Hearing of Jan’s exploits, at the time, scarred me, deeply. And poor Jessica, she had to bear the brunt of it.
Jessica, Jessica, she was a lovely girl, nice, sweet as sugar. She really was.
Her bedroom was painted hot pink and covered in teen girl things. Stuffed animals, cute small things, colorful stickers of Care Bears and unicorns and posters of the “hot” guys of the day, popular bands of the day like Pantera and Green Day. She even had a picture of James Dean taped to her vanity mirror.
Like Jan, I’d been set up with her through a mutual friend.
It was the night after Christmas, the first time we got together. My friend, Jimmy, was dating her friend Mary.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent The four of us had this incredible night. We drove around, joyriding in my car (an old fucked-up Toyota my mom helped get me- I’d paid the other part from odd-jobs- my mom saying she was sick of being my “chauffeur” and carpooling, driving me to school... I’d finally passed my driving test on the third attempt, after snorting coke to amp me up for it. The DMV test administrator said she’d never seen someone complete the test so quickly. I guess drugs aren’t always bad!) Back to the night after Christmas. It was magical. We ripped bong hits, listened to Enigma. It was the first time I’d heard such music, the hip hop beats, the Gregorian chants. It was fantastic and a perfect soundtrack.
Jimmy, wanting privacy with Mary, and being a bro, led Jessica and I to his parents’ room. They were out of town.
(This is how it usually went down in high school. Whoever’s parents were at work or away on a trip or out wherever, that was the house we congregated at.) Jimmy jokingly said something to the effect of “check out this tie…,” holding up his father’s necktie, and darting out of the room.
I wasted no time getting on Jessica. I went straight in, kissed her, and undressed her, laid her on the bed.
I tied her arms up, playfully, with Jimmy’s dad’s neckties, and disrobed. Then I lost all sense, as teens do.
I mounted her and began having sex with her. Without a condom.
We’d been laughing as I tied her up, but when I penetrated her, I remember she instantly closed her eyes and began moaning, breathing heavily.
Fuck, it was sooooooo warm. I’d banged a couple other girls, but with condoms.
This was the first time I’d fucked without one, and it was far superior, almost like nature’s way of ensuring the continuation of the human race, making it that much better raw.
As I fucked, she whispered in my ear that I should put on a condom, but I didn’t stop and get one. I didn’t pull out either when I came, busting right up inside her, with a hefty teen load.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent We saw each other regularly after this, and, for the first few weeks, it was bliss.
The vaunted “honeymoon” period. We went at it like rabbits. Never once using condoms.
I wished later that we had.
I also wish, in retrospect, that I hadn’t been such a terrible cunt to her.
She was a doll. No way she’d have been cheating on me, fucking other dudes, but after Jan, I just couldn’t trust women, and took it out on Jessica.
I’d get super jealous over nothing. Freak out. Yell at her. Over nothing. I’d start fights. Basically be a total prick. Over nothing.
She’d usually just shake her head, roll her eyes. Other times, she’d stomp off, often lock herself in the bathroom.
I’d stand outside the bathroom door, slapping on it, begging her to come out, seeing floaters, and eventually apologizing. Then she’d come out, her lips pursed, eyes narrowed. Her angry look was really sexy, I have to say. Then I’d apologize again, hold her hand, and lead her back to my room, where we’d smoke weed and fuck.
It became all we did, fighting and fucking. Fighting and fucking.
(And hell, could she fuck too, like a porn star… And as much as she was into sex, she was also highly religious, going to church every Sunday, and she’d be seriously pissed off if I ever said “goddamn” and would castigate me for using the “Lord’s name in vain.” That’d always pour gasoline onto the fire, accelerate our quarrels…)
I really can’t say what came over me, why I picked so many fights, why I was such an asshole. I can’t blame it on Jan. Honestly, I felt possessed. It was like another person doing it. A demon inside me. So angry. So hateful. If I saw myself doing that, now, if I saw video of it, I’d be so ashamed. Looking back on it, I was fucking horrible to her.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that she’d gotten pregnant.
We were too young to have the baby, and so we went and got an abortion.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent It still haunts me, to this day. The experience. Going there, that cold, damp, spring morning. Pulling into the parking lot and seeing these protesters outside the abortion clinic. Some were holding hands in a circle, murmuring prayers. Others were holding up Jesus signs, quotes from the Bible.
An armed guard and a lady in a bulletproof vest escorted us inside.
In there, in the lobby, that resembled any doctor’s office lobby, were all couples our same age, teens, early twenties. Before they began the procedures, a nurse had a word with us, told us the girls would be stitched up, sore for a few weeks and that we’d not be able to have sex.
This one jovial Black girl, who’d been talkative, cracking jokes, quipped that
“guess we gonna have to do it in the ass, then.”
The mood was nervous, but light, until the procedures started. The Black girl was one of the first to go back to the operating rooms, and when she came back, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. Any trace of joy erased, washed clean from her blanched face.
While Jessica went back, another guy whose girlfriend went back too, joined me for a smoke outside. We made small talk. Didn’t say anything about what was going on, but it was the unspoken elephant in the room. We were too young to completely comprehend it, I think, which is probably a good thing.
When Jessica came back, she too was blanched, distraught.
I drove her back to my house. She was tired, sad, cried a lot. Said how the doctor told her she had “lovely rosy cheeks” and that he’d stuck a vacuum tube type hose inside her…
When she passed out for a while, in my arms, I left the room because a wave of emotion hit me and I needed to cry. I cried for the first time in a while. I cried a lot, like a baby. I cried so hard that I shook, wheezed and convulsed.
When I came back, she was awake and upset that I’d left, asking where I was. I hadn’t the heart to disclose the truth. That I had left the room because I didn’t want Jessica to see me acting like a bitch, but, in retrospect, not being able to tell her made me even more of a bitch.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent In the days following, she said how guilty she was. How wherever she went, she thought people knew. Like everyone was looking at her, judging her, thinking what a horrible person she was.
After the abortion, we didn’t fight as much, but when we did, it was usually her starting it.
A lot of anger, on her part, lingered. She didn’t bring up the abortion, save for a couple times when she screamed at me for abandoning her that morning and not being there when she woke up.
Never having kids, I think back on that time. Would I have been a better person if we had the kid? Would the kid have come out healthy? Jessica was smoking cigarettes, drinking, smoking weed. The baby probably would have been damaged, premature, unhealthy, but who knows…
Who knows how my life would have been different if I were a father. Perhaps it’d have been better, made me responsible, had me make better life choices.
I’ll always wonder, too, if it would have been a girl or boy.
As bad as it was for me, for her it was way worse. It’s a pain she’ll carry forever.