How I Lost God – Which Turned Into a Long-Condensed Story of My Dysfunctional Life: Part 5

Then came 7th grade. 7th and 8th were in the same school with the high school. Sadly for me we were integrated back into regular classes. Back with the regular kids and many different classes. I became 13 year’s old, hit puberty, and I started getting in trouble and quickly was welcomed by the bad crowd. I began smoking and my parents started buying them for me. I started skipping school regularly, doing drugs, drinking, and sleeping around. Because of course where are you going to find girls that age to sleep with but the bad crowd? The first time I had sex was with a 14 year old girl that had a reputation for sleeping around with everyone in her neighborhood. I will tell this small story as cleanly and nicely as possible. She had always liked me and asked me out often and went as far as befriending my sister in hopes of being around me frequently and making me cave at some point. She wasn’t the kind of girl that my friends would have approved, even though many had also slept with her. Plus, I really just didn’t like her that way. My best friend at the time James was a little older and had a girlfriend. She was a friend to his girlfriend and we went over to her uncle’s house because no one was home. I knew what was going to happen. We were watching a porno with John Holmes in it and smoked some pot. They went upstairs to have sex and that left her and I alone. We started fooling around and got undressed. I got to touch and see a naked girl and touch her all over for the second time. The first time was a few months prior during the previous summer when one of my sister’s friends stayed over. I told her that I couldn’t have sex with her because I didn’t have a condom and she told me that her mom had put her on birth control pills and that it would be OK to not use one. I wasn’t only worried about pregnancy. I had already taken Sex-ED and was sickened by the pictures of STD’s that they showed us. I had always promised myself while watching those films that I would always wear one, and I still had the one they gave me in class. I had just forgotten the wrinkled-up, well-worn, small square package that day. I was very afraid and was shaking badly. I tried to back out because I was so afraid of the act and pregnancy and diseases, but she kept prodding me, that we were already naked and I was standing at attention anyways she said with a sly smile. I knew that if I didn’t, I would end up getting ridiculed by my peers and I had a reputation to uphold. I had always said that I was a virgin with a joking air, when asked in my co-ed group of slightly older kids that stood across the street from campus in the mornings before school and lunch breaks and smoked cigarettes. No one believed the truth because they weren’t I guess. Anyways I fought away my fears and got on top of her and she put me inside her. I hadn’t expected it to feel so much different from my hand that I was already quite used to and I went inside her very soon after. I couldn’t find the power to move my body afterwards and pretend that I hadn’t went. She finally said that she was going to put some music on to give me a rhythm. I was totally embarrassed at my ineptitude and when she got up I went to the bathroom and washed myself up. I just knew that she knew and that she would tell everyone. I came out and grabbed my clothes and told her that I finished myself off in the bathroom and lied and said I was already late getting home and that I was going to get in trouble. She asked if it was something that she did wrong and I said no. I finished dressing and left. One of my friends Brian was riding his bike by the house as I walked out on the porch. I got on my bike, while he stopped and waited for me. He stated that I slept with her, to which I lied and said that I was going but that she stunk so bad when she took her pants off that I just left. This was totally a horrible thing to do to anyone, especially to this troubled low self-esteem girl. But at that moment my 13 year old mind was looking for damage control and that was the first thing that popped into my head to say that would counteract all the things that I was worrying about at that second. It was a preemptive strike in case she started rumors about sleeping with me and my premature ejaculation. It was wrong, but I was scared and I was a bad kid inside and I was 13. He seemed surprised and revealed to me right there that he had slept with her the last time a week prior and that she didn’t stink then or any other time. I asked him if he used a condom. He said hell no, that he would never use one, that he had slept with her for a long time and she had never gotten pregnant because she was on the pill. I was relieved to hear that she didn’t lie about the pill and figured if nothing else he would think it was his kid. She didn’t get pregnant. But I was worried that maybe she had given me an STD because she was so promiscuous, although I never had any signs. I worried about that for two whole years before I finally came to terms that I didn’t get anything from her and because of that fear I always wore a condom until after I got with my wife and we started trying to have kids. I then started riding the miles home when my mom, who was coming home from work, stopped on the side of the road and tried to pick me up so I didn’t have to ride all the way home. I was ignorantly worried that I smelled of sex and she would catch me so I told her I just wanted to ride my bike. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so I put my bike in the trunk of the car. I huddled against the passenger door window the whole ride home as far away from her as possible trying to keep the smell of sex to my side of the car and thought about how badly that had went and the fucked up luck it would be to become a father the very first time I ever had sex. She did try bragging at school that she had slept with me not even mentioning my poor performance, but the guys all believed my story, which Brian’s big mouth told the very next day. The girls believed her and said as much, and gave me shit for sleeping with her; they knew how guys would deny sleeping with someone. I always denied it. She stopped me a few weeks later while I was riding home. She told me that she had liked me for a long time and that the rumors had really hurt her. She seemed most hurt that I denied our encounter. She asked if she really stunk and I told her no and lied that Brian had made that whole thing up himself. She asked if there was anyway we could be together. I told her no and we parted ways and she never came over to see my sister again. I was happy to not have to face her anymore. Brian soon got me into huffing. The majority of the time it was gas, but I sniffed everything from paint thinner to Scotchgard waterproofing. We started skipping and would get in and old VW Bug in his backyard and take turns with the gas can. The big kick was the hallucinatory dreams that the fumes would deliver. As you would come back from the dreamworld to the waking world both would meld together as sounds slipped in. Your face and body would begin to tingle as you sniffed; it was probably brain cells dying. I always got a terrible headache afterwards and would often cough until I threw-up. I think I only did it for a month or 2, before I quit. It was quite addicting and I found myself missing more and more school. I was also sniffing butane in my room at home that I tricked my mom into buying for me for a refillable lighter. I quit cold turkey one day when I skipped and when leaving another skipping kids house, I snuck into his shed outside and started sniffing gas. I woke-up hours later and walked outside. It was already dark and I could see his family in the window eating. I don’t know if the small shed filled-up with fumes or what, but I figured that I was lucky that I didn’t die that day. I got on my bike and rode home in the dark and never did it again. One other thing happened around this time that also drove me to lose my faith in God. I had a dog named frisky; he was a mutt and was a small black dog with a white blaze on his chest. I loved that dog; he slept with me every night and was a comfort to me. He was the one thing in that house that kept me happy and whole. We had actually picked him and his brother up as we were driving our stuff to our new house when I was in the forth grade. We drove by a house with a free puppy sign out in the front yard and my sister and I talked my dad into getting them for us because we were moving to the country. He turned the U-haul around and we each picked out a pup. Not long after we got them, they went under the house and tore-up the heating and air ductwork. My dad was so pissed that he drove a few miles down the rode and dropped them off at the dump. I got home from school and was devastated. 3 days later my pup Frisky showed back up and my dad said that I could keep him because he must have really wanted to be with us. I had him for a few years and during that time he almost died twice. Once a car ran over him but the wheels didn’t hit him and he just rolled under the car because he was so short. The second time one of Rick’s horses kicked him in the forehead. It cut him open and his eyes turned blue for a week before they turned back brown-black. He always had a scar on his forehead after that. One day my dumb sister, who had a boyfriend in town decided to walk all those miles to go see him. She let my dog follow her. When she left that night she forgot about him and got a ride home. I got my mom to drive back to his house and we drove around the blocks but couldn’t find him anywhere. There was a bad thunderstorm that night and he was deathly afraid of thunder and lightening. I drove my bike into town every day for 2 weeks and went door to door but couldn’t find him. I was very depressed and distraught. On Wednesdays at church people would get up and tell their testimonies. I went with my parents that night. I got up and told the congregation about losing my dog. I cried as I told my story. As we were leaving a guy called to me. He came up to me and told me that while praying for me, that God had come to him and said that he would deliver my dog back to me. He said that he saw my dog running towards my house as he prayed and that when I got home my dog would be there. I wanted so much to believe him. On the way home I hoped and prayed the whole way while I cried my loneliness to God. And obviously I wasn’t greeted with my wagging dog when we drove into the yard. One last hope was that my sister had already let him in the house, but no, Frisky was gone from me forever. That hurt me badly. I still don’t understand why that asshole did that to a 13-year-old boy wanting so much to see his best friend again. I truly hope he pays dearly for getting my hopes up just to break my heart once more. At the time I hated him and I just couldn’t understand why God had taken my dog and didn’t let me have him back after what that zealot did to me. It just didn’t seem fair.