I had broken up with Lyn early March, and she had immediately started dating my (former) best friend. I can’t say I was torn up or anything. I knew it had been coming. We had spent months trying to make it work, but it just wasn’t.

Maddy was a mess all spring. Her and Kelly were on and off and  on and off again. She was a wreck when Kelly started dating Jimmy in March. Kelly strung her along for months, half the year. I don’t even know how often the  broke up and got back together. Kelly told Maddy she loved her, but I don’t think Kelly was actually okay with it. If you’re not okay with loving someone, can you actually love them?

Anyhow, it was another few weeks before Maddy had made a semi-clean break from Kelly.

We grew close quickly. We started spending a lot of time together. We would talk until  all hours of the night. Come late spring, we figured dating was the next logical step.

It’s amazing how much a teenager’s mind lacks logic, but who knew that then.

Don’t get me wrong. It was sweet. It was as perfect as a high school relationship could be. It was flowers in the morning at school. It was a nice inscribed ring for Christmas. It was long notes when we were apart. It was sneaking out to kiss in the moonlight. Holding hands in the halls. It was all those things that make it sound perfect.

I don’t think it was wrong. I wouldn’t change a thing, I just know that it wasn’t the Camelot we sometimes thought it could be.

He came back, though. About a week before going back to school.

The day after that fight it was as if nothing had happened, but she was gone. It was over. The next week sped by, and she spent a lot of time with Stephen. She was going off to join him at Bay State, he was helping her pack.

She was so mad at me, we didn’t even say goodbye. About a month into the semester I heard she was dating Stephen.

Here’s the thing. I knew it was coming, the end of our relationship. I was ready for it. It stung more than I was ready for, though. We didn’t talk for almost a year after that.

We fought that night. It was related to going away, going off to college. She had proposed this idea of running away and getting married. I think it was anything to hold on, anything to not move forward.

I walked out on her. I did. She wanted to get married and I walked out on her.

Have you ever done something that seems absolutely horrible, but known it was the only choice you had at the time?

We were 18 for god’s sake. We were fighting about everything.

Yes, there are things I know that I will not share. I have gotten several messages from readers about what I think happened on that woeful night in the summer of ’96.

I’m not here to surmise. Nor would I cross that line. I can only tell you what I know.

Maddy and I woke up the next morning, I got her clothes out of the dryer and she got ready to leave.

I opened the front door to say goodbye, and we both saw the paper. It was horrible. The headline… it was too surreal. “Accident kills Local Teen, Injures Another” read the front page of the Observer. A picture of Kelly and a picture of a mangled pile of metal that had been Jimmy’s car were under the headline.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what Maddy was going to do.

She bent over and picked up the paper. Brought it into the kitchen and set it on the bar. She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands. She sat still for, I would say it was almost 15 minutes.

She got up and came over to where I was sitting in the hall, took my hand and led me upstairs to my bedroom.

We made love that morning to wash away all the dirt and grime of the past. I understand that now. It was our first time, and our last. I can’t lie, it was intense. We worked out all that was wrong in the world until we were cleansed.

After noon some time Maddy headed home. We would stay together officially for the next few weeks, but in reality we were just friends.

Career wise, specifically, if you’re lucky you get to have that moment where you realize what you want to do for the rest of your life and you go out and do it. On a personal level, you might be lucky enough to realize what you want in a relationship and get it. If you’re queer it may be the moment you realized that you were attracted to people you weren’t supposed to be, or you weren’t who you were supposed to be.

But do we define the moments or do they define us?

I had this moment in so many ways on that night in June. I was trying to take care of Maddy. I was washing her hair, and talking to her. I don’t remember what I was saying, though I know I was just making chatter. I just remember sitting on the edge of the tub with my feet in the water washing her hair and thinking this is my life.

In so many ways, this was the realization of what my life was to become.

I understood for the first time what it meant to truly love someone, to know that no matter what you would love this person. Not in a romantic, sappy way. In the way that friends become your family. In the way that the things we suffer together bring us closer than blood often can.

I digress. I knew then that Maddy and I would be the best of friends. It wasn’t going to be easy, and I knew that, too. I don’t know if that moment defined the rest of our relationship, or if what our relationship was defined the nature of that moment.

I helped Maddy out of the tub and into a towel. We walked to my bedroom and she sat on the bed. She reached up and touched my face. She pulled me close and kissed my cheek. I pulled her in close to me. I just wanted to feel her close to me.

She lifted my shirt off of me while she kissed me ever so gently. She took off my pants and she climbed into bed with me. She lay naked next to me, and I didn’t do a damn thing but hold her.

She fell asleep in my arms and I just held on tight. It was just that feeling when you know things are going to get worse before they get better, so you’re just tryin’ to hold off the bad a little while longer. I thought I could ward off all the changes that lay ahead for us if I just held on tight enough.

It was a party on the far side of the reservoir. A pre-graduation party. Everyone was there. Maddy and I were there with Stephen. Kelly was there with her boyfriend, Jimmy.

I can only tell you about what I know happened that night. We (Maddy, Stephen and myself) arrived some time around 9:30pm. By 11:00pm there must have been about a hundred people in that field, and at least two kegs. My parents were out of town that night, so I left the party around midnight to go let the dogs out. My friend Tommy walked back with me.

I left Maddy with Stephen, told her I would be back in about an hour.

Tommy drove me back around 1am. I got out of his car and headed into the field towards the party. I ran into Stephen and asked him where Maddy was. He said she was off talking to Kelly.

I can’t lie, my jealousy kicked into over gear. I went off in the general direction Stephen had nodded and began to scan for my girlfriend and her ex.

I noticed her sitting a few yards back in the woods under a tree, Kelly’s arms around her. I was pissed. I went straight for the keg and downed two or three cups of beer. As I walked back to where Maddy and Kelly had been I passed Kelly leaving with Jimmy.

She did not seem like she wanted to be going with him. For a minute I felt sorry for her, and yet she looked like she was sorry for me. It’s guilt, I told myself, and the anger returned.

I continued into the woods to find Maddy stumbling away into the darkness. I followed her. I followed her through the woods. I tried to make sense of what had just occurred.

I found out bits and pieces, but mostly she just talked about how Jimmy had taken Kelly. I couldn’t even tell if she was talking in the literal present or the metaphorical past.

About halfway home she stumbled and caught herself on a boulder. As she sat there I was able to see her for the first time in some moon light. She was a mess. Here eyes were swollem, her hair was messed up, and she had a giant bruise forming on her upper left arm.

I couldn’t stay mad at her, I was too worried as to what had happened. She wouldn’t tell me. She said it wasn’t important. She was honestly primarily distraught over Jimmy and Kelly.

The way she was talking I thought maybe Jimmy had caught them doing something in the woods and hit her.

She was so lost that night, I thought she would just walk into the water or wander into the night. I realized that night that I loved her, in ways I had not yet known or even understood.

Yeah, all that, and still I guess we technically broke up that night. Looking back at the worlds that collided that night, and the rippling effect of those collisions breaking up seems like it was the simplest and most uneventful portion of the night.

We went home that night. She spent the night with me at my parent’s house. They weren’t home,  so I brought her into the master bathroom and sat her down in the tub.

We didn’t really talk once we got inside. I just ran a warm bath for her and helped her into the tub.

She didn’t take off her clothes at first. She just sat in the tub, curled up, and cried quietly.

I consoled her as best I could without words. As she calmed down, I helped her out of her clothes.

I did see a few more bruises. She saw me looking at the on on her leg and she just started crying again, so I left it alone. Whatever had happened, was over. I just wanted to make her feel safe.

We ran into each other a few more evenings in the woods. Perhaps not completely by accident. I was still trying to find a way to talk about her.

There were several nights I met her in the same part of the shore line, anger and hurt welled up in her eyes. The fourth time we met in the woods, I finally let it fly.

I found out over winter break that Maddy and Kelly were a couple. I was ecstatic. I wasn’t the only one, I wasn’t alone.

Just the knowledge of a lesbian couple at school made me feel better.

By spring time, my curiosity was killing me. I needed to talk to Maddy, I needed to let her know she could tell me about her and Kelly. I had to find a way to let her know I was safe.

I was wondering what I could say to casually bring up the subject, when I ran into Maddy in the woods along the reservoir. She was sitting under a tree with tears rolling down her face. She wasn’t crying, per se. She rarely breaks down and crys. She just leaks tears down her face.

I sat down next to her and contemplated the moon. She just leaned over and put her head on my shoulder. I couldn’t think of a single appropriate thing to say. So, I didn’t.

We saw the sun come up that morning. I realized that night that I was even less alone than I thought.

We started talking more frequently after that.

Now what I don’t know about Maddy could fill Giants Stadium. So, I’ll start at the beginning.

We originally met when we were four or five, probably. We lived across the street from each other from the time her family moved into the neighborhood.

That would have been around ’82, I don’t really remember I was a young kid. We grew up playing in the neighborhood together, though.

It was an average neighborhood. It had all the good and bad of any suburban town.

Come the end of 5th grade, I went off to a charter school and I wasn’t around much. I grew apart from most of the kids I grew up with. Off at the arts magnet, studying dance.

I had a disappointing experience at a dance competition my sophomore year in high school. I decided to leave the arts and go back to the public highschool.

Yeah, it was nerve wracking. I had been in an arts school where I felt comfortable with being out.  Public school was a different story. Returning to the old neighborhood as an out lesbian was hard. How do you go back into the closet just cause you’re changing schools?

Beginning of junior year was rough for me. The adjustment made me a little crazy. It wasn’t even the harrassment, I could take the local jerks. It was the lonliness of feeling like the only one.

By spring of my junior year I was a mess. I mean I was crazy.

My girlfriend, Lyn, was a student at the arts magnet school. We saw each other at the end of the day when they were bussed to Cherry Lane for track practice. Our teams were combined so they could play sports. Our lives were stressed to their limit by that point.

My best friend, George, was madly in love with my girlfriend. He didn’t think I knew, but he could barely hide it. He remained respectful, but he saw her all day every day at school. I, meanwhile, was miles away in my miserable public school existence.

Lyn and I were constantly fighting. I thought my whole world was collapsing. Lyn wanted to see other people, which translated to George.  The tension was twisting constantly between us, and every day track practice brought all three of us together.

It was a living hell.

I am a little scared as to what we will find at the end of this journey. I can see this project growing, but with so much work ahead.

Let the stories roll. Let the questions flow.