Girls, Girls, Girls

Jen and I talked all the time, even after she left  J.C.Penney’s. It had gotten to the point that three jobs were too much for her and her job at Penney’s paid the least so she ended up quitting. I knew that me not being a Jehovah Witness had always been an issue with her being in a relationship due to her family, but slowly I was winning her family over, one sister at a time. I was again blindsided when one day she told me she was set up with a guy named Bill by her father. When I finally confessed that I still liked her in ‘that way’ she was surprised. She thought I had been dating Priscilla all that time.

 After that I was never going to hold back how I felt about things to anyone. I never opened up to anyone as much as I opened up to her. We knew everything about each other and would talk all night long. We’d call each other at 3AM without hesitation. If she had trouble sleeping she’d call me just to have me tell her stories until she fell asleep. While physically, she was dating Bill, emotionally, I was dating her. Was it healthy? I don’t know. She was my best friend and I didn’t care.  She knew I was infatuated with her and couldn’t understand why. She never thought she was special, but regardless how she really felt about me, she didn’t want to give me up either.

  Sometime around this period Dena came to visit me at work, and being tired of listening to her stories about her boyfriend that I felt she was doing to torture me with jealousy, I finally fought back with my own. I told her about Jen. I told her every silly obsession I had about Jen. I told her how I would do absolutely anything for Jen and the best part about it all was that Jen would never take advantage of me for it. That’s how great she was.

  It had the opposite effect on Dena that I was hoping for. Dena would come around more. She would gripe about her relationship and tell me how unhappy she was. She would even go so far as to say what a big mistake it was letting me get away. If I wanted a relationship, it was being served on a silver platter right now and I pretty much said flat out, If Jen ever suddenly became available again, I wasn’t going to miss that opportunity because I was with a girl like Dena.  I told her when we broke up that we would always be friends and that I would never stop being her friend.  To her it was a challenge.

  Meanwhile, in my day to day life over the summer… Matt was once again spending the summer working the Ferry parking lot and house siting his Aunt and Uncle’s apartment. He was having a get together one weekend that a bunch of us attended. That evening we met Kelly’s friend named Yolanda. She was a redhead and her and I hit it off really well. After Yolanda left, Kelly mentioned we wouldn’t be seeing  her again. The reason, she didn’t want her around Denver. That was one of the same things that Denver’s girlfriend Laurie had said about Jean so many years ago and the only thing that got was Jean as an ever-present guest of mine. History was about to repeat itself. I just adopted my newest ‘little sister’.

  In the interest of full disclosure I did officially ask Yolanda out, but she turned me down. My reaction was “whew!” which made Yolanda laugh and note that it was an odd reaction. I asked her out mostly because I had started hanging out with her a lot and people were expecting it of me.

 Whenever an interesting and/or pretty girl started to hang around it became a topic of discussion amongst the guys. There was one time when a girl pretty girl named Nicole started hanging out that Mark thought looked like the porn star Savannah. (never seen her, but having seen Nicole, I can guess what she looks like) We thought George should ask her out. George said no, so we took a ‘secret ballot’.

While reading the votes, “One for Yes. One for No. Two for No” we got to one piece of paper that said “Yes – Paul” and I was like “Paul you idiot! It’s a secret ballot”

Paul was in shock and my brother Tommy started laughing… “That was me!”

  Anyway, Yolanda became an ever present attachment of mine much to Kelly’s resentment.

In the midst of all this, I owed Jill a concert. She was so generous, I felt obligated to bring her to a concert by her favorite artist which turned out to be Pat Benatar. If I make a promise, I intend to keep it.

So here I was juggling the girl I wanted, the girl who wanted me, and the girl who I would put under my wing.