At the end of part one, I had managed to number close Michelle, a beautiful 20 year old HB8. Anticipation is a wonderful thing and I was looking forward to seeing Michelle again. But what to do? Normally, I’d take a girl out for dinner, drinks and conversation, but Michelle was still a couple of month away from her 21st birthday. This was a good thing for me as I had to break out of my beta boy rut and come up with an interesting outing.
I waited until the following Monday night to call Michelle. We talked for a very short period of time. I’ve never been one to want to talk on the phone for any length of time. I prefer face to face conversation. In this case it probably help my efforts. I ended up asking her to go with me the following Saturday to a state park about an hour out of town that has some very nice hikes and lots of waterfalls. It’s a very popular park and I figured we would have a lot of time to talk. If things didn’t go well, we could just drive down, hit a picnic spot, and drive back. If we hit it off, we could spend a couple of hours hiking to some of the slightly more remote waterfalls.
I took care of all the arrangement. Packed a lunch, water bottles, etc., and let her know what time I would be picking her up. Saturday arrived and I couldn’t have asked for better weather. A beautiful late summer sunny day. Not a could in the sky, but the morning had that cool bite that presages fall, a change in the weather, and the turning of the leaves. When I showed up at her place to pick her up she was wearing straight legged black jeans, a tee shirt, and sneakers. Not what I would call the most comfortable outfit for a hike. I pointed this out to her, but she replied that she didn’t like to wear shorts and was more comfortable in her jeans. That was fine with me.
As we drove down to the park, Michelle and I talked about many subjects. Our families, school, studies, outlook on like, so on and so forth. Our backgrounds probably couldn’t have been more different. I grew up in a stable home. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was in high-school. My parents had been married for 30+ years, each set of my grandparents had been married for 60+ years (one set happily, the other completely dysfunctional and twisted). Michelle had not been so lucky and the effects of this permeated her being entirely.
Michelle’s parents had been high school drop outs and and fallen into low level drug dealing and using. Her parents had four children in a hand span of years. Two girls and two boys. The two girls were the oldest of the four children and Michelle the younger of the two. For the first five years of her life she lived in the kind of hell that only humans can create and subject upon each other. Michelle’s father and mother physically and sexually abused both her and her sister. The sister being older, remembered it all. Michelle told me she could remember her sister being abused but had no memory of herself being abused. By the time Michelle and her siblings were removed by the state from her parents home, the damage had been done. Michelle and her sister were fostered by a very well to do family and later adopted by these foster parents. The two boys ended up being bounced from foster family to foster family until they became adults.
Several things became obvious as we spent the day together. First, because of Michelle’s formative years, she had attachment issues. She was very afraid of letting anyone get too close to her. Second, there was a very obvious dark side to her. Not in a desire to lash out and hurt others per se, but in what I’d almost call a death wish. To me, a part of her was quite obviously dead inside. She related a story of this one time in the dead of winter and snow on the ground, she jumped into an ice covered pond. When I asked what she was thinking about when she did it she said, ‘I don’t know. Nothing. My mind was blank.’ Finally, she told me that she had horrible long term memory. She’d tell me that there were just holes in her life where she couldn’t remember anything.
We finished up our hike on the banks of the river that ran through the park. We talked and lounged in the sun. There was some playful kino back and forth and more talk. Towards late afternoon, I asked Michelle if she’d like to come back to my place. When we got back to my place we sat down in the living room and continued talking. I put together something to snack on and offered her a drink. Michelle was a girl after my own heart. Wine was fine, but she preferred my favorite drink. Scotch. We opened a bottle of single malt and relaxed. I was continuing the kino, running my fingers through her hair. Finally, I put my hand at the nape of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. Oh what a sweet kiss. A soft and inquisitive touch of the lips. Pulling back and looking into her eyes, then back for another slow lingering kiss.
I was entranced and lost. I will end by paraphrasing my friend Marquis (if you don’t read him, you should). In her eyes I found the lure of red flags, broken wings, and long nights of passion. It was the harbinger of my downfall.
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