Life Begins (9 page)

I guess I should be glad that Jack
is so stupid when it comes to matters of the heart. By all accounts
she had me beat. She did it all without any of my feminine wiles.
She was able to get him as a human being and not as a
woman.

I still won him, though. That is
all that really matters. It doesn’t matter how I won
him.

~~~

Christine never won me. I was never a trophy
or a prize to be fought over. And I never used Melinda as a pawn in
the game of love. She was a friend. I admit to my stupidity at the
game of love, but I was never intentionally cruel. If I had thought
that Melinda had actually loved me, I would never have suggested
that we get married.

If you want to talk about cruelty, you should
hear what all Christine did to try to make me jealous. I watched
her date the captain of every team at school. She was playing every
boy in school in an attempt to make me jealous.

She would come home from dates, kiss the boys
goodnight on the front porch right where I could see it, and then
spend the night with me. Everybody at school knew it.

And the things she said about me. If anybody
asked about us, she would lie. She once told people that I was gay.
We spend so much time together because I'm like her best
girlfriend. She was just the cover so that people wouldn't know
that I was gay.

~~~

He is leaving out that part where
he said that if he ever did turn gay, I would be the first ass that
he would pound. I'm still waiting for him to come out of the
closet.

~~~

She is going to have to keep waiting. I have
no intention of turning gay. I have found nothing attractive about
men. I don't even know what women see in us. If I ever did turn
gay, I would be a lesbian.

Seriously, the amount of abuse I have taken
with this woman.

~~~

I have never abused him. He must
be talking about the amount of self-abuse he has inflicted upon
himself because he wasn't smart enough to get with me.

~~~

That's right. Most women tell a man, "Do you
know the number of tears I've cried over you?" I tell Christine,
"Do you know the amount of sperm I've lost over you?"

So if there is anything to be learned by this,
it is that for the majority of our teenage years Christine and I
were at war with each other.

~~~

We are still at war as far as I'm
concerned. I'm still waiting to yell, "Fire in the
hole!"

~~~

I don't know if she thinks that is sexy or
not. I can't even decide. While I see it as a sex reference, it is
also slightly disturbing. I don't know if I want to have sex with a
woman who is burning. I suggest she goes to the doctor and get a
cream for that. I might be more receptive to her
advances.

~~~

If he is so worried about my
vaginal health, I believe he has a cream to cure all of my
problems. I will even squeeze the tube for him.

Intermission

I have not really talked to
Melinda since I have been dating Christine. It would just kind of
be awkward. I don’t want to ruin what I have with Christine.
Melinda and I had to stop talking to each other. There has been the
occasional e-mail. And if I get stuck writing, I still call her for
help. I still consider Melinda one of my best friends. She knows
stuff about me that no other person knows. It is out of this
respect for one another that she has agreed to write a short piece
here.

I first met Jack when we were twelve.
Christine was away at the Catholic school. I didn’t get to meet her
until after his father’s death. I knew her before from school, but
I never really hung out with her crowd or Jack for that
matter.

A lot has been said about me and Jack. He is
quite possibly the greatest human being on the planet. He is
charming, funny, intelligent, and beautiful in spirit. He is an
easy person to love.

I did love him and would have liked our
relationship to have been more. I also knew that he loved
Christine. He never led me on. I want to clear that up right now.
He wasn’t playing me. He’s not that type of man. It just isn’t in
his character. He is just really bad at love. He honestly didn’t
know that I had a crush on him. I think everybody else knew, but
Jack was oblivious.

In his thinking, there is only Christine. All
other women just happen to be women because of biology. He doesn’t
see them as sexual creatures or objects of desire. This has to be
one of his most endearing qualities as well as one of his most
irritating.

A woman could love him madly, and he wouldn’t
see it. He would just befriend the woman. He would listen to her
story, comfort her, and show genuine interest in her. Unfortunately
for her, his interest in her is as another human being. He has this
odd philosophy that we are put on this planet to help each other
out.

I’m not sure how Jack cannot know that a girl
likes him. He’s a brilliant man. He knows human emotions and can
express thoughts and feelings like nobody else. He can listen to
any problem and ask questions so that you know that he is actually
listening.

When I first met Jack, Christine was out of
the picture. We spent most of our time together in those days
talking about comedy. When she came back into the picture, I know
that Jack did spend more time with her. But there was also a
tension between them. By the time we were about fourteen, the
entire Jack and Christine relationship had cooled off. Jack was
more of a love sick puppy chasing her around. She was as cold as
ice. I think she still is. I don’t know how he can be around her
without having major shrinkage or frost bite. She is the only woman
I know who could give a man frost bite and have it considered an
STD.

Anyway, Jack and I started to become an item
when we were about fourteen. Jack started to talk about us getting
married. And I can talk freely about this because Christine knows
about it. Whatever happened between them was serious enough that I
don’t think he saw her as a viable marriage option.

For Jack that means that you make other plans
for life. Since society tells you that you need to get married, he
chooses somebody that he is friends with. He doesn’t care about the
woman being beautiful. If he can’t have the woman he loves, he’s
going to spend the rest of his life with a woman whose company he
enjoys.

So Jack and I spent three or four years as
friends who were going to be getting married. We never dated during
this time. We never kissed, held hands, danced, made out, or did
anything else that would make a girl think that he was interested
in her. He just listened to me and was the greatest friend I have
ever had.

As for my involvement in the scheme to get
Jack and Christine together, I did not sell Jack out. She had him
confused about what he was feeling. I came over as a friend to talk
to him. Somehow we got onto our supposed future marriage. I think
that was when I realized how foolish I had been.

Jack didn’t mean to be cruel. It’s not who he
is. He just doesn’t know how to love. And it doesn’t enter into his
consciousness that somebody other than Christine might actually
have affections for him. So when I was talking to him about our
married life, he responded with a brutal honesty.

He did not see our marriage as having sex. We
might have sex after a couple of years of marriage, but that would
just be to experiment to see if it is what people really say it is.
But we would not be having sex for reproductive reasons. We would
just adopt children.

When I asked him what his marriage to
Christine would be like, I had to hold back my tears. He spoke of
it in such beautiful terms. It was better than any fairy tale girls
grow up hearing. And like how he didn’t mean to be cruel, he didn’t
mean to make his marriage to Christine poetic.

So I did not sell him out. I did something to
make it possible for him to be happy. He loves comedy, but there is
something that he loves more. I did what I thought would make him
happiest.

Jack can go back and forth on what he wants
out of life. Comedy would make him famous. He has studied it and
can write theories on it. There is no doubt that he would be the
greatest comic of his generation. He just has an Achilles’ heel:
Christine.

I don’t think he would ever be happy not being
with her. He has to follow his one true love. I wasn’t going to be
the one to stand in his way.

I didn’t sell him out. I made him happy. That
is love. And I think Jack would agree with me. It is the kind of
love that he feels for Christine. You do what is best for the other
person.

And that is all I have to say on the matter.
Although I do have to agree with Arthur, Christine is a bitch. She
makes Jack happy, though. I can’t complain. Jack deserves to be
happy with how much happiness he has given other people over the
years.

A part of me will always love him. My love was
never large enough to conquer his love for her. I’m glad that he is
happy with her. I hope she knows how fortunate she truly is. She
has nothing to worry about from me. My communication with him has
been strictly professional, or as two old friends who are catching
up with each other. Besides, Jack would never cheat on her. He
never did when he wasn’t actually dating her. Why would he
now?

~~~

I’m glad all of my friends think
that Christine is a bitch. They don’t know her like I do. It’s all
an act, except when she wants it doggie style.

Ironically I did a similar joke
the night that Melinda sold me out to Christine. Melinda was asking
me about how I felt about her. I told her and explained to her that
that was love. She told me that was how you loved a dog. And that’s
when I did the doggie style joke.

I do miss Melinda. She was a good
friend. I am still technically friends with her. Christine just
doesn’t want me to talk to her. I think it is funny. Melinda was
never competition, and yet Christine has always been jealous of
her. Melinda has always thought that I have found a perverse joy in
this and that is why I kept my friendship with her for so long. I
don’t think this is the case. Melinda understands me in a way that
Christine has never been able to. I could talk to Melinda about
things that are important to me. Melinda would watch my Jack Benny
marathons and enjoy it. Afterward, we would have an actual
discussion. I can’t do this with Christine. I mean, Christine will
watch stuff with me now, but she is doing it more to just be with
me.

I promised Christine that I would
not devote a chapter to my relationship with Melinda, or my lack of
a relationship. This intermission fulfills that
requirement.

I do think it is hard to write
about somebody that was a big part of your life when you are with
somebody that wants to write that person out of your life. The fact
of the matter is that I can’t tell my life’s story without Melinda.
I don’t really think she sold me out. She did for me what she knew
I couldn’t do for myself.

My friends can debate which girl
would be better for me. I think Melinda made the right choice for
me. I did love her like you love a dog. She was a great companion.
She deserves better than me.

I think Melinda’s version of the
events is mostly accurate. The whole marriage thing came about
after Christine’s relationship with the boyfriend who shall remain
unnamed. I’m not going to recount those events here. There are
parts of my life that I would like to keep untold.

I will say that a peace was
fostered between me and Christine. She agreed to stop seeing the
baseball player. I agreed that I would stop loving her and that I
would move on with my life. We both agreed that it was in both of
our best interests for me to stop loving her.

I think Arthur may be right in
that there is something not healthy about my relationship with
Christine. Although we had this peace accord, Christine and I were
still flirting back and forth. What had started to find expression
around the time of my father’s death started to become unspoken.
Neither one of us was going to break the accord.

We were like an abusive cycle. She
would date other men. I would feel hurt and would hang out with
Melinda. Christine would get hurt by this and would go out with
other men. And while all of this was happening, Christine and I
would be spending the night together most weekend
nights.

I’m not sure how that tradition
started. I know that it started right about the time that Christine
and I signed the peace accord. Through our most difficult years,
those nights together kept us together. We could fight and have as
much sexual tension as our young bodies could handle. Then at
night, we would actually talk to each other and be what we have
always needed from each other.

Those nights are some of my
fondest memories.

~~~

For all of his sentimentality,
Jack seems to forget certain important facts. We started spending
the night together the night of his so called peace accords. It was
a very emotional night for me.

I did like the boy who abused me.
I didn’t like the abuse. It was that… It was a very awkward time
for me. I have always wanted Jack to be my first, but something
happened the night that we almost had sex. He seemed to withdraw. I
took that personally. He didn’t seem interested in me. Plus he was
hanging out with Melinda.