Chapter 20

I think situation comedies on television and family oriented movies lead us to believe that anyone can be a parent, that raising children is a lark that we can successfully muddle our way through. However, the truth of the matter is that raising children is an experience that forever changes not only the child but also the parent. In my endeavor to shame Suzie into revealing something she wanted to keep secret, I had made a mistake that was to prove fortuitous. I had learned that the abuse she had earlier born and the values that had been instilled in her by her wayward mom were still part of her logical thought process. I had been naïvely and optimistically hopeful in thinking otherwise.

As we rode in silence I thought of this. I was not a therapist but was a student of human observation. I thought I understood what made people tick. I could look at someone in a monitor and in many cases sense that I needed to continue to watch that person. It is a sixth sense that many in law enforcement pick up over a period of time. It's hard to explain to a judge why you were observing one particular guy in a crowd of people when you don't really understand it yourself.

Natty and Suzie had both markedly changed in the months since we first met. My failing was my willingness to believe that these changes reflected a healing that left no scars. I made the blunder that a lot of parents make in not bringing up painful topics of discussion under the mistaken belief that doing so will somehow reopen old wounds better left untouched. The problem is that most of the time those wounds are still there festering ready to erupt at any moment of stress. Those ignored and problems gives the person a faulty basis of understand life's other problems.

In our situation I was lucky to have this time away from everything. Maybe this could be the opportunity for us to talk about those things we had hidden and forge a deeper and more meaningful relationship. To do this we would need to understand each other and more importantly understand and accept our own human nature and frailties. Natty, and especially Suzie, needed to recognize that their sense of worth must come from within and not from any other person's approval. To do that I knew I would have to expose my soul to each of them, revealing the ugly side of my not so perfect nature. But to lay bare my soul I had to understand myself in a way that I had not managed to do. I had to somehow come to grips within my own mind of my own inner.

I thought of all this with my arm casually draped around Suzie riding down that monotonous stretch of interstate, Suzie had one hand resting on my leg and the other on the armrest. Her hand on my leg seemed to be tracing some repetitive almost hypnotic pattern as it had for the past half-hour. My mind, that had been pondering thoughts of our relationship, was suddenly floating free. As my mind emptied I gently drift into that space between consciousness and sleep. My mind set free moved from one topic to the next and the focused on images of my first true love...

My first love had been to a young girl between the age of Natty and Suzie. Of course I had been near that age myself at the time. I thought about Jesse and felt that familiar heartache. I was young but knew it was true love, the forever type. I was 14 and she was 13, both of us in Junior High when I first met her. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was smiling and laughing and talking to her friends and suddenly I couldn't focus on anything else. I was shy but my feelings for her overcame my shyness. I had transferred in the middle of the school year and didn't know anyone in the new school. I had moved many times and knew that I would eventually make new friends but at the time I had none.

I had never dated, never kissed a girl, never held a girl's hand. If the truth be known, until that moment, I had never wanted to do any of those things. The silly young girls that I knew were almost a different species than the boys I hung out with. They didn't play ball; they didn't enjoy sports. They didn't fish; they didn't hunt. They wore dresses instead of pants and even the ones that occasionally wore pants wouldn't do anything to rip the knees out. Even my mom couldn't fathom playing so hard that you got as tattered and dirty as I did. I was a boy's boy and knew I would one day be a man's man.

When I boasted to my friends about what I would do if I had the opportunity like most other young men it was just bravado to fit in. Frankly, I didn't understand what all of the fuss was about. I had discovered my hand and figured that the pleasure that hand afforded was a much simpler and surer pleasure than the problematic dating and seemingly endless frustration that the older boys spoke of. I knew that moving into the new school would mean a few weeks without friends, but my experience was that within those two or three weeks I would again have a buddy or two and we'd be playing baseball.

All of those plans were put on hold when I saw Jessica Eileen Miller. Jessie was pert, always smiling. She wasn't beautiful but she was healthy and glowing. She had a button nose, blue eyes and dirty blonde hair that reached almost to her waist. She had a thin waist which accentuated her small breasts and made them appear larger than they were. I found out later that her breasts were barely a handful. Her eyes had a twinkle that spoke of fun and enjoyment of life. I knew from the moment that I saw her that I had to have her.

Love at first sight has been long debated but I know it happens. Not often, only once for me, but it does happen. Jesse was my one true love from the moment I saw her. Suddenly, I was at a loss as to how to proceed. Finding a ball game and finding friends that shared my interests were suddenly unimportant. Meeting Jesse, getting to know Jessie, and finding time for Jesse were suddenly my top priorities.

I was an intelligent and resourceful young man but I was new to the area. My opportunities to meet Jesse were hampered by three things. First, I didn't even know her name. Second, she ended up being an eighth grader while I was a ninth grader. This meant she had different classes and a different lunch period than I had. The third thing was that, although my parents had allowed me to set my own rules about dating, I suspected Jesse's parents would not allow her to even go on double dates.

At that point things seemed hopeless. I could only sit in the lunchroom and stare out at her on the playground smiling and laughing with her friends, friends that would end up being my salvation. Jim, an acquaintance who was to become my first friend at the new school, caught me looking at the three girls on the edge of the playground. Jim had been friendly but there was a measure of hostility in his voice as he asked, "Who are you looking at?"

Turns out Jim's sister Libby was one of Jesse's two friends. Jim thought I had eyes for his sister and was about to set me straight. He also ended up being my avenue of approach to Jess. She, however, was not initially flattered by the attention of an upper classman. Her rebuff was hard to take but I was persistent. In those days you could be persistent without being thought of as a stalker. My persistence didn't pay off until Nora, the other friend, told Jesse that since she wasn't interested in me would she mind helping her get a date with me. Jesse at first was encouraging of Nora in her quest to date me but, as it began to look like Nora might succeed, Jesse suddenly became reluctant.

Jesse told me later that she hadn't wanted to date me because of some of the same reasons that I wasn't interested in girls. First, she couldn't properly date anyway. Then she had good friends that she enjoyed spending time with. Finally, and I only found this out much later in our relationship, she had found the same satisfaction with her hand that I had and didn't see a need for anything further until she started high school.

That is not to imply that Jesse and I became intimate. We never had the time or opportunity for that to occur. Jesse and I still traveled different paths. Occasionally we could both manage to end up at Jim and Libby's house where we could talk. This wasn't very often because Jim and Libby were both upset when they felt they were being used to provide a convenient meeting place for us. I think at first I scared Libby, who thought I would take advantage of her friend. She convinced Jim not to invite me over when Jesse was over at her house. I couldn't even call Jesse at home because her mom was strict about limiting her phone time. On school nights she could have three minutes and talk was supposed to be about school subjects. On the weekends calls were limited to 15 minutes and successive calls from the same boys caused her mom to become suspicious and questioning, something that drove Jesse nuts.

It's remarkable that our relationship got off the ground at all given those circumstances, but it did. We found a connection that was something special. I didn't pressure her for more that touches or kisses and really those were mutually desired contact. At that time nice girls didn't have sex outside of marriage and I didn't question that Jesse was a nice girl. My one fight in Junior High was when Tommy Abernathy saw Jesse and her two friends walking down the sidewalk and said he would mind wetting his dick in any one of those pussies. I hit him so hard he almost broke his hip bone on the concrete sidewalk. I was on top of him as soon as he hit and had him around the neck threatening to beat the crap out of him unless he took that back. Jim ran up and pulled me off until he heard what Tommy had said and then we both threatened to make Tommy a eunuch if we caught him even looking at Jesse or Libby again.

Word got around about what happened, well a version of it, and I soon had to explain the truth to Jesse. The version she heard was that I told Tommy that she was my property and that he better keep his hands and his eyes to himself. She went ballistic that I would consider her property. I was blushing a deep red when I told her what he actually said. At that point I got my first kiss and even though it was a chaste kiss on the lips, it was the high point of my young life. As naïve as I was I was hoping that fate would offer me an opportunity to rescue her from someone or something that would make her want to bless me with another of those magical kisses.

I did receive more kisses as we grew closer and closer together. Although I was head over heels in love with her she only gradually moved from her feelings of friendship to those of love. The incident with Tommy was one thing. Another was my willingness to talk about my feelings and why I felt the way I did. We both were completely different in our likes and the only real thing we had in common was that our best friends were brother and sister. I was willing to give up talk of baseball, hunting, fishing and other guy things to sit with her and talk about the relative merits of 38 Special and The Police.