my first erotic experience

I was 13, and we were not in Portland. I'd had curry before, but I had not yet been to the Pacific. We were not on silk sheets. We were on my dad's bed while he was at work. Craig was on out of school suspension, and I pretended to be sick so I could stay home, and he could come over. He walked about six miles to my house, on crutches. He had injured his leg wrestling with a guy at my birthday party a week before. I met him half-way and walked with him. We didn't see any starlings on the way. I would not have noticed them. I was thinking about how much I dug this guy, that I didn't care that he was technically my friend Tammy's boyfriend. She had quit talking to me that year in seventh grade. She was more popular than me, was more voluptuous and cool, and now I was headed to my house, on a school day, with her boyfriend on crutches. She'd taken a boyfriend of mine before. And despite this affair, which was on and off for 3 years as Craig went through juvenile detention, moved, and ran away from home to seek me out, Tammy and I mended our friendship. Things were over for good with Craig when I started seeing Clint, a better man and now my soon-to-be ex-husband. A year ago, I went to Tammy's wedding, her second.

I don't know what happened to Craig. I haven't seen him since I was 17 and don't want to. He joined the Army. Hopefully he's gotten rid of pictures of adolescent me that I never should have given him.

When I was 16, I lied to my dad and said I was going to the Mall of America with my friend and her mom. Instead, my friend and I took my five-speed Honda Prelude and drove to see Craig in Michigan. The journey was fun but the destination not worth it. We found Craig and his mom in a trailer home. He still had the pictures of me. We went to see the Lion King. He touched me inappropriately in the movie theater with my friend sitting beside me. I let him, but I didn't like him after that.

Stacy and I drove to the Mall of America. I went into debt for the first time, spending more than I had saved for the trip from my job at the movie theater. I got a speeding ticket in Iowa on my way home from Minnesota. I'd called my dad from Minnesota, and he deduced that I'd been in Michigan from our phone bill and a friend of mine who turned out to be loose-lipped under pressure. My dad wasn't mad at me. And he didn't pay much attention to the speeding ticket. We went to a driver's class together to get the points off our records. He'd gotten a speeding ticket, too, driving back from a research trip to Montana.