Come with me, to visit the rambling past of an irrelevant human female....

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As a teenager, I had a tough time fitting in. I was quiet and withdrawn. I had issues being around boys due to being sexually abused for years by neighborhood boys as a child. In grade 8, my mom made me join a youth group at a church near our new home. They kids there weren't bad but I just didn't fit in. I slept next to the girl's youth director and her two little girls when we went on trips because I didn't feel safe for whatever reason. I remember one boy was really nice to me. He went to my school and even though he was kind of popular (B team footballer, member of the school's Young Christians club, and so on), he went out of his way to talk to me, a freakish outcast.

I remember walking home to my sister's house after school. I baby-sat for my oldest niece who was in elementary school at the time. From 4pm to 630pm, Monday-Wednesdays and occasionally Fridays. Thursdays, she had Girl Scouts and I was usually not asked to baby-sit. Most teenagers would have hated that sort of responsibility but I liked it. I was always very close to my niece Nikki. We are only 6 years apart in age and were raised together for the most part.

I started high school and my sister broke it off with her long-term live-in boyfriend at the time. She moved to another town and I was no longer able to watch Nikki after school. Instead of hanging out with friends or getting a job, I just rode the bus home and spent most of my time online. I played Ultima, Warcraft and Starcraft. I participated in RP games on message boards and spent a lot of time on early music file-sharing sites downloading classic rock and metal. I would chat in Yahoo Chat and joined a mixtape/cd trading club online.

Sometimes I worked at part-time jobs long enough to buy something I really wanted, like expensive sneakers or parts for my umpteen computer rebuilds/mods that slowly took over the basement at my parent's old house. I made a few friends despite my lack of social skills and extreme nerdiness. At some point during my junior year, a former 'friend' started a hateful rumor about my sexuality. I spent a lot of time in the company of two female friends. One was just a friend; the other I had feelings for and eventually we would be something more than friends. (*Mariah, for the purposes of this story)

The latter was the child of a strict immigrants who also happened to be Mormon. Mariah was an outcast for those reasons, along with her nerdiness. She was devoted to a certain boy band (WAAAAAY obsessed ). She was also a squeaky clean straight A student who wore bottle bottom glasses and high water pants. She and I were in most of the same classes freshman year, which is how we had become friends. She crushed on all of these unattainable boys, some of whom she'd went to temple with when her parents were feeling 'temple-ish'. Mariah's family were in the process of becoming lapsed Mormons at that point. They had separated like 10 times and her older brother was 'bad news' by Mormon standards. (He was wannabe gangbanger who routinely got into fights at our overwhelmingly white and preppy high school.)

I remember how she would cry and cry about how those boys wouldn't look at her. She'd write them long notes in her most careful girlish handwriting and slip them into their lockers as we walked the halls of our high school during our lunch period. Outcasts didn't get to eat at our school. Not unless you wanted some pretty rich bitch to 'accidentally' lob trash at you since the only tables we were allowed to sit at were next to the trash cans.

One day, Mariah and I were in the bathroom by the shop class wing where we always went to hide from the teachers who patrolled the halls. I pulled my cigarettes out of the ceiling tiles and was sitting on the counter smoking while she sat on the floor crying about some jerk named Jeremy who wouldn't give her the time of day yet again. She got up and started pacing as she plotting a new strategy to get him to notice her. I knew he wouldn't turn his head in her direction. It wouldn't matter if she got contacts or wore a 'sexy' dress or whatever. He was a cross country team preppy bastard who lived in a big house in a gated community that we'd snuck into a few times just so she could drive her dad's car past his house in the slim window between us getting off of work at the local sandwich shop and her 11 pm curfew.

When she passed me, I grabbed her hand and told her so. We were there in that moment, I was holding her hand and I realized it felt good, natural. I wanted to pull her close, but I didn't. She didn't move away and that was the first time I knew that I was 'different'.

If only it were that easy to be 'different' in a small conformist town...

Mariah and I were pretty close sophomore year. We spent the nights at one another's houses a lot. We lived close enough to walk to each other's places when she couldn't borrow her dad's car. We would go to the movies a lot and sometimes during the movies, we'd hold hands. I would hold her during scary parts sometimes too. When we stayed at my house, we'd sleep together in my queen sized water bed and she'd giggle and say that 'the wave motion tickles me!'

She would take off her glasses and I would stare into her eyes...she had sad, deep eyes. Tired face most of the time from spending too much time reading and studying. Her breasts were big and when she'd take off her bra, they were just....BAM! In your face. Sometimes she'd let me touch them, but nothing else. She found it strange that I wanted to, but seemed to be okay with it. In retrospect, that was probably when I crossed the line that led to the rumors starting.

The summer between sophomore and junior years, we went to summer school. Mariah was on her quest for extra credit and I was there because I had failed math and wanted to avoid gym class during the school year. Being in the locker room with other girls was very...let's say...challenging for me for obvious reasons.

A mutual friend (*Kate, for the sake of this story) was also there and the three of us were kind of a clique that summer. Mariah and Kate had been good friends prior and their parents actually liked them being friends. No one's parents seemed to like me. I was 'odd' and a 'bad influence' because I didn't go to church and wasn't all that academically inclined despite being in advanced classes and well-spoken. Plus I was a goth kid whose parents allowed her to smoke and listen to heavy metal including the big bad Marilyn Manson!

Being around the both of them made me confront my burgeoning sexuality. They were both very attractive to me. I have a thing for abnormally tall women. Mariah was 6'1. Kate? She was 6'3. They should have been athletes, but they were nerds. They were both so chesty it hurt. Bursting at the seams. The three of us were in gym class together. Can you even imagine how excited I was? That was the only time in my pathetic nerdy life that I was ever excited to run laps.

Bounce bounce bounce. Bounce bounce bounce. If I were a guy, I'd have had a raging boner the whole time. But since I'm not, I didn't. I did spend a lot of time masturbating to the visions at home though.

Everyday, we'd go out to lunch together. Wendy's or Pizza Hut since those were walking distance. We would sit there and talk and eat. Mariah would push her glasses up her nose like 500 times as she gasped between bites of whatever. Kate would listen patiently like a wise old sage and then deliver some witty remark that would have us laughing afterwards. I was merely a spectator and occasional interpreter between the two of them.

Kate and I started spending a lot of time together. She had a car, a white '83 Mustang GT. It had been her stepdad's pet project for awhile, then it was her mom's 'fun car'. Her parents were loaded. They lived out in the middle of nowhere on a ranch and they had all kinds of crazy shit out there. A garage full of her stepdad's projects, a 'lounge' built onto the front of their house that included pool tables, a jukebox and fully stocked bar and god knows what else. We would go out there while her parents were at work and spend our days sipping Long Islands and Jack and Cokes while she rolled joints.

We would smoke the joints as we relaxed in the lounging chairs on the back porch. She'd crank up the volume on the ancient boom box. We sang along to old songs and sometimes she'd sit on my lap as we sang and passed the joint back and forth. Other times we'd reverse hit as she straddled me. She rarely wore a shirt when we were at her place. Always bikini tops or ittybitty wifebeaters. Her girls were just THERE, in my face. How could I not look, not touch?

There were a few times when played 'teasing' games like 'Pass the Cube' where we'd take ice cubes dipped in whiskey and pass them between our mouths until one of us missed or choked and spit what was left over the railing. One time we played strip poker. Another time we got really fuckin' blazed at like 10 in the morning and snuck into her neighbors pool to go for a midday skinny dip. Crazy shit like that was common when we were together.

A weird tension developed between us. I had strong feelings for her, wanted to do things with her...especially after I saw her in cowboy boots and a hat with not much else in between. BUT...she had other people. An unrequited love with a fellow member of the academic elite. (Later on, she'd spend several years with him only for him to come out as gay.) There was also a strange relationship between her and her forensics partner Whitney. Whitney was bi and open about it. I'm pretty sure her and Kate were a thing around that time.

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Besides fapping a lot, I began to question where I stood in terms of sexuality. I knew I couldn't come out in school. Or at home. My school was conservative and this was back in the early 00s, right before gay became somewhat okay. My parents, despite being permissive and lax about most things, were not cool with gay either. I felt alone and had terrible anxiety. I quit my job and reverted back to playing computer games 24/7.

Mariah and I maintained a close relationship. She couldn't get a guy to look twice at her even after she lost 40lbs and got contacts. She was sexually frustrated and I was willing. We spent some time 'practice kissing' in her basement bedroom. At my house, we got drunk on Smirnoff Ice while listening to The Cure and The Get Up Kids. She would let me do other things once she got to a certain point of buzzed. The lights went off. I would listen to her moan and I'd crank the music up.

'Oh God....' I can hear her now. She was a slow starter and I was inexperienced and a bit too eager. I remember kissing her ears because she liked that and I remember how she would squeal if I got a little too nibbly on her neck. Hands on breasts, hands on waist, hands on thighs, and whatever comes next...

Those were good times, times when I could be honest about how I really felt and want I really wanted. I trusted and I was legit in love. Big hearted me.

The rumors started junior year. I guess Mariah or Kate had leaked my secrets to other people. Maybe someone else had figured them out. I don't know. Suddenly, I was a 'dyke' and a 'lesbo'. All of the good times stopped happening. Mariah and I quit going on our weekly journeys to the record stores to hunt for new sounds. We quit hitting the thrift shops and vintage shops. She quit calling me and eventually we drifted apart after she got accepted into Honor Society or whatever it was called. She finally got one of those preppy fucks to pay her some attention and that was good enough for her.

Kate had her shit with Whitney and the two of them were on the DL. They kept their distance and I secretly hated them for being able to have what I wanted. I ended up at the alternative school for 'fuck ups' because the rumors turned to bullying. I lost all of my friends. I hated school and attempted suicide.

You hear a lot about how bad gay boys have it, but lesbian girls have it bad too. It's easy to assume that girls who like girls can just keep it a secret and they have more opportunity to be intimate and so on. I guess that was true, but we still pay a price. Some of us pay more than others. Some of us will never outlive our pasts.

Senior year was miserable. I met a guy at the alternative school and decided that I was going to be straight. I pretended to like him and lost my virginity to him. I hated myself. I didn't even want to be with him. But I felt like I had to pretend to care.

That year was hard anyway. My mom had a nervous breakdown and I was living with my sister and her two daughters. Money was tight and I was basically playing Mommy everyday after school. I cried myself to sleep on a crappy loveseat covered with cat hair most nights. Sometimes I'd go home to my parents' house. I had a bedroom there, and high speed internet. A computer. I'd escape into music and Warcraft III and feel like I was okay for a little while.

I wasn't allowed to be there with just my mom though. She was unstable. Plus I was needed at my sister's house...so my adolescence was pretty much over at that point.

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Towards the end of my senior year, Mariah and I 'made up' or whatever. We ended up going to prom together. I had my first slow dance to some forgettable early 00's pop hit whilst my head was buried in Mariah's cleavage. She wore a beautiful vintage gown, black body with a white silk collared top. Form fitting in all of the right places. I wore a dress (last time I did! ) and combat boots. A disco ball twirled above us and the two of us sat a table by ourselves, save for the only out lesbian at our school. She was a junior and she had come with a senior friend who had left early for some reason. I didn't know her well, but we had a good time chatting.

Mariah and I left and faced the long drive back to our hometown. We stopped at a park and sat in her new car listening to pop punk hits of the time. Such as:

AND

The lyrics to which I still find hauntingly telling:

"This may never start.
I'll tear us apart.
Can I be your enemy.
Losing half a year.
Waiting for you here
I'd be your anything.
So get back, back, back to where we lasted.
Just like I imagine.
I could never feel this way.
So get back, back, back to the disaster.
My heart's beating faster.
Holding on to feel the same."

We kissed in the front seat and held hands as she drove one handed all the way home. I spent the night at her house and that was the last time we ever did anything. In fact, it was one of the last times I talked to her. I will always remember her and wish that we could've been a real thing.

Maybe if I had been a guy or she had been a lesbian, we could've been something. She was my first love.

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And that's where I end this long ass rambling blog.