#4 MY VERY FIRST DATE
My first date, the intensity of young, female friendships, and my first experience with non-consent
By the time I turned eleven, my mother had met a semi-truck driver named Sparky (his nickname). She worked for a company in Orlando that made custom corrugated cardboard boxes and displays, and when she’d go for her smoke breaks in the loading dock, sometimes he’d be delivering to the company, waiting for the trailer to unload – and he’d join her for a chat.
He wore blue jeans and a work-issued button-up with an embroidered “Sparky” emblazoned on a patch on his upper-right breast pocket. His trucker hat dented his light brown hair when he took it off and he had a trucker tan, the kind where there’s more tan on the left side than the right. His Southern accent charmed my mother – and also maybe all the ways he was different from the men she’d dated and been with in the past, my father included. My father was calm, intelligent, funny, and articulate but their differences in temperament hadn’t aligned.
When I first met Sparky, I really liked him. He was a kind, nature-loving man who enjoyed fishing, the outdoors, and the occasional (mostly unsuccessful) deer hunt with his three brothers. He had a big, warm, amazing Southern family and I loved being part of that. He had two sweet daughters, one older than me and the other younger.
But when we moved to Georgia to live with him, my pre-teen angst settled in. Sparky was a simple man, having suffered from a brain tumour in his twenties, his processing had been made slower and, although later in life I benefited from his more strict parenting style (i.e. I always had to do my homework first before anything else), his style was more dictatorial than my mother’s more “gentle parenting” style (before gentle parenting was a thing) that plus her sometimes fiery temper. Sparky adhered to the Southern mantra of “mind your elders.” I was of the opinion that anyone had to earn my respect.
Summer sisters, the intensity of young, female friendships
This post, however, is not about my first stepfather or my mother. When we moved into Sparky’s house in Georgia, we lived in a neighbourhood that was a “circle” (oval) shaped dirt road with all the houses on the outer rim of the circle having backyards that were masses of trees and woodland (where I loved exploring, but it’s also not about that either).
I’m not exactly sure how but somehow I met two girls – I’ll call them, Amanda and Mary – who also lived in the neighbourhood. Mary was the older, cooler girl, with sparkling blue eyes, dark almost-black brown hair, and thick bangs (a fringe) a la the 90s, whose mother had sadly died when she was young and she had her loving, doting father, a strict stepmother, and a newly minted half brother.
Amanda, on the other hand, was a bubbly, petite gymnast (later cheerleader) with tanned skin and light brown hair. She was naturally fun, popular, and pretty. Her mother and father had moved to Georgia from Colorado. Her father had been significantly older than her mother and had died of cancer when she was small, leaving behind a sizeable inheritance, which meant Amanda’s mother didn’t have to work.
Perhaps losing a parent young had bonded Amanda and Mary but they’d been friends for years before I came along – and they let me join their little friend group. Mary was a year older than us and Amanda was my age but I had a June summer birthday, making me months younger, and Amanda was born earlier in the year.
Amanda had a boyfriend who was even older than Mary. He was tall, handsome, tanned, muscled – and in many ways looked like the perfect complement to Amanda herself. They both had caramel-brown eyes, the same tanned perfect skin, the same colour hair. A few years on, when we were thirteen – or maybe I hadn’t turned thirteen yet – Amanda lost her virginity to him (I think he was around fifteen).
I’d always harboured a crush on him but we’d set up this frenemies dynamic. I knew I couldn’t have him because Amanda was my closest friend. We were inseparable and did everything together – from sleepovers to showers to trampolining to eating dinner together to swimming in my pool or going into my half-made treehouse (my stepdad only built half of it, mostly a platform). Every summer we’d spend months on end at each other’s houses.
The intensity of female friendships at that age can’t be undermined or underestimated.
Do I have a crush on someone I can’t have? Yes, yes I do!
I felt awful that I had this crush on her boyfriend, but since her boyfriend and I were frenemies, we also couldn’t comfortably spend time as a threesome or even a foursome when Mary was around, although sometimes we did, especially after Lana (pseudonym), a friend who was a few years younger than us, and her younger brother, Gerry (also a pseudonym), had moved into the neighbourhood. We’d all hang out as a group.
Once after hanging out, Amanda’s boyfriend, we’ll call him Cowboy (you’ll find out why this nickname is appropriate later), offered to walk me home as the gentlemanly thing. I remember him pulling me behind Amanda’s neighbour’s shed and trying to kiss me. I refused even though I wanted to kiss him. I pushed him away and ran home, the cool dark night summer air pressing in around me as the moths danced in the moonlight.
He was an excellent artist, often drawing life-like sketches of people in pencil (sometimes of me), and from time to time, he’d draw me pictures and would leave them at my side door, watching to see if I’d get them and I once tore up a drawing he’d made for me in front of him. Goodness knows why I did this as it was cruel.
The thing is I liked him intensely but he seemed somewhat dangerous in that he’d occasionally displayed frustration and anger, especially at our cat-and-mouse secret flirtation (we’d brush hands or feet) and frenemy situation, the odd time lashing out at me – and he was dating my friend.
She was deeply into him, dreaming of marriage and a family and I knew I couldn’t take that from her. Turns out, though, she, her mother, and her stepfather moved to Colorado maybe not long after – and I also moved from Tifton, Georgia to Alapaha, Georgia. By the time I was fourteen, I was starting afresh at a new high school, away from those old friends and old memories.
Sadly, I never really got to keep in touch with Amanda, Mary, Lana, Gerry, Cowboy, Cowboy’s sister, or any of the other neighbourhood friends, but the intensity of those feelings and friendships stayed with me.
When, in high school, I read Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters, the only book of hers I read (maybe it was one of the many recommendations from my favourite librarian Mrs Williams) and the friendship depicted in that story reminded me of what I’d had with Amanda – and so did the ending. One of the girls disappears and the other friend always wonders.
Of course, I found Amanda a few years ago on Facebook. She’s happily married to a man who kind of resembles Cowboy (although I’d never say) and has two beautiful children (her daughter looks a lot like she did). She seems happy and content. Besides the odd pleasantries, I’ve never told her (or Mary) how much their friendship meant to me from eleven to thirteen, how intensely I valued them. I can barely articulate it myself as the memories and snippets swirl through my head, nothing much concrete to cling to.
But all I know was that after moving from England to Florida, leaving behind intense friendships with my English best friends, Joanne, Ruby and Kate, and then leaving behind my intense friendship with my Orlando friend, Kayla, I needed Amanda and Mary at that point in my life.
My next intense friendship would come with my twin best friends, Sarah and Anna, and later my uni best friend, Brittany – and close friends Kristy, Darcy, Dixie, Stephanie, the Rebeccas, and others (also male friends like Chester, Shane, Daniel, and Sam). In adult life, in Columbus, I added Annie and Anna to the mix, and I had a group of amazing girlfriends in Germany (Jen, Orienna, Victoria, Jayde, Emily, Megan, Amy, Lena, Erin, and Sarah, to name a few) – and more recently my cousin Pam, older sister Jae, Ruth, Nicola, Tilly, Lacey, Marie, Christalla, Maureen, Esther, and both Claires.
All my life, my existence has been defined not only by my partner (or whomever I was dating) but also by the women I shared my time with. My life has been defined by many goodbyes and hope in the hellos.
When I saw him again…my first-ever date
Don’t ask me how it happened because I no longer remember but when I was around fifteen, I saw him again – or my mother, stepfather, and I somehow ran into him again. He must have been seventeen or eighteen then. He asked if he could take me out on a date and I said yes. I was so excited as I’d thought about him (and Amanda and Mary) from time to time over the last two years. Somehow we arranged the date and he came to pick me up in Alapaha.
However, instead of going all femme fatale (or whatever the virgin equivalent is for a girl who had only kissed one boy at a homecoming dance), I decided that playing it cool would actually just be wearing what I’d had on for school that day – it must have been a Friday night.
Instead of looking like I’m trying, I should be cool about it because then it will seem like I’m not as into him. Why I thought that, I’ll never know. Seeming like you’re not into someone you’re into is not a good idea, especially when said person is taking you on a dinner date. Maybe because I knew he’d had sex before (and probably with quite a number of girls by now) I wasn’t ready for sex and I didn’t want to tempt him. Goodness knows!
I wore khaki (yes, khaki) cargo pants (it was the early 2000s), and a white-and-red baseball-style shirt. I probably wore my signature makeup look which was never foundation (I wasn’t a good girly girl despite being a girly girl), white eyeshadow, my pencil-thin brows (thankfully they did grow back), mascara, blusher (always a lot - I still do this), and lip gloss.
He took me to a Japanese steak house – these hibachi places are popular in Georgia – and he saw a very beautiful girl across the table (you sit at a “table” kind of like a breakfast bar around a hot plate where they perform fire tricks and flips and all sorts in the cooking presentation) that he knew from high school and from time to time he just chatted with her, or she was making a point of getting his attention. Either way, I remember feeling bummed at my date not paying full attention to me. Of course, she was older and actually dressed up to go out with her friends and here I was in a super casual outfit when he had also made an effort.
My Mum has always been lowkey. She never wore much makeup if she wore any, never got her nails done, and never curled her hair, so whereas some women (especially gorgeous, very put-together Southern women) learn how to “fix” their hair and makeup and go to the nail salon regularly from their mothers, I had to learn everything from Seventeen magazine (my absolute fave that I read avidly from my $12/year subscription) as I think this was also pre-YouTube and definitely pre-makeup tutorials and the lot. Teenage girls looked like teenage girls back then. Now, they look like twenty-five-year-old models and they don’t have the weird, gangly awkward stage. I must have skipped the article about how to impress a first date.
I don’t remember being disappointed by the date – of course, I was there with this boy I’d had an intense crush on years ago who also sort of represented these intense bonding friendships I’d experienced – but I’m guessing my first date hadn’t gone well. Let me give you a spoiler, he didn’t ask me out on a second date and I think I still have never seen him again – and he’s a social media ghost. Never could find him and he could be dead for all I know – or he could have twelve children. Hopefully, it’s the latter. Who knows?
Besides, I’d invested too much into my years of having a crush on this intense boy I once knew. He was such a charmer. He was brimming with intelligence. And I knew that he used that charm on all the girls. I knew that if he’d ever gotten me, I’d be one conquest of many. When the next person came along, I’d be left empty and heartbroken. The allure I had for him, was that he couldn’t have me, but when he could – the reality of going on a date – I just was no longer as appealing.
Back to the date, he drove me home and parked a little up the driveway. I was nervous that my mother and stepfather could be watching from the windows but I don’t think they were. I remember making out with him passionately for minutes (half an hour? longer?) and he moved my hand to his hard cock. It was the first time I’d ever felt a penis. I also had absolutely zero idea what to do with it, so I just let my hand rest there awkwardly.
When I got out of the car, I remember feeling incredibly embarrassed as I felt that I had a wet patch in my knickers and when I went inside, surreptitiously going to a mirror, the wet patch showed through.
All I could think was I hope he hadn’t seen that his kiss made me wet (before I even knew what that meant). Even now, I truly hope he didn’t see that wet patch on the back of my khaki cargos.
At some point, he’d given me two photographs of himself – one of which captured him wearing a cowboy hat in a cheesy, photo-studio-style pose. I thought he looked gorgeous in that cowboy hat, plaid shirt, and jeans. I’m sure I still have them somewhere, buried deep in a long-forgotten place. With the rest of my memories of my pre-teen years.
A fuzzy, semi-forgotten side note…
I don’t know how this fits on the timeline exactly, but once I was visiting an old friend (let’s call her Fifi) from the neighbourhood after I’d moved away. Back when I lived there when I’d been around twelve or thirteen, she must have been around eighteen or nineteen. She’d had a tough life in her few years on earth in that her mother and sister had been shot in a robbery of their home in Albany. Her sister survived the attack with part of her face missing and a shattered jaw.
Fifi was married to a really lovely young man and she was a good mother to her two very young daughters (only one of which was his) and they lived with his mother. One daughter must have been under one and the other around three but I can’t remember. I think she was lonely in that there weren’t any people in the neighbourhood that were her age and she needed company.
The summer after Amanda left and Mary had gone off to high school and thus didn’t hang out as often, I’d formed a close bond with her, too; I can’t recall how we met but I know we’d spend hours together, maybe days, maybe months. We once went to the zoo in Albany. I have the photos somewhere. She still holds a special place in my heart, even if some of the particulars of the memories are a little hazy.
I was somehow visiting her years later – and I’m not sure if it was before or after this date with Cowboy – but I went over to his house as he still lived across the street from her and I remember making out with him against his dryer. It must have been between the ages of fifteen (because it was obviously after my first kiss) and sixteen/seventeen when I met my high school sweetheart – and long before eighteen (when I lost my virginity to said high school sweetheart).
Cowboy moved me to the sofa in the den to make out whilst pressed on top of me. I remember the skin on my stomach being so dry and flaky (the kind of dry when you scratch yourself and it leaves ashy marks and I don’t recall why I let my skin get to this state) and I know I was still a virgin so I wouldn’t let him take off my pants or do anything. The kissing was intense and made my heart flutter. I could feel his hardness pressed into me and my body wanted it but not my mind.
This memory also prompted my addiction to Jergens Ulta Healing lotion. After this, I fervently moisturised my skin so that I’d never have another similar deeply embarrassing moment. It’s a shame I hadn’t felt the same about my dark body hair (besides shaved legs and armpits) but I’ll save my adventures with my own, dark, ape-like body hair and moustache for another day. Maybe that was also why I didn’t get as many dates?
On a side note to the side note, when young, we’d all seen his cock enough times. It was massive, long, and pale compared to his tanned body, creeping down past the curve of his upper thigh, with a messy crop of pubic hair. He was proud of it in the way many boys (and men) with big cocks are and liked to show it off.
I also have a vague memory of being upset at my step-cousin, my uncle’s second wife’s daughter, when she and her younger brother had come to stay with us for the summer because she knew I liked him and she was rumoured to have given him a blowjob or slept with him or something and we both must have been around thirteen at the time.
It’s funny that it’s probably been close to two and a half decades ago and I still recall snippets of it, but unfortunately not all that clearly. I guess the bigger questions should really come with why was a fifteen-year-old boy interested in thirteen-year-old girls. But you don’t think that at the time, do you? And also our parents knew he existed and that we all hung out so what were they doing? But, hey, even if they’d said anything about it would we have hung out with him anyway? To be fair, most of us were latchkey kids with working parents so we had a lot of unsupervised time.
I think after our date, my very first official date, we had a few phone calls and then things fizzled out. There was no second date. He had had all he wanted.
My first experience of non-consensual touching
Another vague memory I have is of going over to Lana’s house. Her older very hot brother (who was about sixteen or older) was looking after Lana and her younger brother Gerry – and had a very healthy non-interest in the pre-pubescent girls despite the fact that I also had a crush on him (and probably many of the friends he brought around as he was one of the hot, popular jocks in the high school).
Lana and Gerry had a group of friends over and we were watching the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Langoliers. Amongst the group was another neighbour boy who was a year younger than me but cute and had a crush on me – but I didn’t like him back even though he seemed sweet.
I remember falling asleep on the sofa curled up, wearing denim booty shorts (why was I allowed to wear these?) and I remember being half asleep on the sofa with him sitting next to me and he reached under my shorts and touched my bottom. I vaguely remember being frozen, unable to wake fully, and say that it wasn’t okay to touch someone if they were asleep, but this was long before conversations about consent came out – and it didn’t go further so I never mentioned it. I don’t even remember his name.
Don’t forget to check out the other three posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place.
