I’d be stupid to say I knew anything about everything. Sure, I’ve read the books, looked at the videos and listened to every word given to me by older teens and men while growing up. Tragically, that’s where I went wrong. How does one un-learn seven years of sexual indoctrination about how women really feel? I was told not to care about what they really wanted; but to just about there, in the general grey area off the feminine psyche.
They made it look so easy, like delivering pizza: they’ll eat whatever you give them as long as there’s some form of flattery behind it. Flattery like a butter and garlic crusted slice of pepperoni. Yes, those were the words given to me a self-described Casanova who said he could bed any woman he wanted.
Another tidbit I learned was that all women wore clothes that were just there for you strip off later on without any issue and that everything just fell off like honey. This nugget of falsified wisdom came form a man who was arrested and shanked while awaiting trial.
These and several other “suggestions” were burned into my grey matter like they were gospel—imagine a choir of Harvey Winesteins singing a chorus that would Andrew Dice Clay turn red in embarrassment and you can see what I was up against.
It was a fight against the impossible: my mind vs the real world and I didn’t want to fight because I knew I’d lose if I tried to emulate what I learned in the past.

It had been sixteen years since I last saw her. She had gone east to college while I remained in our small hometown. It was to be expected. She was to be the valedictorian but turned down the honor of speaking at graduation because she had to start a summer intern class at said eastern seaboard college. I still recognized her. She had her hair shaved to the side, had several tattoos on her arms, and looked a lot like Aimee Mann. I could see her though. I saw my old classmate, Jessica Both, just like she was back then…with longer hair, no arm sleeves, and looking a lot like Debbie Gibson in her “Out of the Bliue” era.
“Hey now, is that you, Wes?”
I was shocked she remembered me as I was the one who watched her from a far. She was the front stage of a Metallica concert to my ‘seats next to heaven and behind a support column’ at a heavy metal concert.
She jumped over the empty chair on the other side of the table and then slammed her hands down on the table. “How’ve you been?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
“You even remember me?” She asked.
I remembered as the girl I wanted to tell so much about how I felt about her but had to think twice each time due to everyone around us and the fact that I was out of her league. Yes, I have learned over the years that no one is above or below one’s league but Hollywood had seared that image into me and I wasn’t going to tempt it. I mean, she could have come up to point blank and placed her hand on any part of my anatomy and I still would have thought she was doing it “to be nice.”
I only nodded.
“So, again, how have you been?”
“I’ve been okay. How havre you been, Jess?”
“Thank you for not calling me Jessica. Once I got to college, it was time to grow up and lose the ‘ica’. You know?”
I matched with her nodding.
“I got these sleeves the day after I turned eighteen.”
Her tattoos were some kind of repetitive, multi-colored triangles on one arm and an image of a woman entwined by what looked like branches.
“Those look like they hurt.”
“Oh, they hurt like Hell but what doesn’t hurt when you really want it, you know?”
I nodded again.
“Hey, do you remember the pool party at Russell’s?”
“Oh yeah,” I lied. I had no idea about that party. I wasn’t invited.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she answered.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“That’s a good thing,” she replied as held up a hand to wave a server to the table. “I’ll have a White Russian in Mexico,” she told the sever who jotted it down. “How about you?”
“I have something.”
“Jack and coke?”
“Just a coke,” I responded as I lifted the glass.
“Bring a fifth of Jack too, please.”
Jess waited for the sever to leave before leaning over the table. I did all I could to avoid looking down shirt or to at least make sure I used my peripheral vision while doing so. “So, Wes, did you miss me?”
“Yes, I have missed you.”
“How much?”
“I wished you hadn’t left for the east coast before I could tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Umm…”
“I’m going to take that as you liked me.”
“It was a little more than just liking, Jess.”
“But?” She asked as she finally sat back down in her chair.
“But, high school’s kind of…hard.”
Jess shined a Cheshire Cat grin.
“I mean, hard to explain things without it all going crazy and taken out of context.”
I would never tell her about the house building project that I did in ninth grade that required us to draw out schematics of a house and to explain that it was home of Wesley and Jessica Lowe and their two point five children (one due in a few months). Only one person ever read it, and that the teacher who assigned it.
The server arrived with two glasses and Jess grabbed both of them.
“Vodka, coffee, creamer and a splash of tequila.”
“Oh, that’s the Mexico reference then.”
Jess handed the glass of whisky to me.
“Let’s toast to memories, both old and new.”
“To old and new.”
“Here’s to two-point five kids, eh?” Jess replied as she clinked my glass.