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Chapter 5
And I Dated a Girl

During high school I found one girl to standout from the vast array of other girls I knew. She was a brash, outspoken tomboy, and I liked her a lot. Her name was Kim, and we dated for about two years. I call it dating, though because I wasn't the strict "YES SIR!" man my ex-military father wanted me to be, I was grounded a lot. I'm confident that I spent more time grounded from age fifteen to nineteen than I did free. Still somehow Kim and I managed to date. She had to drive most of the time because my folks wouldn't loan me the family car. Kim and I grew very close during those years. She was my best friend, but I couldn't tell her I loved her. I knew about the word love; we used it in my family. My family "loved each other", that was what families were supposed to do. So when I heard the word love, what came to mind was that antagonistic relationship I had with my father. If that was love, then I wanted none of it. I wouldn't wish that on my enemies. In two years of dating Kim, I was never able to honestly tell her I loved her. It took me almost four more years before I relearned the meaning of the word love. I learned to draw a distinction between "love" and "family love". I consider that distinction to be another of the pivotal points in my life.
Kim's mom, Peggy, was an incredible lady and I looked up to her. She was easy going and seemed to understand young people well. This is probably because she was our school secretary for so many years. She accepted me for the unique person I was, and gave me a lot more love than I seemed to get from home. I spent most of my "non-grounded" time at Kim's house. The freedom I felt, being away from my dysfunctional home, was exhilarating.

Most of the friends I interacted with from day to day were girls. I don’t know if it was the whole macho thing going on, but most of the guys I knew didn’t seem to like reading, or discussing school work. That didn’t stop me from looking up to them though. I wanted, needed, to be better friends with some of guys. I even considered a few of them to be friends, Johnny, Drew, Tommy and Barry. When I hung out with them something moved within me, something fluttered. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt like an unresolved yearning, it hurt deeply, but it was a lovely pain. I never discussed it with them because somehow I knew they wouldn’t understand, but I had an urgent longing to be understood in something that even I didn’t understand. To be loved on a level that I couldn’t describe. To know that somewhere there were others like me.

Kim and I, and a few other friends, spent many evenings exploring the abandoned sugar mill near our town. It was a huge refinery that had been closed down, and fallen into shambles as the sugar cane industry changed, matured and moved to neighboring towns with newer mills. The old dark mill was filled with the creaks and groans of disuse, and shadowy machinery that still smelled of molasses and burnt sugar. We'd climb up on the catwalks and sit together talking deep into the night. It was our secret hangout, one we only shared with our best friends.

Kim and I never made it past the "mostly being good friends" stage. This was firmly my fault though, I know, she wanted more, but it was a more, I couldn't give. We dated for those two years, at a time when everyone was supposed to have a girlfriend or boyfriend, and I considered her to be my best friend. Kim was a year further in her education than me, and when she went to college, we drifted apart. When I came out later, I don't even remember if I told her myself though I've spoken to her a few times over the years. She married and has children, but mostly we’ve lost touch with each other.

One conversation I do recall having with Kim as an adult was about how she was doing in the job market. I believe she had her degree in something like fashion marketing. She wasn't able to get work in that field so she ended up working for a company in their financial department. She was a lot like me, in that we were both terrible at math. When she was filling out the application for the job, they asked her for her monthly salary requirement. She knew how much she wanted to make a year, but not how much it would break down to monthly. She also didn't have a calculator handy. She furiously tried to do the math in her head, and then put down the monthly amount. Some time later in her car, after she had finished the application and turned it in, she realized that she had put down the wrong amount for a monthly salary. In her frustration with mental arithmetic she had entered a number that was TWICE the amount that should have gone there. She was mortified, but felt it would have been worse to go back and explain her mistake. She resigned herself to not getting this job, but against all odds, within a few days, they called and offered her the job, at the inflated salary figure she had listed! Fate had certainly smiled on her that day. Of course she took the job.

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