Chapter 23: Finding My Way

January-February 1978

The following Monday, I tried to keep the conversations away from sex and relationships. I was largely successful, though Kellie clearly wanted another date. I was pretty sure Mary was entertained by the situation, though Jennifer was not. I had the feeling that things were worse than I’d thought. I had to talk to someone and I decided I would co-opt the tutoring session again. I was coming to a crossroads. I had no idea if I would turn right or left or go straight. Something had to give.

I saw Melanie and actually walked over to her and Pete. I stuck my hand out to shake and he took it.

“Hi, Pete.”

“Hi, Steve. Melanie has told me all about you.”

I detected a slight stress on the word ‘all’.

“Lies. All of it. Never happened. She couldn’t tell the truth if you stuck needles under her fingernails.”

All three of us laughed. Melanie kissed Pete. I shook his hand again and we walked towards her house.

“You told him all about us, huh?”

“Yes. He knows pretty much everything, including how we met and what happened between us.”

“No problems, then?”

“No. He has a past, too. We’ve talked about that. He also knows that you and I are simply very close friends and he trusts me not to violate my relationship with him. I think you guys would get along pretty well, actually.”

I wasn’t sure how I would react to meeting Jonas, for example. But then again, I trusted Birgit implicitly when she said there was nothing going on beyond kissing. I felt Pete was in the same boat. I certainly wouldn’t violate his trust. I had kind of done that with Stan, who I’d never met, but it was clear that Melanie’s relationship with Pete was different.

“Melanie, I need to talk to you. I hope you’ll let me slide on the tutoring again this week. I did score an A on the last quiz.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Same thing that was wrong the last time I talked to you. But it’s worse in some ways. Jennifer is showing affection in public and telling me that she loves me. Becky is telling me that she loves me and made it clear she wants to have sex with me. Kellie is flirting a lot and unless I miss my guess, is available to me. And there’s Anna. I’m tearing myself up trying to figure out how not to hurt anyone.”

“You can’t. You will hurt someone. It’s inevitable. Even if you do everything exactly right, you can’t control how other people react. You can’t control their feelings. All you can do is be true to yourself and not mislead anyone. If you think you can manage your whole life without other people suffering emotional pain, you’re kidding yourself. Look at you. You’re tearing yourself up. Do you think you can take all the emotional burden on yourself to spare other people?”

“I’d rather me be hurt than them.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Even if you don’t try to create an emotional attachment with someone, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Let me ask you this - when Birgit was keeping you at arm’s length, did she hurt you?”

I wanted to say no, but Melanie knew better. “Yes. It hurt.”

“And? Think it through.”

“She hurt me by trying to avoid hurting me.”

“Exactly.”

We reached her house and walked in. I put my stuff down and collapsed on the couch. Melanie went and got me a Coke and we sat there in silence for several minutes.

Melanie had hit the nail on the head. Everything I did to try to avoid hurting someone had the potential for doing exactly the thing I was trying to avoid. How could I resolve this? Was life destined to be like this? Hurting people you love even if you didn’t mean to and perhaps even if you did nothing wrong?

Now I understood the guys who treated girls like toys to be played with. They simply turned off their emotions or buried them. I was one of the few guys I knew who cried. I’d even cry in public and frankly, I didn’t care. I didn’t think it was ‘weak’ like some of them did. I got teased for it from the time I was little. I managed to get it more or less under control, but that was only on the surface.

Melanie let me sit and think. She was sitting very close, her hand on my leg. It wasn’t sexual at all. It was comforting. She waited. I guess she knew I had to work it out for myself. But I wasn’t sure I could. I thought about all of the girls I was involved with in one way or another.

Birgit wasn’t really a problem. She wasn’t just OK with the situation, it was her doing. I suddenly wondered if she understood what would happen; if I would see the depth of emotion that sex brought; that somehow she was teaching me, and preparing me for our shared future. If so, she was pretty smart. And even if not, it seemed to be working out that way.

Mary most certainly wasn’t a problem. With her, it was just raw sex. Maybe I was missing something, but I didn’t detect anything in her that set off warning flags. The sex was great. She was fun to be with. We could talk. But she wasn’t expecting anything from me other than orgasms and a bit of companionship. Chess too, I thought with a smile. We were both free to see other people and neither of us seemed to have an inkling of jealousy.

Kellie, Anna and Joyce, and any other girls weren’t a problem either. The relationships were all in an early stage. I hadn’t done anything with any of them except a couple of kisses and an odd hug here and there. I hadn’t led them on nor tried to hide the fact that there were other girls. So with them, as long as I was truthful and open, they would have to be responsible for their own emotions.

It was Becky and Jennifer where the rubber met the road. Both clearly loved me. Both wanted a relationship with me. I think both wanted some kind of commitment. Had I misled them? Both knew about the other. Both knew about Birgit. Both knew my mental and emotional state as best as I could explain it. Both claimed to accept it on some level, but both gave signs of not accepting it or thinking they could somehow change it.

I hadn’t slept with Becky, which in one way made things easier. If I hurt her now by pushing her away, she’d still have her virginity intact. She was clearly in love with me. Hopelessly, head-over-heels in love, if I was reading her right. If I continued my relationship with her, it would inevitably lead to making love. She had made that clear. And that was a bridge once crossed that could not be uncrossed.

I had made love with Jennifer once. The bridge had been crossed. As amazing as that experience was, it might have been better if I hadn’t done that. It had, as Jennie had warned it would, changed the relationship in ways I didn’t yet understand. I could not put that genie back in the bottle no matter what I did.

Melanie touched my face gently. I took a deep breath and told her everything that I had been thinking about. She just listened while I dumped everything on her. When I finished, she asked if I remembered our previous conversation. I nodded.

“You love both Jennifer and Becky. And you want both of them. But you feel you have a commitment to Birgit that prevents having a relationship with either of them on the level you think they want.”

“That about sums it up. You just distilled my entire love life into three sentences. Pretty good.”

“I’m a girl. We’re better at this. Though I have to say, for a fourteen-year-old guy, you have your head screwed on reasonably straight. I guess you weren’t kidding when you said that Jennie and I were good teachers. In fact, you should call Jennie tonight. She may be able to give you a different perspective.”