Life Begins (20 page)

Jack decided to pack a picnic
lunch for us that we would eat in the tree house that we had always
used as children. It was the place that had always been special to
us during the carefree days of our childhood. This was the place
where we seemed to work better as a couple. This was the place that
had not been touched by the adult world. There was still a magic to
it.

The last time we had been in the
tree house was the night when we almost had sex and Jack's father
died. Although I considered the night whose anniversary we were
celebrating, Jack had kind of blocked out that incident. I can't
blame him. Maybe I should have thought about that. All I remembered
about that night was how he made me feel when I was twelve. I
didn't really think about how Jack would feel about his father. I
had never thought that Jack might feel guilty for his father's
death. Why would I? His father's death was an accident, and Jack
never talked about it. He never let me know how he felt.

What started out as a perfect date
for me ended up with Jack finding out why I considered it our
anniversary. After that we continued our date in silence. I tried
apologizing to Jack, but he didn't even want to talk about it. The
silence even continued at the school dance. I don't know how long
we danced before I just finally had enough. I yelled at him and
stormed off. I went to the bathroom to try not to cry and to fix my
makeup if I did cry. Jack ended up talking to Arthur and Leopold. I
don't know what they said to him. When I saw him talking to his
friends, I decided to dance with another guy. It was an innocent
dance. I wasn't even flirting with the guy, and I wouldn't have
accepted had it not been for the fact that Jack seemed to hate me
at the moment. Anyway, when I was dancing with this guy, Jack comes
over and cuts in. He was more accepting of my apology.

I don't think we got to finish the
dance or really even discuss everything before we were interrupted.
Jim, the guy I had kind of been dating before I signed the
Constitution with Jack, kind of punched Jack in the face. This sort
of knocked Jack to the floor. I motioned for him to stay there, and
then I went over to Jim and played the part of loose woman. It's a
part I am quite good at. Once I had Jim believing that he was a
strong man who impressed a poor, weak woman like me, I grabbed his
balls. I mean, I had them in a death grip. I then explained to him
that I was no longer dating him. I was dating Jack. When I knew
that he understood this, I had him help Jack up. I then thanked Jim
and kneed him in the crotch. Everything was good between me and
Jack the rest of the night. Nobody else tried to dance with
me.

After the dance, Jack took me
home. For the past few years, Jack would always watch me from his
bedroom window as I would have other guys take me home. He always
saw the goodnight kiss and the boy leaving right after that. In one
of the sweetest things Jack has ever done, he kissed me with the
first goodnight kiss that I actually enjoyed. He then said that he
guessed he had better be heading home. I then informed him that
there was no reason to do that. The pervert across the street was
not watching me tonight. I told him that he could come inside and
that the night didn't have to end just then.

Like I said before, I have always
made sure that Jack was the first of anything that a boy was going
to do. Although he had spent the night many times before, that was
the first time I had ever invited a guy inside after a
date.

Even with the rocky beginning of
the date, it was still a perfect date. I don't want to say that it
was perfect because of what we did. It was perfect because I was
with Jack Allen Gynapsy. For the first time in our lives, we
actually were together like a real couple.

We have been a couple ever since
then. I could fill millions of pages with how amazing it has been.
I could tell you about the junior prom. I could tell you about the
night alone in bed where the not having sex is better than anything
I could imagine. We have spent the night together for a few years
before we became a couple, but it was nothing compared to what it
is like since we have gotten together.

For the first time in our lives,
we talk. We are no longer hiding behind a masks and walls afraid of
getting our feelings hurt. Everything is out in the
open.

At some point during the first few
months that we were dating, Jack came up with a couples exercise.
Basically we get naked and just talk about our relationship, how it
is working out for us, and stuff like that. There is no kissing or
anything remotely sexual at these times. We just talk openly and
freely. If either one of us is feeling a problem in the
relationship, we discuss it. Jack doesn't want the relationship to
start to have problems. We also add new articles to the
Constitution at this time.

In the old days, I would teach
Jack techniques that I had learned from other guys. With our
current relationship, we discuss ways of pleasuring each other (up
to the line that Jack still refuses to cross). We actually discuss
what we like when the other person does it. We also discuss what
they could do differently that would be more enjoyable. The
frustrations we used to experience are no longer there. We talk
about everything.

Jack and I have been together now
for... God, nine months now. I am sorry that we had not gotten
together sooner. I accept some responsibility for that. Jack was
always willing to be with me. I'm thankful that he was patient with
me and put up with all of the stupid, hurtful things I have done to
him over the years. I can't imagine being with anybody
else.

As I am writing this, Jack is busy
thinking of a way to keep us together. I think he is holding on to
a hope that we could someday get married and have a family of our
own. He will tell me about the wedding and how beautiful it is. I
almost believe in his dream. It's not that I don't want to. I just
know that once we graduate high school that the world we have
always known is going to disappear. He's going to go to college.
I'm going to...

I have no future. I never have. I
hope you accept this as my life's story, Mrs. Dunn. Everything I
have written here is how I came to this point in my life. I come
from some pretty f#cked up sh#t that I can't escape. I don't want
to do anything with my life, except get married and have kids. I
don't want a career, unless you count marrying well a
career.

Jack has a chance to be something.
He has a lot to give to the world. He is brilliant, funny,
charming, and the most beautiful soul I have ever met. I can't let
him throw everything away because he loves me.

Jack is still a child. I'm not
saying that he is childish, or that he hasn't grown and learned
valuable life lessons from everything that he has gone through. In
many ways, he is more mature than I ever will be. He has always
been a more serious person. He's just a dreamer. It's not that his
dreams are bad, but I don't want him to be saddled down with me. I
can never be anything to him but a ball and chain. I will only drag
him down.

Jack thinks that we can escape our
pasts. We can't. We are the offspring of our parents. My parents
are... I have my father's cruelty and my mother's... I'm not the
brightest person in the world. All I have going for me are my
looks, which will surely fade over time. When that is gone, I have
nothing but a used vagina to offer a man. And Jack... Jack deserves
a chance at the wonderful career that his father never
had.

Jack knows that his father should
have been a successful lawyer instead of marrying his mom. Jack
needs to take this opportunity and be what his father never was. I
can't tell Jack this. He will give me excuses and say that his
father was happy. He will also tell me that it was his Grandma
Gynapsy that tells his father's story this way. She never liked his
mom and thought her son deserved better. But even Jack has to admit
that he knows his father thinks he should have gone on for a career
instead of settling down. There's a reason they call it settling
down. All of your hopes and life's ambitions die. We have seen it
with our parents. My father settled for my mother. My mother
settled for my father. Jack's father settled for being a good
lawyer in this stupid ass town instead of being a great lawyer
whose name everybody knew. Jack's father didn't want his only son
to settle, too.

Jack can talk about destiny all he
wants, or the prophecies of his father. I talked to his father
about this more than Jack did. I know what his father saw. I know
what the actual prophecies are. Jack is supposed to save me, and I
am supposed to save Jack. That is all there ever was to it. The
actual specifics of it were never stated.

From the beginning of our lives
together, Jack and I have been linked, but there will come a day
when we aren't. It will never enter into Jack's thinking that he
can't always have me. Regardless of what his father told him, he
will try to find a way to keep everything the way it always has
been. It will never enter into his mind that he could save me and
then leave me, or that he would need saving by me.

Jack is looking to me to help him
keep his humanity. Lately in bed he seems lost in thought. I don't
think this assignment has been good for him. I don’t think this
year of school has been good for him, in fact. It has caused him to
see that we are running out of time. Everything that we have ever
known is going to be changing. It’s not that he doesn’t want to
enter the adult world. It’s that he doesn’t want to lose me. As
much as he loves me, I think he knows that once we graduate, the
world as we know it will be ending. He’s going to be going to
college. I’ll be doing something else.

Ever since this summer when we
took our senior portraits, he has been different. It was the first
time we had ever taken a professional picture together as a couple.
I mean, the pictures from junior prom don’t really count. That was
just an event. Our senior pictures were saying that we are an
established couple. I know that he cherishes these pictures. I can
pretty much guarantee that there is a full set of them in his
keepsake box. He also has his wallet filled with these pictures.
But I know that there was something bittersweet to him about doing
these pictures. On the one hand, he likes it because we are a
couple. But he doesn’t like how it is documenting the end of
something. It’s one thing to know that something is ending. It’s
another to take pictures that are supposed to be cherished forever
only to know that you will miss that moment for the rest of your
life.

He was the same way when he got
his senior ring. I don’t think he really wanted it. He got it
because I wanted him to give it to me. That’s also why he got his
school jacket this year. I told him that I wanted to wear it. But
these things don’t seem important to him. They are just signs of
the end times. Signs that Jack would rather not look for. He hasn’t
had time to figure out how to preserve everything from the past and
what he is currently enjoying so that he can take it into this
unchartered future with everything still intact. If he was able to
keep me when I left for the Catholic school, his mind is going to
be working to keep me now.

I think he is trying to outsmart
God in an attempt to keep me and to keep the promise of being
famous. He wants both. I think for once in his life he is torn
between his two loves. Only one has a promise for the
future.

As Jack is trying to outsmart the
Lord God Almighty Himself, his attempts will all be in vain. He
will be undone by the very woman he is trying to save. Jack is
under the impression that I still need saving or that I even want
to be saved. I mean, what girl wouldn't want to be saved by the man
she has always loved? Me. I know my past. I know what my future has
in store for me. If I stay with Jack, I will only end up bringing
him down. I won't do that to him. So despite Jack's greatest
attempts, he will ultimately be undone by the very person he is
trying to save.

When Melinda handed him over to
me, she made me promise that I would never break his heart. She
said, and he has even hinted at it, that I was what made him care
about humanity. Without me, Jack will set himself up as a god, a
person who comments on the behavior of humans, but who is removed
from them.

I have broken his heart many times
before. When I do it in a few months, it will be no different. He
will get over it in time. I know the greatness in Jack. He will
recover and learn to love again.

And with that, I know what I have
to do. This next part will be for Jack. I don't expect him to read
it anytime soon, but in a few years, he will read it. He is bound
now by a promise. Once I leave him, and he has gotten over the
heartache, I think he will read this. He has always treasured every
moment that I have given him, even if I created a memory that hurt.
This will just be one more bad memory to remember me by. Looking
back on our lives, I don't think either one of us would expect
anything different from me.

My Dearest Jack,

As I am writing this, I am
enjoying the warmth of your love. We have been together now for
nine months. I am looking forward to our first Thanksgiving
together. I have never had a Thanksgiving where the people seated
around the table actually liked each other. It will be nice to know
that everything I have seen on TV and in the movies has not been a
complete lie. Thank you for showing me that a loving family life is
possible.