I was still a virgin when I was fifteen years
old. Almost every girl I laid eyes on looked gorgeous to me.
My hormones rampaged out of control. I developed a relationship with
a girl who was beautiful by any standard. The girl’s name was Amy.
She had worked as a model at a tender age, and it showed. She had
naturally blonde hair. She was thin. Her complexion was perfect.
Amy was all of the things I wanted, and all of the things I was not.
I was fat. I was ugly. I had pimples all over my face.
I did not give a damn about any form of authority, tradition or moral standard.
That, as it turned out, was why Amy liked me. Because she liked me
I fell in love with her, and that seemed like the most natural thing in
the world.
Amy lived in a huge house patterned after
a French Villa. The house sported three wings. There was a
whole wing for the guest bedroom. Another wing housed the master
bedroom, and upstairs the children’s bedrooms. The wing to the south
contained the kitchen and dining room. The layout of the house resembled
a capitol “I” that was missing half of its base. In the center of
the house a long and spacious living area presented delightful antiques,
every item pleasing to the eye. Between the two wings in the front
a small courtyard hidden behind an eight foot brick wall contained a picturesque
fountain. There were two long straight-backed benches placed on opposite
sides of the fountain.
Behind the house Amy’s father had cultivated
a giant garden full of rare plants. Massive live oaks dominated the
landscape, making the entire yard a pleasantly shaded area. There
was another fountain in the back yard. Instead of being made out
of bricks this one had been constructed to look as if it bubbled directly
from one of the live oaks. Everything available to the eye was either
green and flowering, or antique. A long veranda ran across the back
of the house. At regular intervals sat large, comfortable rocking
chairs. Ceiling fans overhead kept the area much cooler than the
outside temperature, even at the peak of summer. For a long time
people jokingly said it might really be the house that I was in love with,
but that wasn’t true. I don’t think that joke is funny anymore.
That summer when I first met Amy I spent every
day in her bedroom. We laid side-by-side and talked, and listened
to music for hundreds of hours. She was a year younger than me, but
her maturity level sometimes made me feel like a two year old. Amy
gave her parents a mess of problems. She was already sexually active,
and she had been for a couple of years. Amy also had a mean rebellious
streak in her. While she had been partying and bouncing between circles
of friends I had been a complete nerd who did nothing but read books.
I was rebellious, but I had very few friends. I was totally naïve
when it came to sex. There was a world of difference between her
maturity level and my own.
We managed to find a lot of things in common
despite our differences. We were both very intelligent, but we both
hated school. We both felt inadequate because of problems with our
families, and we both responded by doing things that normal, happy kids
were afraid to do. Neither one of us fit in with acceptable society.
We both thought we had found the coolest person on the face of the earth
when we looked into each other’s eyes. The innocence of my age allowed
me to believe that we could be together forever, mainly because of how
alike we were. If only reality were not the biggest bitch…
Amy introduced me to droves of people in the
drug underground. I discovered the music of the subculture in that
upstairs bedroom of her parents’ house. My awareness expanded exponentially
into territory I had not even thought about exploring in the past.
It felt good to be alive, like I was doing and thinking things that had
never been thought or done before, but it was no paradise. I became
closely acquainted with my own personal evils: jealousy, obsession, compulsion,
bitterness, sorrow and possessiveness. The sheer intensity of those
negative emotions led me to believe they were more important than the positive
ones I had been accustomed to in the past. I felt so alive when jealousy
coursed through my veins. For some reason I had the brainy idea that
rage made me stronger. Because of that I cultivated all of those
bad feelings. Amy made it very easy for me to do that, but I would
never say that it was all her fault. No, the blame rests squarely
on my shoulders.
Shortly after my sixteenth birthday I departed
from the shelter of my mother’s house and moved down by campus where the
freaks lived. Rules and dogma drove me into a self-righteous frenzy.
Absolutely positive I knew all the answers I struck out to live on my own.
My own apartment, women and money was all that I wanted out of life.
I know the attitude reeked of sexism and immaturity, and that represented
one of my worst problems. I had a bad attitude. Before long
I realized I didn’t know all of the answers. I became forced to share
the apartment with someone, which destroyed the element of privacy I had
reasoned would make it so easy to be with women. The place also ate
up all of my money.
I thought about my problem a long time, and
then I came up with a sure way to bypass all of the tedious aspects of
paying for an apartment. A couple of Amy’s friends sold acid.
I got together with them. I told them I knew a lot of people who
wanted to buy doses, and I had investment money. I bought my first
sheet of acid in the fall of 1986. I sold every hit, one by one,
in three days. I made a five hundred percent profit. I knew
at that moment my money troubles were over. After I dosed the first
time my privacy problems were also solved. I found all of the privacy
I needed every time I closed my eyes. I lost all of the shyness I
carried with me ever since I was a child.
Amy and I got engaged. The instant I
gave her the ring I knew it was over between us. We were never close
again. Neither one of us were ready to take a step like marriage,
especially not Amy. Even today I don’t like to think about all of
the ways the relationship went wrong, all of the things that hardened me
emotionally in a myriad of different ways. The simple way to explain
it boils down to this: Amy wanted to be with other men. I couldn’t
handle that at all. For a long time after we broke up I remained
poisoned to the idea of relationships. Amy messed my head up.
She got in bed with other men and came back to tell me all about it.
She said she knew we would be best friends forever, and she knew she could
confide in me. She told me a lot of things I didn’t want to know,
things I tried very hard not to listen to. Hearing those things and
being in love with her twisted my guts inside out. I drank and dosed
the pain away every chance I got, which was pretty much all of the time.
When I would no longer listen to her, and she would no longer talk, we
both knew our relationship had ended permanently.
We had so many good times together I don’t
think it would be fair for me to end this discourse about her on such a
negative note, even though I probably should. After all these years
I still love her too much to say unequivocally negative things about her.
Amy and I decided between us that we were soul mates, and that is a fact
I do not deny. We spent a couple of years hanging around together
and showing off our affection for each other. I know nobody cares
to hear about the time when we dosed and went down to City Park, but here
it is. We decided the golf course looked just like Scotland, and
Amy wet the seat of my car (it was her first trip). I am positive
nobody wants to hear about the time I camped out on her balcony in secrecy.
I was dying to see her. Her father had grounded her, and I couldn’t
go that long without her company. The trip she and I took to see her grandparents
in Arkansas could never mean anything to you, but it meant a hell of a
lot to me.
The primary reason I have not spoken about
those events in detail owes to the way our relationship ended. Amy
and I had plenty of good times, but we broke up because the relationship
was founded on lies. I fell in love with her because I was fat and
ugly and desperate for contact with the female gender. I lied and
made her believe it was all about her, but it was all about how I didn’t
think I could find anyone else. I don’t know the things she lied
about, and I don’t want to know. I do know that I did not like the
things she told the truth about one little bit, but I acted as if I wasn’t
disturbed at all. The joy melts away in the face of all the burning
emotions I had about her affairs. I can’t find any reason to try
to bring it back.
For some reason I have failed to mention the
crowning failure of my relationship with Amy. We both seemed to be
crazy about each other, and on more than one instance drawn together physically,
but we never did have sex. I like to say that it was because I didn’t
believe in sex before marriage. I am such a good liar most people
probably believe me when I say that. The truth is I was too scared
to make a move on her. I was absolutely petrified by the thought
of being rejected. I can’t begin to describe the embarrassment I
feel today that I never tried to get Amy into bed. I believe that
was what caused her to begin seeing other men. After that happened
I lost the desire to be with her. I still hate myself for the way
I was in my adolescent years. With the specter of my shy, inadequate
nature rears its ugly head I kill it as quickly as I can. That nature
cost me someone very dear to me, and I can not stomach having it inside
me.