(Writers Note: For posterity, I'm writing one section but not posting it on here)
TOC:
Part 1: Janine and Long Distance
Part 2: Smelly Cat the Stalker
Part 3: Amy's
Part 4: -
Part 5: Let's Hit Up The Bank
Part 6: Hello, You're My Boss
Conclusion: I Just Can't Get Over It
It starts back in eighth grade. I wasn’t good looking, I was short, and fat. I wasn’t funny, because I hadn’t found out yet that people like jokes. And I didn’t smell very good because I hardly ever showered. It was these three qualities combined that somehow netted me my first girlfriend. It was nearing the end of eighth grade, and to kick off the end of the year, classes were cancelled. You were still forced to attend school, but they rented a rock-climbing wall, ordered about a thousand pizzas, had a bingo room; pretty much a huge party to round out an unsuccessful set of years, and they forced me to share it with people I didn’t like, didn’t like me, or I had no desire to know.
So, I did what any sane or rational man would do. I sat and hid from the rest of the world in the Bingo room. I sat and played for hours and hours, only stopping once to get up and use the restroom. It was in the last hour that a young woman walked in, a little heavy, with glasses, blonde hair down to her shoulders, braces, and what looked like rosatia.
She sat in the back of the room, and it was just her and I, and the caller. I bingoed once, and every other game, she would move up a seat, until she was sitting right next to me. I had no clue what to do at this point, because she was looking over at me. My sex drive before that day had been absolutely nil, but when she was looking over me, I grew flustered, blushing, and looking away.
“Hi, my name is Janine.”
“I’m Michael.”
Janine laughed, which threw me off, because I had never considered my name to be funny before. We played a game in silence, her sitting next to me, until finally, she broke the silent-bingo-code that I had been so desperate to keep in tact.
“So, do you want to go out?”
“Like, a date?”
“Yeah.”
I thought about it. At my age, dating wasn’t really dating; it was just holding hands in school and asking Mom if she could pick us up and go to the movies.
“Sure. But I can’t drive.”
Janine laughed again.
“No, silly, we’re just going to hold hands in school the last week, and on the last day, you kiss me, and then I see you when school starts.”
Oh, bother. I had never really kissed a girl before, never thinking anything of it. Learning the skill wasn’t something I was looking forward to. We both had braces, and I had heard the awful stories of the young people kissing and getting stuck together.
In that bingo room, I was corralled into something I may or may not have wanted, but at the time, hadn’t the ability to give it enough thought. And so, the last week of school, during locker cleanout, I would help her carry her books, and when I wasn’t, we would hold hands. If I had friends, they would have been whispering, but because I had none, there was no one to judge that I really cared about.
To anyone that ever says you can practice kissing by doing it to a pillow has obviously never tried. A pillow doesn’t kiss back, a pillow isn’t soft, and you don’t really regulate your breathing properly when you’re tonguing feather.
The last day came, and I was standing by my bus, trying to avoid Janine, absolutely appalled at the idea that she liked me, even more so that she wanted to kiss me, and most of all that I would be bad at it and she would forever ruin my chances of ever dating anyone again.
She found me, however, behind the bus. I noticed that her pants were loose; it looked like she was losing some weight. She walked over, took my hand, pulled me to the sidewalk, and in front of God and the busses, brought her lips to mine.
It wasn’t electric. It wasn’t love. It was a motion of necessity, I feared, and I liked it. And I was shocked when she put her tounge in my mouth. But I didn’t pull away until it was clear that if stayed anymore, we would both miss our busses. But standing in the school-bus parking lot and kissing until our parents got here didn’t seem like a bad idea, except I was pitching a pup-tent and that was embarrassing. I smiled, nodded, and walked away with my books covering my pants, climbed onto the bus to scattered applause, and took my seat in the back.
During the summer, I tried several self-improvement techniques. I worked out, but it didn’t take. I kept the weight on, and with nowhere to go, added some pounds. I tried DDR and became fiendishly good at it, until I had mastered both home versions, and the pad began to gather dust. It was unfortuante, it was real, and by the time the hazy summer was over, I was ten pounds heavier.
I communicated with Janine through e-mail, and found out the day before school began she was getting her braces off. I was excited, because I had gotten mine off earlier that summer. I forced my Mom to take me to the store so I could buy a pack of gum for her to celebrate. I dug through my pockets looking for change, not allowing her to put money on the counter because this was my battle.
We wrote each other and decided to meet up in front of the flag-pole before school began; it was a new school, and it would be better to go in together and not feel quite so lost. It was that day that I decided I would shower at least four times a week, simply to smell nice. And we had to start taking gym class again.
When the bus dropped me off, I saw her standing there. I was embarssed; she had lost any excess weight she had during middle-school, lost her glasses, and lost her braces. I had lost my braces, but they used the wrong glue, which stained my teeth, my glasses were broken in the corner and held together by a bandaid, and I was ten pounds heavier. Still, she ran over to me, my hair still wet from my shower. She kissed me, and I reached into my pocket and handed her the gum.
“Gum?”
“Oh, yeah… You know, because you couldn’t chew any when you had braces.”
She smiled, and I was in heaven. She threw around words like, “Sweet,” “romance,” and “love.” For the first time since I met that awkward ,overweight girl in the bingo room, it felt like something that should click. And it did.
We had the same first period class; gym. They distributed the uniforms and made us go change. I was in a class with ten physically fit guys, three guys my size, and two heavier. I felt sorry for them, but the only thought that went through my mind was, “Better them than me.” We left the locker room to go sit in the gym, and that’s when I noticed something about Janine.
As she walked through the door, she had breasts. She hadn’t last year ,but now she did. They were nice, and bouncing as she walked. But I was looking at her face, which was red. She was blushing, and it was beautiful.
A few of the guys sitting around cracked jokes, and it was my obligation as a boyfriend to turn and set them straight. “Guys, come on. It’s not nice to talk like that to a girl, or about a girl that way.”
“Oh, can it, tubb-o.”
“No, man. Just let it go, please.”
They began talking louder as she got near. She heard a few of the words being tossed around, and turned and started walking towards the wall. I stood, and followed her. She was crying. I held her, and for a moment, she stopped.
I looked over at the guys, who were standing in awe of me. Respect was a new feeling.
After gym class, I met her out front. Our paths were diverging to different classes; she was better at math than I was, I was better at English, so we were leveled accordingly. The only other common area we had was Theater. As she saw me walk out of the gym, she began to cry again.
“What’s wrong, Janine?”
The warning bell rang, signifying that we now had three minutes to get to whatever class, on whatever end of the school, or else risk a cursed tardy.
“Michael, I have to move at the end of this month.”
I stood, speechless. She sniffled, kissed my cheek, and ran down the hall to her math class.
I was tardy that day. I couldn’t focus, which was bad. I had gotten a written reccomendation from my old English teacher to be put in an advanced class, and I couldn’t even focus. It was horrible. Three was an icy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and every time I thought about her moving, a chip broke off and moved to my brain. My teacher droned on about Shakespeare, and all I could think about was the girl who sought me out sitting in another room. It was bad enough being that far apart from her, but imagine an entirely different state?
We had lunch that day and spent it outside in the bus-loop, walking and talking.
“My dad got a new job in Washington State, so he’s moving us over there at the end of the month. I tried to talk him out of it, but he said I would make new friends. Michael, I don’t want any new friends.”
I realized then that I didn’t have any friends other than Janine, and that if she left, it would be even harder for me. I had no social prospects; I was just the chubby, smelly kid that occasionally cracked a bizarre joke. I had no home at school, and the only person that made it tolerable was leaving me.
“Janine, we could run away.”
“Be realistic, Michael.”
I could hear her father’s voice coming out of her. “But, we were just a thing, you know? Michael, you’re my first boyfriend, and you’ll always be my first. I don’t want this to end between us; I want to try and work it out, long distance.”
I hastily agreed, not quite sure what that would entail. The rest of the weeks played out as a somber countdown to the last time I would see her, and on that Friday, I was given permission to go to her house and help her move.
We sat in her room, looking over each other with sad eyes. We laid down, and she began to cry. I put my arm around her, and she gradually fell asleep. When it was time for their truck to leave, I woke her and helped her move her mattress to the truck.
She kissed me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Michael, I love you.”
I didn’t know what love was, nor if this was it. I was a ninth grader, but I said it back. She smiled, and climbed into the car. My Dad honked the car horn as he turned the corner and I climbed in.
The first three days were fine. I would e-mail her every day, and I was working the nerve to write an actual letter. We talked on AIM and on the phone almost constantly; she would laugh at my jokes. It didn’t sound like she was distracted. I helped her understand Macbeth and she helped me understand basic factoring.
On Friday, I came home from school to find an e-mail.
“Michael,
I met someone. His name is Jim and he really likes me. I told him about you, and he said that he wouldn’t do anything unless you were okay with it. I just think it would be best for me if I could branch out. I still don’t want to lose you. I still love you.
Janine
PS: you can be my Virginia boyfriend.”
Like a tin can in an aluminum crusher, my spirit turned into a jagged mess that wasn’t even worth .25. I told myself if I didn’t let her do this, she would hate me, break up with me, and do it anyway. I e-mailed her back with:
“Janine,
That’s fine. I’m glad your happy.
Michael.”
And that was the last time I spoke to her.
TOC:
Part 1: Janine and Long Distance
Part 2: Smelly Cat the Stalker
Part 3: Amy's
Part 4: -
Part 5: Let's Hit Up The Bank
Part 6: Hello, You're My Boss
Conclusion: I Just Can't Get Over It
PART 1: Janine and Long Distance
It starts back in eighth grade. I wasn’t good looking, I was short, and fat. I wasn’t funny, because I hadn’t found out yet that people like jokes. And I didn’t smell very good because I hardly ever showered. It was these three qualities combined that somehow netted me my first girlfriend. It was nearing the end of eighth grade, and to kick off the end of the year, classes were cancelled. You were still forced to attend school, but they rented a rock-climbing wall, ordered about a thousand pizzas, had a bingo room; pretty much a huge party to round out an unsuccessful set of years, and they forced me to share it with people I didn’t like, didn’t like me, or I had no desire to know.
So, I did what any sane or rational man would do. I sat and hid from the rest of the world in the Bingo room. I sat and played for hours and hours, only stopping once to get up and use the restroom. It was in the last hour that a young woman walked in, a little heavy, with glasses, blonde hair down to her shoulders, braces, and what looked like rosatia.
She sat in the back of the room, and it was just her and I, and the caller. I bingoed once, and every other game, she would move up a seat, until she was sitting right next to me. I had no clue what to do at this point, because she was looking over at me. My sex drive before that day had been absolutely nil, but when she was looking over me, I grew flustered, blushing, and looking away.
“Hi, my name is Janine.”
“I’m Michael.”
Janine laughed, which threw me off, because I had never considered my name to be funny before. We played a game in silence, her sitting next to me, until finally, she broke the silent-bingo-code that I had been so desperate to keep in tact.
“So, do you want to go out?”
“Like, a date?”
“Yeah.”
I thought about it. At my age, dating wasn’t really dating; it was just holding hands in school and asking Mom if she could pick us up and go to the movies.
“Sure. But I can’t drive.”
Janine laughed again.
“No, silly, we’re just going to hold hands in school the last week, and on the last day, you kiss me, and then I see you when school starts.”
Oh, bother. I had never really kissed a girl before, never thinking anything of it. Learning the skill wasn’t something I was looking forward to. We both had braces, and I had heard the awful stories of the young people kissing and getting stuck together.
In that bingo room, I was corralled into something I may or may not have wanted, but at the time, hadn’t the ability to give it enough thought. And so, the last week of school, during locker cleanout, I would help her carry her books, and when I wasn’t, we would hold hands. If I had friends, they would have been whispering, but because I had none, there was no one to judge that I really cared about.
To anyone that ever says you can practice kissing by doing it to a pillow has obviously never tried. A pillow doesn’t kiss back, a pillow isn’t soft, and you don’t really regulate your breathing properly when you’re tonguing feather.
The last day came, and I was standing by my bus, trying to avoid Janine, absolutely appalled at the idea that she liked me, even more so that she wanted to kiss me, and most of all that I would be bad at it and she would forever ruin my chances of ever dating anyone again.
She found me, however, behind the bus. I noticed that her pants were loose; it looked like she was losing some weight. She walked over, took my hand, pulled me to the sidewalk, and in front of God and the busses, brought her lips to mine.
It wasn’t electric. It wasn’t love. It was a motion of necessity, I feared, and I liked it. And I was shocked when she put her tounge in my mouth. But I didn’t pull away until it was clear that if stayed anymore, we would both miss our busses. But standing in the school-bus parking lot and kissing until our parents got here didn’t seem like a bad idea, except I was pitching a pup-tent and that was embarrassing. I smiled, nodded, and walked away with my books covering my pants, climbed onto the bus to scattered applause, and took my seat in the back.
During the summer, I tried several self-improvement techniques. I worked out, but it didn’t take. I kept the weight on, and with nowhere to go, added some pounds. I tried DDR and became fiendishly good at it, until I had mastered both home versions, and the pad began to gather dust. It was unfortuante, it was real, and by the time the hazy summer was over, I was ten pounds heavier.
I communicated with Janine through e-mail, and found out the day before school began she was getting her braces off. I was excited, because I had gotten mine off earlier that summer. I forced my Mom to take me to the store so I could buy a pack of gum for her to celebrate. I dug through my pockets looking for change, not allowing her to put money on the counter because this was my battle.
We wrote each other and decided to meet up in front of the flag-pole before school began; it was a new school, and it would be better to go in together and not feel quite so lost. It was that day that I decided I would shower at least four times a week, simply to smell nice. And we had to start taking gym class again.
When the bus dropped me off, I saw her standing there. I was embarssed; she had lost any excess weight she had during middle-school, lost her glasses, and lost her braces. I had lost my braces, but they used the wrong glue, which stained my teeth, my glasses were broken in the corner and held together by a bandaid, and I was ten pounds heavier. Still, she ran over to me, my hair still wet from my shower. She kissed me, and I reached into my pocket and handed her the gum.
“Gum?”
“Oh, yeah… You know, because you couldn’t chew any when you had braces.”
She smiled, and I was in heaven. She threw around words like, “Sweet,” “romance,” and “love.” For the first time since I met that awkward ,overweight girl in the bingo room, it felt like something that should click. And it did.
We had the same first period class; gym. They distributed the uniforms and made us go change. I was in a class with ten physically fit guys, three guys my size, and two heavier. I felt sorry for them, but the only thought that went through my mind was, “Better them than me.” We left the locker room to go sit in the gym, and that’s when I noticed something about Janine.
As she walked through the door, she had breasts. She hadn’t last year ,but now she did. They were nice, and bouncing as she walked. But I was looking at her face, which was red. She was blushing, and it was beautiful.
A few of the guys sitting around cracked jokes, and it was my obligation as a boyfriend to turn and set them straight. “Guys, come on. It’s not nice to talk like that to a girl, or about a girl that way.”
“Oh, can it, tubb-o.”
“No, man. Just let it go, please.”
They began talking louder as she got near. She heard a few of the words being tossed around, and turned and started walking towards the wall. I stood, and followed her. She was crying. I held her, and for a moment, she stopped.
I looked over at the guys, who were standing in awe of me. Respect was a new feeling.
After gym class, I met her out front. Our paths were diverging to different classes; she was better at math than I was, I was better at English, so we were leveled accordingly. The only other common area we had was Theater. As she saw me walk out of the gym, she began to cry again.
“What’s wrong, Janine?”
The warning bell rang, signifying that we now had three minutes to get to whatever class, on whatever end of the school, or else risk a cursed tardy.
“Michael, I have to move at the end of this month.”
I stood, speechless. She sniffled, kissed my cheek, and ran down the hall to her math class.
I was tardy that day. I couldn’t focus, which was bad. I had gotten a written reccomendation from my old English teacher to be put in an advanced class, and I couldn’t even focus. It was horrible. Three was an icy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and every time I thought about her moving, a chip broke off and moved to my brain. My teacher droned on about Shakespeare, and all I could think about was the girl who sought me out sitting in another room. It was bad enough being that far apart from her, but imagine an entirely different state?
We had lunch that day and spent it outside in the bus-loop, walking and talking.
“My dad got a new job in Washington State, so he’s moving us over there at the end of the month. I tried to talk him out of it, but he said I would make new friends. Michael, I don’t want any new friends.”
I realized then that I didn’t have any friends other than Janine, and that if she left, it would be even harder for me. I had no social prospects; I was just the chubby, smelly kid that occasionally cracked a bizarre joke. I had no home at school, and the only person that made it tolerable was leaving me.
“Janine, we could run away.”
“Be realistic, Michael.”
I could hear her father’s voice coming out of her. “But, we were just a thing, you know? Michael, you’re my first boyfriend, and you’ll always be my first. I don’t want this to end between us; I want to try and work it out, long distance.”
I hastily agreed, not quite sure what that would entail. The rest of the weeks played out as a somber countdown to the last time I would see her, and on that Friday, I was given permission to go to her house and help her move.
We sat in her room, looking over each other with sad eyes. We laid down, and she began to cry. I put my arm around her, and she gradually fell asleep. When it was time for their truck to leave, I woke her and helped her move her mattress to the truck.
She kissed me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Michael, I love you.”
I didn’t know what love was, nor if this was it. I was a ninth grader, but I said it back. She smiled, and climbed into the car. My Dad honked the car horn as he turned the corner and I climbed in.
The first three days were fine. I would e-mail her every day, and I was working the nerve to write an actual letter. We talked on AIM and on the phone almost constantly; she would laugh at my jokes. It didn’t sound like she was distracted. I helped her understand Macbeth and she helped me understand basic factoring.
On Friday, I came home from school to find an e-mail.
“Michael,
I met someone. His name is Jim and he really likes me. I told him about you, and he said that he wouldn’t do anything unless you were okay with it. I just think it would be best for me if I could branch out. I still don’t want to lose you. I still love you.
Janine
PS: you can be my Virginia boyfriend.”
Like a tin can in an aluminum crusher, my spirit turned into a jagged mess that wasn’t even worth .25. I told myself if I didn’t let her do this, she would hate me, break up with me, and do it anyway. I e-mailed her back with:
“Janine,
That’s fine. I’m glad your happy.
Michael.”
And that was the last time I spoke to her.
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