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Jason, just to say hi and that I think you have lots of cyber friends on your side, certainly including me, and remember I am very old and wise. More importantly, Lizzy and Diane are both young and wise and it is excellent that they are so supportive of you.

thanks, michael. this is mostly just a forum for me to dig out some of the past and lay it on the table. perhaps i need the venting. we all can save the sympathy and "help me, i'm losing it!" stuff for later, if needed. which brings me to my next journal entry thingy here. ready? ok...

so i left off at the part where i walk away from rachel and all of her friends and decide to spend the rest of my days in the library during our breaks. when i tell this to people they feel sad for me and how lonely i was. and upon reflection i guess it does seem pretty depressing. but at the time i was upset with rachel and i realized that nobody around me was paying attention anyway. so i left. it was almost like a release. i became immersed in my writing and my drawing, and i remember i wanted to be the kind of kid who could recite poetry from the top of his head, so i began reading a lot of poe and memorized the first 10 or 12 stanzas of "the raven." i couldn't give it to you now because it's been so long, but i can probably do the first stanza, or at least most of the first stanza. anyway, that's besides the point.

i am reminded that prior to all of this--perhaps this was during 9th grade--i started getting into online dating services. i remember i found out about matchmaker.com, which is now completely different than what it used to be, but i met this girl on there who was like 2 years older than me and she lived in minnesota or something like that. i thought she was hot, blah blah blah. it was some real retarded shit. i just remember we talked a lot, had a lot in common, i was probably real desperate so i would say that i liked her and she said the same thing and i became infatuated, just like with tiffany. except tiffany was real and this thing was not. there was no way it could have been real. but i remember one day this girl told me she started seeing this guy and that he got her pregnant and she posted pictures of the two of them together and this and that and a friend of hers had messaged me telling me to leave her alone and stop talking to her and i was pissed off and devastated. but upon reflection i think it's the stupidest thing i've ever been involved with. how could i be so partial to some internet girl from too far away? why would i give a shit? how could i have feelings like that? i really don't know. perhaps i just wanted to have those feelings and the internet was an easier way for me to let it all come to fruition.

anyway, back to the library. i can't remember if i began doing this during or after the first semester of 10th grade. probably after. the second semester would change my entire life. before getting to the next girl, i must say that during my second semester in my p.e. class i met sean, my best friend. neither he nor i were into sports very much, but he was more athletic, took tae kwan do and stuff. we were playing flag football and he got on a team before i did, and he told the team captain to pick me, so i got picked for his team. i thanked him and we started talking. after that we'd run laps together some of the time (i could barely run on account of my astmah at that time) and we'd hang out in the gym if it was a gym day or whatever. rainy days meant p.e. in the gym reading or working on homework. we'd trade poetry and talk about music, wrestling, and current events. everything was almost natural. he was a grade above me, though--a junior. i'll get back to sean.

i went to my new english class the first day of that semester and found some interesting people. it was mixed up with cheerleaders, skaters, nerds, and goths... which i guess is what i was beginning to resemble. though i never hung out with the goth crew at that school there was one major member in english class. her name was maegen. she had a friend in that class, too. i forget this other girl's name, but she was a punker girl. anyway, maegen sat down next to me, and her friend sat behind me. i found this awkward since i never spoke to either of them before. i did remember maegen from junior high though. she used to hang out with this girl named valentina and just about everyone in the school would start rumors about the two of them, saying that they were witches and practiced black magic and whatnot. i never really believed it, but i always thought they were popular because of how much they were talked about. hahaha. bad press. after a while i considered maegen to be the most notorious girl in school. valentina did not go to the same high school however. i remember that those two girls were always together in 7th grade, and in 8th grade they were with these two new guys who were just like them. all goth, into heavy metal and industrial music and all things black. i was about halfway there myself. i dug that stuff, but was also into a lot of other things that did not fit the profile. anyway, i was still about the same in high school. i wore mostly black, but i wore tennis shoes and not boots... wore t-shirts and blue jeans or black jean shorts when it was hot, and to top it off i wore a baseball hat outside. couldn't wear hats in class, which was fine, but i preferred the hat to having my hair exposed. i've always been worried about how my hair looks. every day of my life. it's bad. anyway, i was not the extreme goth like all the kids in high school were, like maegan was.

so, one day during class she asked me a question about nine inch nails. she said she could tell i was a huge fan, and she told me about tori amos. she told me she was a huge fan. apparently trent reznor and tori amos worked together on one song, not to mention they dated for a little bit, and she wanted to know if i knew this or whatever. that was the first time we spoke to each other. i think it was the next day i went into the library during lunch to find her using a computer. for some reason i can't really describe i sat down next to her and said "boo!" we started talking and then she started looking up porn on the school computers in the library and we began laughing and she'd quickly close it. we began laughing a lot together. she was really dirty-minded and fucked up and i LOVED that. we began meeting each other in the library more often (i planned to go there no matter what anyway, regardless if she was there or not) and we hit it off very well. sometimes i'd see sean in there and hang out with him, too. but mostly i was with her. i remember she gave me her phone number and i gave her mine, and sooner than later we were talking to each other until the late hours of the evening, into early hours of the morning on the weekends, or until our phones died.

there were a few times when rachel's name came up. maegen had known her from junior high and grade school. they were not close friends but more like acquaintances. maegen had told me they were in a class together that semester and she had told rachel that she was excited about meeting me and stuff. i'd hear about rachel from maegen and i'd tell maegen the truth of it all. i told her that i had liked rachel but she was just being a lousy bitch and i couldn't handle it anymore and that was why i began staying to myself in the library. one night on the phone i remember maegen seeming very restless. she wanted to say something but couldn't. and i had a very strong feeling what it was. i told her, "don't worry about it, we'll talk about it tomorrow at school." so, the next day at school i knew what i had to do, and i was very excited about it, but also nervous. after about a month of being friends i was going to ask her out. i KNEW this time i would not get rejected, but i was still worrying how well things would go and how i'd do it and how i'd come off to her. anyway... i saw her during our first break and didn't say anything. i saw her during english class and didn't say anything. i waited until lunch when there was more time, but i didn't say anything. i knew time was running out and for some reason i couldn't say it out loud to her. it became more of a laughable thing between us and i told her i'd just write it down. so i wrote down "will you go out with me?" on a piece of paper and slid it across the table to her and she wrote "yes" on it and slid it back to me. then i remember we got up and hugged each other and then walked out of the library holding hands and then split to our next class.

i remember telling sean the very next day that i asked her out and she said yes. it was exciting, but i was worried because she was my first girlfriend and i didn't know what to do. i had never kissed a girl before either and kept wondering how it would all go down. and well, i don't remember much of what happened between the time it became official and the time we first kissed because that first kiss was something i'll never forget. i do remember i was drawing something one day and she was sitting next to me, and then she scooted in close, then real close, and even closer and had her arms around me and i was just looking at the picture and she had her face right up next to mine, and i could tell she wanted to kiss me but i didn't give her that satisfaction. but i do remember her giving me a faint kiss, half on the lips, half on the cheek and i barely felt it. but if it wasn't that same day then it was the very next that it happened. i thought our lunch break was over so we both began to leave the library. i asked the librarian what time it was and she said we had about 5 minutes left, so maegen said, "oh good! i want to show you something!" so she grabbed my hand and turned back and ran towards the back of the library with me tailing behind. she stopped dead in between two aisles, turned around, and as i nearly crashed into her, she grabbed my face and just shoved her tongue in my mouth and i put my arms around her and we held that embrace until the bell rang. of course, i'm sure a lot of you remember your first kiss, or at least your first french kiss (i had the pleasure of experiencing both in one shot!), so there isn't much i need to say about how wonderful a thing it is, but i just couldn't stop thinking about it after that. the only thing that sucked was that this happened on a friday and i wouldn't see her for the whole weekend and i was just soooo TEASED by it all and felt good but also felt like crap because i couldn't wait for it to happen again and again and again.

well it did happen again and again after that. i specifically remember some moments we had in that library. one day as lunch ended the two of us were outside the library having a haevy makeout session as kids were going to their next classes. i remember opening my eyes to see everyone who was staring at us. i felt this kind of empowerment, like i was now one of them, like one of the people who were important because i was with somebody. i felt like i was on top of the world. one day we got kicked out of the library because we were too close. a librarian told us we had to leave because several people were complaining that all we did was make out and it made them uncomfortable. i got pissed off and started back at the librarian but we wound up leaving. hahaha. sean later revealed to me that he was there that day and saw it all go down. one day we began getting heavier into the petting zone. we hid behind a rack of books towards the back of the library. she unzipped my pants and put her hand inside. i put my hand up her blouse and underneath her bra and began massaging her breast. we stopped because we were laughing that one of the retarded kids was right around the corner reading a book. kenny was a cool kid. i never had anything against the retarded kids but we all sure did laugh at them when they did funny things or said funny things. one time maegen put eyeliner on me and i went to my next class after lunch with it on. one guy asked me about it and was like, "no way! is that for real!?" i kept it on the rest of the day. that was the first time i ever experienced wearing makeup. i started painting my fingernails black, too. my dad was PISSED about it, but i stood my ground and told him i would keep wearing it. he eventually gave in and gave up grilling me about it. she had introduced me to all her friends... the goth squad. i told her i never hung out with any of them because i thought they were all a bunch of fakers and only did what they did for attention. she said that they thought of me that way, too. and this was all before we even met each other. but after i began talking to some of her friends i'd notice that guys started painting their fingernails, too. one kid even started wearing a baseball hat like i did. it was nuts. i never ever in my life thought i would be mimicked like that. i never thought people would pay attention to me in that way. i remember another occassion we had that was very heavy. again it happened as the lunch bell rang. we were with some friends of hers and they started leaving for their classes and i grabbed her and took her down this small flight of steps which led to a door. we didn't go through the door because hiding down at the bottom of the steps was good enough as far as being out of view is concerned. i said to her, "take this as a token of my love" and then i began rubbing her crotch. she never wore underwear and always wore these black skirts and dresses. i could pretty much feel everything over them, too. hahaha. she told me a lot of dirty things, like how some of her skirts had pockets with holes and how she'd put her hands in her pockets sometimes in the middle of class while sitting at her desk and masturbate during class. i thought that was wild. it turned me on. but then she told me a lot of horrible things, too. at that time i was getting into marilyn manson and she said she used to listen to them in junior high, which led me to ask her things about her friend valentina and the guys that they were with in 8th grade. i learned some horrifying things. she used to do all kinds of drugs with those guys, got impregnated by one of them and had a wire-hanger abortion, got impregnated once even before that and had a miscarriage, and the worst was that she told me she was raped when she was 9 by a friend of her parents. her parents were divorced and she had a younger sister and a younger brother by the way. but she said no one believed her when she told them that this guy raped her. she said ever since that time she has been very careful about not letting guys go down on her. she said it brought back bad memories and she felt very uncomfortable about it. and to think, at the time she was 15, and i was 16, and all of this had happened to her.

occassionally we'd hang out at the mall, but i never really liked the mall. mostly because it was the epicenter of what my city's essence was, and it still is today. the people here are snobbish, uptight, and conservative for the most part. i have been quoted as saying one time upon arrival to the mall with sean, "this is the only place in the world where i can be so depressed and still feel like i'm better than everyone else." anyway, one day she asked me, "so when are we gonna have sex?" at the time i wasn't very eager to do it. i was just very content on being with her and where our relationship was at the time. this happened maybe a week after we'd been going out. a week! all the other stuff i recalled just earlier here were random memories. it's hard for me to remember stuff in order of how they happened since it was so long ago. but we did do it one day, and not soon after that did things begin to fall apart. i will get to that next time, as it is late and there are other things i want to do before i go to sleep. so, perhaps tomorrow night i'll finish up with my relationship with maegen.

Hi Jason,

what i mean by this is that both guys and girls alike are essentially TOLD what is beauty and who they should be going after. know what i mean? women read magazines that tell them what they should look like. men have magazines like that too. then men look at the women's magazines because the women in them are good looking. girls do the same thing, though probably not to a great extent.

Yes, I know what you mean. If I cast my mind back through the decades to when I was at school, I can remember wishing to be different to how I was, in just about every way. Peer pressure is so important in those days. But as your school days are behind you, you don't have to try to conform to that stuff any more.

Appreciating airbrushed and carefully posed images in magazines is miles removed from what people want from a real relationship with someone. Miles. I really don't think any girl goes around with an image of a perfect-looking super-cool guy in her head and rejects everything else. I don't think anybody is that superficial, and if they were, you wouldn't want them anyway.

what i'm saying is that even if a girl finds things other than looks to be attractive in a male, it by no means denotes that she will require it

She will not be that concerned with looks. Looks doesn't top the list, because many different kinds of 'look' would be fine. Sense of humour, intelligence, someone who you can really engage with, all these things are more important. But you look fine anyway, so it's not really worth worrying about.

most often times if the good looks are there then everything else can be forgotten about for the time being. plus... back in high school, if you're a member of the cheerleading squad and you are dating someone that's NOT a jock--or worse, someone ugly and nerdy, then you're gonna get tons of shit from your fellow cheerleaders and their jock boyfriends. and who wants that? so, it's almost like a pressure thing in some cases for pretty girls to only date the handsome, rugged guys.

Well, I don't know what other women on here think, but I have never gone for a guy purely on looks, even when I was a teenager or in my twenties. I sort of know what you mean, but I think those 'handsome rugged' guys at school were simply the ones who were most extravert, or had the most confidence at the time.

the thing about my mother is really not all that important ...

Maybe, maybe not. But you're right; I am jumping the gun in bringing that up when you just want to get your story out. And I'm sure most people have tumultuous relationships in their young years anyway. That's not to say I might not bring it up again...

I haven't had time to read your last post in detail tonight, but I''ll read it properly along with your next instalment. From what I've skimmed, your time with Maegen sounds like a pretty cool first 'proper' relationship so far. But her experience of being raped at the age of 9 sounds horrific.

Take Care,

Diane

ok, so i believe i was at the part where i said that maegan and i were getting seriously into each other physically. i remember our first real sexual encounter.

::::WARNING::::
i don't know if it would be wise to go into GREAT detail about gratuitous sex situations involving minors. but i think i'm gonna do it anyway because i've been getting detailed with a lot of stuff anyway. ok ok, i'll probably get heat for this, so i'll TRY to keep it minimal. hahahaha.

so we were at the mall one evening. i remember walking around outside late at night with her and there are shops and everything outside, too. we went across the street to this newly constructed fancy hotel. we were walking around all gothed up and we were in the lobby and found this huge dining area where there was a wedding reception going on. hahaha. we saw some bridesmaids walking around and they all looked at us funny. we saw people having a party and we left. then we found an elevator and just went up in it. we were making out in the elevator and then some people got on. but then they got off and we went up some more flights. maegen exited the floor and closed the door on me and i kept going up and she was on some other floor. we were having fun playing cat and mouse. i eventually found the floor she was on and was running up and down the halls looking for her. hahaha. i met her back on the elevator, to my surprise, and we had a heavy makeout session before getting back to the lobby. we left the hotel and went back to the mall area. outside by the restaurants was where one of the parking lot entrances was and on each corner of the sidewalks was this brick wall that said "valencia town center" and blah blah blah. so behind this one wall were trees and bushes and stuff, so we went and hid behind the wall. i was afraid people would see it. i mean, just over the SHORT wall was a major street. she wanted to, uh, y'know.... go down on me there, and i felt uncomfortable because it was way too risky. so we left that area and then went and found this fountain and some benches. we sat on the benches and not many people were walking around there, so she decided she was going to do to me what she wanted to do behind the entrance wall, hahaha. so she began to do it and some people walked by and she sat up real quickly and i kind of crossed my legs. i was like, "screw this." then at that moment her friend valentina from junior high came around the corner with a friend of hers and they all got to talking and stuff.

we later went behind this coffee shop that had another little fountain, some benches, and this statue. for sure there was nobody around there. so we sat on a bench. she turned and put her legs up on the bench and took my hand underneath her skirt. suffice it to say i did what you all probably think i did. remember what i said about her choice of undergarments? we noticed that we were between the back of the coffee shop and a huge parking garage. so we got up and went into the parking garage and took the elevator to the roof. less people parked up there. there were 2 elevators that led up to that area, so we kind of went to a remote area where not many people would see us if anyone went up there. i sat down against the little wall and she sat down next to me and unzipped my pants... and, so, yeah. it was kind of like this: , or perhaps more like this: after i was done. but then she wanted to have sex afterwards. i didn't expect that. i just thought i was getting and then i'd return the favor or something. but it went from to and there wasn't much else i could do. so i popped open a condom i took from my dad's drawer and she put it on me. she lifted her skirt and, well, sat down on this: whatever she did didn't last very long. i sure as hell barely felt anything. but i remember when i had ben stay over at my house one night i told him all about it and he said, "did you have it in her?" and i said, "yeah, i guess." and he said, "so then you had sex." and i kind of thought that made enough sense. hahaha. but anyway, after that happened i went back to what i was doing to her on the bench, but for a longer period of time. she liked it. i have big hands. long fingers. ANYWAY.... i remember my dad picking us up from the mall that night and she had stains on her skirt... guess she couldn't keep it all in her mouth.

i wanted to do it again with her because the first time was pretty bad. but it was like, i was 16, she was 14, and it was nearly impossible to it at either of our houses. i think that day we did it was the first time my family met her and her mom. i had been her house a few times and met her mom and her siblings. they were all very nice. but the next time we decided to do it we went to see a movie at the mall. this terrible film, "mission to mars" with gary sinise. i wanted to see it but it was bad. we planned to skip the movie and just say we were gonna go see it, but i kinda wanted to, and i thought it would be weird if we didn't have ticket stubs when my dad came to get us, and then i worried what if someone asks me about the movie and i didn't see it? what would i tell them? that i skipped it to have sex with maegen on the roof of a parking garage? so, we actually watched it, sat in the back of the theater and made out a bit, but not too much. she seemed a little distant that night. i told my dad beforehand how long the movie was and what time to come get us, and i didn't want him thinking we had other plans after the movie. i was worried he'd grill me. so after the movie i knew we didn't have very much time. we went back up to the same rooftop and began going at it. but this time she wanted to do something different. she wanted me to be on top. remember, this was my first time really experiencing all of this, so i didn't quite know what i was doing. hadn't watched enough pornos i guess. hahaha. anyway, it must have hurt her because she was laying on hard concrete. besides that she said it hurt when i tried to, y'know... go in. so she sat up and became upset. i asked if we could start over or do something different and she said no and that the mood became ruined. so, i begged her to lift her skirt for me so i could at least see her. she said no and felt uncomfortable and so all we did was leave. we left, went and waited on a bench for my dad to pick us up. and on that bench she started saying weird shit to me about "what if it all ended tomorrow?" and blah blah blah. i had no idea where all of this was coming from and had no idea what she meant with her games. she wasn't speaking straightforward and i was utterly confused. apparently she was subtlely trying to tell me she wanted a break. at least that's the impression that i got. i didn't think she meant it though.

the next day at school i remember being with her all day. during lunch time this girl came up to her who i hadn't met yet. see, i had said before that she was well known, but that's not the least of it. she used to sing a lot and belonged to this group or organization or something where she'd perform solo songs or in a group or whatever, and she was in choir classes and this and that. a lot of people knew her through that. she had told me people knew her that she didn't even know and she just said hi to whoever said hi to her just to be nice. anyway, so this girl comes up to us and starts talking to her and she asks maegen, "so you seeing anyone right now?" and she said, "no, not really." i was shocked. i gave her this confused and angered look, and then i just walked away. she came after me and said, "jason, i thought we talked about this." i was soooo confused. i said, "i don't understand what's going on." anyway, a lot of that was a blur to me because it was the most confusing thing i've been through and i couldn't tell you exactly how it ended. but it did. and so after one month of being friends with her and one torrid month of love with the most notorious girl in school during the spring of 2000, it was all over.

it became nasty, too. i felt like "leaving green sleeves":

Alas, my love, you did me wrong,
to cast me out discourteously,
for I have loved you so long,
delighting in your very company.
Now if you intend to show me disdain,
don't you know it all the more enraptures me,
for even so I still remain your lover in captivity.

i felt like she did me wrong, however, when she showed me disdain i became angry rather than enraptured because i felt like i didn't deserve it. at this time i still used that matchmaker site for friends, and i had told her about that site. she had made an account on there as well. one day i posted this thing on there talking about how upset and depressed and angry i was and i said a lot of things i guess i shouldn't have, things personal to her, like things i've told you about her past. anyway, the next day at school i was in the library with sean during lunch and she came in with her gay best friend, derek, and this other girl she knew and they all bitched me out right there in the library. they yelled at me and were screaming about how insignificant i was and how i was disrespectful and blah blah blah. i didn't think it would go that far but it did. sean started laughing at me and he got up and left to another table. i kind of was laughing to myself as well, but it was probably only because i was so freaked out that i had to laugh to seem like i wasn't afraid. what sucked was that i still had english class with her and her punker girlfriend. i think the next day after this incident her punker friend threatened me over the internet saying that if i come to school the next day that she would kick my ass. i wasn't really that afraid, i just didn't want to be involved in anything that everyone would see or talk about. my dad used to take me to school those days before he went to work because during the summer of 1999 we had moved into my stepmom's house and it was about a 15 minute drive just to get to school. i would take the bus home though. took forever. almost an hour or so. but anyway, i told my dad about it all on the way to school. i don't remember what he said or how i even brought it up to him. but nothing happened that day. i had written something of an apology down that i wanted to say to maegen. after our english class i asked her if i could speak with her and she said okay. so i tried to tell her what i wanted to say but i couldn't, so i just handed her the piece of paper i wrote. she accepted my apology, but it was still over.

she found solace with her gay friend derek. apparently she found solace with him sexually, too. this was all fucked up and confusing. then she claimed she became lesbian. first i thought, "i'm so bad, i turned a girl gay!" but after a while i just laughed about it. sean was also friends with derek from junior high and he would hang out with him sometimes. sometimes maegen would be with derek, so sean would later tell me that he hung out with her after we broke up. he said that she started dressing differently, lost a little weight and looked absolutely gorgeous. when i was with her she wasn't fat, but like me, had a little bit of meat on the bones. i had no problem with that. but he said she lost some weight and had a perfect figure. i would just look down and shake my head and say nothing when he would tell me that.

anyway, a lot of this sean hanging out with them happened after i left that school. but it was one day in p.e. that sean told me that this guy came to his class talking about a new school opening up on the campus of our local community college. it was for juniors and seniors only and was for the kids who weren't into the whole public high school thing. he said he was going to do it. i figured: i barely had any friends, except acquaintances, besides sean... fuck rachel, fuck maegen, things were not looking good... i was doing alright in my classes but i just hated most of it... so i was sad that he was leaving. but he had said it was for juniors too, and i would be a junior next year. so, the next day the same guy came into my history class to talk about the new school. i got all the paper work and took it home. that guy was the principal of the new school. i told my parents i wanted to go. students that wanted to attend actually had to have an interview with the principal to get qualified to attend. it was awesome. either people heard about us and thought we were some continuation school for delinquents or thought that we were the select genius group and went to a special school. hahaha. anyway, i got in. this place was cool in my book, as far as the idea of it was. no mascot, no sports teams, no cheerleaders, a lot more one-on-one student/teacher interaction, and most importantly, NO PROM!!!! i liked all of this. it was for kids who wanted to be educated and fuck all the rest of the high school bullshit. it was for one purpose and i dug it. there was gonna be a VERY tiny student body and i really dug that. anyway... so begins another chapter of girl troubles and my last two years of high school. until next time...

Hi Teratogen ~

I'll be catching up with this soon and responding.

Thanks for your words, Michael... and your own, expressed support. I smiled slightly when I read Teratogen's response to you... there seemed a bit of that male-male discomfort with emotional expression thing, even when it's in the form of support, going on [yes, I'm winking at you, Teratogen ].

Heed his words, too, Teratogen... he is old and wise. Diane and I, on the other hand, are young and wise... aren't we, Diane. Aren't we. I said, "Aren't we!?!"

Love,
Lizzy

lizzytysh wrote:Hi Teratogen ~


Heed his words, too, Teratogen... he is old and wise. Diane and I, on the other hand, are young and wise... aren't we, Diane. Aren't we. I said, "Aren't we!?!"

Love,
Lizzy

They say that one's hearing is the first thing to go, once you reach 85.






Sorry Matron, I didn't hear that...............SPEAK UP FOR PITTY'S SAKE

They say that one's hearing is the first thing to go, once you reach 85.

Byron, I've been squinting at the screen for some minutes, but I'm sorry; you're going to have to write that more bigly.

Yes Lizzy, Micheal is old and wise, and we are young and wise, and Byron is young and foolish. That about covers it .

Now, I must read Jason's latest chapters. Better get a cup of tea first...

Diane

began reading a lot of poe and memorized the first 10 or 12 stanzas of "the raven."

I just looked it up and read it for first time in many years. Worth copying first three stanzas here:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

It's hard not to copy it all. How evocative of loss it is. I can imagine that young man, sitting in the library learning poetry to give shape to the pangs of loss and loneliness. Hmmm, reminds me of how often I have found words that understood me when no person did...

we'd trade poetry and talk about music, wrestling, and current events. everything was almost natural.

Sean sounds like an ideal mate for you, Jason.

it's hard for me to remember stuff in order of how they happened since it was so long ago.

I think your memory for detail is remarkable. I can't even remember what I did a week last Sunday.

i learned some horrifying things. she used to do all kinds of drugs with those guys, got impregnated by one of them and had a wire-hanger abortion, got impregnated once even before that and had a miscarriage, and the worst was that she told me she was raped when she was 9 by a friend of her parents. her parents were divorced and she had a younger sister and a younger brother by the way. but she said no one believed her when she told them that this guy raped her

Maegen's experiences were terrible. It makes me so angry when adults abuse helpless children. It's good that at least she had you to talk to about it at that time in her life. I hope she has since got counselling to help her recover from her experiences.

i don't know if it would be wise to go into GREAT detail about gratuitous sex situations involving minors.

Well, as you were of similar age, the situation isn't abusive. But you sure do go into detail .

and unzipped my pants... and, so, yeah. it was kind of like this: , or perhaps more like this: after i was done. but then she wanted to have sex afterwards. i didn't expect that. i just thought i was getting and then i'd return the favor or something. but it went from to

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of anyone's first sexual experience .

started saying weird shit to me about "what if it all ended tomorrow?" and blah blah blah. i had no idea where all of this was coming from and had no idea what she meant with her games. she wasn't speaking straightforward and i was utterly confused. apparently she was subtlely trying to tell me she wanted a break. at least that's the impression that i got. i didn't think she meant it though.

It seems as though Maegen started to withdraw from you after you started having sex with her. Because of the abuse she'd suffered that's not surprising.

a lot of that was a blur to me because it was the most confusing thing i've been through and i couldn't tell you exactly how it ended. but it did. and so after one month of being friends with her and one torrid month of love with the most notorious girl in school during the spring of 2000, it was all over.

it became nasty, too. i felt like "leaving green sleeves":

Alas, my love, you did me wrong,
to cast me out discourteously,
for I have loved you so long,
delighting in your very company.
Now if you intend to show me disdain,
don't you know it all the more enraptures me,
for even so I still remain your lover in captivity.

I can imagine how confusing and painful it must have been when she seemed so interested in you, and then suddenly switched off like that.

when she showed me disdain i became angry rather than enraptured because i felt like i didn't deserve it

You didn't deserve it, that's for sure.

Jason, Maegen's reactions to you, and her splitting with you would almost certainly have been to do with her own bad experiences, and little or nothing to do with you or how you had behaved. She was doubtless as confused as you were about why she changed towards you. Her experimentation with being lesbian could well have been about the same things. Maybe she was trying to find a way to avoid reminding herself about what had happened to her? In any case, you didn't 'do something wrong'.

...i liked all of this. it was for kids who wanted to be educated and fuck all the rest of the high school bullshit...

It's excellent that you got to go somewhere suited to your intelligence and your temperament.

until next time...

until next time...

Take care,

Diane

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

i had this huge thing i began to write down and something FUCKED up.... my goddamn computer thinks sometimes that my mouse clicks stuff when it doesn't really. it thought i hit the "back" button on my browser and i wasn't even touching the goddamn mouse!!! i lost everything. this pisses me off. i spent about 45 minutes on this already. fucking a. i'm gonna have to skip it for tonight. i don't have enough time to continue now. GODDAMN IT! hopefully i can cool off by tomorrow to remember everything i wrote. i'll write it in microsoft word and then paste it in here. oh man i am pissed...

That really is annoying, Jason. Yeah, computers think and do all kinds of stupid things. Especially mine. They are such morons. Please continue when you have recovered...

Diane

Been there, done that, too many times, Jason. I know EXACTLY how you feel!! I have an ergonomic keyboard now, which aside from anything my computer might do... has some key near my little finger on both left and right, that I sometimes inadvertently, barely tap ~ and EVERYTHING I'm working on disappears. It happens so subtly that I can't even figure out what I've done. It used to be also that my computer would go offline, without warning, and after working on something for a long time, I'd click Submit... the material never to be seen again. Then ~ sometimes, with this industrial-strength computer, if something has sat too long, minimized or whatever, it kicks me out of here [or something like that]. When I click on Submit, I get a screen asking me to sign in... hit all the Back and Forward buttons I want, but I'll never find what DISAPPEARED. It's like being punched in the stomach... even though jumping right back on the bicycle and trying to recreate as much as you can remember in the moment, is the best idea... I've almost without fail been too disheartened to even consider that.

I KNOW how you FEEL!!!

Love,
Lizzy

Ok, so now that I'm writing this in Microsoft word it’s going to give me correct punctuation and spelling and crap, so the capital letters is uncharacteristic of me. Anyway, I believe I was getting to the new school. So, this new place was pretty cool I though. I mean, from an educational level it was. Later I learned that not a whole lot had changed with the way people behaved and such, mostly because it was the teenage hegemony. Kids from all of the other high schools in our city came here. This school was on the campus of our local community college and was made up of only about 8 little bungalows and another one for bathrooms, which was built during my senior year there. One bungalow was for the principal’s office, one for the teachers’ offices, and one was a computer lab. So basically there were 5 regular classrooms. Hahaha. We only had 3 normal classes (English, history, and an elective—there were about 4 electives, which included the novel, California history, film as literature, and another one that I forget). For seniors the history equivalent class was one semester of economics and the other semester was government. We had a fourth class that was changed after I left that school, but when I was there it was just a weekly class for an hour and mostly it was just to make sure we studied and did our homework and blah blah blah. It was mostly for us to manage our time and all that junk. But California law said we HAD to have 4 classes minimum, which is why it was added in there, but I guess they were forced to change it after I left to be a real every-day class. Anyway, on top of this we had to take a minimum of 6 units of college classes, and not only that but those units went towards college credits once we graduated and went there as full-time college students. Not bad!

I liked the social idea of it, too. We had 5 teachers in total. Both taught junior and senior classes and everything worked out well. There was a morning track and an afternoon track. I was in the morning track and had my classes from 8 to 10am, while the afternoon track had classes from 12 to 3pm. But it was a lot easier to have one-on-one interactions with the teachers. Everybody knew everybody, even if not personally. I find some old classmates here on the internet that I never really talked to in school but am not beginning to.

Well, just like any time people go to new places, new schools, new classes, what-have-you, you are always trying to be conscious of your surroundings. For me, the first thing I always look for in new classes are girls. There were a lot of very pretty girls around… in fact, let me make this known: the ratio of girls to boys at this place was about five to one. Reminds me of the song by the doors, hahahaha. “five to one, baby, one to five/no one here gets out alive.” Anyway…. Every single class of mine I shared with 3 or 4 other guys and the rest were girls. Imagine that?? Heaven! I took a particular fancy to one girl named renata. She was this skinny Hispanic girl with dark red hair and long eyelashes and a very sweet smile. When I say Hispanic I don’t mean she was from mexico and spoke fluent Spanish because she wasn’t, and she couldn’t. but her last name was Hernandez and that was her nationality . She was into the rave scene so she wore a lot of different colors and was very bright. When I say bright I mean you could spot her from a mile away because of all the different colors on her person. Red hair, brown skin, green t-shirt, blue jeans, white sneakers, black bookbag with all kinds of stickers, pins, and iron-ons on it… you understand. Anyway, I don’t know how many of you know what raves are, or what the scene is like. I’ll just say that it’s pretty weird and I don’t understand most of it. They all go to discreet locations, mostly in the desert, play house music, drum and bass… just kind of like electro-disco, and take a lot of ecstasy. I hope you all know most of what I’m talking about so I don’t have to go into any further detail. It’s pretty big in California, I don’t know if anyone else in the states know what I’m talking about. I know it’s huge in Europe. Well, she was into that stuff a lot. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t get it, but I didn’t mind that she was into it. I was just into her.

Of course, just like I always am, I fell victim to what has always plagued me, and that was the infatuation factor. I become obsessed with a girl to the worst point… what happened with renata is what happened with almost every other girl. I’d watch her all the time, listen to her when she spoke in class, paid attention to every little detail about her. The only thing I WOULDN’T do was talk to her. Things would build up so much… I’d often lay in bed at night and fantasize about being with her, about the perfect meeting, the perfect union, the perfect everything. I’d think about what I’d do with her. I don’t mean sexually though. Whenever I had a crush, an infatuation with someone, I never thought of them sexually. Weird, huh? I don’t get it myself, but the only things I’d think about would be like what I’d say to her to get her to like me, and how our first kiss would be and all of that. But the thing of it is… when these things don’t happen, you become disappointed in yourself that they did not come to fruition and then it all goes downhill from there. I’ve learned this hard lesson well over the years. Well, a lot of this was happening to me, that is, until the day I finally spoke to her.

Sean and I had a lot of the same college classes since we didn’t have high school classes together on account of him being a senior and I being a junior. We took psychology, philosophy, and math together. He knew very little of renata, except of what I told him because he knew I liked her. I mean, like I said, everyone knew everyone, so he was aware of her around school, but did not have any class for her… except for the one class all three of us shared, which was our math class. Usually sean and I would arrive and sit at the far end of the room near the window, but she would come in late, and seeing as there were very little seats available by the time she arrived, she’d sit right near the door. One day sean and I decided to sit over by the door, and so we did. Renata came early this time and sat right in front of me actually. Sean was sitting next to me. he saw a book in her book bag and asked her about it. He knew she and I were in all the same classes, including our elective, which was the novel. In that class we just read 3 or 4 novels and talked about them in depth. That’s all it was. At that time we were reading “the awakening” I think by kate chopin. Good book, great story. Anyway, he started asking her about it, and then I chimed in. after a while I began talking to her about music and sean just sat back. She had scribbles all over her notebook and her red backpack so I knew what she was into. She liked the smashing pumpkins, nine inch nails, the steve miller band, tom petty, pink floyd, and a bunch of other stuff besides that electronica raver stuff. It was great. After class that day I thanked sean so much for helping me out and for doing for me what I could not do, and that was just simply start a conversation.

After that renata and I would talk all the time during school. I must say that in my last two years of high school I made more friends than I ever did between kindergarten and tenth grade. And yes, most of them were girls. It had been a while though and I had still not told renata how I felt. I guess it wasn’t that strong of a feeling when I look back on it. The infatuation was strong, but it was all based on her beauty and the things I heard her talk about in class. I liked her that way. But I hardly knew a thing about her. I knew a few things but I don’t think it was enough to warrant any kind of strong feeling otherwise. I mean, I liked her, but “like” is probably as far as it really went, even if back then I thought it was stronger. I had overheard her talking about not wanting a boyfriend with some of her other friends though. Sometimes she’d miss school. I dunno really what it was all about, but I think it had to do with family problems or from staying out too late and experimenting with drugs. [is it just me or do I always seem to be attracted to the fucked up chicks? If you don’t think so, wait until I get to the next few girls.]

There was this guy named chris who also liked renata. He was kind of this big dumb goofy guy. He was the equivalent to the jocks back at our other high school but he was actually a nice guy. I have nothing bad to say about him, it’s just that he wasn’t all that smart. Years later I saw him bagging groceries at a grocery store and I was talking to him for a bit and he told me he had two jobs to help support his girlfriend and their son. I was like, “woah… you’re a dad.” I felt sorry for the guy, but it was nice to see him. Anyway, there was one day where renata and I were hanging out underneath a tree on this grassy knoll just talking and chris came by. He was trying to sweeten her up and even asked her out. It was funny because he did this a lot to her and she would just nicely try to tell him no but he couldn’t take a hint. So he tried it again that day to no avail and after he left she was kind of joking with me about it all. I said to her, “well, you can’t blame him.” That was my subtle way of saying “I’d do the same thing if only I had the balls.” She did get what I meant and said “thanks.”

As I try to recall specific events that happened between renata and I there is nothing that really comes to mind. We never did anything outside of school, unlike my relationship with maegen (obviously) or even Rachel. It was mostly talks during breaks between classes, before school even started, or whatever. Nothing more. I wished it was more, but it never came to be. Sometimes I’d see her after school, too. I dunno… I just don’t have too many things that were special between us that I remembered. I just remember sean getting upset with me because I was being such a fucker for not asking her out or anything. And I was. I was being a loser. I was being a fucking retard. But that’s how I was. I couldn’t help it. Well, I could, I guess… but I was too set in my crap ways to do anything about it. He was having problems with this other girl anyway. And I was always there to help him. But I think one day I told sean that I would get the courage to tell her how I felt. And then this thing happened….

I’ve already said enough for today. I’ll save the rest for tomorrow night perhaps, if I don’t come home drunk. Hahaha. Friday night! Can’t wait! Anyway… you already know that I’ve been complaining that every time I attempt a relationship with a girl that it all goes to shit, so there isn’t much that I’m teasing you with. You KNOW that it’s going nowhere but downhill after this. Hahaha. Well, maybe I shouldn’t laugh. But I’m sure you can easily guess that the end of this story doesn’t involve me getting the girl.

Until next time…

Hi Jason,

I have just read through your latest instalment. I am enjoying reading your life story. I think you can switch off the automatic correction thing in word.

Here are some thoughts about the relationship stuff:

just like I always am, I fell victim to what has always plagued me, and that was the infatuation factor. I become obsessed with a girl to the worst point… what happened with renata is what happened with almost every other girl. I’d watch her all the time, listen to her when she spoke in class, paid attention to every little detail about her. The only thing I WOULDN’T do was talk to her. Things would build up so much… I’d often lay in bed at night and fantasize about being with her, about the perfect meeting, the perfect union, the perfect everything.

Nothing in life can ever be perfect. It can in a fantasy, but not in reality. There is a crack in everything. There is such a thing as something being ‘good enough‘. If our parents were never satisfied with us, we got the message that we had to strive to be ‘perfect‘. We never feel things are good enough, and this creates unnecessary anxiety. Just jump in there. Easy to say, hard to do when you feel you are not going to be good enough unless you are perfect, which is impossible. You don’t have to wait until you think you are going to say or do exactly the ’right’ thing. You don’t have to try to make things ’perfect’ for any particular girl you like. Do you understand what I am saying here?

[is it just me or do I always seem to be attracted to the fucked up chicks? If you don’t think so, wait until I get to the next few girls.]

Everybody’s fucked up in some way, but some moreso than others, of course. You are still very young compared to the vast majority of us on here, and have years ahead of you to meet various girls until you find ones you really click with. At the moment, yes, you may be trying to have relationships with girls who themselves have difficulties. But you may meet someone tomorrow and help each other to overcome your respective fuckedupnesses (!).

I’ve already said enough for today. I’ll save the rest for tomorrow night perhaps, if I don’t come home drunk. Hahaha. Friday night! Can’t wait! Anyway… you already know that I’ve been complaining that every time I attempt a relationship with a girl that it all goes to shit, so there isn’t much that I’m teasing you with. You KNOW that it’s going nowhere but downhill after this. Hahaha. Well, maybe I shouldn’t laugh. But I’m sure you can easily guess that the end of this story doesn’t involve me getting the girl.

Did you enjoy Friday night? Maybe you met a new girl ?

Take care,

Diane

no, friday night never happened. the night i came home and wrote that bit was thursday and that was a bad day, and then friday was a bad day, too. it was so bad that it leaped over into this weekend. fortunately i was not at work this weekend, but was called to work today. without saying the actual words i basically told them to fuck off. hahaha. things are not going well over there right now. it's been about a week of hell, each day getting deeper and deeper into dante's diagram. perhaps by this coming week we may find light after digging through the very end of the pit. just like you said, diane, there is a crack in everything. well, leonard said it first, but you know what i mean....

anyway.... i just realized that i'm writing this response in the bulletin and not on microsoft word, so i'll post this response now then start writing my real response which is my next installment.

Well, there is one thing I do remember for sure about my awkward friendship with renata and that is how it ended. But before I get into that, I just want to mention another thing I remembered. It was not too long after I started talking to her because I remember we were still in the same math class. She needed a ride back to her house, which was quite a ways away. She said she lived out in butt-fuck Egypt, which is a common phrase I guess. I thought maybe that was just out here on the west coast but I guess it’s said on the east coast as well. Hahaha. It’s just a term used to mean that they live way too far away. But this all reminds me of the time we gave a ride home to tiffany. However this time renata had asked ME for the ride. Of course, I had to turn and ask sean because he was the driver. He said it was okay, and later he told me he did it for me, but I remember it all well. It was about a 20 minute drive just to get her home. Crazy. But we were listening to the smashing pumpkins in the car and she was talking to us and things were going well. I think she was talking about her family and how she didn’t get along with so-and-so in her family. I remember when we pulled up to her house she thanked us and got out and sean said something to her to the effect of “hope things get better with your family.” I didn’t even think of saying anything like that but he told me afterwards, “you gotta say stuff like that. You gotta remember what they say to you so she can tell that you are interested.” It made a lot of sense.

However, back to the ending of this story… a lot of us shared the same friends, it was like a circle of friends. This one girl, jenn, was mostly the center. She was this wild girl. That’s about the best I can describe her. Just wild. Imagine iggy pop looking like a bleach blond teenage girl with tattoos and loud punk rock music on all the time. Well she was a bitch, however, she liked it that way. If you called her a bitch she’d say thank you and then kick your ass. She was okay otherwise… just so long as you weren’t on her bad side. Anyway, she had just broken off a relationship with this guy she’d been with for quite some time. Renata had made it clear that she was interested in that guy. And for some reason jenn was upset about this. The two of them were friends but jenn didn’t like the fact that renata wanted her EX-man. That’s right… jenn dumped HIM, but she wouldn’t let anyone else at him. Well… it just so happened that one night around this time I was talking to jenn on the internet. The subject came up about me and girls. She was saying that there HAD to be someone at school that I was interested in and I tried to play it off like there wasn’t anyone. But I kind of felt pressured and just let in and said that I liked renata. Then jenn went off about renata and her ex-boyfriend and how she knew they were seeing each other behind her back. I nicely tried to tell jenn that she should not be bothered by it and to let it go. But she just got more upset. I didn’t quite get it.

The next day at school I was sitting outside early listening to my headphones and I saw renata walk up, looking really pissed off. She came up to me and I said hi and then she said, “can I talk to you?” and I got up and we walked off to where no one else was. Then she went off on me. “what did you say to jenn? What are you trying to do to me? how could you do that?” I was shocked. I didn’t know that I had just participated in something that little girls did back at my old high school. It really blew my mind. I didn’t think by me saying anything to jenn that she would go and retaliate against renata and then name drop me. first of all I didn’t know what to say. I apologized, but she got upset and walked off. Then later she came back and said, “everything’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” But all that day she didn’t say a word to me, and out of fear I didn’t say anything to her. The next day I went up to her before school and pulled her aside to talk to her privately. I told her exactly what I said to jenn, which included me confessing that I liked her. I don’t remember her reaction to her hearing that I liked her, but she just said the same thing she did the day before, like “it’s okay, don’t worry about it. It’s over with. We’re still friends.” Something to that effect. After junior year she left. She took this test to graduate early. Then she took a semester off. During senior year I saw her up by the college library. We talked for a bit. She had told me that the same thing happened to her… she said something to another friend of hers that was not supposed to be said, and her friend went off on her like she did to me. she told me about it and then kind of laughed and said, “well, karma came around to me and I got the same thing.” At that point I felt completely forgiven for what happened before. That was about all that happened though. I didn’t get her phone number or anything like that. I didn’t even bother to ask her out or anything like that.

I think she had left for a year after that semester because I never saw her around anymore. I had heard that she moved anyway. Then one day I saw her again. She was working at this little coffee stand on campus. I had seen her there quite a few times later, too, but she never saw me, which was weird since I passed the stand every day on my way to the bus stop or to a class. If she did see me then I don’t think she recognized me. I dunno… things like that are disheartening, but really I think it would have been weird to start talking to her again. Or maybe I’m just saying that to make myself believe there was justification in not talking to her again when I was really probably afraid she’d have no recollection of me whatsoever if I did. Ah well.

My senior year was quite different. Sean had graduated. He still went to college there but I didn’t see him as much. Renata was gone, too. Some other friends I had went back to their old high schools because they either didn’t care for that school anymore or because they wanted to have a real graduation with hundreds of students and the whole deal. I didn’t. I stayed there. And some others did, too. There were still many girls though. I was secretly hoping one of them would have a crush on me and try to seduce me or something. That was especially true on grad night when we went to Disneyland. It never happened, but I thought it’d be cool if it did. I did find out about one girl that did like me though. First time some girl had a crush on me that I knew of. Hahaha. She was a weird one though. I’ll explain her later…. As well as my next romantic endeavor named daniela. God help me. until next time…