significance to me than do the previous two, for a few reasons. The first reason being because I felt I had more of a sense of purpose for this one, meaning: I was finally aware of what these bloody crushes were meant to be for. The second reason is: I was much closer to informing her than anyone before her. She was in sixth grade (thus a year older than me), and we met after my school decided to create a fifth/sixth split class in about the second quarter, so as to lessen the class sizes in both grades for each classroom. I remember when I first really started to fall for her, because I was wearing a “World Youth Day 1993” t-shirt, and she was as well. Her name was Sarah G. We were making Christmas ornaments in class that day, and I really started to notice her because of her t-shirt. After my best friend Arianne and I walked back to my house (Arianne had been my best friend for several years, and we knew each other very well) she asked me how I felt about Sarah, and I think right there my crush jumped to an extremely heightened degree. There was, however, quite a huge interference with my will to act on this crush: she had a boyfriend already, Christopher Sullivan; Chris lived just down the street from me. Well, I was just waiting for the day when they would break-up, and then I knew I would act. After a few months of waiting patiently, they finally did, but there was a huge setback, that would be the way she broke-up with him. She met someone new at a party of some sort, this person she happened to find more attractive than Chris. Well, this guy asked her if she was dating anyone, and she then said “not anymore” or something to that effect occurred. She called Chris, and told him they were no longer dating, as she had found this new guy. I heard about this a while later from Arianne, and was quite upset about it, because I knew the chance would not present itself again for a very long time.
My next crush after Sarah, I am indeed embarrassed to list and only lasted for a few days. Her name was Jennifer C, and looking back, I have no idea why I saw her attractive, besides perhaps the fact that she seemed obtainable, and I was around her a lot. Arianne of course, helped me nourish my crush for Jennifer as well. Having been the helpful person she was, however, told Jennifer, and Jennifer of course naturally just wanted to be friends, so that was a true rejection. Jennifer wraps up my elementary school crushes, after that they proceed to the dreaded but overall enlightening “Middle School Fancies (Crushes)”. My first crush in middle school was for a girl who also went to Tarver, by name Crystal S. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair, and a pretty face, and the reason I wanted her, was because I would talk to her in my “elective class” that we had to start middle school with. I thought she was pretty from the start, but then, I began to talk to her, and I thought she was quite kind and intelligent, the three qualities I most seek in a woman. My crush lasted a good deal of sixth grade, but as with most of my crushes before her (save Sarah), I did not really pursue her nor desire her terribly much, and left my desire for her with the end of the year. In seventh grade, I took a somewhat twisted opinion of life, and that is to say, I more or less became a Vulcan. I had been terribly taken by Star Trek, and wanted to learn to rid myself of emotions, as did Data and the Vulcan race. I thought and still do to some degree that emotions were the cause of many problems on Earth, not that I had any great problems myself of which I could blame emotions for, I just saw the view offered in Star Trek and took it as logical and well thought out. Keeping all of this in mind, it is easy to see why I did not seek anyone nor did I have any crushes. At the end of the year, however, something completely unexpected happened to me… I got my first official girlfriend.
She was Sarah’s sister, Danielle, and my going out with her happened almost by accident. It started when either Arianne or Sarah noticed that neither of us had a boy or girlfriend (respectively) and thought perhaps we should be hooked up. I believe as usual she had a small crush on me first. I was cleaning my house one night for money for a Star Trek convention and Arianne happened to be over. She called Sarah and was talking to her about me I suppose. Well, there was a link of communication I, to Arianne, to Sarah, to Danielle. Danielle and I spoke to each other through this link, and it became quite clear to me that she liked me enough to go out. I was very nervous, but I wanted a girlfriend, rather badly, because I believed everyone had already had one, save me. Well through this lovely line of linkage, Danielle made it clear to me that if I were to ask her out, she would answer me with ‘yes’, in fact; that is exactly what I heard straight from Arianne’s mouth. Well, in light of this new piece of information, I decided to ask her out, but of course not directly (why break with tradition), I asked her through, Ari, through Sarah, and then of course to Danielle, herself. She was good to her word, and my heart sank, I now had my first girlfriend, and I was quite euphoric over the whole new situation in which I now had found myself. That night Arianne, her mother, Nancy, my parents and I went to the Black Eyed Pea, and I was so excited I could barely eat. The next day I went with Danielle’s family to church, and by peer pressure from Sarah, was more or less coaxed into holding Danielle’s hand. I was not too comfortable, because Danielle’s entire family was in the car. Sometime after that we went to the Star Trek convention, which is an interesting first date, I remember we were sitting and watching some presentation, I think it was actually a film, and I kept struggling with putting my arm around her shoulder, and finally did it. All of this was kind of difficult because up until a few years ago, I was extremely prudish.
After the convention we only saw each other one more time while going out, and that was when I asked her if I could come and visit, but she thought that I meant could I come and have supper with them or something to that effect. I do not remember exactly how that occurred, but her parents were somewhat upset as a result from that. Well, we got the miscommunication cleared up, and I rode my bicycle down to her house. I stayed there for a while, we were happy to see each other, and I had to go home to clean my house, I thought my parents would be upset that I did not earlier. In spite of not seeing each other, she called me often. Maybe once or twice a week, and she would always tell me about what was going on within her life. It was interesting I suppose, I do not really remember exactly what she told me, but she sure enjoyed talking a lot to me, I think I got somewhat annoyed by how much she spoke, and she would not hear me speak very often at all. Well after about six months (perhaps as little as four of five) of going out, I think, I finally decided it was becoming somewhat stupid, and I decided to break it off. Of course I did it in a cowardly way, pretty much the same one as I asked her out in. I had Arianne do it for me, which looking back was stupid of me, but I was young and unwitting of such things as courtesy of that nature at that particular time. I remember having seen her on the fourth of July at Stanley Lake in Northglenn one time after we broke up, but I believe after that that was the only time I saw her within that year. Danielle was a pretty girl, and nice and such, I just do not think she had what I was searching for in a girlfriend. And there is one point I forgot to mention, this will make me sound mean, but, it happens… the whole reason I dated Danielle in the first place was I wanted to get closer to her sister Sarah, but it did not happen, and I do not even know how it could possibly have worked in retrospect.
After Danielle, my first real deep and painful, not to mention most awkward love happened, and it is probably one of the most confusing and painful experiences I thus far have had. Her name was Melissa S, and it all started when she began to talk to me in Mr. Czernicki’s classroom. It was my eighth grade year, and I was a student aid for Czern (as he was affectionately called by his students). He was generally out of the room when I was meant to do my work for him, and I was left alone to enter grades into the computer, I really enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to be alone in a comfortable atmosphere, left to wallow in my own solitude. Well, Melissa happened to be an office aid, and came by everyday to collect the attendance sheets from all of the classroom doors, where they were left. As it happened, she would come by and speak with me sometimes when she made her rounds to do this. It was quite early in the year, perhaps as early as August, but definitely by September that she started speaking to me. She came by and made more or less friendly chitchat with me, about various subjects such as some of the teachers and how she did not like them and so forth. I thought nothing of this initially except that she was just trying to be friendly. One day, sometime later, I went to my German class, and we had to practice for a dance for our Oktoberfest, and we had to do a partner dance. Melissa asked me if I wanted to be her partner, so somewhat shocked that she was in my German class, I accepted her invitation to dance and at that very moment, though I did not completely realise it, my heart was bound to her for a very long while. We danced and practised the dance together with the rest of our class, and I distinctly remember her hands being quite cool. Going home that day my mind was racing with a newfound emotion, which I had not yet experienced. I would not say I was in love that day by any means even thinking of it now it is difficult for me to label with absolute certainty if I ever loved Melissa at all.
After having spoken to Melissa several times more, while practising dancing or at Mr. Czerniki’s room, she donated to me a small Republican elephant pin as she a few days previously learned of my then staunch interest in politics. My attraction to her grew all the more for the very reason that we had so much in common including our religion (Roman Catholicism), our political beliefs and our academic interests to a degree regarding our German class. From this action of hers, it came to mind as a surety that she indeed liked me in the same manner as I liked her. In retrospection, I find that I was likely taking a fantasy to its bounds and exploring my own emotions as far as I could. Whether it was the same day or some days later, I do not recall entirely, but we exchanged phone numbers, and when she did not proceed to call me, I made clear to her that I thought she should, so she did. We spoke on the phone for hours always for a few conversations, what the topics were, alludes my memories presently, but I know the conversation’s very basis in fact, made me more nervous than I had ever been, and I have no doubt that this was quite evident from her end of the telephone line. A particular call that is slightly more vivid to me remains in memory however, but only in broken fragments of an actual conversation. I remember distinctly being in my basement and her cousin from the mountains was in town and on the telephone with her. I was listening to a record of Beethoven and as she called I was on Moonlight Sonata, which is by far my least favourite of Beethoven’s pieces. She asked me how popular I was during the course of the conversation that ensued, which sticks out in my mind for reasons of their own importance, but I remember thinking at that very point that I was in for a girl who needed popularity to secure herself in the dire social world of American middle schools. I wondered at that moment what significance and importance it must bear for two creatures who were supposed to have two souls united in affection and mutual admiration to have one wonder about the other’s social standings and political potency. I doubt I thought of it in so poetic manner at the time, but I basically was curious about these things all the same.
One other call, which I look back towards with shame and embarrassment, does occur to memory. I was walking in my basement ready to ask Melissa to ultimately be mine, go out or however one states their affections and that they would like to make more of it than a remote admiration with a mutual and intimate affection in return. I proceeded with fortune and wit enough to ask if she had a boyfriend as a great precaution, so as to be entirely sure of a chance of exclusivity into her attentions, when as a reply of which I did not wish to hear nor was expecting echoed over the phone lines… “Yes”… !!! Astonishment and betrayal are the qualities, which leapt to mind over such a wicked and cruel reply. In my mind (to this day) I knew Melissa had known how my desire for her had grown by an immense proportion and that this answer would send a shock of utter speechlessness through my brain. As it happened I was entirely dumbfounded for what I thought to be an extensively lengthy time. I felt my heart literally stop for a second at my surprise. My generally sharp and ready tongue found no words in which to articulate the feelings and thoughts, which were flashing through my brain and would have been appropriate to say. I finally did reply, but I could hear the deep amusement, which my reactions caused to my companion over the telephone, and thus eventually came to the conclusion to only pursue friendship with her, until she dropped her boyfriend, and then I should again have my chance.
Some time passed between this conversation and another day where at school we had what I thought to be a bomb threat, during the course of it, and actually learned to be a plutonium threat afterward. This day was significant for several reasons among which were the fact that I finally acquired her telephone number for myself (before I had only given her mine). Also this day we went to another school as to be “safe” from the substance, and I walked around the school yard with my friend Jeff Kollnot, and discussed with him the overwhelming infatuation for Melissa of which I was cursed (at the time blessed perhaps). Going home I was a good deal late, as the transportation system became rather confused, as I rode the omnibus to and from school, and what turned out to be the false threat of a plutonium scare, caused all students to be tardy in return from the school to their residences. That night Melissa called me again, but this time it was entirely different as to what happened on the fear inspiring telephone as the rest of the conversations I had had with her. Melissa called with a fright so great, that I was quite surprised as to hear her so very afraid. She called bawling over a film she had seen that night, though which it was, elapses my memory presently, all I know is, I thought it was not entirely scary enough to have such reactions to, but all I knew was I wanted nothing more than for her to feel better, and especially safe. Melissa’s brother was rather obnoxious, which I had learned from both the witness of him at our school together, and also from her description and concurring battles with him during our discourses over the telephone. His relevance to this particular incident is, he effectively took and made every effort possible to add to his sister’s agitation as he could, thinking of it now, I am sure he was only acting as an immature junior brother would to a sister, by exploiting her vulnerabilities to the best of his abilities. He succeeded regrettably, and it was my self-imposed duty to counteract him and her fright by any means necessary. I had difficulty in the solacing, but I believe eventually I ultimately succeeded in quelling any and all fears, which she bore. As to the time immediately following the call it is difficult for me to ascertain how I felt, until the next sullen day, because my thoughts always seem to go back to that, as its potency in my life at that time is so outstanding that only highly relevant events relating to it recall themselves to memory at will. Perhaps I embellish slightly, but not by much.
The next cursed day, I receive a note from my dear Melissa, whom I effectively allowed to cry on my shoulder the day previous, stating that she had no desire to see me any longer, and that any effort made to contact her in any manner whatever would be seen as hostile and poorly in her eyes. At the very moment that these words were entering my sight to be processed mentally, my anguish physically hurt me, and my disappointment and sorrow were total. Never before had I felt so utterly rejected and useless, this is all bad enough alone, but this was combined with the person on Earth whom I cared the most about that I had ever cared for in my life, and for whom I would do anything asked of me, it was more than I could handle. The humiliation ensued with luncheon that day, where my table and the fellow students with whom I sat, was next to Melissa and her friends, and her friends were mocking me by calling me a homosexual and any other insults of which their inarticulate and uncaring minds could find to use upon me. Finding myself at home that day was no better than when I had found myself at school hours earlier, for my parents were upset at me for some reason, as they had only just returned from holiday somewhere (I think St. Louis), and I am sure I had neglected to do something, or do it correctly, so my mother found reason to yell at me, and I had no desire to take such abuses at the time, because my mind was elsewhere entirely. Before that day, tears had not found their ways out of my eyes for some years, but after all of these events combined I could help it no longer and wept like I had not done since my earlier days in elementary school at least. This made me feel all the worse, because I did not want to seem in any way weak from this display of sorrow and overwhelming, but in the end alas I believe it helped me immensely to do so, and my parents needless to say, were quite obviously feeling guilty after my reaction to their poorly timed chastisements.
Feeling that Melissa was confused or playing a trick on me, I decided to avoid her with all efforts, but unfortunately for me at the time that was not as easy of an ambition as I had hoped, for a few weeks later she and her friends had made several sexual jokes about me, which they were quite obviously intending for me to hear. Furious at this continued and unnecessary berating I called Melissa that night demanding explanation for this harassment her friends felt so necessary to give me. The call turned things in a much queerer direction than I should have ever thought them to go at the time. She basically blew off the fact of what was happening explaining nothing to my satisfaction, and she made me think that she wrote the note when she should not have, and that she was sorry for having done so. This filled my heart with a sceptical joy and consequently my affection for her had returned with her mere uttering of the words, which I thought were the words for me to see that penance for a grave mistake had come to her. This state of languid social progress came to the effect where within several weeks time, I felt I would again try to get a better relationship created between us, but then something again disturbing happened a few weeks later.
A friend of mine who sat in my English class with me, who happened to ride the bus with Melissa and be friends with her, told me at lunch for the price of food, that Melissa had told him on the bus that the whole thing was a joke on me, and that she indeed had no attraction for me whatsoever. Again at lunch I got to feel my heart make some peculiar physical oddity and the pain returned, and what followed was not sorrow, but rather anger, and really, chaotic and uncontrolled rage. That day, the school, or rather a club of the school was sending out ‘candy grams’ where candy and a small note from an admirer or friend would be sent to someone else for a price, but it is a nice gesture, generally. I had never received any in my three years there, save that day. I received it in my German class (the one I shared with Melissa) and she was witness to something I regret today, as having been childish and in the heat of the moment. I received the card, and without even looking at it, I took it and ripped it to shreds there in front of her, giving the candy to a solicitor who noticed my interest in the thing had been keenly removed. Melissa made an effort to speak to me afterward, and it breaks my heart to this day to think of how I treated her, even if what Justin had told me was true, it bore no resemblance to the behaviour of a gentleman, and for that I am sorry. I wish to this day I had at least read the letter, before merely having seethed and brutally showed my disgust for the situation. I also wish I had not so earnestly trusted Justin, and had investigated with some discretion before so hastily reacting with such foolishness. After all of this things were off for a while and Melissa and I had finished for a while, or so I thought when I believe a friend of hers told me that she still was rather attracted to me, and again sought my friendship.
This was difficult because my trust for her was minimal, though I had learned more recently that Justin was not as reliable as I thought, and my regret and forgiveness grew ever higher in her favour. Also the fact that she still owned what I now believe to be my undying love helped with the guilt I felt for my hasty and rash reactions. I wrote her several letters, as I always felt that my thoughts were ever superiorly expressed in them, and none of them had I sent her, save a small fraction of what I had written. We got on speaking terms and later in the year as a cultural diversity thing for our German class we did our dance once more, and she fought with another girl to have the rights to be my partner, which entirely surprised me, for I thought she possibly hated me greatly. Finally I wrote her the last letter of eighth grade and gave it to her and told her to call me, because I had something very important for her to hear. A few weeks after that, she eventually did, and I told her, that no girl had ever made me go through such a range of emotions from hatred to love, as had she. She did not take this entirely well, but I think she was okay with it. Thus ended the school year, and afterwards and even during, every time I saw her my heart never failed to skip a beat, and my comfort never failed to be compromised in her presence. Until in tenth grade, we again shared a German class (in ninth grade too) and I finally came to terms with it, and my heart wallowed on her no more. In eleventh grade she was speaking to one of my good friends Andrew, and somehow came to find it again all right to call me, but for advice and solacement, and has been soliciting my help in such ways ever since. She in the meanwhile had become very heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, and taken a life too prone to danger, but eventually wizened up and came clean from that route, and now I believe she is finally coming more to terms with what is truly important, and my pride and love for her grow still today, and I now hope that we remain friends for the rest of our lives, because my care and admiration for her still grows in spite of the constant upsets which she caused me. From the time when her friends were pushing her into me in the hallways of Westlake to now, I still think of her with admiration and respect, and still am baffled by what has happened during those awkward years, but she remains to be my first love, and one of the greatest sources of my confusion.
In the same year as these incidents with Melissa, but about half way through it, my affections were divided between two girls. The other girl has long been a source of admiration that will never die, making eighth grade one of the more potent years of my small love life to date. This next crush brings a great degree of sorrow and joy to my mind simultaneously and her name was and is Kelly B. Kelly was a beautiful girl when I had first met her back in my elementary school years, and a distinct memory comes to mind of her, in which I had fancied her in band, because I thought so much of her even then, when really my knowledge of her was rather minimal and obscure. My observations were turned towards Kelly in eighth grade and grew larger after my ceaselessly confusing difficulties with Melissa had been continued for a long spell. Finally I had decided to turn my attentions elsewhere and Kelly was by far the most obvious choice for numerous reasons. Among the many reasons in a most brief list are her: ambition, kindness, intelligence, beauty, knowledge and appreciation, not to name all of the various sub-categories. To add to her delightful description Kelly was a blond haired girl with her hair going down to the top of her buttocks. She was a tall lengthy girl, but well proportioned with medium sized breasts and buttocks if memory serves entirely correctly. She had the most delicate and wonderful face, and I was surprised to learn she was not more sought after than from what I could gather, because in my mind she was one of the prettiest girls I had yet met, but this was only a bonus to her great intelligence and achievement. She had so far as I could understand never earned anything lower than an ‘A’. She demonstrated great talent in acting (which she adored), creativity, and the power to complete the most tedious and intellectually tiring tasks with enthusiasm and vigour. One quality which she carried to a fault would be modesty, for if she were to read these pages, she would consider it nothing but flattery, even though everything I write, I write in the highest truth of my mind, and take no liberties of exaggeration or embellishment. Kelly was one of the greatest people of whom I had the pleasure of knowing, so much so, may I add, that I have often had a feeling of envy over her and her various qualities and talents.
Now I shall attend to the story of what happened between us, leading once more to confusion and pain on my part with great embarrassment and misunderstanding. In December, I remember quite well taking great notice of Kelly after many of those troubles with Melissa had come to pass. I had sat next to her in my English class from at least second quarter onward (perhaps the whole year), and our teacher was the great Mr. Ehman, whom I quite respected and liked. We had quite a bit of reading that year, as most English classes generally do. One particular book or rather part of a play we had to read was the Diary of Anne Frank, and we were split into ‘acting troupes’ to read this, in mine, among other people, there was Kelly. Kelly read the part of Anne Frank, and I the part of Peter, who in the book fancied each other. Since I also fancied Kelly, it was no stretch to put that element into the acting, so when she being the determined actress that she was, read her part with such great passion, I could not help but bring my infatuation to a higher level. After taking her acting skills to be partly a reflection on the way she perhaps maybe really felt about me (as I had with her), my thoughts seldom disappeared from her save to think of Melissa of course. Alas, the day before winter break came and our whole grade went to a roller skating rink, and at this place my best friend at the time, Jeff K, and I were trying to point out our crushes of the time to each other, and describe them. We were attempting to point them out as they skated around the rink and comically we thought we wanted the same girl for a good hour, because they were skating so close to each other, that we thought they were the same, and they had the same description as well. Well all of that winter break, I thought of Kelly so often that I took the liberty of going on walks near where I believed her house to be, based upon a directory I had had from Elementary school. I could not wait to return to class to see her. When we finally did return, I was rather happy to see her of course, and as always it remained socially awkward. Every day was like a slow advancement to see what each moment might bring, be it for better or worse, and each day, I went to school with little intention of learning, but rather of the advancements that may occur.
The advancements as stated before, were slow and not forthcoming to the degree that I should have hoped. Eventually things did occur, and generally when they did they helped mostly to feed the awkwardness and misunderstanding, which the age I was in bore. About a month went by after we returned from Winter Holiday, and day by day, I hoped to progress my situation and standing with Kelly. I finally found my chance to take my relationship with her from friends to more, or so I believed. About two weeks before Valentines Day, I wrote a note to Kelly, stating that I should like her to be my Valentine but implying I would like her to be my girlfriend as well. I asked her if she would be my Valentine “Aye or nay”, and I received a response from her, with the wonderful word “aye” written upon it, and she wrote a note implying something to the effect of, that we should take it slow, and we would see how it went. I, of course was ecstatic at this news, but after this, advancements in our “relationship” were stagnate, meaning they were not there. I became somewhat concerned at the lack of momentum in the relationship, so I wrote another note to Kelly, wondering why things were not evolving with particular speed. She responded with a note stating that she thought we were just friends, and that it would take a while before anything could or should happen. As a reflection now in life, it is funny to me, about just how immature and awkward I truly was without perhaps realising it at the time. My dependence on notes and things like that amuses me to think of now, and is a vivid sign that I was not ready for such things to a great degree, but also needed them to overcome the awkwardness for later. I was shocked and incredibly embarrassed by this letter, and did not know how to react. Eventually things calmed down and I used it as a learning experience, but never lost my fondness of Kelly, and to this day, I would be elated to have a closer relationship with Kelly. Kelly ended up going to a different high school than me, because she joined a program which was only offered at that high school called the International Baccalaureate, or IB program. I have tried to remain in contact with her in spite of this handicap of not being able to see her daily, as I should have liked. In high school I talked to her relatively often on the telephone, and our senior year was the last time I spoke to her on the phone. The last time I saw her was a few weeks before the beginning of the school year of our freshmen year of college, and it was a chance meeting in a local Target store, she looked as brilliant and beautiful that day as ever she had, and I was very pleased for the opportunity to see her, though I hope sincerely that it will not be my last time. About a fortnight later, she went to a college in New York.
This was the last of my middle school romances, and the dreaded and somewhat rewarding years of high school thus began. My first year of high school I had a few fleeting fancies, but nothing that manifested to anything of great significance. The crushes I had my freshman year were on girls by name: Tammy R, Julia M, and Melissa S, and these are all, which I can remember. Tammy was a shy quiet girl, who was rather bright and always strove to obtain a premium grade. She was a sort of ‘girl next door’ with shoulder length dirty-blonde hair, and an almost chubby, but yet attractive face. Julia was extremely quiet also, yet was much prettier than Tammy. She was a good friend of Melissa S, which frightened me during the time of my interest in her. She was a very short girl with somewhat long blond hair, and penetrating blue eyes, which went well with her thin figure and face which made her rather small all around. Finally Melissa was a more outspoken sort, witty and had a beautiful medium sized face, with nice eyes, and short blond hair going a little past her head. She was nice, but also befriended Melissa, which again made me skeptical of any potential relationship with her, but again, in retrospection this worry was not necessary. I do have one distinctive memory of Melissa, which sticks out in my mind above all others. Melissa was in a geography class of mine and in geography I have always had particular strength. Knowing this, Melissa one day asked me a question leaning over the desk upon which I was working to where both of her elbows were upon the table and she was bending forward. Being the studious fellow I was, I was concentrating hard upon my work looking at it on the desk, and suddenly I looked up to answer the question she had just asked me. This being during the end of the last quarter it was rather warm so people including Melissa, dressed accordingly. So on this particular day she was wearing a white low cut shirt and which due to her position and to gravity hung low enough to allow light through. When I looked up the first thing that greeted my eyes was this not-so-obvious fact. So as I looked up I got to see clear through her cleavage to her nice flat stomach, and naturally was intrigued by this, and the fact that she had rather large breasts for the age was rather helpful in determining my immediate crush I held upon her as well. Being that she was exceptionally nice to me, I read this as a sign of interest where I should simply have read it as a sign of friendship instead, but for a freshman in high school one takes what one can find. The most intriguing bit of this to me, years later, is that breasts were never really a source of great sexual tension for me, not to say I did or do not find them attractive, but rather that they simply never bore me any great source of desire. So being attracted to a girl for that reason is strange for me to consider now. Of course I liked Melissa for a variety of reasons, but this simply was the catalyst to my investigating the other greater assets and qualities she bore besides the best cleavage I had seen up until that point. Unfortunately ninth grade gave me no real hope for any sort of romance, yet was perhaps one of the more content points in my life for romance. It was an almost welcomed era after the age of Kelly and Melissa, and the confusion that those emotions brought with them.
Tenth grade was by far my best and worst year of high school and not in that order either. It was an odd thing really, because being in ninth grade, a very neutral year emotionally, I was never too happy nor was I ever too sad but simply content. I looked forward very much to tenth grade because it meant no longer being the bottom class of the school, it meant a very nice schedule that entailed first to fourth hours only the first quarter, and I would be gone before noon. I had a million reasons to look forward to this, yet my expectations were dually let down, and disappointment loomed far beyond what I thought it could. I had some friends but at the same point, felt totally isolated, my grades were very poor, and were upon the verge of failure most of them, finally my attitude became so distraught that I cared not what happened to me any longer. This was to that point, one of the worst times in my life with little question and I knew not what I could do to improve life for myself and felt only self-pity and self-loathing. Basically I was a very unattractive person then and no girls would have any desire to do anything with me. Finally over the Winter Holiday of that year, I decided that self-pity would do me little to no good, and made a resolution to grow from the experience and thus decided at that point to take control of my life, and become the best person I could be. Suddenly a flash of unbounded optimism took control of me leaving me with a sense that there was nothing I was incapable of, including greatness and by that point I wanted to be great and no longer to remain in the self given state of seething and sorrow I was in. I became a new man, nearly overnight, I conquered nearly all of the qualities, which were not pleasing to me, and gained a sense of confidence I have not seen since. With this new optimism and confidence my grades arose to the level I thought they should and I started gaining friends rather rapidly. This continued to further my confidence and trust in myself and it cycled so. So, I no longer had trouble in speaking to girls, I figured most people were like me, and were seeking others to share their lives with, and with this mindset, I made a vast amount of friends who were both male and female. With this confidence I spoke freely to girls and in the Winter Dance later that February I found my second girlfriend, yet little did I realise it at the time.
At the dance I was walking around enjoying the atmosphere with my schoolmates being everywhere, going and talking to people I knew, and dancing at various times. Strolling about, I came by a group of freshmen girls sitting at the base of a rather large stairwell. They saw me, and seemed interested by me being there, and so thus began speaking to me. I talked to them a little while, and after some time, they suggested that we all go dance, so we left to the dance floor and began dancing. After a brief time of dancing and talking, one in particular took a great notice of me, and was rather attracted to me for some reason or other. I asked her name and she told me it was “Nessa” which was short for Vanessa. She wore glasses regularly, but memory serves me not well enough to recall if she wore them that night. She had long black hair at the time, though it always felt somewhat strange, both oily and coarse, but was pleasing overall none the less. She had a pretty face and was thin; she bore a nice figure with larger perky breasts and a smooth flat stomach. She was a nice girl with a big heart and very giving to those for whom she cared. She was charming in her way, and fell for people easily as I later discovered. In fact, most of these facts were beyond my perceptions at the moment we first danced, save of course the most superficial aspects of the appearance aforementioned. I knew as I sometimes do, that she wanted to be with me, which was flattering to me, but I was not entirely interested in her in return at the time. Now in retrospect I find her more beautiful in my thoughts as time goes on, and I miss her company as well as her aesthetic grace to this date.
Back to the story: we danced together that night and her desire for my affections was rather obvious to me by the night’s end. That night she gave me her phone number and after that I gave it some thought but not much afterward until I met her again within the halls of the school several days later. She mentioned how she would like to go on a date with me or something of that sort and I decided that it would not be a bad idea, as the last actual girlfriend I had had was some two and a half years earlier. So motivated out of the realisation that no other girls were standing in line for me at that very moment, and that I wanted to be with someone again, I decided to ask Nessa on a date to the Denver Art Museum, a place I thought would always be a wonderful spot for a date, and a first date in particular. Because I was still in my stage of immaturity and fear towards such things, I wrote a note to her requesting her company there instead of asking her orally. After reading this she responded with an affirmative and even more assumed we were boyfriend/girlfriend from this simple question. I was excited about the prospect as it had indeed been such a long time since I last did have a girlfriend, in spite of knowing that the error she had made in my intentions was rather a large one in my mind at that period.
Finally the date came and as I did not yet have my driver’s license, I had my mother drive us to the museum in Downtown Denver and we were to meet her again after she had dropped us off there sometime later. During that particular time the museum had a British art exhibit, which fascinated me deeply, as I am a large fanatic of British culture and the art I knew so well, which they have produced. For this reason I had a special desire to view this exhibit. At the museum we walked around all seven floors of the halls and marvelled at much of that art we saw. I particularly liked the landscapes and portraits and frequently go back to DAM to see my favourite painting called “Dreams of Acadia”. As we walked around we began to embrace each other by holding hands. As the day progressed we held each other around the waists and walked as one and we did this for nearly two hours before we had to return to the car to go home again. Nessa particularly liked the Spanish art exhibit, probably because she herself was half Cuban and half Irish, which my friends and I later dubbed “Cubish”. At this point I felt closer to her, but not by much and finally embraced the fact that I again had a girlfriend. I had taken Nessa on her first date as I have with a good deal of girls before and since.
After that date, Nessa started to fall heavily for me but in spite of all of my hopes the feelings reached no mutual point and thus my feelings for her nurtured not to what they ought to have been. For sometime we dated, roughly a month, and this month we found each other around school daily, and we got together when we were able, but as neither of us had transportation means (save our legs), our rendezvous’ happened not oft. We wrote each other notes in a notebook back and forth nearly every day and Nessa called me most days after school. During these calls Nessa tried to curry affection from me by trying various things to be “cute.” One time, which specifically sticks out in my mind, is when she once whined like a dog, and I responded nearly immediately with a sigh of some sort about how cute or endearing it was. Unfortunately this led to her doing it much more often than I ever could have hoped for and it annoyed me beyond belief before long, but I was unable to tell her, as I was afraid of hurting her by it. Nessa used to draw anime regularly and often she would draw pieces for me, and colour them and so forth. This was a nice gesture of her, though I know not how personal it was for her to give me her work.
Even against the fact that my feelings were not growing for her as hers were for me, with Nessa did my first kiss come. Nessa and I went on another date and this time we went to see a film in the theatres called “Shakespeare in Love”. At the theatre I held Nessa around her waist and stroked her hair, and so forth. In retrospect I now realise that she had an extremely nice body, and I now also realise that I should have taken it further, or rather I could have, by taking more liberties with my hands, but at the time I was too afraid to touch either her crotch or her breasts. In those days I was very prudish and it took an act of God, or so I believe, to expel me out of that sad sort of existence. That night I believe we both grew thirsty for affection after holding one another all evening, and when we returned to my house I determined to have our first kiss and so we went on a walk by Tarver my old elementary school. At this place we had our first kiss, but it took an extremely long time of awkward waiting from us both to reach the point of it. Finally I told her to go back, and thought I had not the courage to undertake the great rite of passage that was either of our first kiss, but as we were just about to leave the grounds of the school, I took her and bent my face forward in horrible anticipation of rejection and disappointment and embraced her lips with my own. The kiss was not spectacular, after all we were neither of us experienced at all and thus it was a very novice try, but it was still my and her first kiss and it was special and unique for that reason alone.
We kissed several times there following the first one, and afterward, I was nervous of my performance, but thought it better to keep trying to perfect my technique. I brought her home to my house and that night we kissed some more before we drove her back to her own house. About a week later my friend Kevin Finnegan, along with Nessa and I sat in my hot tub, or rather Kevin and I did, but Nessa did not, but stayed on the side, as she was afraid to get in because she was on her period. She often kissed me as I was sitting in there, but I felt awful she was not also in there as well. That night I discovered that my feelings for her simply would not grow to match her own towards me and decided to break up with her, though this part of it, as with my previous girlfriend was horribly executed. For about three or four days that week I treated her horribly, and acted like a total fool in hopes that she would get upset and be the one to break up with me, as I felt entirely guilty about the ordeal. Nessa, unfortunately, had no intention of breaking up with me, and simply acted hurt when I would reject her. I did things like blow her off in the hallways, in our notebook I wrote rather crass things (not insulting, just crass). Despite my efforts, I eventually came to the realisation that I must break up with her because she would not have broken up with me. I made this conclusion for three reasons two of which I told her, and one I never would have. The first reason was: I wanted to break up while our relationship was fresh and young and would be remembered as a highly potent and young one. The second and perhaps most accurate to truth reason was: I did not want to lead her on, on account of I had not the same feelings at all for her as she did for me. The final reason and one I dared not let her know of was: I wanted to get with other girls, and see what that was like, I was sure I could and thought Nessa being my girlfriend would hold me down. For all of these reasons I concluded that we needed to break up, and that I had to be the instrument of that decision.
I could not face the difficulty once again of breaking up with a girl, so I asked my friend Ryan Slater to do this ugly task for me. I asked him for two reasons actually, and believed at least one to be noble, though the other was mighty cowardly I shall admit. The noble reason was I knew he was interested in her and wanted her to have someone to move to immediately afterward. The less noble reason was, I could not bear to hurt her directly, and could not bear to face her response to it, so naturally a courier was the better way to go. To this day I very much regret my decision as to how I did it, and wish I could have known then what I now do, but everyone has those sort of regrets I suppose. Sometime later my friends and I were talking about Nessa and she unfortunately became somewhat of a joke around my group of friends. She dated after me, but each successive boyfriend of hers seemed to last less and less time. So I often made the joke that she turned into the village bicycle but that fortunately I was the first to ride. This of course was stupid of me to say, and I should have not been so quick to judge. I recall also that one time, I was talking about how it would be stupid to date her, or something cruel like that, and one of my friends then asked “Why did you date her?” to which I responded almost instinctively with “I didn’t mean to”, which has remained a source of merriment in my group ever since. Some months later I worked at a place where I had a computer and used Instant Messenger constantly and often wrote to her. From this I heard the second girl ever confess her love to me, and I felt terrible for it. I wanted never to have her take it to that level, but could still offer her no solace with a returned emotion. Sometime later she dated my friend Andrew and shortly thereafter moved away to Las Vegas, but continued a long-distance relationship with him for some months before they decided to break up. Since then Andy still keeps in touch with her, and so luckily she has not fallen out of my life since that point.
After Nessa, I believed I had other girls to go for, but my perceptions were perhaps a bit less accurate than I hoped. I enjoyed a brief bachelorhood for some time but finally found my third official girlfriend, and the first that was in my grade. Nikki S was her name and she was in my core and often sat in the great meeting and socialising spot of the library with us. At the library daily would my friends and I go and sit and talk with one another to the annoyance of the librarians themselves, though they never actually expelled us from the library save when no one was allowed to go in. I remember at the beginning of the year we watched the film “Gettysburg” as an extra-credit assignment for after school one day. I remember being told for some reason that Nikki believed that I was gay because of something I did after the film finished, and I was somewhat upset about the statement, as I saw no real validity in it. Sometime later I started coming to the library during my off-hours and socialised with my friends who were sitting there, as well as people I knew not so well such as Nikki, and her best friend of the time, Alexis. Daily would I do this, and daily we grew to know each other better and better. I knew Alexis a bit better than Nikki, because she went to my elementary and middle schools with me, and lived nearer to me, so near in fact that often we would walk home together. Alexis was not the most attractive girl, whom I knew, but she was not the ugliest either. Because of the age we were at perhaps, or just the luck of the people who congregated to Horizon, most of the girls were very attractive, and being simply average as Alexis was, earned her the nickname “DUFF” behind her back, or “Designated Ugly Fat Friend.” She, Alexis, had a dark blonde hair colour and a somewhat chubby face, but not really making her actually fat, she had peculiarly odd eyes, somewhat beady in nature, but deep set into her skull. Alexis spoke to Nikki somewhat often, and at the table we would always play cards to pass the time, until finally the librarians forbade it at last. As we played cards different people would often come together and generally participate, unless they were unable to play due to homework or something.
At these games it would vary entirely how many people were there, often we would have as low as three or four, but other times we would have up to eight or more people, on these occasions, and nearly every day, we ran out of chairs that the library provided, or space at the table, so people would have to sit on the outskirts of the table near to the corners to even see what was going on. We would also sit at various spots in the library itself, and generally preferred to be near the front somewhat near to the entrance, but definitely away from the majority of the bookshelves. In April sometime we started to move to the back of the library overlooking the entrance to the school and facing West towards the mountains, we could observe the people coming in if we so chose, but seeing as the library was on the second floor of the school that mostly did not happen. It is when we sat here that I think of the beginning of Nikki and I, and it was a brilliant time of year the flowers were blossoming and life was ripe for the taking, the greenery and lush vegetation of Summer was seeping through the dreary death of Winter. This was perhaps my finest hour of high school, because my grades were high, my friendships were vast and well founded, I had found a new entrance into a popularity the likes of which I had never seen before (this is not to say I was highly popular, but rather better liked than most). I had the confidence in myself to face to anything, or nearly anything, and I wanted to use it. The time of year was perfect, my heart was jumping in anticipation for the summer to come and the school year to end. During all of this I believe it carried on to other people, and they began to notice my exultation and I think I became wholly more attractive than I was at the year’s beginning, resultantly.
During this time my good friend Andy was perhaps also at the top of his form, and this communal prosperity spread to all of my friends. Andy sat with us nearly every day, and spoke to us as well, and I recall that one day after school, or perhaps even when Nikki left the table to go to the bathroom, Alexis told me that Nikki might be interested in me, and Andy later confirmed this with Nikki too. I had no real intense desire to be with her before I had learned of this, though I was attracted to her, and the idea of going courting her sort of jumped into my lap, as a matter of speaking. Andy told me she was interested in me, and if I were to ask her out, she would say ‘yes.’ I thought, ‘sure, Nikki is really attractive, why not?’, so I asked her to accompany me outside of the library briefly the next day. Outside I asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend, and she responded by saying “I’ll need to think about it.” I was a little shocked by this response, but was not upset by it, as I knew she would say ‘yes’ sometime later. We went back and I was naturally excited and told Andy and Alexis about what had happened when Nikki left. Alexis told me that she had to make me wait as a matter of procedure, which she would have done for anyone. I suppose this was to set a precedence for later in the relationship, but I was excited for the next day to find myself again with someone. I called up Alexis that night, and she said that Nikki had thought about it and said yes and to this I was ecstatic. The next day I went to school excited and in a very happy state of mind. This was near the end of the school year and I was overjoyed about that, and we had almost no time remaining there, but because of the upcoming Summer my heart was constantly filled with delight, and Nikki in my mind is the symbol of that time. A week after we began dating our class had a panel of war veterans from the Vietnam war, included in the panellists was my father, who had served as a helicopter radio technician during the war. I gave Nikki a rose, to symbolise our union of a week, and thus the gifts began.
About two weeks after we began dating I took Nikki on her first date, and we went to the Cherry Creek Mall, and ate at a place called the Rainforest Café. The Cherry Creek Mall, was in my mind a place of elitism and wealth, because it was very expensive, and in a wealthier part of Denver. We also saw a film “Never Been Kissed”, which was mediocre, but a good date movie nonetheless. At the beginning of the date we ate, and the restaurant, although it was overpriced and had bad food, had one of the most incredible atmospheres I had ever seen. As Nikki and I sat there we spoke and she told me that she was incredibly nervous because this was her first date (as I then learned). We soon finished dining, and realised we had some time before the film was to begin, so we went on a glorious walk through the path by Cherry Creek. As we roamed by the flowing stream, the lush vegetation surrounded us and towered over and around us. We walked upon a delightful little bridge, while the sun was setting, and there we stood for some time; holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes and speaking. I asked her if she felt comfortable kissing then, and she responded that she was not yet ready, though in retrospect I wish I would have simply acted, and discovered the truth from her response. At the conclusion of this date, Nikki and I went back to the roof of the parking garage attached to the mall, and waited there for my parents to come and pick us up to take us home. I was quite excited about all of this still, and it did seem like an enchanting evening all the same.
After that, our relationship pretty much progressed to a series of times where she would be working late at McDonalds and I would go and visit her, usually with Andy or Kevin. At this time, I didn’t have my own car, as I had only turned 16 some months earlier, and wasn’t particularly interested in driving. We would go through and generally only had the ability to see her in the drive in, but sometimes not. Since I wasn’t working at this time, we’d almost always order water. This was frustrating for the McDonald’s employees, since they would sometimes give us the order of the car behind us, since no one water wasn’t something you didn’t have to register. Eventually that summer, I got a job working at the University of Colorado Health and Sciences Center, in Aurora (a city some distance from my own). Also, around this time Nikki, would come over to my place for the beloved hot tub parties and they had a tendency to get somewhat risqué, but in a fairly innocent way. Nikki being a person of tremendous virtue would participate but far more grudgingly than most. After a continued pattern between us of me begging her to do stuff with me when we were both free, and her always working and having me visit her at work, she broke it off with me after a month and a half on 4 July 1999. She had called me in the morning to perform this burden and as she spoke, I remember trying to be polite and helpful, which apparently upset her that I wasn’t more resistant to the idea, I later learned. All the same, I was feeling a little down for a bit, but the very same day, I was made quite happy by the next link in the chain of Jason’s love life.
Cassandra C, had been close friends with my friend Kevin, and I had met with and even hung out with her a few times. There were a few things about Cassie that I quite liked, she was quite pretty, she was fun, she was laidback, and she was interesting. She was a pretty blonde girl with short hair, and lovely blue eyes. When I’d known her, she was quite thin and attractive, and I was happy to have met her acquaintance. On the 4th of July, Andy and Kevin came by, as well as Cassie, because I’d had a good idea of where to go and watch fireworks. There was a hill near my house, right above the local high school, where I thought we’d get a splendid view of all of the fireworks in Denver. I was correct to believe this, the view of all the local municipalities fireworks were thrilling and fun. When we walked up and watched the shows, we were there not more than ten minutes when we saw police lights flashing from a car near the road. The officers came up and told us we were sitting on private property and asked us to leave. Cassie, being made indignant at how we were treated spoke back to the officer in a rebellious tone. Thankfully nothing came of this, except getting Kevin angry at her, and when we went back to my house, Kevin was also made angry at me that same night, when I told him that it didn’t really matter if the flag was illuminated at night (I think because my parents’ wasn’t). This really made Kevin angry and at some point he left, but Cassie and I remained at my house and eventually started griping about Kevin. Not because he was a bad guy or anything, but we had just simply been made angry by him that day. The result of Kevin and Cassie’s anger toward each other actually eventually resulted in their not talking for some time, and only through the intervention of Andy, did they eventually speak again.
That night, I found myself highly attracted to Cassie, and in reflection I’m sure it was at least somewhat mutual. I found myself wanting to hang out with her a lot more privately and we did. She would come over to my place to watch a movie, or I’d go to hers to do something similar. At one point I invited her to come up to Estes Park (a nearby mountain town) with me to buy a derby. She did this, and I found myself thinking about her at work, and just looking forward to getting off so that I could go and see her. At this point, I particularly hated my job, so there was the one half of the day that would be hard to take, going and doing office work that I didn’t quite understand with my brother’s then girlfriend, named Trudy: and the other half of the day would usually be spent hanging out with Cassie and feeling quite blissful. One thing that always seemed a little odd to me, is that we were somewhat dating, but never officially, and I was a little confused about how things stood between us. At one point (in late July I think) I asked her to go with me to the Renaissance Festival (a long standing tradition of mine), and afterward, we went to Brittany Hill, a fairly expensive restaurant with a very awesome view of the city, and then to see a movie called Shakespeare in Love, which was a decent film, but that I had taken three separate girls on dates to see (Nessa, Nikki, and Cassie). At the end of this extremely fun and good day, Cassie kissed me on the porch of my house before she left. I was actually somewhat shocked from it, though it was just a peck on the mouth.
After this, Cassie and I went on one more date of note… we went star gazing at a rural place fairly far north, during a meteor shower. During the shower, we snuggled close, and I wanted really badly to hold her and be intimate, but because of my lack of confidence in such matters at the time (remember this was still quite new to me really) I was unable to. After we went home, I think I knew it was ending, and the next day, she called me and chastised me for the things I had done, mainly I was pushy about being in a relationship, and she wasn’t game for that, so we more or less ‘broke up’ from our unofficial relationship. I learned shortly after, to my chagrin, that she was dating a guy named Bobby Kaleisch (whom I’d never liked), because he was a hypercritical assholish sort. So it was, that the entirety of my junior year of high school, I spent single. This was both good and bad for me in terms of my esteem during the year. I felt like I was unable to attract any further girls, but at the same time, I was free of the distraction and costs of dating. Looking back on it now, I think it was saving me a lot of grief that I was shortly to discover with my next relationship. The most interesting thing about being single was probably going to the prom alone. I went by myself after having asked a few girls to go, but discovered they either didn’t want to go, had dates already, or simply didn’t want to go with me. It was a little disheartening, but I didn’t let it get me down too much, and actually had a great time dancing like a fool. I soon came to the conclusion that if I’d I went with someone else; I would have found it far less enjoyable. Thus, I remained single for a full year, until I met a girl named Abigail.
Now, before I get into my narration of Abby, I just want to mention a few things. The first one is that I have long been dreading writing about my next few relationships, simply because of the immense amount of writing I figure they will require. Also, it has been at least five years since I started writing these chronicles, so I am afraid my memories of events that took place seven years ago will be less detailed and accurate than I’d like. Finally, this and the next relationships have been particularly potent in my life and bringing up their memories may cause some reactions that I don’t really want to have, but all the same they must be told. Along these lines I must mention why I’m writing this in the first place. The main reason is for myself in later life, so that I can actually remember these details better. Another reason is for amusement for anyone who does care to read it too. Also, I feel that it is a fairly good description of who I am and in many ways why I am like I am. Love is a very molding thing for a person, and not having it, I feel makes a person often worse. On to Abby:
I don’t remember precisely when I met Abby, but I know that we shared our first year Latin course together under that favorite teacher of mine, Mr. Frazer. I sat in the front and she sat toward the back, and apparently she thought I was pompous and always trying to show off. This wasn’t too far from the truth, and throughout the whole year, I hadn’t really noticed her. In the summer of my junior year (right before senior year) I went on a trip with my parents around Great Britain and Ireland. When I returned, I went to school early and saw her sitting there talking to Mr. Frazer and I later spoke to him, this is the first time I can really remember having noticed her. After the school year finally began, I found out that not only was she in my Latin class, but also she was in my health class. This gave us a bit of a setting to really get to know each other better, and after school one day when I was nearly ready to go home, she was looking for a ride and saw me in the hall. Since she knew me from these places she shouted out in the open and blunt manner, I later learned was very much part of her nature, “Hey you, you have a car, right?” A little taken aback, I affirmed that I did and she then asked me for a ride home. I agreed to drive her home, and got to know her a little along the way. As we drove I thought to myself about if I could get into a relationship with her, but in pure speculation.
After that, we had something more of an establishment between us, and it gave me greater confidence in dealing with her at all. My group of friends’ usual habit of sitting in the library during off hours stayed well in tact and in early October, as we sat there, it was almost the time of the homecoming dance. As we sat there, everyone was talking about it, and who was going with whom. At this point, I saw Abby just sitting there, not entirely participating (as she wasn’t officially part of our group) but sitting in the same group of chairs around a coffee table that we were, I decided to take it upon myself to invite her in, officially, and asked her who she was going with. She said she wasn’t going with anyone, and at that point I asked her, if she’d like to go with me. She said yes, and I know that I was pretty happy about this, but didn’t really know where it would go from there. We set up the date, that I’d pick her up at her house and we’d go to the dance together, which was in a few days. When I picked her up, she looked lovely, and I met her mother, but not her father, because he was in Colorado Springs for some reason. We went to the dance together and had a very fun time dancing. I remember that during the dance I kept speaking in different accents, which really amused her. As we danced, I just felt good to be there with her, and decided at some point to try and take it further.
After the dance we went to my house and she met my mother. Abby was obviously fairly nervous, and I learned as I had learned from so many girls I had dated before, that this was Abby’s first date. A little while later, Kevin came by and being the fairly boisterous person he can be sometimes was a bit loud and obnoxious which frightened Abby a little, and somewhat bemused me. At the end of the night I asked Abby if she wanted to go out in the next week (because we had a day off) and she agreed to go with me. It was looking like something quite exciting and I was happy with the situation. So, I drove her back with excitement running through my head. We met a few days later on October 10th and went on a date downtown. We went out to eat and walked along the 16th Street Mall. Abby was getting her hair done by her neighbor who worked at a salon called Antoine de Chez. We walked into the corny t-shirt and souvenir shops and laughed a lot. We also went to the capitol building and went to the rotunda, this is where I wanted to kiss her, but found myself too afraid to. It was pretty charming. Thus, we spent two days later, October 12th together and went on a very enchanting walk. This particular route I’d gone on with nearly everyone I’ve met, but this time was a very special time. We talked about such things along the walk as sex, and how we were both interested in it (which was a whole new prospect entirely to me) at the end of it, we decided to officially go steady.
I was thrilled, and two days later, she came to my birthday party, it was fun to announce to everyone there that we were together, plus I found myself in a relationship again two days before I turned eighteen. As the weeks progressed, I again found myself afraid to kiss her, but eventually, we were hanging out at a nearby elementary school’s playground (Sky View I think the name was) and she was hanging from the monkey bars, this is where I decided to take my chance and kissed her, upside down. I thought it was romantic and interesting and she seemed to like it too. Oddly enough, Abby and I progressed rather rapidly from there. On the night of the 2000 election, Abby and I were in my room and making out on my bed, when I decided to progress things a little faster. Not only did I cop my first feel so to speak but I also put my hand down her pants and felt for the fist time a girl’s vagina. She was rather aroused, as was I, and I asked her if I might go down and perform cunnilingus on her. She nervously agreed and soon I saw her pants on the floor by my bed and soon I had a closer inspection of what I had just felt previously. As, I stuck my tongue out, I distinctly recall the taste was about as I’d expected, and she was more wet than I’d thought possible. As I drove in with my tongue, it hurt my neck a little and my face was wet from cheek to cheek with her. After I was pretty sure she’d had at least one orgasm, we decided to conclude the night. We soon set off to her house, and we were both fairly excited about what we’d just experienced.
Apparently, the next day or two, Abigail found herself frightened of what she was getting into, and so consulted her friend Amber. To my great relief (as I later learned), Amber saved our relationship, by convincing Abby to stick it out at a green picnic table between both of their houses. Things went by fairly normally after that, and I don’t think there was much of a sexual relation again for some time between us. Something that came up and kind of frustrated the relationship later was when, in our Latin class, we were sitting out in the halls to study and a guy named Tony Clemenger and some others were talking about smoking pot. Now I’d never done pot myself, and I didn’t really have anything against it, or at least nothing all that much against it. But he then asked Abby if she used to be a big pot head before. This little question would drive me crazy for at least another year. Now I remember Abby had mentioned to me before that she had tried it, and I thought little of it at that point, but something about it just killed me when Tony had said it. This is important for two main reasons, the first being that it set a great insecurity of mine, with wild emotions behind it in motion. The second reason is that it proved to me how much I really loved Abby at that point. I was very upset about the thing, and would later interrogate Abby for a long time about it, I simply couldn’t help how truly hurtful it was to me. It is nothing I’m proud of, and feel embarrassing writing it, seven years later, but it is an important part of the story.
For Christmas, that year, Abby and I made stockings to give to our friends and family together, and it was a quite romantic ordeal between us. We also spent New Year’s Eve together, and we were getting close to finally sealing the deal and having sex, since my parents were gone from the house, but Amber called and asked if she could come by, this was frustrating for both of us, but we bore it with smiles. It would be a few more weeks before we finally shared the experience of losing our virginity to each other; it was on my bed and a little strange at first. I put on a condom and remember just being a little baffled by it all, I think it was a little uncomfortable for her, and I felt guilty for doing it, but at the same time, still curious and eager to learn about this, and with someone whom I obviously loved so deeply. As the weeks went on, naturally we tried again and again, and eventually found it to be a far more satisfying experience. As we continued to try new things, there was a point, when we had finished sometime earlier, so I had nothing on, and Abby just with the lower end of her body was shifting around and I eventually realized that I was again inside of her, skin to skin. This was an incredible feeling and it had me dazzled. As time went on we had a huge amount of sex in different positions and places, and just whenever we could. We were caught more than a handful of times from many different people. It was heaven.
To commemorate our first time, I gave her a love spoon from Wales I had gotten there in 2000, but asked for it back and gave her a rather nice vase, in which I gave her a few roses to put. The idea was to put one pedal in for every time we made love, but I would have been broke if we’d actually stayed by this idea. Sometimes, we would make love all night, and it was just thrilling to be with her, I suppose the thing that really was odd about this for me, and that I haven’t really experienced since, is that when we would have sex a little later on, I wanted to crawl into her skin, and feel and touch every part of her, and to merge with her very soul. I’d never felt so passionately about any one in my life. She was my complement and I loved her more than even I knew at the time. Of course we would fight, especially over the pot thing, but that would come later. And I do remember when I first really messed up with her, we were supposed to go to a winter dance in February of 2001, and it happened to be a snowy and icy night. As I drove out to pick her up for the dance, I ended up sliding into a park van. I was fairly shaken by this and went home to call her and tell her about it. Her parents came to pick me up with her, and we still went to the dance. My parents were out, so I couldn’t tell them about what had happened until later that night.
At the dance, we danced most of the night, and toward the end of the night, I asked my friend Stephanie (whom I’d always fancied) to dance, to which she agreed. We danced to what ended up being the last song, and Abby was very jealous and upset about it. I felt very guilty about this, and later tried to make it up to her at prom that year. As the rest of my senior year of high school unfolded, Abby and I would spend every moment together we could. Sometimes, we’d just watch movies, or sit and talk and always go on walks. All in all, it was a very charming and happy time for us both. We fell more and more in love, and at some points, she would stay with me over the night, and it was simply a really happy time in both of our lives. After the school year ended, I got a job at a company called Co-Sales, where I would drive to grocery stores (King Soopers) and rearrange the shelves to a schematic they had set earlier. During some of these trips, Abby would come and visit me, and even assist me on occasion. I felt at the top of my form, and like I was really in a happy state, almost about to begin college and I went with my friend Kevin on a trip to Kansas earlier that summer. During the trip, I would think about Abby a lot, and call her quite often, missing her like crazy. I also missed her a lot when she went to Florida with the school’s orchestra, and being away from her was like losing a limb.
Now I suppose I should describe Abby, before I get too much further on. Abby was a fairly boisterous and blunt girl, quite pretty with blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. She was very talented and while we dated, she excelled at many things, including shooting rifles (mostly 22’s), playing the violin, and she loved to snowboard and do things outside. She had a few quirks, and they were all the more charming for me. She was fairly short but had a great love for life and going out and trying new things. She would say and do cute things a lot, but never on purpose, one thing was that whenever she would laugh it was usually a hardy one, and at the end, it would turn into a kind of vocalized sigh ending in something approximating a “a hmmmm.” When I and later other people would hear this we would imitate it, to which she would get self conscious and try to control it, making all the funnier. Of course, she had things I wasn’t quite so fond of, but were still part of her. One such thing was, she was quite malleable, meaning that she was somewhat partial to imitating whomever she would take a particular fancy to. Also, she was a fairly physical person, and whenever she felt attacked, she would often curl up into a fetal position, which I stupidly thought it was my duty to get her out, physically… this would sometimes result in wrestling between us, a folly I look back at now ashamedly, but I like to excuse as being part of my youth. Abby had a somewhat high pitched voice, which was extremely distinctive, and I would have recognized it anywhere. Overall, Abigail was a beautiful person with a beautiful soul, and I am lucky to have found someone to have as my first intense love.
The summer of 2001 was undoubtedly the best time for us, and it was full of bliss, mystery and optimism. One thing that I had recommended to Abby, near the beginning of our relationship, was for us to break up when I went to college, (she was a grade younger than me). This was an idea, that she wasn’t entirely thrilled with, and being quite young, naïve and new to this, I wasn’t quite sure what the problem would have been. But, toward the end of the summer, I was about to move on to college and I was getting eager to leave. Abigail, Amber and my parents helped me to move into my dorm room, it was quite a thrill when we got there, and I was very pleased with the situation… my roommates, David and Preston, and I bought lofts for our beds. I found out that Aubrey was fairly close to me, which was exciting in that it made us even closer than we had been. Having Abigail there again didn’t seem that big of a deal, it was like having an extension of myself there. After, Abigail and Amber helped me settle in, I went back with Abby to Thornton (our hometown) to drop some things off, and pick others up. On our ride home alone, I tried again to break up, probably because of all the new girls I was surrounded by, but Abby wouldn’t hear of it. She ended up convincing me that staying together was the best choice and in reflection, I’m very glad that she succeeded.
As the school year progressed, we had a somewhat long distance relationship, living a little more than 20 miles apart, but without a car, and her without the liberty to come to Boulder (where I went to school) very much, we didn’t see each other nearly as intensely as we had during the last school year. We did call each other rather often, and talked on the phone for a very long time, and Abby would come to see me, as often as she could. This was actually very thrilling for many reasons, and every time I would see her, my whole night would be brightened. Sometimes when she came up we wouldn’t do much, other times we would go on adventures. One time when she came up, it was perhaps the most single magical evening of my life thus far. It was an early autumn evening and it was raining outside. Inside my roommate Preston was playing Dave Matthew’s Band’s “Two Step” on his computer, this was significant because it was Abby and my song. It started this roller coaster of sheer emotion and we later went on a walk in the rain, beneath an umbrella, just being in love with one another, it was quite a powerful experience, and I had never been so touched by a single other person in my life so much. Another time she came up, I had just gotten a video game from my friend Zach, and normally, I try not to play these things, but I was quite obsessed with this one. Shamefully, the whole time she was there I played this stupid thing, rather than devote my attention to her. I mention this because, I feel that during this time, I was somewhat priggish and uncouth at times, and we both made mistakes.
When I went home for Christmas that year, it was a very good time for me, and a time in which I got to reacquaint with everyone from high school after our first term of being apart. Abigail, was very much a part of this equation now, though she was relatively new in our ‘circle of friends’. After Christmas, things seemed to change somewhat. I got involved with a school group called ‘Quad Squad’, which was a sort of dorm council (I lived in a dorm called the Quad) and eventually this led to me joining another organization for the whole university called RHA or the Residence Hall Association. Also, my roommate Preston moved out of our room, because David and I fought a lot and made the tension rather unbearable. Finally, my new classes were actually quite interesting, and I was devoted to doing well in them, I studied harder this term than I ever had or ever would again. All of these changes, came with one other thing that somewhat surprised me. Abigail proposed the idea that I had nearly a year earlier, that we break up but this time when she got to college. I had agreed to do this, because I felt that it would have been wrong for me to deny her my own idea. I also figured (both naively and wisely) that it would be absurd for us to think that we would be together forever, especially since we had only experienced each other in the capacity of love and sex. After the agreement we had made, I eventually noticed a change in Abby toward me. She became colder and more removed. That summer, I went to Massachusetts to visit my brother Marc, and my oldest brother Matt had flown in as well. There we all got tattoos and had a good time, but it was looking with dread at going back home this time, because I had gotten in a job at Ball Metal Container, a soda can factory.
At Abigail’s senior prom, she was decidedly more hostile toward me in general, and this was just an indication of the trends to come for the end. Prom the year before had been a magical and fun experience, I felt like the cock of the walk, and here, with my friends gone, and the end pending, it was noticeably less congenial. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but I still had an innocent optimism that things would only look up later. That summer was a very hard one on me, Abigail grew more and more distant, but her love would still show itself in subtler ways. I recall distinctly asking her to come over before she went to work (she worked at Target), to come to my house and visit me. She did come, and I was so tired for some reason and still sleeping that, she just came and cuddled with me in bed, even though she was obviously quite bored, strangely that has grown to be one of my fondest memories of her. Also, every time I’d visit her at work, she would run out of the little station she was working out and yell ‘dude!’ and run to hug me. I was quite materialistic at that time, and in spite of my poor experience at work, I had a good amount of money and so would go often. I’m not sure if I went to buy things and she happened to be there, or I would go to visit her and buy things because they happened to be there, I’m guessing it was much more the latter. As mentioned before, my first summer at Ball, I absolutely hated it, the hours were long and often we would work overnight, I looked forward to each day with dread, and wanted to quit consistently. I stuck it out somehow, and during this time, I think it made me a worse and worse person.
Similarly, Abby was acting more and more contemptuously toward me as well, by and large. She would often punch me on the arm (relatively lightly) for saying disagreeable things, which I often did. Or she would insult me on occasion. In the back of my mind, I knew the end was coming, and I had some sort of unrealistic hope that we would get back together shortly after our break up, because we learned that the rest of the world didn’t offer what we did to each other. Toward the very end of the relationship, I did what I deem the most shameful thing of my life so far, I cheated on Abby with her friend Amber, an act of desperation for both of us. I still don’t know why I did it, other than that I was deeply hurt by the idea of losing her, as well as the shitty time I’d been having all that summer. After this vile act, Amber and I agreed never to disclose this to Abigail, but I felt it would be wrong to hide something like this from her, and so I told her some time later. This hurt her deeply, I have no doubt, but the way she presented herself, she never let on to having her feelings that deeply hurt. In reflection, I’m happy that she put up a strong front, or wasn’t really bothered by what had happened; it would have killed me to see her really hurt by that. At the summer’s end, we both moved into our new dorm rooms, which were decently close to each other. A few days later, we officially broke up, putting no doubt into either of our minds where we were psychologically. We agreed to remain friends, and being a dumb kid of 19, I thought that would work in our instance.
As time passed, I saw that Abby was doing well at finding what I felt to be unwholesome experiences. She was partying quite a lot through the person who had gotten me into Quad Squad and RHA. I felt guilty about this, because I had introduced them. At the beginning of our break up, I felt fine, like nothing had happened, perhaps in my mind we were not really broken up, I’m not sure. As our chasm widened, I began to notice things that rather disturbed me with the whole situation, and eventually, it really hurt me, a few weeks into our break up, I was feeling the most intense psychological pain of my life. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and I just wanted someone to talk to, but I felt completely isolated. I would try to talk to anyone I could, simply to exorcise this incredibly hard heartache I was suffering. Nothing seemed to help. I would sometimes call Abigail and make embarrassingly whiny declarations and absurd accusations. I would make overt hints at thoughts of suicide I’d been having, and looking back now, I feel quite ashamed of myself, to think that she was suffering as bad or worse than I was, but putting up with my consistent flow of negativity. I won’t say I’m proud of this time, I’m absolutely ashamed of it, really, but it is definitely all part of the story. Well, as more time passed, and I felt more and more desperate to do something, anything to relieve my poor heart, I had an idea that seemed like my only route, but looking back now seems like sheer stupidity.
What I thought might work got me into a heap of trouble and altered my next few years in more ways than one. Having talked to Amber, who strangely, was suffering her own deep troubles of the time, I asked her to come to my dorm room, where we would invite Abby to come, and to have a ‘discussion’ with her about what was going on with what I felt was some poor choices she was making, in terms of partying and promiscuity. This discussion became simply just a lecture with me chastising her for the decisions she had made. Abby was sitting defensively in a fold out chair I had in my room, listening to me, and Amber was sitting on the bed. I took it upon myself to try and unfold her arms, which I saw as an act of defiance, and as I tried to uncross them, it became a struggle wherein she ended up tilting back in the chair. The only thing that was keeping her from falling back onto the floor by this point was that her feet were hooked around my legs, and I caught her ankles with my hands. I threatened her that I would let go, unless she would be more compliant, but wanting to be free from my tyranny she opted to struggle free of my grasp, and as soon as I was trying to set her back down, she kicked free and fell back the other way knocking her head against the wall. At this point, she was very upset and tried to flee the room. Coming to the realization of what I had just done, and what might come from it, I ran to the door and barred her from exit, pleading with her not to go, and offering profuse apologies. I had never cried about the situation before this, but in a huge overwhelming rush, it all came out. I was bawling like I hadn’t done since I was a young child and all to salvage what was left of our quickly deteriorated relationship. Eventually, we both calmed down a bit, and I asked her not to tell anyone about what had taken place, to which she agreed, and resignedly I let her go.
They say that love makes fools of us all, and I have certainly been a fool more than once to this end, but never like this. I found out later that Abigail went to Chalon, the fellow I had joined those aforementioned organizations through. Some more time passed, and my depression became even deeper and I felt ever more helpless and impotent. At some point, I talked to Abigail later, and discovered that a new friend of mine, Phil, and her had been very intimate. When she told me this, it nearly killed me right there. The difficulty and helplessness I had suffered reached its pinnacle by this point, and as I thought it couldn’t be any worse, I later learned that Abby had told Amber that she had slept with Chalon twice. At this point, I went to talk to Chalon about another incident that had taken place on an RHA retreat, involving their friend Andrew. Andrew on this retreat was somewhat making a mockery of himself, and was isolated by the other members of the retreat. He resented this, and made some threats out of anger, these included the frustrated quip of “I’ll kill you”. When this got back down to the campus, behavioral charges were brought against him. Chalon, and his friend Nick, felt this was indignant, and wanted to convince me not to speak against him, since they felt that Andy was acting under stress and was obviously not serious. I don’t know how I feel about that all now, but I do know I wouldn’t alter the truth for their convenience. For some reason, at this point I also felt it necessary to tell them about what happened with Abigail (as they were now closer to her than I was), I think my motivation was that I didn’t want them to only hear it from her, if things got ugly.
Things did get ugly, and this was all due to my own stupidity at handling… everything. After the hearing for Andrew, I felt that I had done a great disservice to myself by telling Nick and Chalon about what had happened, and they would use this information to blackmail me. I thought the most prudent course would then be to talk to those in charge of them, in case they so intended to do this, and get it off my chest. So, making the same mistake repeatedly, I told the director of my dorm about what had happened, and this was the final undoing, though I wasn’t aware of that fact until some weeks later. In about mid October my brother Marc was moving from Massachusetts to San Francisco, California, and dropped through Colorado to do it. He picked me up on the way, and it was very relieving to see him, but at the same time, my heart was still in the depths of the dreadful pain I had been feeling for so long. I helped Marc move out, and flew back to after four days (Saturday to Tuesday). On Wednesday morning, my father took me up to school, where I found a letter in my mailbox telling me I was on behavioral suspension, and mildly upset I went to get ready and went to class. When I returned, to my room, I found a message on my machine from a police officer asking me to call him, so he could come and talk to me. Figuring this was just a message about all of the recent difficulties and things that had happened before, I did.
He asked me when I could meet him, and I said now would be fine. Now at this time, I must point out, I had made a new friend some weeks earlier, named Alyssa, and she was there with me, which was very comforting, but more about her later. The police officer came, and asked Alyssa to leave; I was disturbed by this, but thought maybe he wanted confidential information. He asked me a few questions and then he read me my Miranda rights. This was a total shock to me and I somehow didn’t see it coming, but my thoughts and all were pretty murky in general around this time. He didn’t put me in handcuffs or anything, and asked me to walk out to his vehicle with him. When we walked out to his police SUV, I saw Nick and Chalon standing there, just looking at me, knowingly. It was at this point that the officer frisked me and put me in handcuffs. He sat me down in the back and my mind was racing, naturally by this point. The handcuffs against the firm backs of the seats were quite uncomfortable. When the ride ended, he took me out, and I went and did all of the things one normally does when they’re arrested, including giving up some articles of clothing (I was dressed fairly ridiculously on this day), as well as they took my fingerprints and did my mug shots. I sat down in a detaining cell, where I talked with another bloke who had been arrested for violating his probation for a charge relating to drugs (I think cocaine) some years earlier. There were sandwiches and such there, but I had no hunger.
At the end of this ordeal, a few hours later, I was released on a personal recognizance bond (having been a first time offender and so on). I walked out of jail very relieved to be done with that ordeal, but worried about the charges I would later face and what their consequences would be. I had no money with me and so I had to somehow inform someone where I was, and luckily the front desk of the nearby police station let me use the phone to call my friend Aubrey. Fortunately, my friend (her then boyfriend) Brandon was in Boulder that day and they came to pick me up. On the way back, I had a million things flying through my head, and it was lucky for me the way things worked out in ways. At the end of the night, Alyssa took me home, for a four day break we had, and ended up staying the entire time (more to that later). The results of this whole thing were that I was forced into a restraining order with Abigail for a year and a half, and I had a deferred sentence, meaning that if I fulfilled all the terms of the sentence, it would disappear from my records. I also had to take domestic violence courses, which was somewhat absurd to me, because I am really such a passive guy. Looking back now, five years later, I find the consequences a trite harsh, but understand them too. After this period ended, I wrote a letter to Abigail of deep apology, and as a result she summoned me to talk to her. I met her with a new friend of hers named Jessica, at a nearby Starbucks, and I told her how I felt and apologized for all my errors of the past. She told me she forgave me, and not to worry about that, but that she didn’t want any further contact with me. It was a funny meeting, I was hopelessly nervous about it. It was the last time I would ever speak to her.
A few years later on the 8th of February 2007, I was out with my parents in Ft. Collins, and when I returned home, Amber had been trying to get a hold of me all morning. My cell phone, had turned itself to mute, and I found that I had several missed calls, a lot more than I would normally miss from such an error at that time. I called Amber and asked her what was up, to which she replied she would be there straight away and not to go anywhere. When she arrived at the door of my house, I saw Kevin with her and I immediately knew something was wrong, the only question in my mind was, who was it? As Amber came in she asked me to sit down, and a chilled numbness drove through my mind and I did as I was directed. “Jason, Abigail passed away last week,” she told me. I didn’t know what to do so I said she must be kidding, to which she firmly replied she wasn’t. Baffled, I just nodded. Amber told me the rest of the details, that on 2 February 2007 Abby’s car had slipped on some particularly bad ice we’d had that winter on her way home from work, and that she got out of her car after a minor fender bender to talk to the other driver and she was crushed when a third car, an SUV had struck and killed her, almost instantly. I’m still not entirely sure of the details, but I’m not sure I ever really want to know precisely how it happened. After, Amber had described this, I asked if it would be alright if I went upstairs and left with my mind again racing, I just prayed and asked that she would be alright in heaven, and cried a little, asking God why he would have taken her so young. This was particularly interesting timing, because some weeks later I would be moving to Seoul, and I was fortunate enough to be home when it happened (I should have by all means left much earlier). I went to her service, where I fortunately missed Phil, Nick and Chalon (they had gone to an earlier one) and there I met and saw her parents for the first time in years.
Abby had changed a lot from what I could see, but in some ways not at all, and I had never suffered a deeper personal loss in my life up until this point, she still lit a fiery passion in my soul, even after cremation. It was strange, I would think about her for years, nearly daily to some extent or other, and I always prayed that we would reconcile and be at least friends again, but here I knew this was never to be, at least not in this world. It was deeply disturbing that the first true love of my life was no longer around, it was tragic, because she was only 22, and I wish no one had to die in such a violent end, but here it was. I still think about her often, and sometimes grow sad at the thought of her and what we once had and how everything ended without any more chances. It certainly gave me a whole new perspective on life and a little less hope. In one way, I felt relieved after she died, and that was because I had felt so intensely for her, it was almost paralyzing. Her absence from Earth, although deeply deeply sorrowful, is a relief to my heart to know that the next plane we meet on won’t be as turbulent as this one. So, thus is my story of my first true love, and I only hope that if she exists somewhere today, she can look back and be happy with me over the memory of what we once were. Abigail was my ‘flower’ and she will always have a high seat of honor in my heart, I miss her dearly, and I feel fortunate to have known her, and to have mutually given our virginities to each other. The initial loss of her in 2002 was only helped by the next great love of my life, Alyssa.
The story of how Alyssa and I met is a fairly amusing one. It all happened probably within two weeks after Abigail and I broke up, at the beginning of the school year of 2002 - 2003. It was the first day of class, in late August, and I happened to share a class with my friend Aubrey called ‘Trash and Treasures’ an archeology course about the architecture of ancient Samaria, Egypt, Greece and Rome. When I walked into the great lecture hall it was held in, I saw Aubrey sitting, and as I sat next to her I saw a pretty red headed girl with a union jack on her lunch box. Now, being the great anglophile I was (and am), I figured I had to meet this girl. At this time, I was in a particularly gregarious mood, since I had been elected vice president of RHA, and felt I needed to meet and talk to many people. To this end, I tried to meet many other people before and after, but felt that there was something special about this person. I asked Aubrey to move with me, and sit by this new girl, and reluctantly, she came. When we sat down next to her, I asked her what her name was, and she told me it was Melissa. I asked her about her lunch box, and she was quite open to talking to me, which was thrilling. I asked her what year she was in, and she told me sophomore. When I heard this, I thought I’d use my impressive etymological skills and said “A wise idiot, huh?” and I then explained sophos and moros meaning wise and foolish, respectively. I think she was amused and when we walked out together, we parted and I felt quite happy about the new friend I had made. I talked to Aubrey about how excited I was to have met Melissa, when Aubrey said that she thought her name was Alyssa, and that I had misheard her, which was kind of surprising to me.
The next few times we had class, we would always sit together, the three of us, in the front row and listen to the lectures given. We would make jokes, and the more I learned about Alyssa, as I had confirmed was actually her name, the more I liked her. I eventually got her contact information, including her AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and this started a lot of long IM conversations between us. It was through this medium that I had discovered that horrendous road block that has slapped me in the face so many times in my life before and since… she had a boyfriend. I also, let known quite clearly that I fancied her, and I found out that she felt the same. I actually felt fairly guilty learning that Alyssa was interested in me, making her feel conflicted between if she wanted me and her boyfriend. I did have a few advantages over him though, the largest of which was that he lived in Washington state, a great drive away, and I lived right next to her. We hung out outside of class sometimes, Aubrey and I would go to her apartment, or she would come over, and once she even went to a party which Nick and Chalon were throwing, and here she met Abby, making Abby quite jealous, much to my later regret. I don’t know if it was me that inspired it exactly, but at some point, Alyssa was dissatisfied with the way things stood between them. On the weekend I drove out with my brother to San Francisco, she broke up with him, and when I came back, I heard this news and was very happy to hear it, even though I felt bad for both of them. I knew what it was to have that sort of pain, as I had recently gotten a crash course in it, but at the same time, I knew that she and I could be together before too long.
So it was, when I returned on the fateful day that I was arrested and brought to jail, I called Alyssa and as would be the case so many times in my life, she was there for me, in an instant. I knew I liked her, and she brought me a feeling of comfort and security when she came, she seemed like an angel sent down from heaven to help me and thus I always called her ‘my angel’ as a result. Whenever I would call her that, she would deny it in a modest way, but I have always believed that title was extremely appropriate. At any rate, I called Alyssa and she came over, and took me back to my house where my parents met her for the first time, and I told them all about being arrested, to which they were fairly shocked, but rather supportive as well. Alyssa and I then went on a walk on that same path that I had taken Abigail, and nearly everyone else I knew on. Along this path, we talked happily, or at least as happily as I could be at the time, and discovered a little grove of trees, which she deeply attached to, calling them ‘her trees’, I felt it was charming, and I talked to her about her very recent break up. During this whole walk, I feel that we were both struggling with the idea of actually getting together, because we both had had recent breakups from two year relationships. We decided it was probably a good idea to get together, because our feelings by that point were fairly intense. It was quite an emotional day for me, having gone to school, and then being arrested, and going to jail, then coming home to this. I asked her at a bench along the walk if she wanted to be my girlfriend and she said that sounded like a good idea.
I took her farther along the path and we went to Horizon, my old high school. I brought her to a group of trees where I kissed her, and quite passionately, she returned my kiss. The next few days we hung out, and didn’t do too much that I recall, save that we advanced fairly quickly through the stages of intimacy. A few days later, on the floor of my parents’ basement we had sex for the first time, not really an appropriate choice, and I am quite ashamed to admit it now, but it did happen this way. The thing that makes it all the worse is that Alyssa was a virgin before we got together and although she had been in a relationship for two years, they never actually had sex for reasons to do with her former boyfriend’s religious convictions. This was really a bad foot to start on, I now realize, but there was a big problem during that time and it was I was rebounding hard. I still had Abby on my mind, not in an intimacy sort of way, but just the pain. The thought of sex was somewhat repulsive to me at this point in life because it hurt so badly, and the memories associated with it, were now corrupted. I felt terrible then as now about how this was affecting poor Alyssa, but I knew I was broken on many levels and simply couldn’t provide the service for her I knew she needed. This series of sexual hang-ups on my part helped to color the rest of our relationship, which was really a pity.
Aside from that aspect of things, our relationship grew tighter and stronger and in spite of the fact of the rebounding and emotional difficulty we were both suffering, we grew to like each other more and more as time continued. After that long weekend at my parents’ house, things started to get better, and we would do things like watch the entire series of Red Dwarf, or Horatio Hornblower at Alyssa’s apartment. This was a great escape, as we would often buy snacks and simply lie in each other’s company and laugh mirthfully at so many things. We wouldn’t go too many places, since neither of us had much money, and now due to the litigation I was suffering from what I later came to call ‘the incident’ with Abigail, I had less, as I had to go to domestic violence courses, which were somewhat costly. As the year continued on, Alyssa and I found ways to spend as much time together as conceivable, which included making our next semester’s schedule only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and having a couple classes together. This gave us five days a week off, and we went hiking all around Boulder, to different places, or we just stayed in and watched movies and so on. We were quite lazy, but content together, with no will really to do much but be together. After six months we happened on a very charming and grand Victorian bed and breakfast called the Earl House, we decided to have our six month ‘anniversary’ there. This was a fantastic time, and we felt very elegant and sophisticated to be doing something like this. We even invited our friends Amy and Andy (whom we had earlier set up as a couple) to come and visit us.
Going to this bed and breakfast inspired Alyssa to look for work at one of her own in Colorado Springs her hometown. That summer, I reluctantly went back to Ball, but under a different crew than what I had been the year before. Alyssa moved back home and found work at a lovely B&B called the Holden House. It was during this period that we had our first major tiff. During the summer we would see each other fairly often, but not like we had during the year before of course. At one point, I didn’t call her for a month, which understandably made Alyssa rather upset at me. After this point, I made a larger resolve to be a better boyfriend to her, and to fix not only the mistakes I had made with Abigail, but was currently making with Alyssa too. For the rest of the summer, Alyssa would often come to visit me at my parents’ house in Thornton, and I would visit her less frequently at her parents’ house in Colorado Springs. Every time we would see each other, it was rather blissful, and her family would take special precautions to make things nicer for me. Whenever we would see each other, it was always very happy, but the times in between were a little less so. This isn’t to say that things were bad, but simply it was a different feeling. After this first summer more or less apart, we were quite happy when the new school year began and I found myself in my first apartment with my three of my friends, Brandon Morin, John Buchholz, and Ian Kamp. It was a great time; it was at this point that we discovered a new friend, named Thomas Hutton, who lived elsewhere in the same apartment building.
Alyssa and I were quite happy to be together again, and things went fairly swimmingly by and large. During our autumn break of that year, we went up to my parent’s mountain property and camped. It was actually a very fun time, albeit rather quiet and isolated. On our first anniversary, we went out to a restaurant in a nearby town called Broomfield, but before we went, one of my roommates left a nasty message for me on my door, and this made me very angry. My wrath ruined the romance between Alyssa and I, which in turn made her quite upset with me for some time. Feeling guilty about this and just wanting to show her my love again, I tried quite hard to make her birthday special by taking her out, and having my friends cover my bed with rose pedals for when we returned. She was delighted with my efforts and all was better again, since there had been some remaining animosity from the less than romantic anniversary we had shared two weeks earlier. As the semester came to a wrap, Alyssa said that her parents were going to take us on a cruise in the Caribbean in January. Things fairly well continued as per normal until this time. I felt quite fortunate to be going with them on a cruise. We went on the cruise in January that year, and it was really cool, and we had a pretty good time, but I am afraid I didn’t show my appreciation as well as I should have. We went to the island nations of Jamaica and Grand Cayman of the Cayman Islands, as well as Cozumel, Mexico. It was simply an impressive thing to take a cruise ship, although it is not how I would opt to spend my vacation in the future, but it was certainly worthwhile to do.
When we got back from the cruise, Alyssa was somewhat depressed about things in general, but she would never disclose such things to me. I don’t know whether to feel insulted or fortunate that that was the case, but that was kind of how she was in general. Alyssa in description was a bright, lovely girl, who was almost too kind and cute in many ways. She was very pretty, and although as modest as a girl could be, had a very high sense of self assuredness and competence. She refused to let others, especially others she cared about help her, and this was evident on many levels, but emotionally most of all. I suppose it may have been from being an only child, as may have been the case with Abby as well or maybe it was just part of her genetic makeup, but all in all, having a person like that in one’s life can be a very helpful and sometimes frustrating thing. As the months rolled by, and we continued to do much together, things were getting better and better, and more settled. We were quite happy with one another, and the way things were going, and when the summer came home and Alyssa moved back home, and I remained in Boulder, we tried very hard to be more pleasing and accommodating to each other than before. Every time she would come up, I’d try to give us plenty of things to do, including going to various places and trying new things like going on a bike ride to Denver from Thornton, and so on like that. Similarly, Alyssa would always try to make a special time for us when I would go down to Colorado Springs by going various places. This was nice because I would have four days off in a row, being back at Ball for a third summer, and I’d spend nearly my whole time going there, or she would do likewise for coming up.
One time, when I went down to Colorado Springs, Alyssa completely surprised me, by bringing me to her work, under some pretext of having forgotten something there, and ended up renting us a room for the night. I was totally surprised by this, and it was a very lovely and romantic experience we shared together. It seemed like we had made it through the worst of times, and my love for her was deepening and grew more than I knew it could. Part of this was due to the subsidence sometime earlier of the rebounding I had suffered for a good spell with Abigail and my breakup. It was an auspicious time and it was perhaps the pinnacle of our time together. Strangely, this relationship although turbulent in many ways, was much more emotionally stable than any I’d been in before, and the highs and lows were much less extreme relatively speaking. My care and admiration for Alyssa were very high, and I always had a great esteem for her, and now it was a good time we shared our thoughts, and I never felt as connected to a person on a mental level. As the summer progressed, I felt I should give her retribution for the great time she had shown to me at the Holden House, so I took her to Fort Collins, my favorite city in Colorado and went to a bed and breakfast with her by the name of the Edwards House. It was meant to be a surprise, and when we went up, we found out after some time of being lost in the city (I wasn’t terribly familiar with the streets of the city), we found it. Alyssa was thrilled, I had gotten the best room in the house, which was two stories, and this was a very blissful time for us both indeed. Here we did a few things, went out for supper on the romantic old Victorian street the house sat on, and walked around the campus of Colorado State University. Fort Collins being the highly charming city it was, made everything all the better.
One thing I must mention, although a very minor point is, on our stay we watched most of Rushmore, and this was a very happy moment for me. For some reason, I found a lot of solace in this fact and being with Alyssa it was all the better. When we went back home, there was a very good air between us and I knew I finally was getting better with things, which made me happy to be pleasing her, after she had done so very much for me. Of course, good things don’t last forever and the decline happened a very short time later. This event took place in early August, and a couple of weeks later, I heard about something that shocked me to my core, my friend Darrell from high school shot and killed himself. This was disturbing for a number of reasons and really made me think about mortality as well as the brevity of life. He was only 20 years old, and had killed himself over a girl, strangely enough. On the same day I had heard from my friend Kevin, about this tragic event, I also got a call from Stephanie, the same Stephanie whom I had danced with at the winter dance instead of Abby. She asked me if I wanted to go to her sister’s party and I replied that I would, and not having seen her in some time, I asked if she wanted to hang out on the day I got off work. Now, I had been working an abnormally high amount that summer, taking up nearly every extra day I could get and this was my last week of a summer where I worked an average of 52 hours a week. I was exhausted from work and stunned by my friend’s death. As I said much earlier, I had always fancied Stephanie, and after her party, my first day off from work, I took Stephanie on a picnic at a particular favorite park of mine called Adams County Fairgrounds.
On this picnic, we dressed in southern attire (like Gone with the Wind characters), and it was all quite romantic. As we sat and talked about many things (including what had happened between Abby and I), things got very tense and Stephanie reached over and kissed me. This was a kiss I had long wanted to try out, but had been to afraid to, or just unable due to being involved in one relationship or other at the time. At this point, with the overwhelming emotions I was feeling, and a new spirit of adventurousness from thinking a lot in a factory for thirty-six hours about Darrell’s death, I decided I needed to take advantage of this opportunity and regret what I had done rather than what I hadn’t. I figured it was fairly harmless, and although the kiss was quite arousing, it went no further than that. After some time of this, we eventually went back home, and I went to Darrell’s wake that same day. It was deeply saddening to see him laid out in his coffin; I hadn’t seen him for a year and a half by this point. My head was spinning with all these new things that were happening, and the next day I was to move into my new apartment, which was in the same building as Alyssa’s. During the wake and funeral, the unexpected realization that I would be seeing people whom I hadn’t seen in years hit me, and it added to the emotionally entanglement that I was finding myself in. Some time later, feeling guilty I told my roommate Thomas (the same I had mentioned meeting at my last apartment before), and he in turn told his then girlfriend Mary Beth.
At some time, I had made Mary Beth angry at me, probably by suggesting she was too controlling of Thomas, and she felt it was her friendly duty to tell Alyssa of what had occurred. At this time, Alyssa asked to see me outside, and I knew something was wrong (I hate that feeling). When I came out to meet her, I saw her smoking a cigarette (she didn’t smoke as a regular habit by any means) and she told me it was time to have ‘a little talk’. This was not something I was really prepared for, nor did I particularly want to participate in. She told me that we needed to take a break, and upset I pled with her to be kind and understanding to the situation. She was less than thrilled and showed her utter disdain and disgust with me and my actions. I knew the only person whom I had told must have gone through the chain to tell her, and I thus went and chastised Mary Beth, demanding she leave my apartment, which she did. This put a terrible tension on the household, where it seemed full of broken trust and bitterness and guilt all around. I felt quite depressed about what had happened, and felt quite low in my virtue. Eventually, after some terrible weeks, Alyssa and I made up, and she forgave me, but never quite got over the indignity she felt I had committed against her. This very much soured the rest of our natural relationship and made things very confusing. We would go through periods of nearly a year (to a year and a half) where neither of us really knew what we were relative to each other. We tried to be ‘special friends’, which essentially meant ‘friends with benefits’ but the benefits were psychological and emotional, as well as sexual. We were dating officially, and we would be broken up altogether as well, and it was during this time that it was the most ambiguous I’d ever had a relationship.
Things would continue as normal, and Alyssa claimed to have forgiven me, and we would actually be very happy as before, but the doubt and broken trust were always lurking. I enjoyed all of my time with her, and things were for the most part grand, at least for me. As the school year went on, we went into Winter Break, where Alyssa couldn’t take it any more and broke up with me again, after which time; we would get together and so on. It was during this time, that Stephanie and I got together again, and got much more sexual with each other. I didn’t tell Stephanie until years later, about what had happened, but the method and way of the break up, was a much kinder experience than it had been with Abby, in its entire abruptness. Basically, I discovered during this time, that I really loved Alyssa’s friendship. After winter break, we got back together, and things were for the most part again happy. Of course I never mentioned to her about Stephanie and my second tryst, but I have a feeling she knew at least a little about it. As the spring term began, I found myself abnormally inspired with life again. I think I felt freer than I had in a long time, and decided I wanted to move to England for a year abroad, and if I had the money, I wanted to explore southern Africa. I felt potent and good, it was a sort of rebirth for me. As the semester panned out, I was happy with Alyssa, and after a rocky time of it, our sex life was getting exceptionally good. It was a good time and I was more prepared for things to come than before.
Eventually, with the coming of my last summer at Ball, and Alyssa again moving back to Colorado Springs, we broke up sometime in May or June, mostly due to the distance between us. Although, Alyssa would come up and visit me again as she had the past three summers, and things would seem like we were a couple again. I never really knew what to think about it all, but I just decided to go along with it rather than define it, it seemed to keep things more pleasant all around. It was at this time, that I met up with Lara, a girl I had met a little after Alyssa, by accident on the streets of Boulder, and we started to really hang out. Lara lived in Evergreen (a city in the mountains a little west of Denver). I had always thought that Lara had an infatuation with me, but when we met again, it blossomed into so much more and I started to like her by this point as well. I also got to meet Lara’s friend Jenn, whom I had a fling with after Alyssa and I were ‘officially broken up’ again. It was good to have a fuck buddy, something I had never really fully had, and it made things run much more smoothly for me. As the rest of the summer passed, and I went to England at the end to study in London for a term, Alyssa and I grew closer as before. We couldn’t quit each other, but what was much more solid, as seemed to be the case for our entire relationship in retrospection, was our friendship. I loved Alyssa, and potently, but it was never quite the same as the way I felt I loved Abby (not that anyone would ever be identical). Alyssa and I stayed in contact in England, and I would call her more often than anyone else at home, with the possible exception of my parents.
While I was in England, I did a great deal of exploring around the UK, and Europe and decided it was the right time to go to Africa and make my plan happen. I was in Africa for nearly a month, which was a very powerful experience, but one thing they didn’t have much of was an infrastructure, including regular internet access. And so it was than when I got back to London for my final week abroad in late January, I discovered an email in my inbox from Alyssa that said she wanted to cut off all romantic ties with me. I was a little shocked and it certainly didn’t do anything to make me feel good for the last week I was in England. What was especially disappointing about this was, I had discovered in my time away how truly much Alyssa had meant to me, and how I really wanted to be with her when I went back home. I had grown up and considered things better and now was ready to show that to her clearly, but it wasn’t something she wanted any longer, and I felt totally rejected not having tried to date or anything really in London. In Africa I nearly had had an interlude with an Australian girl of Korean origin named Beth, but felt I couldn’t bring myself to close the deal because she felt her heart belonged to a South African she had met in Egypt sometime earlier. When I returned home, I saw Alyssa and talked to her in many heated discussions about the final break up and I felt cheated, that I had spent so much time and effort to finally come to a good conclusion and she was unwilling to cooperate. Of course, she was right, ultimately, it was time to move on from each other in that capacity, but it still hurt. I feel fortunate the way it all worked out now, if it hadn’t been for our separation, I certainly wouldn’t have gone abroad in the first place, and here I was, a more fulfilled and worldly person, or so I felt at the time.
Being home again, was actually a very hard thing for me. It turned out that I had spent my last semester of college in London and now had nowhere specific to go. Even though, I knew I wanted to go teach English in Japan (as was part of the grand design I had mentioned about going to Europe and Africa), I didn’t have the desire to do much. The world was now quite open to me, and I had no direction, or only a vague one, that I wanted to carry out later. I was that most notorious age of 23, just out of college and back from a fairly life changing trip. It was a lot to undertake, and now I was missing my great support of Alyssa to really guide me right. I spent the first month or so, happy to be back, but discontent to say the least. I had been living alone and making it quite well and exploring every avenue I cared to look without anyone’s permission, and here I was back at my house in Thornton with my parents wanting to know where I was whenever I left, and I was totally dependent on them for everything, it was strange. It is about a little after a month after I returned that I met Paige P. I met Paige at a party held by my friend Brett, and the circumstances of our meeting seemed like an act of true divine will in some ways. The night before, I had had my worst date ever, which almost turned me off of the idea of love and dating altogether for some time. I also didn’t want to go out this next night, which was a Saturday, simply because of the recent snow and I didn’t feel quite up to doing things of this nature.
My friends Kevin and Zach invited me to go out to Brett’s party in Boulder, and reluctantly I agreed. I had told them the story of my ‘date’ from the night before, which very much bemused them. For some reason I drove, which apparently was a good thing, because not only did I not drink, but it also let me control when we would leave. When we got to Boulder, there were a fair number of people at the party, and I found it to be fairly comfortable and I just kind of made my way around talking to people. I seem to have a knack for being social and good with people in a party setting, which I hadn’t remembered since I hadn’t been to one in a rather long time. I talked to various people, about many subjects, and I recall looking toward the door when three new girls showed up. They were all fairly attractive, and one of them was a quite tall, gorgeous brunette with long hair. They all went to talk to Brett, the host, in his bedroom, and I recall being a little envious of his position, but at this party, built on the apathy I’d had from my terrible event of the previous night, I didn’t care all that much. It was a little while later of sitting on the couch and talking to people, that I eventually sat next to the gorgeous brunette. I learned her name was Paige, and we talked for a long time. For some reason I was loaded with confidence that night, and just would talk to her about all sorts of subjects. Among the things we talked about was anthropology, including a discussion about the Earth goddess, and modern day feminism, and so on. I remember being amazed, because not only was this one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever met, but she was obviously quite brilliant, and receptive.
She told me about her plans to go to CU, my alma mater, and how one day she wanted to go and teach English in Japan, which was particularly inspiring, because she brought it up first, and it was the thing I most wanted to do. She told me that she had just moved into her own apartment, and had a dog named Bobbi. Things couldn’t have seemed to be better, and it gave me such a new start and perk to life and I thought that my life had forever changed by this singular stroke of luck. Of course, things weren’t perfect which I quickly learned, for she told me two things that bothered me a lot, one a lot more than the other. The first bothersome thing was that she mentioned her age as being nineteen. This was disturbing in that it was a very young and naïve age, and though I believe some people are probably more mature and advanced at that age and ready for the sort of thing I was looking for of my ripe old age of 23 (at the time), I knew that it was an age that was fraught with figuring out life and making mistakes. This was confirmed by the second thing she told me that had me very worried, she had just gotten out of a two year relationship of her own within the month. When I heard this, I knew that things were bad, but being in total infatuation, a feeling I hadn’t experienced for many years, I was too blind to really see it clearly. At the end of the night, not wanting to wear her out, I told her I had to go, and as I tried to round up Kevin and Zach to take them back, she came up to me and asked if I wanted to hang out sometime since she was looking for new friends. I told her I would, and actually had it in mind to ask her if she wanted to go to a Gilbert and Sullivan play that the Colorado Symphony Orchestra was doing in a couple weeks, she eagerly accepted my offer and wrote her number for me on the back of a previous symphony ticket I had in my jacket pocket.
As I walked out of the apartment with Zach and Kevin, I was elated beyond belief, and couldn’t remember being so ecstatic about things. I told them about my good fortune, which they were witness to, and was smiling on the whole drive back home. The next day, I found myself thinking about her without end, and I wanted to call her many times, but restrained myself, because I didn’t want to seem too desperate, and I was also hesitant based on the doubtful factors she had mentioned. I went on a drive with my friend Kevin to Fort Collins, and eventually to Cheyenne, Wyoming, just to drive and talk. I told him how jubilant I was over this girl, which I feel annoyed him after a while. Of course, he gave me some advice, I think Kevin always felt he was a sage when it came to women, but I was eager to hear advice, it had been so long since I had courted anyone. I asked Kevin what he was doing the next day, Monday, and I then asked him if he wanted to go to CU and I could then show him around. He accepted my offer, and the next day I called Paige and told her I was showing him the campus and asked if she wanted to come too. She agreed and I was again beaming with the thought of it all. We went up to pick her up, and walked to school from her apartment. As we walked through the campus, Kevin became annoyed at how many guys would simply stop and stare at her, a rude gesture, but one which made me all the happier to know that I was the one with her at this point. As we walked, I was more and more impressed with everything about her. I liked her dog, and had actually wanted one myself for a long time. Bobbi was a boxer/Australian Shepard mix and highly energetic.
After we had shown Kevin around campus, we decided to go eat at California Pizza Kitchen in Flatirons. After that, we decided to go back to my house and being slightly nervous the whole time, it was a might uncomfortable. The reason for my nerves was not only was a dealing with a girl who was in the highest league, but also, because I didn’t know how to proceed with her, seeing as she had just painfully recently gotten out of a two year relationship. When we got to my place, we watched a movie and played pool, as well as just sat around and talked about titillating things like sex and so on. Eventually, Kevin opted to leave, so that I could be alone with Paige. I was quite happy about his decision, and went back with Paige to her place, along the drive my nerves showed and Paige being quite aware of this (as women tend to be), told me not to worry and that she really liked me. That was comforting, but I told her my hesitation wasn’t based on that so much as the fact that she had recently gotten out of a relationship, and one that by all means was probably one of her most potent ones. She assured me that she was over it, and partly out of fantasy and partly out of my experience with women recovering from things faster than men, I decided to believe her. That night, we stayed and talked in her apartment until the sun came up, and we started to fool around. I had never been with a girl who had been so arousing to me as Paige (save maybe Stephanie). We didn’t have sex that night, but the next day when I went home, my head was spinning. After this first full day, and night together, I found a reason to go over to her place every chance I got. Paige never came to my place, unless I drove to pick her up, because she was epileptic.
We progressed very fast, I couldn’t remember having fallen for someone so quickly in my life, and I eventually got to meet her sisters, Chelsea and Erika (Chelsea was one of the girls who came in with Paige to the party where I’d met her). Paige and I would go many places in Denver and Boulder together, and I was more happy than I could remember having been (especially romantically) for a very long time. We went to the Gilbert and Sullivan play I had asked her to go to, and she was dressed up as probably the classiest girl I’d ever seen, which was extremely attractive to me. As it turned out, her ex-boyfriend, Dan, lived very close, and Paige had to pick up her bed and things which were still at his place. This became troublesome, because she would see him around everywhere, or he would simply stop by her place. I knew this was definitely going to be a problem, and this is where I made my largest mistake in keeping her interest. Having undergone the hardships I did with Alyssa, but especially Abby, I wanted to show every support that I felt Paige needed, to tell her I’d been there, and to help her. She felt I was getting pushy, but I think it became more of a matter of that I was showing myself as being too weak and sympathetic as sad as that may sound. We continued on being romantic and eventually she came to the conclusion that we should only be friends, I eventually figured out that she was only really rebounding with me, or at least that’s how it seemed.
We still did things as friends, like hike and go places, but the sting of the dissension was already there. We would claim that we were friends, but still got quite intimate and she would do things like take baths naked around me. I was getting mixed signals that I simply didn’t really know how to interpret, other than that she must have been quite confused. During this time, Paige was looking for a job (as was I), and I wanted to help her out with the search, so I suggested that she work at Celestial Seasonings, a tea factory in Boulder. I drove her up there, and helped her get applications and so on, and at many places. She was grateful, but the drift was still happening. She did end up getting the job at Celestial Seasonings, and I was very happy for her about this. Still when I was with her, I’d want no one else, which was sadly a rarity for me. After a little over a month of dating (and having to go back to Illinois for a week for my cousin, Danny’s funeral [he’d overdosed on drugs]), we had a party at my house. I had far too much to drink that night, because I wanted to show my friends the worst I could be drunk, and it was amusing, but I had gotten the second sickest I’d ever been from such stupidity (the first time being my twenty-first birthday). Paige took care of me, and I remember Kevin, who always seemed jealous of Paige, told me not to let her go and that she was a great girl, a fact I knew all too well. It seemed a bit sad to me that he told me this, and the next day after I had recovered, I drove her back, and after I returned home from Boulder, she called me to tell me that she thought it would be a good idea if we didn’t speak anymore. Naturally, I was heartbroken, and she said she’d call me in about a month.
I was sad and feeling quite low for a while, and the next day, she called me again, because she felt depressed and needed me. She asked if I would go up, and I told her I couldn’t, God knows I wanted to, but I simply couldn’t for several reasons. Sadly and with a heavy heart I hung up the phone. The next day, I was feeling particularly low myself and so called Paige, and she was angry that I had disobeyed her wishes and called her, when she clearly asked me not to. I was livid about this hypocrisy, and knew that she had a few things I wasn’t entirely thrilled about psychologically, but in spite of these flaws, I still can’t remember falling for someone so quickly, and for the very brief period we found ourselves together, she has had a very potent place in my heart. After Paige, I was discouraged from even thinking about other girls for a very long time. I didn’t think anyone could compare, and the truth was, I wanted Paige, and no one else, she never did call me back, and though I thought about calling her several times, I felt it was best to avoid the whole thing and find solace elsewhere, which led to an interesting year to be sure. I missed Paige a lot for a long time, and I’m only happy that if we had to be apart ultimately, that our time together was brief, I don’t think I could have dealt with the pain of breaking up with her after a long time together. It was from being with Paige that I resolved to marry whoever I got into a serious relationship with in the future. I could no longer stand the pain or frustration of a breakup like that, it always felt like a part of my soul was being ripped out whenever I’d lose anyone whom I cared about that deeply.
As luck or misfortune would have it, I didn’t have to worry about any amorous affairs for a very long time, and certainly none of that potency to date. I’d have some liaisons here and there with a few friends with benefits, like Stephanie or Jenn, while I was at home, but never did I date anyone until I left home in February of 2007 to Seoul, South Korea. When I got to Seoul, I was hoping to maybe find someone to get into a relationship with, I was tired of being alone, and I wanted to share my life and experience with someone, but it was a big shot in the dark. As it turned out, I moved to an area with a low population of foreigners (non-Koreans), and the pickings were slim at best. Strangely, I worked at a school with a staff of almost all Korean women, and one other male teacher, and four foreign teachers. I would soon discover that in spite of these odds, I wasn’t really interested in any of them. At some point, a couple months into it, I really started to hate my life where I was, and I felt like it was going to chaos. I was sure I made a huge mistake and I didn’t see any reasonable way out of it other than doing something drastic like fleeing the country, or worse yet suffering it out where I was. It was at about the time of my greatest unease that some things started to work for me. The first thing was that my recruiter offered to move me to another school on the other side of town. The second is that I met a South African girl named Jeanine. Now mind you, something I had discovered early in Korea was that I had a certain charm for meeting girls and charming them, especially at bars and parties and so on.
One Saturday night, one of the teachers at our neighboring school, ECC, was moving home, and I decided to go out with them to a part of Seoul called Hyongdae. I had seen Jeanine around, but that night, we talked, I think she was a little more intent on talking to me than the other way around, but I was happy to talk with her too. We went to some clubs and ate and so on, and I discovered that I actually had the attention of several girls partly because of my booming confidence in things and partly because of my good dance skills. At the end of the night, I was kind of angry because I had to leave with some of the guys I’d come up with back to a place called Itaewon, another part of Seoul we were staying at. This meant I had to leave my small cult following of girls and didn’t have a chance to get any of their contact information. I was quite content to get back, however, and instead of going to sleep, I just got on the subway (it was about 7:00am by this point) and went home. I was happy when I returned, and a few days later ended up running into Jeanine again. We hit if off quite fast, and started hanging out a lot. We both needed each other because of the depressing circumstances we were surrounded in. It was actually very fortunate for me that I had someone like her around, because for the first time in months, I felt that someone nearby really cared about me, and that I was wanted on a romantic level again (it had been almost exactly a year by this point since Paige). There were a few problems with Jeanine to this end, however, so I wisely didn’t invest too much emotion in her, but I still did care about her greatly and liked her a lot as well. These things were the fact that she was a hardcore Christian, which meant that she didn’t believe in sex before marriage, but that apparently didn’t mean that she didn’t believe in being sexual before marriage. I got to drink from her furry cup on several occasions, but the favor was never returned.
Jeanine was a pretty girl, but a little bigger than I really preferred to date. She was tall, and what I would describe as a hardy Afrikaner. She was very expressive, and loved stupid things like reality television and the like. She had a huge heart and loved and cared about her family and God more than most I had met. She was quite generous and never really thought about money. She had a cute accent, and it always made me smile to hear her voice. We would go on walks together and sometimes go out to eat at Outback Steakhouse. I would often talk to her about how my life seemed to be falling apart, and she would patiently listen and give advice, which I found to be rather helpful. She did have a sense that I was somehow fashionably deficient, and so would take me shopping to get better clothes. I think the thing I most liked about her was that she distracted me from how much I hated things, and she would give me something to look forward to at the end of the day. This was something I needed and I am very thankful she was in my life. I think because of her virginity and so on, she actually fell for me much harder than either of us would have wanted to admit. Jeanine was very proud and would never allow herself to show many signs of weakness or need to me. We knew it our ‘relationship’ was to be short lived, and we decided to break it off a little before I left for my new city. So it was that for about a month of dating, we broke it off and I moved to my next city in Korea, called Yongin. Jeanine helped me move, and settle in, which was actually very comforting, and I was happy just to have a friend like her there.
After the day I moved in, I saw Jeanine in central Seoul once more, during which time, we went back to our former intimate ways, and resolved never to again. I also saw her one last time in September of 2007, during which time, she was noticeably agitated by everything I did or said. She saw me on a day when her cousin was marrying a guy she had dated and didn’t take it well, I tried to comfort her by either being cute or sympathetic, but she wouldn’t have it, and everything I said seemed only to serve to raise her anger at me. I tried not to take it personally, but was growing irritated at being consistently scowled at for only trying to be helpful. Now mind you, Jeanine and I would send short emails and so on during this time, but hadn’t really talked much since I had moved. This would be the last time I would see her, and one of the last times I would talk to her. Apparently, she avoided me on the internet after that for a while, and I decided to write her an email asking what had happened. She responded by telling me that things hadn’t been working between us, and that we only made each other angry. I felt this was pure nonsense and not substantiated by my experience of it. I believe that she really just felt that she had gotten too close and wanted to withdraw from everything. She had obviously made special efforts to be disagreeable, even during the time we were dating, and I felt it had all just culminated to this. I felt a little sad to be so isolated again, and away from my friends and family at home, who I felt were the only people who really cared about me.
In the meantime, after I had moved to Yongin, I found a whole new world had opened up to me romantically or at least sexually and I was very excited about this. When I had gotten there, I found that most of the teachers at my school were male, and there were only a couple of girls. I was not happy about that, but as time went on, I discovered more people there than met the eye at first. After settling in for a couple of months, a group of us went to Taiwan together, and this included a girl named Jess. Jess was a little overweight, but still kind of pretty, and we ended up staying in our hotel room more than we should have. It was doing this together that we ended up talking about sex, and after getting amply aroused, decided to satisfy each other’s needs. We had sex a few times that trip, and once after we returned. It was good to be have sex again, but I felt a little empty after this time, and guilty, because I soon learned that Jess was getting a little attached to me as well. I tried to make it abundantly clear that I wasn’t interested in anything but friendship, but decided I had to stop the thing after we got back to Korea. After Jess, I met a girl (the second ever) from MySpace named Nami, Nami was an American of half Korean and half American descent. We would talk online, and I got to use the video part of my phone for the first time to do it. Nami had found my profile and messaged me, and I responded. We decided to meet up in a place called Suwon, and after a difficult time of finding each other we went out to eat and back to her place. We went there to sleep so that we could go on a trip white water rafting the next day with a group called Adventure Korea.
After playing cards and talking a good deal of the night, we ended up eventually going to sleep with only three hours to go before we had to wake up. We ended up cuddling in bed and then having sex, giving us only an hour of sleep before the trip. Nami, was a pretty girl who was fairly intelligent and looked much more white than Asian. We would get together occasionally after that and usually have sex and do something fun. It was around the time I met Nami, that I also met another girl named Anne, who was half Chinese, half American and had lived around the world in many places, including Hong Kong, India, Norway, the United States, and Korea. She was pretty, very slim and rather kind. We met by chance on a trip to a city called Boryeong for something called Mudfest. I thought she was a very cool girl and tried to hang out with her a lot, but she wasn’t really interested in. Also around this time, I met two girls named Kyla and Kerri, (British and Canadian respectively) at a party in a city called Ori, I was very interested in Kyla, and Kerri fascinated me, because she was also a linguist. I never really dated them, but started to go out with them as friends and so on, but sadly I knew they were both leaving the country soon. Anne and I never really worked out, because I was getting too clingy and she felt suffocated by me. A little after all of these strange relationships were starting, I also met a cute Chinese girl named Ting Ting at a local pizzeria called Pizza School. We went on a date to the Korean Folk Village, but I felt she was too innocent to really try to take it any further and so just kind of left that at the friendship level.
I know it must seem overwhelming to read all of this, but in the span of nearly two months, it was much more overwhelming to do it all. After a while, things kind of simmered down for me romantically, which was actually a welcome break from the intense social life I had suddenly acquired. I was happy to be out of everything, but at the same time, a few new prospects had opened up too. One of the teachers at my school, but a different floor, named Lindsey, and I started hanging out one night, and we ended up almost having sex, save for the fact that I didn’t have a condom. We agreed to become friends with benefits and got together a few more times, fooled around but never actually had sex. Also, the former resident of the room I had moved into, Amber, one night was online and very horny, she told me about that, and asked if I was interested in shagging. I told her I wouldn’t mind, and she came over that night to my place. After this incident, I was starting to get worried that I was trying to fill the hole of isolation I had with random encounters and so decided to not really go out of my way for them anymore. I stopped everything with Amber, and found myself alone again and thus is where I’m at now in my life. This is the story of my love life to date, I am not proud of everything I’ve done, and I’ve made more mistakes than I’d care to admit (but did anyway). I don’t know what will happen, but I only can hope I find the right girl to come and take the fear and so on out of me. As time progresses, I’m sure I will update this more but here it is for now.
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