1 Chapter 1
I’m discontented with my life. Perhaps that’s not unusual in our modern world of never-ending bills, grumpy cat memes, and one-night stands, but it seems especially difficult for me to find joy in anything right now. Or maybe ever.
I want to change that. Heaven knew I deserved it, what with the shit I’d gone through over the years. But how? I was stuck in a rut.
Perhaps if I explained…
* * * *
I grew up in a single-parent household with three older brothers and one middle sister. I was the youngest. That meant I got hand-me-downs and had to fight for scraps. Dad did his best to care for us, but half the time he was stoned out of his mind when he wasn’t working nights at the car assembly plant in our fabulous town. Mom was a faint memory of lavender and breast milk.
My sister left town at eighteen and my brothers followed in Dad’s footsteps once they got their high school diplomas—barely. Of all the men in the family, I got the brains, not the brawn. So I took that, mostly survived the bullying and fag-bashing of my teen years—a few hospital visits, and a reconstructed jaw were the highlights—and made it out of there as soon as possible after earning my own diploma.
College had been a nightmare of wannabes screwing their way through four years of pseudo-study, and I couldn’t get laid if my life depended on it. That might have been because I was an introvert, skinny, still had really bad acne, and was barely five-feet-five inches tall. No one gave me the time of day, and my old-school Goth look didn’t win me any favors. So I focused on my grades, masturbated to fantasies (and sounds) of my hot roommate Roger Whitmore who fucked anything male that moved, and graduated magna cum laude.
As I had given the speech at the ceremony—it had taken me an hour and lots of breathing exercises to get over my stage fright—I’d looked out over the crowd of my peers, most of whom were bored stiff and couldn’t wait for the day to be over so they could get on with their oh-so-important lives. No one from my family had come to see me walk the stage, though I’d invited them.
It hurt, but I pushed it down and finished my ten-minute spiel, ignored the polite applause from the crowd, and sat behind the podium. My only real friends during that time had been my college professors, most of whom, I thought, felt sorry for me. Whatever.
After surviving my education years, I moved to the big city and into a tiny apartment, thinking I would finally have the freedom to come into my own, live as I wanted, and find my joy. I was Mary Tyler Moore, bitches! Or Ally McBeal’s dancing baby.
Well, that joie de vivrefizzled out quickly.
* * * *
On my twenty-second birthday, I went to a trendy gay bar I’d heard of and proceeded to get drunk and deflowered, all in one night. The loss of my virginity happened in an alley, and hazy memories revolved around my dangerous, slutty behavior. Apparently I’d begged for it, loudly, while I was snockered in the bar, and someone had taken me up on the offer and saved me from total embarrassment. Alcohol had made me into a porn star, and as a result, I never touched the stuff again after that.
Thankfully, the stranger who’d taken my virginity had been gentle, though it had hurt a little on entry. It was a wonder I could even vaguely remember his kind, round face, beard scruff, dark hair and eyes. He’d been twice my size and a little bit taller than me. I’d cried as I slumped against the wall when we were done. After helping me to stand and dress, he’d asked if he could see me home, concerned, I suppose, at my lack of composure and inhibitions. I’d been ashamed of my behavior and had told him I’d be okay on my own before leaving my dignity behind and running away. Liar.
I haven’t been back to that bar since then because I was mortified as fuck. And the man who’d been so kind had stirred something inside me even beneath the booze, and I’d felt pathetic. What would such a person want with me in the light of day? Admittedly, my self-esteem could use some work.
Instead, I focused on paying off my student loans trickle by trickle while working two jobs, because having a B.A. in Liberal Arts did squat for earning major income in the real world, not if you weren’t one of those shiny go-getters who practically shimmied up the corporate ladder. And for all my gung-ho attitude when I’d left home, the real world had sapped it all, and reality had hit me, hard. In short, my life was ho-hum and there was no satisfaction to be had anywhere, just like Mick Jagger had said back in the day. So I kept my head down and did what I had to do to survive.
