I was listening to HDTGM, one of my favorite podcasts, and I remembered one of the most darkly comedic lies I ever told.
The lie itself isn't the dark comedy, though it's darkly funny in that it was ALMOST not a lie. It's only funny if you think stories that are borderline pedophilic are funny, I'll throw that out there right now.
Maybe it isn't funny at all?
Let's find out.
I don't necessarily regret anything, or any person, that I've done in my life, but there are instances, and people, that make me feel gross inside. John was one of them.
Have I mentioned before that I've been 5'9 since I was like, 13, and I've had big tits since a little after I was birthed? I've inhabited the body of a woman for longer than any sane person would categorize me as a woman, and I used to love that about myself. I thought I looked older (I did in the body, but the face was allllllll underage naivety), I assumed it meant I could do older person things. At 14, having the body of a woman, but the brain of an idiot 14 year old, I got into...ew, ready?...chat rooms where role playing was a thing. In my defense, it was because Amber was heavily involved in Vampire: The Masquerade, and she seemed to be having a good enough time, so I thought "why don't I also do something fucking lame as fuck, but, like, with FAERIES" and dude, I put so much importance in spelling fairies with the super stupid E because it was 1998 and I didn't how to not be a fucking moron yet.
I started using some AOL chatroom dedicated to like...I don't know, renaissance roleplaying, or fairytale renaissance role playing....whatever kind of genre Skyrim or Dragon Age or Fable would be, but with fairies...oops, sorry, FAERIES...that weren't monochrome hags, but gorgeous, sumptuous creatures that were buxom and definitely helmed more by dudes than women. I became a regular in the chat room, started making some friends, and I started chatting with this dude more than I chatted to anybody else. We started talking in non-roleplaying capacity (listen, it is literally making my eyes water to share this. I hate myself so much right now). His name was John, he lived in Passaic, NJ, something about a flower shop, something about breaking his back, he was 24, and we talked ALL THE TIME. Back in the 90s, people did crazy things like talk on the phone, so when John suggested he call me, I was like, cool! Yay! And we started talking to each other on the phone. If you're wondering to yourself if I was honest about my age, yes. Yes, I was. I told him I was 14. At the time, 14 seemed so grown, and having the attention of a 24 year old man on a friendly basis seemed on par. I was smart, right? What did age matter? But as I look at that age gap specific to that situation right now, it makes my skin crawl.
I didn't see John as anything more than a friend, though, so we remained pretty steadfast chat buddies for the next year or so. He'd call me sometimes, but it was mostly chatting (I left the roleplaying shit pretty fast, it was so fucking dumb to me. I couldn't stay in it) and emailing. To my dedicated FAE with an E email, no doi. Which I will not put in here as I was planning on, because, after checking just now, I still have very googleable accounts with that name that I forgot the passwords to over a decade ago, and I would like to spare SOME humiliation. So, fast forward to me moving to Vegas. John and I are writing letters to each other, sending pictures back and forth, and then John makes this big "I've caught the feels" confession. Which...15 year old me was super touched and pleased, because this was a real life man in his twenties interested in me, that must have meant I was smart and cool and mature. It certainly didn't mean he was a pedophile.
I wrote John back (like some fucking romance novel heroine. Bitch, pick up the fucking phone and call a mother fucker. HOLY SHIT, I have just had a revelation. I don't think I have EVER audibly verbalized the words "I love you" to someone for the first time. Chris was in a letter, Allen was in a chat, Dan was in an email, Derek was in a chat. Who the fuck even am I as a human?) and I was like ZOMFG, I luv u 2 LOL!!!! Because what did I know? I loved the idea of someone loving me. Of someone I saw as having real world authority and adult merit seeing me as a romantic option made me feel special. Me now, as a 34 year old woman, understands how easy it is to fleece girls at such a tender age, because it really did give me a rush of self-assuredness and validation. I'm grossed out and...reflexively embarrassed of myself for not having the intelligence to go, "what the fuck kind of 25 year old man needs to be in love with a 15 year old?". I didn't think through the "romance" part of it to come to the logical "predator" conclusion, I just thought John saw a witty, clever, beautiful human and connected. Nevermind that I was none of those things.
John came out to visit me in Vegas, and it was this super fast, intense thing for me. Like, the connection was immediate, the love felt real, but it always does at 15, doesn't it? We were inseparable. We didn't fuck, I was still unready for that after the Alex fiasco, though I did make a valiant effort, and I gained an affinity for blow jobs because I had to do SOMETHING, right??? Adult sex stuff meant I had do do things I maybe wasn't ready to do to keep my manz. My pedophile predator man who let a fucking FIFTEEN YEAR OLD BLOW HIM, WHAT THE FUCK. Fun fact, John was also the first person to go down on me, and I was so fucking NERVOUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. He got in one lick and I was like, no, nuh uh, put that shit away, I can't do it, this is weird, and he was like, calm down, loosen up, you'll like it. Strike two, you fucking perv-o, I did not. I had a lot of hang ups about oral sex for awhile after that. Seems like I may not have consciously known this was all icky, but somewhere, my brain was smarter than my immediate brain and it knew to file the experiences under WHAMMIES: Big time gross.
John had been staying with me for two weeks, I think, and his stay duration was indefinite. We talked about getting married. A fact that I gushed to my dad and he had no problem with (bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. My dad would have definitely been the kind of dad that sold me into the sex trade when I was 11 or married me to an old rich man when I was 9 if we lived in the magical land of Bible Times), but when I gushed to my mom, she had reservations. As any fucking person of sound fucking mind would have (DAD). I'm jamming along, thinking this is all so fucking romantic, I'll be married at 15, this will be great, what a love story! And I come home from school one day, and John's stuff is GONE. There's a note on my bed that said something to the effect of, "I had to leave. Blame it on Kristine or blame it on the stars, but I can't know you anymore. I'm sorry if I hurt you." I remember the Kristine or the stars part really well. Kristine had been his fiancee before he met me, but she ditched him, and he was still hung up on her. Jury is still out on if she ditched him so she could finish elementary school, or if she ditched him because they were the same age and she caught on to him being a tempter of young female persons, but he had made mention of her and how broken their relationship ending had left him. The stars part, even then, struck me as maddeningly fucking dumb, but the entire thing...I was heartbroken. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I didn't know what to do. I didn't understand.
And I couldn't stop fucking CRYING. For days. I skipped school for the first of those days, but my dad wasn't having any of that shit, so I had to return to school the next day. I realized as I was sobbing my way through the halls that I needed a good reason to be crying, but fuck, I didn't want to tell anybody I got dumped. I couldn't tell my teachers I was bawling in the back and snarfling through lessons because I was heartbroken and confused, so what the fuck was I going to do??
Of COURSE I cooked up a fucking whopper of a lie, you guys. Of fucking course I did. And may I just tell you that I went all the fuck out with this lie. I could have kept it simple and understandable. Grandma dead? Nailed it. Parents divorcing? Boom. Pet got run over by a car? Yes, do it up. Did I do any of those things? No. Here's the lie I went with:
My boyfriend and I got married two weeks ago.
AND THEN HE DIED.
I remember SO Fucking vividly the shock and horror and sympathy I got from my classmates. I didn't have to spin the lie to teachers, and I have to believe if I had, they would have called me on my bullshit. In a major fucking way. But, seeing as how 15 is consenting age in Nevada with a parent's approval, and it's not like people don't fucking die, those chumps all fucking bought it. I say chumps like they're the assholes for trusting that some fucking douchenozzle wouldn't make up some ridiculous story to make her crying seem valid instead of just saying she was dumped and it hurt.
The rumor mill circulated HARD. I always meant to ask Steffie if she heard about the girl whose husband died, but I was pretty relieved to not immediately be pegged when we became friends, and as the years passed, I just forgot to bring it up.
To add the necessary component to the story: before John came out to visit me, he bought me a trip to Florida as a Christmas present (and to illustrate how seriously I took John's feelings for me, I fooled around with like, seven dudes while I was down there. No genital stuff, because seriously, I was terrified to engage in that behavior again, but some PRETTY FUCKING SERIOUS feelskies and make out action. I was fucking fifteen. That was god damn age appropriate). Before I left on that trip, which was two weeks long, I had been making friends with this girl named Kristen. Kristen was mousy and nerdy. The kind of girl who, when you look at her, you know she won't lose her virginity until she's 35, she's way too into horses and Disney Princesses, and it's a safe gamble that she thinks she has a legitimate romantic entanglement with one of the doctors from Doctor Who. An obscure one, though. She was dumpy and short and kind of tragic looking, but she was one of only two people who talked to me nicely at school, so I latched on and made the best out of her being my only friend. I told her the kinds of things you tell friends....my home life kinda sucked, I hated my mom, I had been in a psych ward for a couple of years, in and out patient, because of depression and suicide attempts and mental breakdowns....the usual life stuff. Kristen may have looked mousy, but bitch was NOT the kind of person to keep juicy gossip to herself. She told EVERYONE about my stint in the psych ward. When I came back, the rumors about me were fucking SCANDALOUS. Everyone thought I had been gone for so long because I tried to kill myself and I was in the psych ward AGAIN. I had kids who had openly teased me apologize to me for being mean (I was very confused about this, but appreciated the sentiment). One kid in particular, Ken something or other, a tiny kid who played tennis and I remember him looking like a far more diminutive Josh Chan, who had tormented me every single fucking day in chemistry class, sat down next to me on my first day back and was like, "Oh man, Ondrea. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. If I ever said anything to you that made you want to kill yourself, I am really sorry." I was alarmed, to say the least, but I didn't want the sympathy train to end because that little dick nugget had been REALLY fucking cruel to me and while he didn't even come close to hurting me enough too feel suicidal, he did make me feel like absolute dog shit about myself. Another kid, a popular senior on the football team that was ALSO in my chemistry class, asked me to be his lab partner later that week (I assume. It couldn't have been long after), and he told me that he had been in a psych ward, too, and if I ever needed anybody to talk to about it, he understood. His name was John, and we were pretty chummy for the rest of the year.
The point here is, the school already thought I was fucking dangerously close to the brink and ready to kill myself, or break down the walls of my own personal reality, any fucking minute. So much so that this boy I had a crush on, Clint, who found out about my crush via Kristen, as well (cunt. Couldn't just keep her good damn fat, mousy mouth fucking shut), would make jokes about me being so far gone on him AND in such a fragile mental state that I was probably stalking him, and creeping on him all the time, and spying on him in bushes. I found out about that from Steffie the first night we hung out. I'm getting way off track here. The point of all of that is, I was on thin fucking ice at school. I couldn't explain depression and schizophrenia (my diagnosis at the time) to them en masse, so if I came to school in hysterics because I was dumped, I'd get fucking hauled off and Baker Acted or some shit. I fully maintain that I lied in self defense.
I sent John letters upon letters demanding he tell me exactly what the fuck happened. I called, but he changed his number. I never heard from him ever again, and for a month, maybe two, it really did fuck my shit up hard. I just couldn't understand. I lived on a steady diet of Fruity Pebbles and applesauce. I watched What Dreams May Come a LOT. I listened to Elton John. And I cried. I cried a lot. I got over it after a month or two, and I moved on to the next.
I found out about a year later that it was my mom's "fault". My mom had been so greatly unnerved by me being 15 and John being 25 that she called him up and asked him what the actual fuck he was doing with a 15 year old girl. Could he not find someone his own age. She called him a fucking pedophile, and it worked. He fucking split the next day while I was in school, which really is funny. I was so fucking livid at her, but only for a day. On principle, she shouldn't have meddled, but 35 year old me is so glad she did. Because if she hadn't, I WOULD have married him, and...ew.
John wasn't even the worst of it. I maintained that at 16, I was old enough to touch genitals with whomever I wanted, at whatever age, so I took up the insanely fun hobby of fucking around with my dad's friends. Most of whom were in their early thirties. Some of them were in their twenties, but mostly, they were in their thirties. Not only did they know how old I was, they all made a big deal of considering each other a work family, and so many of them had groped my teenage tiddies. Extra gross. I mean, I went along with it, but why? Why are you initiating sexual shit with a girl half your age that you should see as an extension of family?
I met my daughter's dad when I was 17, and he was 24, and that boggles my mind to this very fucking day. As 17 year old me, I didn't see an issue. 35 year old me does. My daughter is almost the age I was when I started fucking her dad, and from my instagram stalking (I check her accounts every day, because it's the only way I can watch her grow up), her boyfriend looks age appropriate. I am holding out hope that she doesn't get lured in by some dude who is swarthy looking but charming, and well into his twenties while she is still a teenager, who will knock her up and emotionally manipulate her into making huge decisions because she feels backed into a corner and scared. Hopefully she stays in an appropriate age range.
My husband and I have a seven year age gap between us. He's 42, I'm 35, and I wonder sometimes if I could have effectively seduced him when I was 17. If he would have found it appropriate to want to snuggle up against my teenage body when he was a literal fucking man and I was still a god damn child.
The strange thing is, I legitimately don't think pedophilia is something that should be demonized. It's definitely odd for people as a general rule to agree that sexuality isn't a choice, but to alsohave such hateful views of pedophiles as if someone wouldn't just choose an attraction to people their age. That conversation is for another time, perhaps.
I thought this might be funnier than it actually is, but it's really kind of a bummer. What a depressing note to end my evening on.
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