As you can tell from the title of this chapter, my 9th grade year had its ups and downs. My first day of school was cold and started painfully early on that lovely, typical day in Puget Sound.
My high school looked basic, and I was not feeling too excited or bored by the reality that I was to attend that school for what I thought would be a full four years. Turns out? I was destined to go to multiple schools in multiple US states those years.
My middle sister (the half-evil one, not kidding), was already attending that school and she was, by this time, a super fan of me. Her pride and joy, her little brother. As you remember, I had won one out of the total 14 or so fist fights we got in. My victory being the last fight. My middle sister was now attached to me in some freakish wolf-pack to the alpha kind of way.
My middle sister always had a big grin on her face, as if she was constantly on head meds. It made me kind of wonder what my dad wanted to change about her personality considering he was an uppity prick too. Maybe she was just too high-energy for his already beaming fake-optimism? No idea.
Entering one of the main doors of the school I could see, right in front of me, was where I was expected to eat lunch every day. Their entrance area was literally the cafeteria. That was connected to the main office, and the library which were both off to my right and split in half by a wide room leading back outside. In front of me? Another wide room leading outside and to my left, two, widely separated hallways, each leading to rows of classrooms on each side of each hall.
In those two hallways existed most my classes. At the end of the hallways was another connecting hallway, making a full square shape. In the middle of that square sat an outdoor area where what was intended to be a garden. I'm sure the original architect fantasized about people keeping up with that garden, but they underestimated the laziness of the average human, and didn't consider much of the year, it would be hard to grow anything worth looking at. To summarize: The garden was just a bunch of dirt, pots and dead plants.
My geography teacher was a skinny athletic middle-aged dude (around 50) who had the personality of Robert Downey Jr. while looking like a scrawnier black-haired Kevin Spacey. If there were a teacher I'd expect to have a scandal of impregnating countless students, it was him. Why? Because he was smart, charming and I could see half the girls in the class eye-banging him while laughing at everything he said. I laughed too, and you can take that however you like.
Another class I had belonged to a boring, short, fat, old, gray-haired math teacher who is barely worth mentioning as he had zero personality. He was the type of teacher to not attempt teaching you whatsoever beyond robotically rapping off math equations while ignoring whether or not you were even paying attention. He clearly had the philosophy of "If they don't pay attention, that's not my problem, I'll just fail them." and he did, me, my friends, and a number of other people. The same man was also my science teacher, but I was good at science, I passed that class just fine with minimal effort.
Another teacher I had was a hot 24-year-old woman, I desperately wanted to sleep with her. She wore glasses, had pale skin, light brown hair and was my favorite English teacher ever. Yes, even better than the English teacher I mentioned in an earlier chapter who looked like Joseph Stalin. Mind you I don't like Joseph Stalin, just saying, he did that look better than... you know what forget it, this is a rabbit hole.
We had a weirdo art teacher who was pretty typical for an art person. Older, pulled back brown hair, wearing ridiculous hippy outfits and had a very skinny physique. That was the class where a weird middle eastern boy with a shaved head would always sit next to me. The boy would wear a winter jacket seemingly no matter what time of year it was, and one day, he decided to piss in a bottle that had previously held his beverage. Where? In the middle of class. Where specifically? Under our shared desk.
The boy, not giggling, not amused, not anything, dead faced pulled the bottle up above our desk, now fill of his piss (which I assumed was tea) and said "Hey, I just pissed in this." My reaction? I immediately stood up, walked over to our art teacher and notified her I was sitting next to a freak. Me, in all black with a Rob Zombie T-shirt pointing at the real problem in society: Truly socially inept abominations.
The boy was immediately removed from the classroom where all the civilized students who knew how to ask for a bathroom break remained. You might ask "Well, maybe he was foreign, did you think about that? Maybe he came from the country of Piss-in-bottle-land?" No, he was American, perfect accent, born here, solid, homegrown, American.
Then there was my journalism class where I also wanted to bang my teacher. She was about 45 years old, had pale skin, brown hair and so on as well. I actually think, realistically, both teachers would totally sleep with me/date me if I was older. They looked at me in a flirtatious way, and I loved it. Of course, I would never try to get with either because we live in a society. However! If those teachers were to have met me when I was an adult, and we were both single? Oh man. Call me guy with common sense in one case, and a cougar hunter in another. With either teacher, I would have been a happy lad.
This is of course does not actually take away from my core morals. These are fantasies about sleeping with my teachers, not realities. I did at the time refuse to sleep with anyone I did not love. Now that I'm much older and have gone through a lot more, I had to add "Also if you threaten to destroy my life, and I know you have the ability to/will lie about whatever you want to destroy my life, yeah, I may succumb to being extorted by you." to the list as some people are absolute shit.
I know, I don't love bringing it up, but when it hits my mind, I gotta talk about it as I am not the type to let things bottle up till I erupt. I just get it out, and I feel a little less damaged. That second situation unfortunately did eventually happen to me, and on top of them successfully "getting what (they) wanted" all parties going for my throat publicly, got a fat payday as well. Their checks paid to them by the company making the feature about what a monster, they want me to be (the bigger the monster, the bigger the production company's profits).
To have someone on the phone, bragging to you about how much money they made lying about you? Where is a Snickers bar when you need one?
So! I wanted to bang my middle-aged teacher. She was really hot, really nice, and also happened to be my photography teacher on top of being my journalism teacher. You know why I also felt she had a thing for me? She made me chief editor of the school newspaper. Sweet Jesus, the woman wants me (so I thought and still think due to the constantly flirtatious looks and special treatment). Much later I crossed paths with her, and she was super pregnant. I thought "Dang, missed my chance" and "Aren't you a little old to be pregnant?" but of course I said neither to her because again, society, we live in one.
So, while it was fun talking about the bulk of my teachers, time to get to the people closer to my own age.
My middle-sister knew a girl who really wanted to date me. She was a goth girl who had a face covered in zits. Pale skin, black hair at the tips with her roots showing an almost ginger brown color. If she didn't have so many zits, I'm sure I'd see some freckles there somewhere too.
When I first met this girl due to my sister forcefully introducing us, I wasn't attracted to her, like, at all. The pimples on her face were so overwhelming, I kind of felt freaked out. That and, this girl hung out with the druggy goths, not my beat.
There was the pale curly black-haired goth who everyone said was a "slut". Specifically, someone told me "She's like a pizza, everyone's had a slice" and I was like "That analogy makes no sense but ok." There was also another, very Jewish-looking, also curly haired pale skinned girl, only this one wore glasses, was the least attractive, and I would later learn that she had numerous lesbian experiences with my soon to be girlfriend. There was a creepy green mohawk dude who was like 5 foot 4 inches tall, who would also always hate me. There was a couple of twin guys my soon-to-be girlfriend hung out with, one super gay and the other a chill AF kind of dude. And there was the druggie flirty chick who always wanted to bone me friend of her as well. I only knew that because this girl made it painfully obvious.
Regardless, me not wanting to let anyone down or break anyone's heart, I asked out the 5 foot 7, 119 (or so) pound zit-faced girl because that's what I was expected to do. We dated for a couple weeks, and it was great. I started to warm up to her, and the acne, started to disappear in my mind the more I got to know her.
I imagine what you may be thinking "Dude, you had a back covered in zits, how could you judge her?" Well, if she had acne on her back, and not blocking her face, it would be a lot easier to actually SEE her. It wasn't about the zits, zits are like a speed bump on a long road (the road being your overall appearance, your face being the majority of what makes up the road). But if the biggest part of your immediate appearance is zits, we're talking about a road not just with a speed bump her or there, we're talking about a road made out of speed bumps... even if you don't get that analogy, I like it. It fits. And I had some zits on my face too, but not that many. It was intense.
That's actually something she used to make fun of me for, my analogies.
We were both big into literature. That, and we loved talking on the phone to each other. In fact, I'd bet this girl and I talked on the phone longer collectively than I ever talked on the phone with anyone in my entire life. Soul mates? I don't really believe in that stuff anymore, but this girl and I, we had something special.
But did I ruin it? Yes. For a moment.
I got on the school bus one day, and the guys who lived near me wanted to see who my girlfriend was. I pointed her out to them, and a dude who ironically had acne on his cheeks said "Dude, she's ugly". If you want a realistic image of what she looked like, without having to see her yourself, she basically looked like the ginger girl from Stranger Things, only with tons of pimples. Do you have that visual now? Fact of the matter is, she wasn't actually ugly. It's just me, and people like me, couldn't get past the zits till we actually got to know her.
So now that the guys who lived near me weighed in, saying she was ugly, what did I do? Bro, I literally broke up with her. What an asshole right? Yeah, well, while we were broken up, as I found out later, she had sex with some random dude. It was like the 3rd dude she had slept with in her life by that time. Of course, I didn't know this happened till much later, and right after dumping her, I immediately felt the void in my life.
As a result of feeling like crap for a week (which she clearly did not feel in the same way as she was busy sleeping around), I decided to ask her out again. Just like that, I said "I'm sorry for dumping you. Will you go out with me again?", and she said yes.
From that point on, to my knowledge, she was loyal to me. Not in every way, no, but loyal in the physical affection sense.
She had a serious problem with weed and cigarettes. Pretty sure I dumped her a total of seven times throughout our relationship due to the fact that yeah, I wanted her to stop smoking everything, and she refused. There were other break ups, but the bulk of them revolved around her addiction to drugs.
While we were together, in between all the times I dumped her, she and I would often heavily make out to the music of Marilyn Manson. Barely into a relationship with her, I began wearing black trench coats and other clothes that were darker than ever. I loved my combat boots and she loved me more for wearing all those things. Yes, the same combat boots I would eventually kick my father bloody with out of self-defense. (Pro tip: Don't choke your badass son, even if he points out the obvious, that your wife is a bitch. Your son will defend himself and whoop your middle-aged tubby ass.)
So, my mission was, I loved this girl, and I wanted to lose my virginity to her. She did eventually tell me how many guys she had slept with, and she also revealed some really terrible things she went through that I don't want to talk about in this book as it still hurts my heart to this day. The point is, I felt like I really knew her, and that she knew me. I felt like she was my home, and everything else was pretty much just background.
We talked to each other collectively longer than most married couples talk to each other over a decade. This was definitely love, and this was definitely the person I wanted to give my all to. Even to this day, I can point at that and say, "He loved her and she loved him."
Yes, she lied to me about smoking pot. Yes, she lied to me about smoking cigarettes. Yes, she slept with someone after only being broken up with me for a few days... but you know what? My heart didn't care about any of that. Whenever I broke up with her, I regretted it and desperately needed her back. My ability to forgive people, even to this day, is overwhelming if I know, deep down, they love me.
My girlfriend made a joke at one point, saying that she heard guys have a problem getting it up the first time. I laughed and felt certain I would not have that problem. One day, we were making out on a dock leading to a large pond. This pond was in the middle of the nearby military base where she lived. I wanted to lose my virginity to her right there, on that dock, and she was ready too. But? Despite me being desperate to do it with her, I also felt the area we were in was inappropriate for it. It was far too easy for people to see us, so? My manhood got stage fright, just like she said it would.
When my girlfriend realized her warning became a reality, she laughed and said it was ok. I was bummed out for a week after, losing my shot.
By that point, we had already experienced a lot of activities together. We ran around third base but never further. At some point, we decided to skip school together and as we walked away from the campus, we saw that a nearby Mormon church had a very large parking lot behind it. Even further, a grouping of evergreen trees with plenty of privacy.
When we realized the opportunity within that group of trees, I knew, this was the moment. She and I walked toward the trees, but before we could get there, it began to rain. She said, "Oh crap, this sucks." I stopped, smiled, and closed my eyes, standing still right in front of her. In my mind I visualized it being sunny, I asked the rain mentally, to cease, and wished for generally clear weather.
Would you believe me if I told you the rain stopped? Do I even care if you believe me? It happened, so if you want to be wrong about whether or not that story is true, that's your problem.
Side note: After this event went down, I mentioned to my mom, you know, the thing with the weather. My mom said, "You're a Druid Greg!" and after she explained to me what a Druid was, I thought "You are ridiculous mom." Because of course I don't control the weather, it was a coincidence. Just like when my grandma canceled our family reunion because the forecaster said it would be rainy, and I insisted to my grandma that it would be sunny so she shouldn't cancel it... yeah... it wound up being sunny. Again, coincidence. I'm not all-powerful when it comes to the weather. I'm pretty sure there was a time I asked for the weather to change, and it didn't... I just can't think of one right now.
Back to the parking lot, low and behold, we got the weather we wanted, so we both climbed into the tree line. Underneath the trees, we found a condom wrapper and some other garbage. Obviously, we did not invent the concept of "behind a Mormon church sex".
And for the second out of the total three times out of my life, I couldn't get it up.
I have made love more than... rough estimate? 5,000 times? Maybe much more? Yet those 3 times will haunt me forever. I am getting older too, so maybe more times are ahead of me.
Regardless, this time? She wasn't having it. She put her mouth on me and essentially summoned the confidence in me to bring her to the place she wanted to be. After she got me aroused, she hopped on. As she moved back and forth on me, I looked up at the trees and thought "This is happening... this is everything." Connecting to this person? Finally feeling like I belong with someone and am accepted to the point of them wanting to simulate breeding with me? Talk about the highest level of human validation. I took over after a short bit, and after, she accused me of not being a virgin at all due to how "well" I performed. Apparently, I knew what I was doing. Something the girl 4 years my senior had also implied about me much earlier in life. This kind of thing just came naturally. Almost like most XY's were born to reproduce with XX's and continue to forward the human species or something.
But the summer just before that? I forgot to mention... I got frisky with a second ebony goddess. Just kidding. Unlike the first ebony girl I dated, this one was no princess. She looked pretty average and was my sister's friend. Another girl older than me? That compensates for the "not as hot as the other ebony girl" aspect of my interests.
This girl lived about 10 condos down from me, same floor. She could come right over and hit me up whenever she was feeling down to get it on. Unfortunately for both of us, I was not super into her.
I did however get my second touch of boob from her while we were making out on my bed one time. She was very excited by that moment and go figure, she was also a twin. Did the twins swap out and take turns visiting me to make out? That would have been a hilarious prank to me. But no... right after I touched her boob while kissing, I was certain I had no interest. Not long after I bailed on that relationship and was off to start high school, destined to meet my acne-infested gothic love.
My goth girlfriend and I had sex a lot. We would finish, wait two minutes, and go again, and again, and again. Condoms were a disaster so at some point we just gave up on them and di everything skin to skin. We had sex in countless places, in the middle of the woods, while watching movies, behind every other cement wall we could find. At one point I found myself fingers deep in her by a convenience store in the middle of the night. We were obsessed. We were insane together.
With this all considered, yeah, there was a pregnancy scare. There was also an STD scare. I'll cover both.
The STD scare happened because I shaved my genitals for the first time before I slept with her. I wanted to be clean and ready to go. I did groom myself in the past with trimmers, but never with a razor. When we first had sex, it was two people with well-maintained genitals, feeling it all. But not long after, the red, massive pimple-looking bumps showed up all over my pubic region. To me it looked just like what I imagined herpes would look like. I was a bumpy mess down there and it terrified me. I looked like a total freak and after passively accusing her of infecting me on the phone, I went to the ER with my mom. She assured me she did not have an STD, and once the doctor looked at it, I knew she was right.
"That's ingrown hairs." the doctor said as soon as he saw my business down there. He informed me some people can't handle shaving their genitals, and that they just have to use trimmers instead. Feeling like an idiot, I called my girlfriend back up and apologized for even passively suggesting she may have infected me with a disease. She was forgiving. In fact, not long after that, me still being completely broken out, we were having sex again. I was still covered in bumps, and she didn't care. I cannot stress enough how gross I was down there. I could physically feel large bumps all over, going in and out, rubbing against and doing everything else, and she seemed to be all the happier. What? A thought crossed my mind during "Man, she really does love me." But still, I knew for that period of time? I was physically a monster. It had to be love because I was horrifying down there for weeks.
As for the pregnancy scare? She called me up one day and let me kow, she hadn't had her period in a while. We both, being so young, just assumed she was pregnant and began panicking. Without much hesitation, I had made up in my mind that I could handle this. I said "Well, I'll be the father of your baby, I mean, I'll be there for you and support whatever decision you make." Yeah, I was freaking out, but I knew I would not want to abort my child. I was pro-choice, I think if other people want to stop the heartbeat of their unborn child, that's on them, and none of my business, but for me? There was no choice. I'm pro-choice for others, but for me? My position is "I hope she keeps it, but if she doesn't, I'll love her anyway." I simply would rather step up than run away. There is no responsibility more important than fatherhood.
Despite my white-knight mentality with accidental pregnancies, my girlfriend indicated she wanted to try the morning after pill because it was too soon in her life to have a baby. I stated I would still support whatever decision she made and notified my mom we needed to get a pill prescribed to her. My mom reacted with "Are you out of your god damn mind boy?" written all over her face but was also willing to help us get through the situation.
Shortly after we made up our minds about what we'd all do, but hadn't even started to do it yet? Ring ring. "Hey, Greg? I got my period."