Chapter 51: Fallout and Self-Discovery

May 1979

The limo dropped me at home about 9:00pm. I took my stuff to my room, stripped, and hung up the tux. The rest of the things went into the hamper. I took a shower, put on shorts and a t-shirt, and walked down the hall into my dad’s office. I saw no reason to put this off any longer.

“Stephen, you need to explain yourself!” my mom demanded.

“I was in Mrs. McGrath’s, well, Mrs. Sanders’ now, wedding, as I said.”

“You walked her down the aisle! You’re sixteen and not even related to her! Why would she ask you to do that?”

“Mom, you would have to ask her. All I know is that her dad died when she was six, she has no brothers, and the only male blood relative she has is an uncle she does not like.”

“That doesn’t matter. Why would you agree to do it? It’s completely inappropriate.”

“I agreed because I like Mrs. Sanders. She asked me and I didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Of course you didn’t. You never see anything wrong with anything! People will talk!”

“Mom, I don’t care what people say. Mrs. Sanders asked me to do it and I did it.”

“You had no business doing that! And you certainly didn’t ask permission to do it. There’s something going on here that’s just not right and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

“Mom, Mrs. Sanders likes me. I earned her respect working hard and responsibly in her yard. She believes I’m a good person. She treats me like an adult. The same as the Spencers, the Blocks, the Abbadellis, and the van Hoeks. So do Andreas at the deli and Larry’s grandfather. I earned their respect by working hard. In fact, every adult I deal with in my life treats me as an adult and with respect, except you.”

“Do not disrespect me, Stephen! You are not an adult. I don’t know how you fool all of those people, but you don’t fool me for one second! I know you for what you are — immoral, deviant, and deceitful. There’s more going on with Mrs. McGrath than you are telling me and I WILL get to the bottom of it. And people WILL talk. They will say there was something going on between you and Mrs. McGrath!”

“It’s Mrs. Sanders now, Mom. And I don’t care what people say. Let them talk.”

“I wonder, Stephen, given what I know about your immoral behavior, if there actually was something going on between you and Mrs. McGrath.”

“Judy,” my dad interrupted, “that’s crossing the line.”

“Ray, your son had sex with that Swedish girl. But she wasn’t the first. Who was?”

“Judy...”

“No, Ray. I will find this out!” She glared at me, almost retching the words, “Stephen, who was the first person you had sex with?”

“THAT is none of your business, not now, not ever.”

“You are still a child, no matter what you think! You’re under eighteen. I will ask you one more time, who was the first person you had sex with?”

“And I’ll answer one more time, no actually, I’ll answer as many more times as you ask — that is none of your business. Not now; not ever.”

“Then you are grounded until you tell me. No visits with friends. No phone calls. No leaving the house for any reason except with express permission. Nothing.”

“Mom, I’m leaving in five weeks and I need to see my friends to say goodbye.”

“You just want to have sex with those girls. Well, I’m putting a stop to what their parents will not.”

“Dad, this simply isn’t right,” I protested. “She’s asking a question that is totally inappropriate. And she’s saying I can’t see my friends to even say goodbye before I go away for a year.”

“Judy, he has a point,” my dad said.

“No, he does NOT!” my mom screeched. “His immoral behavior has gone on long enough. It ends today.”

“Steve, go to your room for now,” Dad said quietly. “I’ll come to talk to you later.”

“OK, Dad,” I nodded, forcing my face expressionless.

I turned and left the office, shutting the door behind me. I needed to blow off some steam, having held back from saying to my mom what I really wanted to say. I changed into my swimsuit. I knew Mom would use this as a sign of disobedience if she saw me, but I no longer cared.

There really was nothing left to lose at this point. She thought I’d had sex with Jennie and nothing could change her mind. I realized that I needed to talk to Jennie before Mom did. I dialed her number and left her a message on her answering machine that she should talk to me before she spoke with my mom.

I swam laps until I was exhausted and went to my bathroom to shower and dress. I had calmed down a bit, but I was still tempted to just unload on my mom. To tell her that yes, I’d had sex with Jennie. That Jennie seduced me and I loved every minute of it, and so did she. That as of yesterday, I’d had sex with twenty-four girls. That I’d had a foursome and tell her explicitly about what I’d done. That I’d have sex with as many girls as possible just to piss her off.

I suddenly had clarity in my thinking about an answer to Joyce’s question of why I felt the need to have sex with so many girls. Jennifer had hit on the first piece — the control issue. It was one part of my life my mom couldn’t control, no matter what she did. A second piece was that it was that the best way I knew to upset my mom. The third piece was tied to my rejection of Roman Catholic teaching about sex being a sin.

All of those, either directly or indirectly, had to do with my mom. Jennifer had pushed me to stop yielding control of my life and seeking approval of others. For that matter, so had Stephanie. Those two seemed to be completely in sync. And I was in sync with them. The connection. I knew I had it with Jennifer and I expected that I’d have it with Stephanie. Jennifer was sure I would have that connection, and it would be even stronger.

While I was trying to wrap my mind around what that meant, Dad came down to my room.

“Steve, swimming when I told you to go to your room only made your mom angrier.”

“Dad, I could have done a lot of things, but I needed to burn off the energy that otherwise would have been used to yell at her. Doctor Mercer suggested that I swim or run or something when I felt my temper rising. It works. It helps me calm down and regain focus. I stayed calm, Dad.”

“You did. And that’s a good thing. But your mom is convinced that something inappropriate happened between you and Mrs. McGrath. She’s said you are out of control and that the only way to solve it is to ground you and cancel your trip.”

“Dad! No!”

“I didn’t say that was going to happen. That’s what your mom wants to do.”

“Dad, she’s been looking for a reason to do that ever since I brought it up the first time. She can’t stand losing control over my life. The problem is, she’s already lost it. Instead of giving me some freedom like any teenager would expect, she got worse. She’s doing the same to Stephanie, and that’s going to blow up in mom’s face.”

“Son, you can go on your trip. I won’t cancel it at this point, no matter what she says. I told her that.”

“What about not seeing my friends? I did nothing to warrant grounding.”

“Steve, she has a point that you weren’t completely honest about your role in the wedding. It’s true you asked about being in the wedding, but you left out an important detail. One that, if your mother had known, would have caused her to forbid you to participate.”

“Dad, Mrs. Sanders talked to Mom a couple of times about the wedding. They talked at church and they talked here before we left. I have no idea what was said because those were private conversations. But Mom did approve based on what Mrs. Sanders said, not what I said.”

“Son, were you involved with that young woman in any way?”

There was no way I could deny it outright, I just couldn’t do that. A refusal to answer would be the same as a ‘yes’. So I simply told the truth.

“Yes, Dad, I was. Willingly. It was just after my fourteenth birthday. It only happened twice, and it’s been over for almost two years.”

He just looked at me for a moment.

“Steve, I can’t condone that; I also can’t condemn it. My first time when I was fifteen was with a twenty-two-year-old girl back in New Hampshire in 1932, when I was on a skiing vacation with my family. But your mom would never understand.”

I wasn’t really surprised by this revelation. Dad seemed to have had an interesting past, though I only knew bits and pieces of it. I wondered what he was going to do now. I doubted he’d tell Mom, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Dad, there is nothing I can do to change what has happened. Mom can’t deal with the fact I’m growing up. Nothing can change that, either. I have been responsible every step of the way. I had a job where I kept getting more responsibility, and that led directly to the programming work for Doctor Grossi. With very few exceptions, I followed her rules, and I never hid anything except my sex life from her. To be honest, that is just none of her business.”

“Steve, would you say the same about your sister?”

“Actually, I would. Stephanie has to make her own decisions, just as I did. Just as you did. Just as mom did. It’s really none of Mom’s business so long as there isn’t force involved.”

My dad chuckled, “Son, when you have a daughter, you might just change your mind.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. I hope to be like Mr. Spencer, or at least like Mr. van Hoek or Mr. Block. Both of them knew I was having sex with their daughters. Neither approved, but they accepted the fact that their daughters had to make their own decisions. Mr. Spencer is totally accepting of Melanie’s sexuality.”

“Your mom was right, though, about you wanting to have sex with the girls you’re seeing.”

“Well, of course she’s right!” I replied with a smile. “But sex is not the only thing. In fact, it’s not even the most important thing. I know you might find that hard to believe, but it’s true. My best friends are girls — Mary, Melanie, Jennie Sanders, Beth, and Bethany. Of course, Larry’s a good friend, but I get along better with the girls. I always have.

“Think about it. Jannelle Green when we lived in Yorba Linda. Mary Dixon when we lived in Palos Verdes. Tara Schumacher when we lived in Tucson. Terry Schaeffer when we lived in Anderson Township. Kim Smith when we lived on Milford Hills Drive. Jennifer before she became my girlfriend. Does Mom think I was having sex with all of them?”

“I hadn’t even considered that,” Dad said thoughtfully. “You always have had lots of girls around, even when you were younger. You get along best with your cousin Vickie. You and your sister get along much better than you and Jeff.”

Yes, I thought, it’s a very good thing he had no clue just how well I got along with Vickie and Stephanie!

“So, Dad, can I see my friends before I leave? I’m going to be super busy with Summer school for most of June. I’m leaving in thirty-six days. I want to spend time with Larry, Jennifer, and Melanie, but especially Jennifer. Joyce and I have already said our goodbyes. This week I’ll do that with most of the kids at school. But I need to be with my friends before I leave.”

“You know my opinion, but I need to talk to your mom first. I’ll talk to you after they leave for church.”

“OK, Dad. I am invited to a Memorial Day party at Melanie’s that is on the calendar and already approved. Plus the going away party that Jennifer and Larry have planned that is on the calendar as well.”

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow, Son.”

“OK. Goodnight, Dad.”

He left to go talk to Mom. That would, I was sure, be an interesting conversation. I held out hope that Dad would put his foot down on this. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t reveal the confidence about Jennie because all it would do was make mom harden her position. There was still the implied threat of her comment about me not being as smart as I thought I was. That bugged me, but there really was no use worrying about it.

I pulled out my journal and began writing. I was searching for an answer to Joyce’s question. What was I looking for? What was driving me? As I thought about it, I wondered why it was that I broke off some relationships. The ones I broke off always had something missing. What was missing?

I had pushed away some girls who wanted relationships. Why? Just because of Jennifer and Joyce? I hadn’t done that when Birgit was alive because I had both Becky and Jennifer. I had also pushed away other girls who were great in bed, but I had felt something was missing. Thoughts were spinning round-and-round, but I was reaching no conclusion.

I decided to take a different approach to solving the conundrum. What was there in my relationship with Jennifer that made it work? We had been friends first, but then when we made love we found our souls were connected in some unique way. Our relationship was on a completely different level than any other.

Except that wasn’t true. I had the same thing with Stephanie. And then, out of the blue, something hit me. Stephanie and Jennifer were almost identical in every way down to the strawberry blonde hair. Was my attraction to Jennifer because I had been willfully blind to my true feelings for Stephanie? If the connection with Stephanie was there as well, and I thought it would be, then many things would make sense.

But I was still missing something. Why the other girls? Why not just Jennifer? What was I looking for? And then it hit me. I was looking for a connection. I was looking for other people who I could share that same connection with. If I couldn’t find one, then Jennifer was truly a unique soulmate. Stephanie was a very different thing because I could never marry her or have children with her. I needed someone else with the connection.

But if that was the case, why did I need to keep looking. I had Jennifer. I didn’t need to keep looking. It made no sense. And then a single word popped into my brain — Birgit. I had thought she was my life partner, and Fate had taken her from me. If Fate took Jennifer away, who would I have?

Joyce suddenly became second best, something to settle for. And I realized that, somehow, Joyce knew it. I would be looking for someone who I had a connection with. I didn’t have one with her. Oh, I could marry her and probably be very happy, but she was right — I’d keep trying to find someone with the connection.

With Jennifer, the connection didn’t show up until we made love the first time, despite being friends for a year. With Stephanie, I assumed it was there, but I wouldn’t know absolutely for sure until our first time together. That’s what was driving me — the search for the connection.

So many things now fell into place. I had an answer for Joyce. One she knew was coming; one she had figured out. Even if she didn’t know exactly what it was, she had the basic idea. I needed something very specific from a woman and I was looking for it. Joyce did not have it, and she knew it. The only question now was when to tell her.

Joyce was going to date while I was gone, so I didn’t need to call her now and tell her, nor do it by letter. We’d talk when I got back, as she had asked. In some ways, I was sad about the outcome, but in the end, I knew Joyce was right and I simply needed to deal with it.

Now that I had put my finger on why, I had to figure out what to do. Could I find a connection without sex? Did another one even exist? I thought back to my relationship with Jennifer before we had become lovers. Were there signs? I didn’t think so. I’d have to ask her.

Thinking about Jennifer, I wondered if her attitude was based on a conviction that I would never find a connection and would always come back to her. That would make sense. But what if the connection wasn’t always instantly known, or what if it could develop? That, too, fit Jennifer’s thinking. She was OK with dalliances and random deflowerings.

But how did Joyce fit into her thinking? Perhaps if the connection could develop over time, then I had been with Joyce long enough that Jennifer felt it would never develop. And that could explain her attitude towards Kathy Will, that our mutual crush could be a hint of a connection. Was that the issue with Becky? That the connection could develop, at least in Jennifer’s mind?

What about Melanie? No, Jennifer’s problem with her was not about a connection, but about her own fears and desires. Melanie and I had something special, but even Melanie acknowledged in the end that it wasn’t like what Jennifer and I had. Again, this fit neatly into my theory.