I peaked early in Give me your soul

  • March 17, 2014, 10:25 p.m.
  • |
  • Public

Good old summer of 2001. I spent a good deal of time with my newly graduated friends. I was scared that once they trotted off to college they'd just forget about me...a common fear. Life tends to go that way, too. People grow and change and separate. I almost never saw the one friend I had before high school anymore. When you enter a high school drama department you accept the fact that you're sacrificing any existing impression the rest of the school might have about you...unless you have one of the rare schools who value their arts. We spent Y2K hanging out, playing Fallout 2 because it seemed appropriate. We would hang out Grad Night but then that was it.

During the summer I ended up dating Sherrice. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly but we had fun. We went to driving school together (our school had no driver's ed class) and since we lived in close proximity we got to hang out all the time. Then Karen came back. She had been in New York, I think, and before that she spent a lot of time going wild up in Hollywood. When she got back we went for a walk in the park near my house super late at night...I used to love going for late night excursions like that. We had a good long talk and walked around the park and then we kissed. It was pretty wild how it came to happen and it was the last thing in the world I expected, but the part of me that should have remembered I had a girlfriend got washed away. I was a dumb, hormonal teenager and I got a chance to be with the girl I've been crazy about forever but no circumstances ever excuse cheating on someone who has been nothing but good to you. I hadn't even been in the dating scene for a year and I'd already become a scumbag.

Sherrice and I broke up and she did a great job dealing with still having to be around me as much as she'd have to be. Our first show of the year was The Importance of Being Earnest (it seemed like Paschal preferred to alternate between good plays and good musicals on a yearly basis) and the auditions took place on 9/11/2001. A lot of us were convinced that was the reason our auditions went so well, we had a lot of practice performing under less than ideal circumstances. The girls in particular were worried because this year saw a good amount of new girls trying out who were tiny slips of things but their fears were unfounded. The major female parts of that show were filled by the girls who deserved them: a somewhat newcomer from HTSB the previous year, Jessica, Sherrice (playing my character's love interest) and our president, Lindsay. Jessica and Sherrice were both convinced it was the events of that day that were why they were cast but they were both good actors and were good choices for the part.

There was one totally new person cast: Barbara. It wouldn't be long before we'd end up dating. Our first kiss was a humorously botched up attempt on the ride from family fun center in the back of a mutual friend's parent's van. She hadn't told her parents about me for a few weeks and they ultimately found out...well her mom did. We were lying on a couch backstage, I had my head in her lap because I had a headache, and suddenly she tenses up and then bolts off the couch. I look out into the house and see a very angry-looking Hispanic woman staring daggers at me. She got up on stage and went around back to head Barbara off, intending to get an explanation for what she saw, then she sought me ought to see if our explanations lined up. Fortunately, we both said the same thing but now our relationship was out there and she wanted me to come to their house soon and speak with her.

This was the first time I really had to do one of these "meet the parents" things, and technically I only met her mom and stepdad at that point. But her mom pulled me into this little room hidden away in the garage and gave me a pretty good shake down. Both she and the step dad worked for the Santa Ana police department and they even had a background check run on me (I was 17 so I didn't have anything worth checking). She laid down some pretty strict rules: nothing past 1st base, she wasn't allowed to come to my house, all dates either take place in public or at their house. They made it clear they did not like me but they didn't stop me from dating her. They were also quite religious and I was pretty much a atheist. I was never raised with any sort of religion so the concept of God wasn't something I thought much about.

To be continued...


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