Be Fries

I was sixteen, but she was a year behind me. We got to know each other by being on the same OM (Odyssey of the Mind) team, or was it the Madrigal chorus? I'm bad about past particulars sometimes, so I don't remember exactly how we met or what month it was, even. I've always been one to notice the details, believe it or not, but I find that I lose those details first when they don't bear the fruit of importance, or when I don't want to remember them anymore. Anyway, Wendi was her name. She was a full-on redhead, complete with freckles and skin that tanned to a dark pink instead of brown. She was adorable and fun and smart and perky, and her mother was a weasel who pretended to be a sweet, caring nurse when it was in her best interest. Her father was a jovial, beer-drinking man who I think was an engineer. I didn't see all that much of Wendi's father.

I have many Wendi stories because we really were inseperable for a pretty long time. Maybe most of them will come out eventually.

One thing about Wendi that I remember is that we had, between us, the two halves of a heart that together spelled "Best Friends." Spencer Gifts, I think, was where we got them. I had the "Be Fri" side and she had the "St End" - we made the "St" mean saint. Together, we called each other be fries. We did everything together, or at least as closely as possible.

What was odd to me was that I was behind her, sexually, when I was sixteen and she was fifteen. She had already had sex before I met her, with her boyfriend at the time we met. I was still a virgin. I thought her boyfriend, Lee, was a great guy - a gentleman, very respectful of me and my friends and his girlfriend. She once admitted, though, that Lee had threatened to break up with her if she didn't have sex with him, and she had just come into her own with confidence, so he was able to bully her into it. (I seem to remember more threatening behavior, too, but not the specifics.) Anyway, she said she wasn't a virgin proudly - she had a steady boyfriend, so she wasn't called a slut under the rules of the time.

We had been friends for awhile when, once, her parents went out of town and left her at home. Of course, that meant that she would be having a little party out of her parents' bar and whatever alcohol we could all get our underage hands on. She and Lee had broken up and I was just starting to get back together with my first love, Jamie. I was young, but I have always been a passionate person, and Jamie truly was my first love. I had never been able to figure out why he had broken up with me back in our freshman year - he had said we were "getting too serious" but that hadn't made sense to me. Anyway, Jamie and I had met up again at a friend's house that summer and were starting to hang out again. He was going to be at the party as soon as he could sneak out and make it the few blocks to Wendi's house.

The others on the OM team made it over pretty early. Wendi and I had already been drinking when the doorbell rang. The guys (Wendi and I and one other girl, Rachel, were the only girls on the team) had beer that they'd managed to get someone to buy for them. I was impressed because I couldn't have figured out how to get alcohol at that age. I knew people who could, but my parents didn't drink and none of my close friends had fake IDs. There were rumors of a place where basically any fake ID could get you alcohol, but I didn't have the guts to get caught.

I don't think Rachel was there yet when the guys got there, but she was there later. We were all feeling amorous, even in our little tight-knit group. I, of course, was waiting for Jamie. The other girls were talking about which of the guys they'd like to make out with when we took our group bathroom breaks or went to the bar to make more fun drinks. It gradually got to be hours and hours later, and Jamie hadn't shown up. The other girls had started dancing slow dances with some of the guys, and I was thinking I'd been stood up. Eventually, I started dancing with one of a set of twins that was part of the group. After more ire-building alcohol, he kissed me and I kissed him back. Damn it, Jamie deserved it, right? I'd started to love him again and he was standing me up when I was just blocks away from his house. We'd tried to make love recently - I'd always wanted him to be the first - but my body hadn't been quite ready yet. I was sad about that, but angry, too. How dare he! I'd get even with him for breaking my heart a second time by making out with this twin.

Well, that's not exactly what happened next. The twin, in my anger and inebriation, was able to get me into a dark room where we could have a little more privacy. I thought it was for some heavy petting. It turned out that the twin had a plan, though. From what I was told later by his friend, he came to that party knowing that he was going to lose his virginity. He'd stolen a condom from his twin brother's wallet and planned to use it; he didn't care which girl it was. I had no idea I'd won his sex lottery that night by being the one left. We got into the room, and I eventually noticed him trying to pull down my pants. I wasn't ready for that, so I tried to keep it from happening without being overly demonstrative about it. When he tried again, I told him flat-out that I wasn't planning on anything involving the lower half of the body. He told me to relax, that nothing was going to happen that I didn't want. He was lying. Soon, he was on top of me and pushing into me. I was in pain and telling him no. I was fighting to push him away from me, and he just kept saying "Relax." I couldn't stop him, and all I could think of was that I was in Wendi's mother's bed on top of her lace bedspread. When it was over, I was in tears. I told Wendi what had happened, and she came up to help me wash the blood spot off the bedspread. She was angry, like I was.

Then Jamie showed up. He had been held up because his parents had suspected that he was sneaking out, but had gotten there as soon as he could. I was crying, and I told him what had happened. He was kind to me, but left soon after. We never did get back together after that.

What happened next was odd; I guess it happened because of the guilt, because I had made my bed by drinking and getting belligerent and felt the need to lie in it, maybe just because I wouldn't be alone that way. I ended up spending more time with the twin. We made out more and hung out together until they all left. I was mortified all around, because I had gotten drunk, had unintended and unwanted sex, and then spent time, on purpose, with the person who took my virginity from me forcefully. Why do we women do things like that? I was also mortified because it was Easter Sunday that morning after, and I had to sit in the front row of church knowing that I was a complete and total sinner. I had terrible guilt and shame and anger, but most of the anger had been pointed at myself. It was April.

Weeks later, after the initial shock and gossip and girl power talks, and after we had let the twin know that we had found out about his little plan to get laid that night, I still hadn't had a period. Mine had never been every four weeks like the clockwork cycles of other girls, but I was getting worried. And then something terrible happened.

In May, about a month later, I was in a car accident in which I had gotten a concussion, and had gone to the hospital in an ambulance. Because I had hit my head on the roof of the car as it slammed on the ground during a flip, and because I had already had a lower back injury earlier that year, they wanted x-rays of my neck and all the way down my back. When they do x-rays of the abdomens of women in their child-bearing years, doctors and nurses ask if those women are pregnant or think they could be pregnant. Not being one to lie to authority figures other than my parents, I had to tell them that I didn't know whether I was pregnant or not because of the thing with the twin. They had to skip the lower back x-rays, and because of that, they put a note on my x-rays saying why they weren't taken. That's how, when he went to pick up the x-rays for my follow-up appointment with my family doctor, my father found out. I didn't know about his knowing until later, after I had gone to my doctor's appointment alone and he had given me birth control pills, "to reglate my cycles" as I told my mother (it wasn't untrue; it just wasn't the whole truth.)

My father, bless him, did not bring it up. That was left to my mother, who hadn't really liked me since I had become a teenager. She chose a great time for it - we were on our way to an awards assembly, just the two parents and me. It was a rare occasion, and I had just climbed over the seat to sit between the two of them as we got to the end of our driveway, trying to take advantage of my time to be alone with them as their little girl. My mother's statement was very straightforward. "Just because you're on birth control now doesn't mean you can sleep with every boy at Stafford High School, you know."

I honestly didn't know what to say. I was completely devastated. She told me how they had found out, and I didn't get the happy, warm feeling I was hoping for from that night's awards. My father, whom I adored, knew I had done something terribly wrong. He still never said anything about it, but he knew that his little girl was no longer innocent. I never told them it wasn't by choice, because I was sure (and a friend of my mother's concurred) that my mother would blame me for it after I had gotten almost to the point of forgiving myself. And then there was Wendi's mother.

Eventually, Wendi's mother declared me a bad influence on her child. Wendi had started dating Jamie (yeah, it bothered me, but what could I really say?), and had gotten caught sneaking out of his house one night after midnight, and after having sex. Although Wendi had not seen me at Jamie's house, and I had had nothing to do with her being caught or even with her having sex with Jamie, we were forbidden to talk to each other, by her mother. My father had tried to reason with her, but "Mental Custard" (as Wendi and I began to call her mother) wouldn't have it. She would be allowed to see Jamie before me. Unbeknownst to her mother, Wendi had been having sex far longer than I had and was drinking before I was, but I was the bad influence.

Anyway, we went a LONG time before I could be in the same room with Wendi or her mother outside of school, but we were finally allowed to be friends again. Eventually, Wendi and I both began dating other long-term boyfriends who were friends. And eventually, Wendi had another party. With the same people as the first party. And again, I answered the door to find the guys, together. The twin spoke first, because I suddenly had no voice. He said, "Wow, Kim! Deja vu."

I lost it. I tried not to, but it wasn't possible. I had gone through so much crap as a result of this guy that to have him not only in the same place under the same circumstances, but mentioning said circumstances as if it had been just another fun party of the past and we were all buddy-buddy, was too much for me. I let them in, directed them to the bar and the fridge, and went up to commiserate with Wendi. I was completely livid, and I had had a drink, so my inhibitions weren't so strong. I ended up kicking a hole in Wendi's bedroom wall, for which I was truly sorry. I had surprised even myself with my anger. Wendi joined in with the anger, but it wasn't WITH me - it was AGAINST me this time. There would be no way to get the hole fixed and painted with the right color paint before her parents came home the next day. But her anger also went farther than that.

Wendi proceeded to tell me that she was tired of my telling her how I was a victim and that the twin had taken advantage of me. She told me that it had been my own fault for being drunk and not being able to fight him off if I didn't want him. In fact, she doubted that I'd even tried. She then said that I needed to just get over it, because he was her friend, too, and that if I couldn't get over it, she wanted me out of her house. In my strongest moment to that point in life, I turned to Wendi and asked, "Can I get my stuff first?" I then called my boyfriend to come and pick me up. Of course, the boyfriend tried to start a fight with the twin because he had heard what had happened, which didn't make it any better for me. I was flattered because SOMEone was defending my honor, but I knew it was already too late to save the friendship and I knew that the attempted fight would only put me farther into ridicule territory.

I did talk to Wendi a couple of times after that, but it was a couple of years later and we only made smalltalk while I rang up purchases for her and Mental Custard at Sears, where I worked my way through college. I never talked to Wendi as a be fri again, and aside from rumors, have no idea what happened to her.