Lesbian Stepmother (15 page)

I got banged up a little, sure; but she was killed
instantly, the entire left side of the car crumbled and twisted
against the uncompromising tree.

The next few years of my life were the most miserable
ones of all. My mother had been more than just my mother; she had
also been my best friend. For the first few months I was virtually
paralyzed with depression. I was in and out of hospitals and
psychiatrists offices, but I hardly even remember any of it; I don’t
want to remember any of it. That whole period of my life is a blur
of wretchedness. Eventually I began to function again, but it was a
sickening, almost mindless functioning. Every day was another
pointless struggle, trying to pass through the meaningless hours with
her no longer in my life. I hated every minute of every day. The
loneliness, the depression, the constant sadness of knowing that she
was never coming back; it was really too much for me to bear, and the
fact that my father was a workaholic, leaving me to tend to myself
most of the time, didn’t help matters any.

It was just me and him in the house after that, only he
was usually at work. It’s kind of funny, because despite the
fact that he was a workaholic, he didn’t make very much money
and so he couldn’t afford a babysitter or any type of daycare.
So when I wasn’t at school, I sat alone in the small house and
missed my mother and cried.

Don’t get me wrong; my father was never mean to
me. In fact, I could tell that he was hurting, too. He loved my
mother and maybe even missed her as much as I did. But he never had
much of an interest in me, and other than making sure that I went to
school each morning with decent clothes on and had enough to eat, he
mostly just left me alone. If I really needed something, I always
had it, and he was kind to me in his own absent way. But I don’t
think he ever spent a single hour with me, just the two of us talking
things over or being together. He would always sit there in his easy
chair surrounded by stacks of papers, studying them relentlessly and
making little scribbles on them with his fancy pen. This was just
before computers flooded the world, or he’d probably have sat
there with a laptop.

I wasn’t sure exactly how he handled the whole
thing. He never really did discuss it with me other than to ask on
occasion how I was coping with it all, usually while driving me to
see one of my doctors. Looking back, I feel like I should have asked
him, but remember, I was only seven and had just been severely
traumatized, so I guess it’s understandable why I didn’t.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the next eight
years of my life, because during that time nothing really unusual
happened. My father, whose name is Jeffery, immersed himself even
further in his work, and I just sort of floated through each day,
trying more than anything not to think too hard about things. I
thought maybe he would start dating or something, but he never did.
He just worked, and I just went to school and sat around. The years
were empty and lonely and sad, and my memories of them are almost
nonexistent, because there’s really nothing to remember. Those
years were just long collections of days, and I suppose during that
time I slowly healed a little, because I no longer focused solely on
the accident and the loss of my mother. Instead I focused on nothing
and merely existed. Going to school and watching television are
honestly the extent of it. I didn’t even have a friend during
those years.

I was lost in limbo.

Like I said, nothing really happened for awhile so I’ll
skip ahead. The next point of interest that I’d like to
mention is during my sophomore year in high school when I was 15. I
had never been on a date before, and I’ll admit, I was still a
bit young for such things, but there were several boys at that time
who were beginning to express an interest in me. I was slowly
growing up and turning into a young woman, and I’d be lying if
I said I wasn’t attractive. It didn’t mean anything to
me, and I literally did nothing to amend my appearance, but it’s
true I was at least a little above average in the looks department.
I spent a lot of time walking and had a very athletic, feminine body
and a rather cute face. I also had long, dark hair that I didn’t
have to play with for it to look very good. I was lucky, I suppose,
or would have been if I’d cared about such things.

Anyway, the boys who
took an interest in me were not really the least bit interesting
to
me. I ended up going out with a couple of them, mainly just to get
them to stop asking me. It’s a stupid reason, I know. I
suppose I was also kind of curious about the whole dating thing, and
that may have played into it, too.

The first boy I went out with was Billy Ripkin, who by
then everyone was just starting to call Bill. He asked me out to a
movie, and I accepted. We went that evening right after dinner; he
didn’t have a car, and so he just walked to my father’s
house and knocked on the door, and then the two of us walked to the
theater, which was only half a mile away. He was sort of a pudgy
kid, with long greasy hair and a very pale complexion. I didn’t
like him much, and we hardly even spoke on the way to the theater,
other than him trying to explain to me how great he was and that no
one seemed to notice. I suppose he was trying to impress me, but it
had the opposite effect and I began to feel sick.

The movie turned out to be a horror movie, the one kind
I really can’t stand. Leave it to Billy. I was already
uncomfortable just being there with him, and the movie, as terrible
as it was, still managed to be scary. I sat there stewing, hardly
able to wait for the whole thing to be over with. It seemed to drag
on and on, and at one point he reached over and took my hand, holding
it in his warm, sweaty one. It made me feel even worse. I kept
thinking I was going to catch some strange disease from his unwanted,
moist touch.

The movie finally ended, after what seemed like
forever, and he walked me back home. He kept bringing up stupid
parts of the movie and reenacting them for me as if he forgot that I
just sat through the whole dreadful thing, too. It made me feel
sorry for him and like him even less at the same time. The half mile
felt more like two miles, and on several occasions he tried to hold
my hand. I didn’t let him, explaining that I needed to swing
my arms to walk properly. I felt funny swinging them so
exaggeratedly, but it beat the hell out of having him grip me with
his clammy hand again.

When I finally made it home and thought the whole
thing was at last over, he kissed me. We were standing right outside
the front door of my father’s house, and he put a hand on my
waist and leaned into me, pressing his mouth to mine. I couldn’t
believe I didn’t see it coming. His lips felt cold and slimy
and I could smell his breath, which stank something awful, like he’d
eaten liverwurst for dinner and hadn’t brushed his teeth.

I pulled away quickly, wiping my mouth. He didn’t
like that and said goodnight, slinking away into the darkness. He
probably felt as bad as I did, but I didn’t care.

My first kiss! I went inside and washed my mouth out
with Scope.

The next day at school he was acting as though we’d
had a great time and even bragged to several people that I was his
girlfriend, which I certainly was not. I wasted no time in telling
him how I really felt, which hurt his feelings all over again, but at
least it put an end to the whole mess.

He didn’t talk to me anymore after that, and I
was glad.

* * *

The second boy who I let take me out was two years
older than me, and on the football team. Brad Simmons, his name was,
and he was sort of musclebound. He’d been hitting on me for
much of the school year, and I admit, I was kind of attracted to him,
so when he approached me after school one day and offered to buy me
dinner at a new Italian restaurant, I said okay. It made me wonder
why I ever agreed to go out with Billy in the first place, although,
looking back, the date with Billy was much less of a mistake.

Brad had a car, an old Ford Escort, and he picked me up
at my father’s house. My father hardly noticed. He was still
working as hard as ever on his endless stacks of papers, and had
gotten into the habit of eating TV dinners, so when I left he didn’t
even look up. He just told me to have a nice time and made some
scribbles with his pen.

Brad was so different from Billy that there was almost
no comparison. He was bigger, stronger, more aggressive and much
more confident. I had no plans to do anything with him other than
have dinner and maybe let him kiss me, but of course Brad had plans
of his own.

We did eat dinner, and it was very good. Brad ordered
the chicken parmesan, which sounded wonderful to me, so I ordered the
same exact thing. We also had a large mixed salad and fresh bread,
with a little bowl of oil and vinegar to dip it in. Both of us were
obviously underage, and so we drank root beer with our dinner,
although Brad hinted he had a little “nightcap” out in
his car for later.

The nightcap turned out to be a bottle of rum, a bottle
of Coke and a couple of paper cups. He drove out to a little place
the kids used to call “Dead Man’s Island,” which
was really nothing but a secluded strip of woods near the parkway,
and mixed us a couple of cocktails. We could see the headlights of
other cars as they passed through the thick expanse of trees, but it
was unlikely that they could see us. Not unless someone actually
drove around and pulled up right near us, which on this night they
didn’t.

“Drink up,” Brad told me, handing me a cup
of rum and Coke.

Not knowing what else to do, I drank up. It was the
first time I had alcohol, and I must admit, I liked it. It tasted
fine and it made me feel really good almost right away. We drank
slowly while he told me stories about his greatness on the football
field, although I was fairly certain he was average at best. It was
nice for awhile, sitting there and drinking as the sky grew
completely dark. We each had two full cups and then he poured us one
more, a strong one to share. I probably wouldn’t have shared
the same cup with someone under normal circumstances, but by then I
was sort of half-way drunk and I didn’t really care. We passed
the cup back and forth, taking big sips until it was gone. Then he
sat there looking at me with a little smile on his face. Every time
a car went by and the beam from the headlights filtered through the
trees and illuminated him, he looked a little spookier to me.

“You’re really pretty,” he told me.
“Can I get a kiss?”

I’d already decided I was going to let him kiss
me, and after all that rum I really wanted him to. Still, I was
feeling a little frightened. I nodded my head, consenting to the
deal.

Brad didn’t waste any time. He leaned over in
his seat and slipped a big hand behind my neck, pulling me closer
toward him and pressing his mouth against mine. I went with it, and
soon his tongue was poking around inside my mouth. It was kind of
exciting, much better than the cold, oily kiss Billy had given me
several weeks earlier. It would have been perfect, actually, but
then he got carried away and began crushing me up against him, very
roughly, and sucking at my tongue until it became painful.

I’m not going to go into all the details here,
mainly because that’s not what my story is about, but also
because I don’t like thinking about that night. I do want you
to understand, though, that I made it very clear to him that I didn’t
want our little date to go any further than it already had, and that
he refused to listen. It was almost as if he felt it was his right
to have me that night, despite all my protests. In fact, I couldn’t
even really get through to him. It’s like he wasn’t
hearing me, like he was programmed or something, and there was no
reasoning with him.

I fought him off for a minute or two, physically and
verbally, but soon gave up out of sheer fright. He shoved me and
choked me and pulled my hair. He was like an animal. We ended up in
the backseat together, me literally trembling with fear as he took my
virginity. The experience was horrifying, and I blocked much of it
out even as it was happening, not allowing myself to think about it.
Instead I thought of my mother and of how much I loved her and missed
her. I have no idea how long it went on; it could have been ten
minutes, or it could have been an hour. Either way, eventually it
was over and I was dizzy with shock and fear and pain. I also felt
dirty and ashamed, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong,
except maybe drink a little.

Brad must have sensed how I felt, and feel pretty
ashamed himself, because once we got ourselves back into the front
seat of the car he began apologizing profusely, and explaining that
he didn’t know what had come over him. He drove me home
without further incident, making me promise not to tell anyone what
had happened. Then he drove away, leaving me standing there in the
dark outside my father’s house, still trembling and crying.

It took me a long time to get over that night. In
fact, I’m not sure I ever did.

That was the first time I ever had sex with a boy, and
the last.

Chapter 2

For the rest of that school year, I pretty much kept to
myself. Other boys continued to flirt with me on occasion, but I had
no interest in dating anymore so I politely declined any offers I
received. I didn’t have any girlfriends, either, so I garnered
a bit of a reputation as a loner. That was fine with me. Being left
alone had its advantages.