Rachel really got the shit end of the stick when it came to me. It’s not that I didn’t love her, we wouldn’t still be friends otherwise. It’s just that looking back I see so blatantly that I kept parts of me private from her. I couldn’t risk the chance of investing my full self.

Stephen, well I’ll get to that eventually. Suffice it to say that I was a giant fortress of walls with him. He probably was with me, too. We used each other. Hindsight being 20/20….I even knew while we were together that I was completely closed up.

In my hurting  hormonal teenage mind I really thought I had fallen in love with Rachel. Stephen, I never tried to kid myself about. I didn’t try to kid him, either. If we were one thing, we were at least honest.

There were a couple of other girls in college, after Stephen. They have their own stories, but Abigail took the cake when it came to heart break.

God, I loved that girl. I thought I was going to marry her. She ripped my heart apart piece by piece. She chipped away at it, little by little, until my whole world just crumbled around me.

Yet, explaining how she broke my heart is hard.

We started dating at the very beginning of our senior year in college. Three years into the relationship I’m ready to start a family, and she tells me she doesnt think she can marry me……ever.

It’s not that I needed to get married right then, it’s just that the three years had apparently been a lie. The talks about our lives, our goals, our love, our future… all were apparently conditional on money.

The funny thing, she still thinks I broke her heart. In the end I was the one who did the walking. It wasn’t pretty, though.

I became so incredibly jaded. So jaded, that I was totally okay with being jaded. I had seen nothing but Abigail and I together in my future for so long. When I finally realized that wasn’t happening. I just couldn’t see a future. After a while I didn’t want to see a future. I was content for quite some time with the idea of only living for here and now.

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

I went to my first prom with a neighborhood kid name Tommy.  Ha ha, we had sorta dated way back. As much as you can “date” someone at the age of 11 when the furthest you can go is two blocks down the road. Anyhow, we grew apart, but every once in a while we would both be hangin’ out and get to talking. It was my junior year, he was a senior. I was dating sorta dating Kelly, he was sorta crushin’ on me. I didn’t go to make Kelly jealous or anything (although it did), I went cause he was an old friend. Truth be told he reminded me of the days when things were a little more innocent. Maybe a little more simple. Whatever, the point is…it wasn’t romantic.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?

That’s a trick question right there. Believe it or not, I would have to qualify my first love as Taylor. I hear talk of him once in a while. I think we even might have been at the same party once or twice after high school. We don’t really talk, though.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

When I was young, for a short while, I hung out with a small group of neighborhood girls. It didn’t last long. They weren’t the cool crowd, or the jocks, or the geeks, or any other high school group. The bond was the neighborhood. Somehow when you were inside the neighborhood, none of that clique stuff mattered.

Anyhow, we thought we were real bad. My friend stole two wine coolers from her parents fridge. Two wine coolers between six or seven of us. Oooh, we were so bad ass.

4. What was your FIRST job?

My first job was working at the corner store a few blocks from my house. Crazy ass shit.

5. What was your FIRST car?

My first car, was a ’66 Ford Mustang. I wanted a Mustang just like all the guys in the neighborhood had growing up. Stephen bought me the ’66 from his aunt. He gave it to me for our one year anniversary and my birthday. They were three days apart.

Prior to my sophomore year in college, I drove my parents Buick tank around.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

My girl friend. The love of my life.

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

That would, also, be my girlfriend.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Mrs. Carman

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

California. Remind me to tell you about California some time.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?

Did Rachel tell you we had been friends way back when we were little kids. Yeah, she lived right across the street from my from the time I was 3 and 1/2. I guess that would make her my first best friend. And, of course, we still talk.

11. Where was your FIRST sleepover?

Remember those girls I was tellin’ you about. The wine cooler girls. I’m pretty sure my first sleep over was at one of their houses.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

I don’t mean to be redundant, but it was my girlfriend.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

I was in my cousin Renee’s wedding when I was 3. I don’t remember a damn thing.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Besides kiss my girlfriend? Umm, I took a shower.

15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

The first concert, I guess would technically be Rachel’s brother’s band. What were they called? It was something like Jack Hammer, but not. Beating Daniel. Well, you can see why they didn’t get far.

16. FIRST tattoo?

It’s a freedom knot at the middle of my lower back.

17. First piercing?

I went straight for the tongue.

18. First foreign country you’ve been to?

Canada.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?

In theaters? E.T. It scared the shit outta me, don’t tell anyone.

20. When was your FIRST detention?

Oh god, umm, I got caught cutting school. Or rather, I got caught sneaking back into school after cutting class. I was a mess in high school.

21. What was the first state you lived in?

New York

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?

I actually had three. We had one of those two doubles connected with a common room thing going on. It was some miracle of housing at Bay State. So, the other person in my double was this girl Michelle. I had actually known her from elementary school, but then she moved away from town. I think I freaked her out. The person she knew in elementary school was so different from the person I was going into college.

I had two more roommates. Karen, who was awesome. We had many late night bonding sessions. We were both a hot mess like whoa, but I think we managed to not feed each other’s messes okay. Just nice to have someone else who got it.

Number three was Karen’s double mate, Laura. Laura was just pretty much never home. I think Karen saw her during the day (they were both acting majors), but she was never home. I didn’t ask questions. Maybe I should have.

…but don’t you want to know more? Why do these surveys never ask the real questions?

A. Where did you give your FIRST blow job?

Down by the water falls. The first, last, and only one. You wanna know who? Well, that’s a whole other blog entry.

B. Who lit your FIRST j?

That woulda been Mikey Douglas. Wait, the statute of limitations would be up on something like that, right?

Come on…..aren’t we getting to the real memories?

C. Who was the FIRST person to hold your hair while you puked from drinking yourself stupid?

Kelly. And I was so incredibly stupid.

D. Where were you the FIRST time you had to fend off a neighborhood boys advances while playing hide and go seek?

I was hiding behind the shed in the Callari’s back yard.

E. Who was your FIRST? (you know…)?

Who took my virginity? Is that what you’re asking? Taylor. Taylor took it in the mechanical sense. In that he was the first person to penetrate me.

Kelly was the first person I gave it to willingly.

Sorry, have I said too much?

The Taylor thing made it even more intense. We spent a lot more time together after that, she was my self-appointed body guard. Stephen probably began to grow tired of me always being along on dates. At the end of the night, we would walk home together. We would take the scenic route down by the water’s edge. There was a fallen tree there, we would sit and talk until late in the night some times. Just the two of us.

We talked a lot about love. Her relationship with Stephen. My failed relationship with Taylor. We talked a lot about Taylor, actually. Not about what had happened, but a lot about how it felt. How angry and strongly Kelly reacted. How afraid I had been. How Kelly had made me feel better.

There was one night I broke down and started crying. I still felt ashamed for letting Taylor violate me in so many ways. Kelly took me into her arms and held me there an hour or so. Constantly reassuring me that it wasn’t my fault.

I fell asleep there in her arms until she stirred. It was time to go home before we were missed. She lifted my head towards hers, and she kissed me square on the lips.

The embrace lasted maybe a minute, maybe a minute and a half, but it filled my stomach with butterflies and it felt right.

We hurried home after that. She kissed me again briefly before we parted ways.

I barely remember the walk from her backyard to my bedroom. A million and one things were running through my mind.

Yes, I had kissed a girl.

Stephen was going to be a senior in the fall, it was all Kelly could talk about.

Taylor would be a junior, he got his driver’s license, a pickup truck, and a job at a burger hut.

Taylor would pick me up in his truck, drive me around town and then take me back to his dad’s house. He wanted more from me than I wanted to give, but I let him take a lot.

This night in April, though, he went too far. When I stopped him, it started a fight. I was sitting on his bed crying when he got angry and tackled me. I fell over backwards and landed on my head. The weight of him coming down on me twisted my neck around. I thought for a moment it would snap.

I completely broke down. I collapsed into what could only be described as a mess on his bedroom floor. I was deafeated, and unsure as to what would happen next.

It took me a few minutes to gather myself into a moveable form. I stood up, using the dresser to support me. I slowly began to walk towards the door.

He reached out to grab my hand and I jumped. He caught my hand anyway. He begged me to stay. He apologized up and down. He got down on his hands and knees.

I stayed.

The next day after school, Kelly comes up and notices the literal pain in my neck. She asks me what happened, and I begin to talk.

Next thing I know Taylors got me by the shoulders and yells something to the nature of, “It’s private.” I’m on the floor holding my head and crawling into the girls rest room.

From the floor I hear Kelly yelling.

“If you come near her, I’ll fucking kill you!” she screams.

I hear them fighting outside the door to the bathroom. He wants to apologize, she wants him to go away. A teacher came out and made him go away. Kelly came into the bathroom and sat with me on the floor.

I bawled my eyes out while she told me all the ways she was going to hurt Taylor. I was devastated. I was embarrassed. How could I have let this happen to me? I just kept asking, and she just kept telling me…it’s not your fault.

The next day I brought all of Taylor’s stuff to him. His class ring, his necklace, his art, his letters. I told him to never talk to me again, and I’m pretty sure Kelly threatened to remove his balls if he bothered me.

So, that was over.

Yeah, I was a mess. I don’t know what I would have done without Rachel around. A lot changed in our relationship that night.

The real story, though, is what happened to Kelly.

Her boyfriend, Jimmy. He was trouble. He was drunk.

Okay, Rachel left to go let her dogs out. Stephen and I were hanging out to the side of the party. Kelly walked up and asked if we could talk.

It had been a while since we had talked, we were graduating soon. We walked a little deeper into the woods. We talked for a while.

She wasn’t happy with Jimmy, but I had always known that. It was the tragedy that ended our relationship. Kelly was so afriad of letting go of the hetero-privelege.

While we were talking, Jimmy walked up and thought we were standing a little too close, apparently. He grabbed her and pulled her aside. Not very far, though. In his drunk stupor he was much louder than I think he meant to be.

He was angry. Really angry. She was his girl, and he wanted her with him at the party.

She came back over and said she had to go.

You know, I even asked her not to go. She hesitated briefly, but I don’t think it was really a choice for her.

Jimmy came over and grabbed her arm. She looked at me, with apologies. I looked back with anger. How could she say she loved me and go home with that neanderthal?

You know what, it didn’t matter.

From all reports, Jimmy dragged Kelly off towards his Mustang. Stephen saw her crying sitting on the hood of Jimmy’s car. They argued for a while before Jimmy decided it was time to go home. He helped her into the passenger side and climbed into the driver seat. It was approximately 1:2oam when they left the party.

At around 1:30am, Jimmy’s car collided with a tree going 95 miles per hour. Jimmy survived. Kelly did not.

So, what happened that night at any point other than 1:30 in the morning seems to be irrelevant.

Yeah, a lot happened that night. A million fractured moments. Pivotal moments in the life of a teen ager. Let’s keep perspective in line, though.

Freshman year was miserable in every way possible. Taylor and I had been best friends, but as things progressed we were driven apart. Taylor wanted me to be his girl, and I just wanted to be Kelly’s. Kelly and Stephen were off in their seeming bliss, as Taylor grew steadily more frustrated with the state of our relationship.

I should have ended things with Taylor much sooner than I did.

Kelly tried to tell me.

We had been at Stephen’s house for a party. An innocent party, we weren’t quite to the age of sneakin’ booze and sex was still beginning to enter our consciousness.

You’re going to laugh at this story and how cheesy it sounds. We were up late that night, out in the woods behind Spruce Street. A game of hide and seek was going on, but Kelly and I were sitting on the end of the dock talking about the concept of god and signs of a higher power. (Yeah, I was that big of a dork as a child.)

Stephen comes along and joins the conversation. I think we all lost track of time, but we were watching the sky intently. We had decided to see if we could ask for a sign of some sort of higher power.

There was nothing really extraordinary in the sky that night. A large number of shooting stars, but that was normal for fall in upstate.

Kelly had fallen asleep contemplating the sky, and Stephen and I continued our conversations about the existence and the nature of god. We’re lost in our talk, when all the sudden there is a loud boom and a flash across the reservoir.

Kelly shoots up off the dock and looks around. It scared the shit out of all three of us.

It turned out to be a fire cracker, but Kelly was still shaken. Really freaked out about it. She just kept talking about this dream she must have been having and the explosion and how it was a sign.

Stephen and I tried to calm her down. We walked her back toward land, we sat for a while under a giant oak tree. A few of our friend wandered by, some showed concern and others thought Kelly was just messin’ around.

Johnny, a friend of Stephen’s came by and thought it’d be funny to fuck with Kelly. He steps up behind her and shouts a loud boom in her ear. She falls immediately to the fetal position and remains unresponsive for the next two hours.

Most of our friends thought she was just messing around, and left to go to bed. Johnny actually felt bad, an emotion I didn’t know he was capable of. He stuck around with Stephen and I, and we sat with Kelly into the early hours of the morning.

We contemplated the possibility of needing to call an ambulance, but didn’t really know how that would have worked. “Hey,  we were contemplating god and not my friend is catatonic can you send help?” It’s not exactly easy to explain.

She did eventually snap out of it. She had no memory of the time that had passed, at least that’s what she said. A strange and difficult bond had formed between Stephen, Kelly and myself.

For the next few months we talked non-stop. Mostly about our experiences that night. We each experienced it differently, but were strongly moved by this event. At the time it seemed huge.

We spent all our free time together or talking on the phone. We became the best of friends.

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Some of the writings are responses to surveys which are part of Y Project X.