November 11

There was one other life-changing event that involved the Valiant, and that was when I lost my virginity.  It began as a bit of flirtatious note-passing during church service and then evolved into a serious discussion.  I guess it was about this time that I began showing symptoms of my black-or-white, with-me-or-against-me upbringing.  I would occasionally be very studious and moral and good, truly acting on my intentions to be good for God.  But this was always interrupted by periods of giving in to my ‘lower’ nature and doing what all the other kids were doing.  The net effect was that, from an outsider’s point of view, I was either groping girlfriends on a bus trip or I was singing Kum-By-Yah around a campfire in utter sincerity.  I’m sure I came across at times as both hypocritical and condescending.  The only time I ever had to confront this dichotomy was when we were about to leave on a band trip and I was asked to say a prayer.  This almost always bothered me.  For one, it was a reminder that I was a preacher’s kid and was different.  But it also forced me to say a public prayer when I was anticipating kissing and groping some girl for awhile.  Most any other kid could have switched gears like that effortlessly, since church was just this formality they did because of their parents, or was some sort of abstract thing, a tradition.  But I had bought it hook, line and sinker and was always plagued by the deeper thoughts.  One summer at camp a bible study teacher discussed I John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  It was very helpful to me to overcome some of the anguish I would feel.  It was very much like the effect of the confessional in the Catholic church, except I was just speaking to God and he was promising to not only forgive me but cleanse me.  But while I may have felt cleansed and forgiven on the inside, this was never apparent on the outside.  To others I was just either hypocritical or uncaring.

But the night of the note-passing I took — we’ll call her Amy — back to her house with one stopover.  We parked on a hill behind the K-Mart and got in the back seat.  All I remember was that it was very orderly.  There was no groping or loving going on.  We weren’t dating, she wasn’t exactly my type for that in any way.  She was a bit overweight but cute as a bug, but we were both willing and consenting so we disrobed just enough and……well, it didn’t take long.  And then it was over and I drove her home.

Don’t get me wrong, I was perfectly gentlemanly and even nice, and I was very appreciative.  I still to this day think of her with great fondness.  We even recently spoke of it via email, and while it was awkward I was able to confirm that she wasn’t particularly hurt or upset about it.  And we had sex again two more times within a fairly short timeframe.  And that was it.  Unfortunately we exchanged a few handwritten notes along the way, and while I don’t remember exactly what we wrote the important point is that I kept at least one of these notes somewhere in my room.  And my dad searched my room and then found it.  I’m not sure why he was even searching to begin with.  But he did, and it broke his heart.  His firstborn dedicated to the ministry and here he was defiling himself and becoming impure and losing his virginity, something which he could never recover.

In retrospect, it is amazing to me that a primitive concept such as virginity should hold such sway over our modern cultures several thousand years removed.  At least we’ve stopped shunning or stoning women for not being able to prove their virginity on the night of their wedding, but we still hold it up as a sacred standard.  But in reality all it means is that women enter into marriage anticipating a strange, mysterious probably painful event wherein she is supposed to please her man on the first try and also fulfill all of his porn-fueled sexual fantasies.

But to my dad it was horrible.  I think I was past the age of spankings here, but I was probably grounded.  And for reasons I’ll never understand he took this as an occasion to talk to Amy’s mother!  I have no idea what was said but there were ‘words’ and she still holds a grudge to this day.  I think they started attending another church, or stopped attending altogether.  I rarely saw or spoke to her after that.

I’ve always considered myself fairly handy and fast on the uptake when it comes to electrical and mechanical tinkering.  John and I would occasionally kill a boring Saturday by doing some maintenance on the Valiant.  We replaced the oil pan and valve cover gaskets a couple of times and cleaned a lot of sludge out where we found it.  I would also occasionally replace the plugs and check the gaps.  But we got it used and probably free from some old friends from Big Lake so it had a lot of miles on it.  And I never did any deep engine or transmission work on it, and I doubt my parents had it maintained other than to fix major problems so it was not destined to become a classic lovingly waxed in someone’s garage.  One fateful day it finally gave up the ghost in the form of a plume of blue smoke which probably meant a blown head gasket and water mixing with oil.  I don’t know where it ended up, but hopefully a nice family and not a salvage yard.

My next car was one that we, I think, actually purchased with me in mind.  It was an old used but fairly clean station wagon.  I drove it a few times and allowed my friends to all be impressed with it.  OK, so maybe that wasn’t their reaction, but it was wheels.  I envisioned a lot of fun with this car.  It would seat several people.  I also was very proud of the fact that I fixed the wiring to the rear window so I could lower it from the driver’s seat like it was designed to do.  The wire to the motor had a short, which I spliced and taped up.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy it for long.

I had a couple of other jobs during this time period.  My second-ever job was at a small chain drug store.  I stocked shelves and cleaned up and put cardboard boxes in the incinerator.  But what I remember most was grabbing a peach soda and a fruit pie and chilling out in the store room.  This was usually accompanied by a radio.  I always think of this job, and that storeroom, when I hear Van Halen’s “Running With the Devil.”  The song just grabbed me in so many ways.  The the thundering bass intro, the crunchy guitar and powerful, crashing drums that joined in, David Lee Roth’s ear-piercing screams punching in and out.  And it was the song of the outlaw.  It was everything I wasn’t, yet it spoke to me on many levels.  It spoke to my dark side, it was my alter-ego that took women’s virginity, that got away with theft and challenged athletes, that drove around with friends who had loaded guns.  But I wasn’t supposed to like songs like that.  It was evil, and it spoke of hanging out with the last entity in the universe one should want to associate with.  I would air guitar and air drum and lip synch and avoid work as much as possible.  I don’t think I had even seen an album cover or a picture yet, but I knew I loved that band.  And I still do to this day.  You will probably not be surprised to learn that I was eventually fired from that job.

My next job, if I have my chronology right, was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  At one point I did some temporary work for them, helping to load up trucks for delivery.  This was an occasional job, just Saturday nights.  They needed extra help for the Sunday editions.  And one time I helped Jason deliver papers.  His mom was a teacher at our school but they lived in a different school district so I only knew him through her.  We left his house, drove to the pick-up area, split a joint in a glass pipe and passed out.  It was my first marijuana, and I was less than impressed.  But now I could brag if I wanted.  I helped him roll and throw the papers for his route that morning.  Later I got my own route in the River Oaks and Sansom Park areas.  I threw the route out of the Olds ‘98 and occasionally got my brother and a friend of his to help.  They would jog behind the car grabbing Sunday papers out of the trunk and tossing them into yards as I pointed.  I was usually blaring rock music on the radio and I’ve often wondered what the subscribers thought, or if they ever saw us.

I put the station wagon in service for the paper route but after only a week or so I pulled out in front of a pickup truck and got slammed on the driver’s side, front end.  Fortunately no one was hurt but the car was a mess and, again, we couldn’t afford to fix it.  I think my newspaper delivery career ended there too, although I couldn’t swear to it.  I was very disappointed after the work I had done on that car.

At some point around this time, although I think it was before I lost my virginity, I was over at John’s house.  His dad ran a construction business out of the house next door and we sometimes hung out over there.  On this day I think his dad was out of town.  I’m sure we were bored and looking for something to do, so the talk naturally turned to girls.  Somehow or another the talk turned into action, and the next thing you know we’re in the bathroom in some sort of strange masturbatathon.  As best I recall it was just a sort of competition to see who could come first.  I can’t imagine doing anything like this now, but there we were, whacking off right in front of each other.  And then it happened.  John, for reasons I’ll never know, decided that he would help me out by taking my cock into his mouth.  As strange as it may sound, I remember being rather detached about it, as in “Hmmm, that’s nice I guess.”  But it didn’t do anything for me, and it didn’t last long, and we finished the normal way and never spoke of it again.  Believe it or not, I never thought it was that strange, except perhaps a bit quirky.  But then John was quirky, so it fit.  It was only many, MANY years later that it dawned on me.  “Holy shit!  John is gay!”

One of my other friends, the one I spent the most time with during my last two years of high school, was Gary.  Gary’s family was just weird.  His dad was an engineer/manager type at the General Dynamics plant and did crash inspections or some such.  He was also a deacon at our church.  But his mom was flitty, a bit hare-brained, and wore thick glasses.  His sister inherited most of these traits but also had big breasts.  She got her fair share of attention but has probably never had sex.  It seems like there was some incident somewhere in there but the adults hid it and I was too naive to think to just ask.  But even those breasts couldn’t overcome her personality which often came across as mild retardation, so she will likely die a spinster.  Gary also inherited the thick glasses as well as some sort of speech problem magnified by braces and bad acne to boot.  But he and I liked rock and he didn’t live far from me so