True Story

       Some people - some horribly misguided people - complain that all I do is joke around, that I never really reveal anything of myself.  That is so not true - It just happens to be the case that even the most deadly serious episodes of my life have all been generously sprinkled with a bit of humor.  Dark humor, twisted humor, perhaps, but humor nonetheless.  Case in point...

       Everybody who knew Marie, knew that Marie was a little weird.  I mean, hell, she had the scars on her wrists from where she'd tried to kill herself three times.  Still, she was exceptionally intelligent, funny, and pretty - all huge plusses in my book.  (I could overlook the scars easily enough since, hey, I was a bit suicidal myself from the age of 12 until about...well, now, I guess.)  But, overall, she wasn't - or didn't seem anyway - any more weird, troubled, whatever, than your average goth girl working at Starbucks nowadays.

       Any event, as it turned out, Marie was the first girl I "did it" with.  I'll throw in the funny part, even though it's not really germane to the moral of this story.  When we reached "the point of no return" - or rather,  a second or two just prior to that point - I idiotically asked her if she was "on the pill or something".  Of course, the words were no sooner out of my mouth than I thought, "What the hell did I bother to ask that for? - I mean, for God's sake, I'm not gonna stop now, no matter what the answer is, so how stupid was that question, Jack?!"

       Her distressingly vague reply, however, was, "It's all right."  Naturally, me being me, I couldn't resist overthinking that one to death.  Did "it's all right" mean, "Yes, I'm on the pill", or did it mean, "I don't care if I get pregnant"?

       Once again, what the hell's the bloody difference, since the answer wasn't going to affect my behavior in the slightest at that point anyway.

       Okay, jump ahead two months, to the point in time when I'm next home from school on vacation.  I bump into Donna, Marie's best friend, who informs me that Marie is, has been for the past month, in a residential psychiatric hospital.  (Jeez, I guess I don't have a date for the weekend.)

       Yeah, it makes kind of a funny story to tell people - "The first girl willing to sleep with me was clinically insane - haha".  But the truth, as I confessed to my one, true, very best friend, Susan, over the top of a vodka collins late one night in college, is that, "And yeah...I've pretty much always suspected since then that every girl who's slept with me only did so in a moment of insanity."