.o61 x letter to ash part one
I wrote this huge letter to my friend Ash in Alaska... part I wrote on Christmas, part the day before Valentine's Day. I still haven't mailed it. I'm splitting it up into several parts and posting it here. I don't expect anyone to read it -- it's way too long -- but it'll be here for me to look back on.
12.25.o6
Where do I start? There is so much, there’s no way I can go into it all. There’s Danny, he’s most pressing right now. There’s Yuka. I just wanna do a brief overview of everything, even stuff you already know, and even crazy stuff that some people might not understand. Maybe I’ll go into everything, maybe I’ll forget stuff, but this will probably get very long… I hope it’s a good read.
Back in Florida. The year with my grandmother. I had my first brush with boys and dating. I dated Josh, a year older than me. I was so… naïve, innocent, haha. He drove me home from school and we used to wrestle outside. One day I noticed he had an erection. I didn’t say anything, but it freaked me out a little. Another day he tried to kiss me when I said I wasn’t ready. I didn’t appreciate that. He’d asked me out online, and I broke up with him online.
Then… the fight with my grandmother. I talked online with my friend Xenom… explicitly. My dad had never cared as long as I was careful and didn’t give out personal information. My grandmother, though, hated it. Xenom sent me pictures of porn, and I minimized the window when Gramsie came in the room, but she was suspicious when I wouldn’t show her what I’d minimized. At the same time, I was getting into religious debates with Xenom, an atheist. He said things that made me doubt… I read the Bible and went to a Bible Study, but it only made me doubt even more. I became agnostic. I wrote a whole lot of poetry founded in the confusing things I was feeling then, too.
My grandmother installed Net Nanny on the computer. I got angry and tried to uninstall it. She caught me and read my angry conversation with Xenom… see, I’ve always had more privileges and freedom when it comes to the internet, porn, and a lot of stuff than most kids have-with my parents. My grandmother was different, and I couldn’t handle it. She almost shipped me back to my parents, but ended up taking the computer out of my room and password-protecting it. I was outlawed from it entirely. I was told I couldn’t use the internet at all, even at school, but I ended up making an email account at rock.com in case Dad was monitoring my hotmail and keeping in touch with everyone in computer class at school. I didn’t think it was fair. My argument was that my grandmother wouldn’t tape-record my conversations when I went out with friends, so how was it fair on the computer? And it was my only way to keep in contact with some of my friends.
Things got better over time. Gramsie started letting me use Word on the computer to write for a limited time a day. Then I could check my email once a week. We worked things out. Her house, her rules. I wrote an apology. There were and still are things I felt were unfair, but I handled it poorly. And again, her house, her rules-I’ve learned that very well.
For a while I even found Jesus again by telling myself people wrote the Bible, so it isn’t perfect, just an overall guide. But after a while, I feel back into agnosticism, and I’m still there. Why would God allow His Word to be so confusing and contradictory that it causes wars? How many people have been murdered over interpretations of the Bible? Free will and imperfect people, but God’s Word, the Bible, is supposed to help guide us right, not make the confusion and chaos and killing worse.
Then there was Travis. Three years older than me (two and a half), a senior to my sophomore, and already signed with the Marines. He asked me out in person. I went to his church a couple times. But he attached too quickly too strongly, he even told me he loved me, and I couldn’t say it back because I didn’t feel the same. I never even kissed him. I wrote him a letter to end it and felt absolutely horrible I didn’t have the decency to say it to his face. From that I learned never to do anything important any other way than in person. No phones, no internet, no letters.
I went to prom with him as friends because I’d already agreed, and to his graduation because we were (and are) friends. He ended up going to Iraq and still wrote and called. For a long time it annoyed me a little because I hated phones and I felt maybe he was still hung up on me… but now he’s dating best friend Alicia, completely in love with her (I introduced them, after a fashion), and I don’t mind phones anymore, so it’s cool. We’re friends. I think he’s going back to Iraq soon.
Moving back to the tenth grade… school was almost over when my uncle got into a custody battle over cousin Kaleb with his ex-wife. A man tried to serve Cris and me subpoenas, so dad brought us back up to Bolling and decided to homeschool us. He didn’t want us involved in my uncle’s custody battle, but he didn’t want us back in DC schools.
Oh, I hated homeschooling. But first, Tim.
I met him… in October the year I started homeschooling, which would be 2004 (and I just realized I’ve been putting 9th grade as 01-02, but it was 02-03, uh-oh). I was sixteen. He was 14, but he looked older and I looked younger. We were both virgins, but he’d kissed and fingered before, whereas I had nothing.
You might remember when he rode our bus. So I didn’t technically meet him October ’04… that’s just when I started to pursue him. I went after him, but indirectly. In the end, his mom liked me and said he should ask me out… so he did. It’s kind of funny and pathetic in retrospect. His mom was there the whole way. This may sound bad, but I’m telling it all anyway.
He wanted his tongue pierced, but his mom was recovering from a hysterectomy and couldn’t drive him, so I convinced my mom to. His mom-Mrs. Tracy-said he had to kiss me first. So we went outside… and he gave me my first kiss. I saw him get his tongue pierced, and Mrs. Tracy got her nose pierced.
Before I go on and get into some of the bad stuff, let me explain what I saw in him. He was so outgoing and carefree. He would flash in public-he didn’t care what people thought of him. (In retrospect, I see it was a kind of act, overcompensating, because he cared too much what others thought, but at the time…) And he could be very sweet.
Anyway, for a few days after the first kiss, he always kissed me. I couldn’t work up the courage to initiate. Finally, though… I did.
Time passed. He was moving in December, and finally the closeness of it hit us. Mrs. Tracy told us I could stay the night, we could have her room, candles, whatever. She suggested I tell my parents she wanted my company because her husband Greg was away, she’d just had surgery, she was lonely. So I stayed.
In her room, Mrs. Tracy crushed up Ambien, her prescription sleeping pills, and snorted some. She let Tim snort it, too, and tried to make me because she said she wanted us to be open. I refused. She had Tim say if I loved him, I’d do it, and I said no. I had no desire to fuck with drugs, and besides, snorting sounded fucking unpleasant. It may sound like a dumb reason, but hey, it was one of mine… and it works.
Mrs. Tracy went to lock herself in her bathroom, and on the way she told me she was proud of me for refusing. Alone in her room, Tim and I cried and hugged and kissed, and he said he loved me. I said it back. I felt it. Looking back, I see how messed up everything was-him, their family, the situation-but my feelings were genuine given my limited understanding of the situation. I still call him my first love because I loved him, even if I probably shouldn’t have, even if I wouldn’t have if I’d seen the situation more broadly and clearly.
We didn’t sleep in her room; we slept on the couch. But we took a shower together. I gave my first blowjob. He tried going down on me. Details-I’m sorry if you didn’t need or want all this information. Not then, but eventually, we had sex. My dad had told me if I chose to have sex, he’d rather know I was safe and it was in our house. So one night when my family went out, I told Tim I was ready. I had to reassure him it was okay, because he wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t ready. I told him just to be slow and gentle and it wouldn’t hurt me too badly, so he was very careful. He didn’t want to hurt me. It did hurt a tiny bit, but I was expecting it and it wasn’t bad at all.
My parents weren’t approving of him at all, but they didn’t show it. They know teenagers; saying no often just invokes a stubborn streak. My parents are truly wonderful in that respect and many others.
One day my family, Tim, and I went to Philadelphia for the day. When we got back, Tim went home and I went back to my own house. Ten o’ clock that night, Mrs. Tracy called in a panic because Tim had come home high. I was bawling when I woke up my parents, told them, and asked to go over there.
He’d had a bad reaction. He was pasty, pale, clammy, throwing up in the bathroom. My parents came over for a few minutes to help-my dad suggested it may have been laced with something else-and then let me stay the night. We put him on the couch with a blanket and a big bowl, and I stayed up half the night without eating, worrying over him. The next morning I was sick-I couldn’t even keep down Pepto Bismol. My parents took me home, and when I’d rested a few hours, I went over and talked to Tim. I told him I’d literally worried myself sick over him. He’d hurt me badly because he knew how I felt about drugs and smoking and everything else. I told him, and I told him I wouldn’t take it again. If it happened again, he wouldn’t see me again. It’d be over.
He didn’t do it again. Then again, he didn’t have much time; it was only a couple weeks before he moved.
I helped them pack. When his family stayed in the TLFs, I got my parents to let him stay with me. We shared the same bed for a few days. It was a good feeling.
The day before he left, we both cried and held each other and decided long-distance would be a bad idea, although we would keep in touch.
His family was messed up on so many levels, and so was he. They still are. But I don’t regret any of it. I learned a hell of a lot from it. I’d like to think I’m not the sort to repeat mistakes.
Homeschooling continued. Oh, how I hated it. I taught myself and, part of the time, my brother. At least he had an organized lesson plan. My homeschooling was made for adults who didn’t finish highschool and want a real diploma, not just a GED. I completed Practical Psychology, The Essentials of Grammar & Writing 1 & 2, Lit 3, Keyboarding, United States History, Government & Economics, Health, French II, Physical Science… that’s all I can recall off the top of my head, except I completed Personality Psychology only to find it was a college course and I would get no credit for it. I started Lit IV, precalculus, and physics… but the latter two I couldn’t learn on my own, and to be honest, I stopped trying in Lit IV.
We’d moved from Bolling to Summerfield in Maryland. I thought about living with Alicia and going to her highschool senior year, but my parents thought it was ridiculous. I considered leaving home and doing it anyway, but I didn’t truly want to live there. Alicia has four siblings. I’d be a burden. So I called it a last resort and decided if I did all the research and work myself to get me into Maryland schools-even calling people, which I loathed-my parents would see how serious I was and agree.
During all this, I met Yuka. Well, to be more exact, Cris met Yuka. I was bored out of my skull because I had no friends in the neighborhood, and I’d always made friends at school. I couldn’t just go out for hours every day until I ran into someone my age. I couldn’t keep myself entertained outside for that long. But Cris was riding his bike and he saw two Japanese girls sitting on a porch. One was only half Japanese and very pretty. Putting this together from Yuka’s and Cris’ stories afterward, he kept biking past pretending not to look until finally he stopped and laid out in the grass across the street, casting “sneaky” looks her way. She decided to say hi.
He told her about me. Made me out to be a real geek, on the computer 24/7 with no social skills. Haha. When he came home, he told me there was a girl my age I had to meet.
It was a couple weeks before I finally went with him to meet this girl. She answered the door and said she had laundry to do, but she’d meet us at the Youth Center in an hour or two. She had no intention to actually do it, but her dad convinced her to. When we met up and started talking, we clicked instantly. It was weird; I’d never just clicked like that, almost spontaneously, with a friend. Or soon-to-be friend.
I told her my homeschooling blues, she told me about her school. She encouraged and helped me figure out how to get in. I met her shortly before my 18th birthday and invited her to come to Six Flags for my birthday. She met Alicia, who came also. With Alicia I have a history of spending less time with her when I meet someone new (you, Tim), so I was very careful to pay attention to Alicia. Yuka didn’t mind. She hung back on most of the roller coasters Alicia and I rode-I love roller coasters.
It wasn’t long after that before my parents found out what I was doing to get back into public schools. I was right; they agreed. Proceedings to get me back in school started en force.
I’d be going into the 12th grade the year after I was supposed to graduate. To make matters worse, PG country wouldn’t accept any of my homeschooling credits. I was tested for Lit III, US History, Science, and Algebra I (which I’d taken in middle school but didn’t count even though I’d passed Geometry and Algebra II afterward). I lost all my other homeschooling credits. Which meant French II again. Health again, next semester. LSN Government, the equivalent of Gov’t and Economics, again. And other classes just to fill credits.
At the tail end of May, Yuka and I went job-hunting. We applied at Starbucks. I applied at the movie theater and Borders, too. Starbucks hired us in June. Two weeks of training, and then we were baristas. I loved it. Henry, the manager at the time, was great. He had a habit of telling us to calm down when we weren’t flustered, but aside from that, he was basically your ideal boss.
Shortly after we started working, I met Yuka’s brother, Egan. I didn’t give him a second thought at first, but when I started to spend time with him, I developed a crush fast. I learned that facial hair isn’t necessarily a turn-off. I learned that I could initiate. I told him I liked him. I asked him if he liked me. I kissed him-that one wasn’t as productive as the others since I was scared shitless.
He wasn’t really my ‘type’, if you can say I have a type, but the whole experience was so novel that I was infatuated with him. I found out he and Yuka smoked. I let them know how I felt about it, but I didn’t try to force them to stop. I didn’t even suggest it. Haha, I learned that from my parents. Trying to get them to stop will only aggravate them. I see now the smoking never would have worked. Eventually it would have been the habit or me, and he’s just the stubborn sort to choose smoking because your significant other shouldn’t try to change who you are. I agree, but that’s just further proof it wouldn’t have worked.
And he wasn’t very affectionate. I’m all about the little touches and kisses, all the time. There was nothing in public, but he said the Japanese are raised to be distant in public but fine in the bedroom, in private. The thing is, he was ‘affectionate’ sometimes in private-making out-but not really very much beyond that. And something I realized later I missed: I always knew when Tim was horny. He wasn’t shy about it. I never knew when Egan was horny. I mean, I could tell intellectually, but it was always obvious when Tim was hard. If anything, Egan hid it, I guess.
It’s funny though. When he moved to Seattle, I knew it was over-but then, it wasn’t, for a while. It got stronger, for a while. On the internet, haha. We had webcams. We had fun. I was caught between this feeling it would fade away soon and it could last, we could see each other again after the school year. For a little bit I thought I might love him, but I didn’t, not like that.
Eventually it did fade. Quite suddenly, actually. I had this conversation with him about seeing other people. He said he didn’t want us to feel like we couldn’t see someone else. I wanted to know if he didn’t care if I dated someone else or if he would care, he just didn’t want to hold me back from it. I don’t remember what he said, I just remember explaining that if I went after anyone else, it would mean I didn’t feel the same about him anymore, because I can’t genuinely like two guys at one time. I told him I’d tell him if that happened.
I guess something about that conversation made me realize subconsciously that it was over. Within a few days, I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t feel the same about him. I think I also sort of felt him getting interested in other girls through conversations we’d had, and I realized that if he could genuinely start to like other girls and still profess feelings for me, he wasn’t for me. I’m not sure, but it was done.
School started at the end of August. Central, my school, is fucked up on so many levels, but I still prefer it to homeschooling. I have a lot of friends there. It’s so easy-all I have to do is actually do my work and I’m doing better than most of my classmates. I’m applying to colleges. I got a 2190 on my SAT-highest scores together. I took it twice and made a 2150 each time, but first time was 750, 700, 700 and the second was 780, 710, 660. The order of those being reading, math, writing.
My school has uniforms. On principle I hate them in public schools, especially the way Central went about it, but I’d give more of a crap if I hadn’t fought so hard to get into this school.
Let’s see. The right order to tell all of this in is getting harder as events get more intertwined. Dad comes next.
Dad has threatened to kick me out several times. I can’t stand his temper. Clearly I’m getting tired of writing since I don’t feel like going into details, but I’ve had a grudge against him for a while for his temper and lack of respect for my boundaries. He used to play with my boobs-poke at them and such-even though I told him to stop. He doesn’t anymore. He finally get the point. But it took him so long to stop that I never really forgave him. And I hated not being able to reason with him when he was angry-and how he’d get angry for the most ridiculous reasons. I’ve finally come to terms with it. It’s his house, his rules, and I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’m 18 and 7 months. I should have been gone by now. I’m not going to change his temper, but I can live with it a few more months. Then I can get out of here. I love him. But he has his flaws. There’s no point in even feeling resentful about it when he gets angry. I just shut up, do what he says, and in short order he calms down. At least he doesn’t hold grudges after stupid temper tantrums. He even apologizes where he feels it’s warranted. And hey, sometimes he’s angry for a good reason. I try to recognize it when he is.
12.25.o6
Where do I start? There is so much, there’s no way I can go into it all. There’s Danny, he’s most pressing right now. There’s Yuka. I just wanna do a brief overview of everything, even stuff you already know, and even crazy stuff that some people might not understand. Maybe I’ll go into everything, maybe I’ll forget stuff, but this will probably get very long… I hope it’s a good read.
Back in Florida. The year with my grandmother. I had my first brush with boys and dating. I dated Josh, a year older than me. I was so… naïve, innocent, haha. He drove me home from school and we used to wrestle outside. One day I noticed he had an erection. I didn’t say anything, but it freaked me out a little. Another day he tried to kiss me when I said I wasn’t ready. I didn’t appreciate that. He’d asked me out online, and I broke up with him online.
Then… the fight with my grandmother. I talked online with my friend Xenom… explicitly. My dad had never cared as long as I was careful and didn’t give out personal information. My grandmother, though, hated it. Xenom sent me pictures of porn, and I minimized the window when Gramsie came in the room, but she was suspicious when I wouldn’t show her what I’d minimized. At the same time, I was getting into religious debates with Xenom, an atheist. He said things that made me doubt… I read the Bible and went to a Bible Study, but it only made me doubt even more. I became agnostic. I wrote a whole lot of poetry founded in the confusing things I was feeling then, too.
My grandmother installed Net Nanny on the computer. I got angry and tried to uninstall it. She caught me and read my angry conversation with Xenom… see, I’ve always had more privileges and freedom when it comes to the internet, porn, and a lot of stuff than most kids have-with my parents. My grandmother was different, and I couldn’t handle it. She almost shipped me back to my parents, but ended up taking the computer out of my room and password-protecting it. I was outlawed from it entirely. I was told I couldn’t use the internet at all, even at school, but I ended up making an email account at rock.com in case Dad was monitoring my hotmail and keeping in touch with everyone in computer class at school. I didn’t think it was fair. My argument was that my grandmother wouldn’t tape-record my conversations when I went out with friends, so how was it fair on the computer? And it was my only way to keep in contact with some of my friends.
Things got better over time. Gramsie started letting me use Word on the computer to write for a limited time a day. Then I could check my email once a week. We worked things out. Her house, her rules. I wrote an apology. There were and still are things I felt were unfair, but I handled it poorly. And again, her house, her rules-I’ve learned that very well.
For a while I even found Jesus again by telling myself people wrote the Bible, so it isn’t perfect, just an overall guide. But after a while, I feel back into agnosticism, and I’m still there. Why would God allow His Word to be so confusing and contradictory that it causes wars? How many people have been murdered over interpretations of the Bible? Free will and imperfect people, but God’s Word, the Bible, is supposed to help guide us right, not make the confusion and chaos and killing worse.
Then there was Travis. Three years older than me (two and a half), a senior to my sophomore, and already signed with the Marines. He asked me out in person. I went to his church a couple times. But he attached too quickly too strongly, he even told me he loved me, and I couldn’t say it back because I didn’t feel the same. I never even kissed him. I wrote him a letter to end it and felt absolutely horrible I didn’t have the decency to say it to his face. From that I learned never to do anything important any other way than in person. No phones, no internet, no letters.
I went to prom with him as friends because I’d already agreed, and to his graduation because we were (and are) friends. He ended up going to Iraq and still wrote and called. For a long time it annoyed me a little because I hated phones and I felt maybe he was still hung up on me… but now he’s dating best friend Alicia, completely in love with her (I introduced them, after a fashion), and I don’t mind phones anymore, so it’s cool. We’re friends. I think he’s going back to Iraq soon.
Moving back to the tenth grade… school was almost over when my uncle got into a custody battle over cousin Kaleb with his ex-wife. A man tried to serve Cris and me subpoenas, so dad brought us back up to Bolling and decided to homeschool us. He didn’t want us involved in my uncle’s custody battle, but he didn’t want us back in DC schools.
Oh, I hated homeschooling. But first, Tim.
I met him… in October the year I started homeschooling, which would be 2004 (and I just realized I’ve been putting 9th grade as 01-02, but it was 02-03, uh-oh). I was sixteen. He was 14, but he looked older and I looked younger. We were both virgins, but he’d kissed and fingered before, whereas I had nothing.
You might remember when he rode our bus. So I didn’t technically meet him October ’04… that’s just when I started to pursue him. I went after him, but indirectly. In the end, his mom liked me and said he should ask me out… so he did. It’s kind of funny and pathetic in retrospect. His mom was there the whole way. This may sound bad, but I’m telling it all anyway.
He wanted his tongue pierced, but his mom was recovering from a hysterectomy and couldn’t drive him, so I convinced my mom to. His mom-Mrs. Tracy-said he had to kiss me first. So we went outside… and he gave me my first kiss. I saw him get his tongue pierced, and Mrs. Tracy got her nose pierced.
Before I go on and get into some of the bad stuff, let me explain what I saw in him. He was so outgoing and carefree. He would flash in public-he didn’t care what people thought of him. (In retrospect, I see it was a kind of act, overcompensating, because he cared too much what others thought, but at the time…) And he could be very sweet.
Anyway, for a few days after the first kiss, he always kissed me. I couldn’t work up the courage to initiate. Finally, though… I did.
Time passed. He was moving in December, and finally the closeness of it hit us. Mrs. Tracy told us I could stay the night, we could have her room, candles, whatever. She suggested I tell my parents she wanted my company because her husband Greg was away, she’d just had surgery, she was lonely. So I stayed.
In her room, Mrs. Tracy crushed up Ambien, her prescription sleeping pills, and snorted some. She let Tim snort it, too, and tried to make me because she said she wanted us to be open. I refused. She had Tim say if I loved him, I’d do it, and I said no. I had no desire to fuck with drugs, and besides, snorting sounded fucking unpleasant. It may sound like a dumb reason, but hey, it was one of mine… and it works.
Mrs. Tracy went to lock herself in her bathroom, and on the way she told me she was proud of me for refusing. Alone in her room, Tim and I cried and hugged and kissed, and he said he loved me. I said it back. I felt it. Looking back, I see how messed up everything was-him, their family, the situation-but my feelings were genuine given my limited understanding of the situation. I still call him my first love because I loved him, even if I probably shouldn’t have, even if I wouldn’t have if I’d seen the situation more broadly and clearly.
We didn’t sleep in her room; we slept on the couch. But we took a shower together. I gave my first blowjob. He tried going down on me. Details-I’m sorry if you didn’t need or want all this information. Not then, but eventually, we had sex. My dad had told me if I chose to have sex, he’d rather know I was safe and it was in our house. So one night when my family went out, I told Tim I was ready. I had to reassure him it was okay, because he wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t ready. I told him just to be slow and gentle and it wouldn’t hurt me too badly, so he was very careful. He didn’t want to hurt me. It did hurt a tiny bit, but I was expecting it and it wasn’t bad at all.
My parents weren’t approving of him at all, but they didn’t show it. They know teenagers; saying no often just invokes a stubborn streak. My parents are truly wonderful in that respect and many others.
One day my family, Tim, and I went to Philadelphia for the day. When we got back, Tim went home and I went back to my own house. Ten o’ clock that night, Mrs. Tracy called in a panic because Tim had come home high. I was bawling when I woke up my parents, told them, and asked to go over there.
He’d had a bad reaction. He was pasty, pale, clammy, throwing up in the bathroom. My parents came over for a few minutes to help-my dad suggested it may have been laced with something else-and then let me stay the night. We put him on the couch with a blanket and a big bowl, and I stayed up half the night without eating, worrying over him. The next morning I was sick-I couldn’t even keep down Pepto Bismol. My parents took me home, and when I’d rested a few hours, I went over and talked to Tim. I told him I’d literally worried myself sick over him. He’d hurt me badly because he knew how I felt about drugs and smoking and everything else. I told him, and I told him I wouldn’t take it again. If it happened again, he wouldn’t see me again. It’d be over.
He didn’t do it again. Then again, he didn’t have much time; it was only a couple weeks before he moved.
I helped them pack. When his family stayed in the TLFs, I got my parents to let him stay with me. We shared the same bed for a few days. It was a good feeling.
The day before he left, we both cried and held each other and decided long-distance would be a bad idea, although we would keep in touch.
His family was messed up on so many levels, and so was he. They still are. But I don’t regret any of it. I learned a hell of a lot from it. I’d like to think I’m not the sort to repeat mistakes.
Homeschooling continued. Oh, how I hated it. I taught myself and, part of the time, my brother. At least he had an organized lesson plan. My homeschooling was made for adults who didn’t finish highschool and want a real diploma, not just a GED. I completed Practical Psychology, The Essentials of Grammar & Writing 1 & 2, Lit 3, Keyboarding, United States History, Government & Economics, Health, French II, Physical Science… that’s all I can recall off the top of my head, except I completed Personality Psychology only to find it was a college course and I would get no credit for it. I started Lit IV, precalculus, and physics… but the latter two I couldn’t learn on my own, and to be honest, I stopped trying in Lit IV.
We’d moved from Bolling to Summerfield in Maryland. I thought about living with Alicia and going to her highschool senior year, but my parents thought it was ridiculous. I considered leaving home and doing it anyway, but I didn’t truly want to live there. Alicia has four siblings. I’d be a burden. So I called it a last resort and decided if I did all the research and work myself to get me into Maryland schools-even calling people, which I loathed-my parents would see how serious I was and agree.
During all this, I met Yuka. Well, to be more exact, Cris met Yuka. I was bored out of my skull because I had no friends in the neighborhood, and I’d always made friends at school. I couldn’t just go out for hours every day until I ran into someone my age. I couldn’t keep myself entertained outside for that long. But Cris was riding his bike and he saw two Japanese girls sitting on a porch. One was only half Japanese and very pretty. Putting this together from Yuka’s and Cris’ stories afterward, he kept biking past pretending not to look until finally he stopped and laid out in the grass across the street, casting “sneaky” looks her way. She decided to say hi.
He told her about me. Made me out to be a real geek, on the computer 24/7 with no social skills. Haha. When he came home, he told me there was a girl my age I had to meet.
It was a couple weeks before I finally went with him to meet this girl. She answered the door and said she had laundry to do, but she’d meet us at the Youth Center in an hour or two. She had no intention to actually do it, but her dad convinced her to. When we met up and started talking, we clicked instantly. It was weird; I’d never just clicked like that, almost spontaneously, with a friend. Or soon-to-be friend.
I told her my homeschooling blues, she told me about her school. She encouraged and helped me figure out how to get in. I met her shortly before my 18th birthday and invited her to come to Six Flags for my birthday. She met Alicia, who came also. With Alicia I have a history of spending less time with her when I meet someone new (you, Tim), so I was very careful to pay attention to Alicia. Yuka didn’t mind. She hung back on most of the roller coasters Alicia and I rode-I love roller coasters.
It wasn’t long after that before my parents found out what I was doing to get back into public schools. I was right; they agreed. Proceedings to get me back in school started en force.
I’d be going into the 12th grade the year after I was supposed to graduate. To make matters worse, PG country wouldn’t accept any of my homeschooling credits. I was tested for Lit III, US History, Science, and Algebra I (which I’d taken in middle school but didn’t count even though I’d passed Geometry and Algebra II afterward). I lost all my other homeschooling credits. Which meant French II again. Health again, next semester. LSN Government, the equivalent of Gov’t and Economics, again. And other classes just to fill credits.
At the tail end of May, Yuka and I went job-hunting. We applied at Starbucks. I applied at the movie theater and Borders, too. Starbucks hired us in June. Two weeks of training, and then we were baristas. I loved it. Henry, the manager at the time, was great. He had a habit of telling us to calm down when we weren’t flustered, but aside from that, he was basically your ideal boss.
Shortly after we started working, I met Yuka’s brother, Egan. I didn’t give him a second thought at first, but when I started to spend time with him, I developed a crush fast. I learned that facial hair isn’t necessarily a turn-off. I learned that I could initiate. I told him I liked him. I asked him if he liked me. I kissed him-that one wasn’t as productive as the others since I was scared shitless.
He wasn’t really my ‘type’, if you can say I have a type, but the whole experience was so novel that I was infatuated with him. I found out he and Yuka smoked. I let them know how I felt about it, but I didn’t try to force them to stop. I didn’t even suggest it. Haha, I learned that from my parents. Trying to get them to stop will only aggravate them. I see now the smoking never would have worked. Eventually it would have been the habit or me, and he’s just the stubborn sort to choose smoking because your significant other shouldn’t try to change who you are. I agree, but that’s just further proof it wouldn’t have worked.
And he wasn’t very affectionate. I’m all about the little touches and kisses, all the time. There was nothing in public, but he said the Japanese are raised to be distant in public but fine in the bedroom, in private. The thing is, he was ‘affectionate’ sometimes in private-making out-but not really very much beyond that. And something I realized later I missed: I always knew when Tim was horny. He wasn’t shy about it. I never knew when Egan was horny. I mean, I could tell intellectually, but it was always obvious when Tim was hard. If anything, Egan hid it, I guess.
It’s funny though. When he moved to Seattle, I knew it was over-but then, it wasn’t, for a while. It got stronger, for a while. On the internet, haha. We had webcams. We had fun. I was caught between this feeling it would fade away soon and it could last, we could see each other again after the school year. For a little bit I thought I might love him, but I didn’t, not like that.
Eventually it did fade. Quite suddenly, actually. I had this conversation with him about seeing other people. He said he didn’t want us to feel like we couldn’t see someone else. I wanted to know if he didn’t care if I dated someone else or if he would care, he just didn’t want to hold me back from it. I don’t remember what he said, I just remember explaining that if I went after anyone else, it would mean I didn’t feel the same about him anymore, because I can’t genuinely like two guys at one time. I told him I’d tell him if that happened.
I guess something about that conversation made me realize subconsciously that it was over. Within a few days, I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t feel the same about him. I think I also sort of felt him getting interested in other girls through conversations we’d had, and I realized that if he could genuinely start to like other girls and still profess feelings for me, he wasn’t for me. I’m not sure, but it was done.
School started at the end of August. Central, my school, is fucked up on so many levels, but I still prefer it to homeschooling. I have a lot of friends there. It’s so easy-all I have to do is actually do my work and I’m doing better than most of my classmates. I’m applying to colleges. I got a 2190 on my SAT-highest scores together. I took it twice and made a 2150 each time, but first time was 750, 700, 700 and the second was 780, 710, 660. The order of those being reading, math, writing.
My school has uniforms. On principle I hate them in public schools, especially the way Central went about it, but I’d give more of a crap if I hadn’t fought so hard to get into this school.
Let’s see. The right order to tell all of this in is getting harder as events get more intertwined. Dad comes next.
Dad has threatened to kick me out several times. I can’t stand his temper. Clearly I’m getting tired of writing since I don’t feel like going into details, but I’ve had a grudge against him for a while for his temper and lack of respect for my boundaries. He used to play with my boobs-poke at them and such-even though I told him to stop. He doesn’t anymore. He finally get the point. But it took him so long to stop that I never really forgave him. And I hated not being able to reason with him when he was angry-and how he’d get angry for the most ridiculous reasons. I’ve finally come to terms with it. It’s his house, his rules, and I’ve overstayed my welcome. I’m 18 and 7 months. I should have been gone by now. I’m not going to change his temper, but I can live with it a few more months. Then I can get out of here. I love him. But he has his flaws. There’s no point in even feeling resentful about it when he gets angry. I just shut up, do what he says, and in short order he calms down. At least he doesn’t hold grudges after stupid temper tantrums. He even apologizes where he feels it’s warranted. And hey, sometimes he’s angry for a good reason. I try to recognize it when he is.