Boyfriends, Part 2

After I wrote my last entry, I realized I’d left out a couple of critical moments.  The first was in first grade at Franklin elementary.  Kent and I had a mutual crush.  One day, I was on the playground waiting for the slide.  I turned around when I heard a sound, and Kent and several other boys were behind me.  I don’t know how I knew to run, but I did.  I ran and they all chased me.  Finally, I fell down and Kent pinned me to the ground and kissed me.  I thought that was the most romantic thing ever, and told that story over and over for years.

The other story occurred in the midst of my relationship with Scott.  It was before he broke up with me for the first time.  I was at my Grandma Dollar’s house for the weekend, and there were boys who played at the park across the street from her house who were about my age.  In retrospect, I now realize that they were all attracted to me.  The one I was most attracted to was, ironically, named Scott.  That Scott had a girlfriend at the time, though.  John was much younger than I was.  And then there was David.

David was very aggressive with his attention.  I told him that I had a boyfriend, but he was persistent.  As I have said many times, I hungered for attention, and David gave it freely.  We spent a weekend cuddling under a tree, and then I went back home.  I told my mom about David and that I didn’t know what to do, now.  She kind of scolded me for cheating on him, and even then I thought she was being hypocritical.

When we’d first moved back to California we had lived with family until it got uncomfortable.  From there we moved into a shitty motel called The Rio Rancho.   While we lived at the Rio Rancho, on at least two occasions, my mom had sleepover guests.  Men.  We all slept in the same room.  She’d wait until she thought we were all asleep, but I wasn’t asleep, and I was old enough to know what was going on.  Imagine the internal conflict of raging silently because your mother is cheating on the only dad you’ve ever known, while also being mildly sexually aroused because someone is having sex in the same room with you.

Now, as my mother was laying guilt on me for cheating on my first boyfriend, we were living with a man who was not my mother’s husband, and whom she ultimately divorced my first daddy for.

I quickly realized that I liked Scott much better than David.  I wrote David a letter and apologized for leading him on, but explained that I wasn’t ready to break up with Scott.  And that was the end of that.