The story of a Lonesome ol'Jerome

51- Take 2, hospital, prom, and Ozzfest

*17 year old Gwyn's POV*

Two weeks after Lydia was married to the 19 year-old with a car and a job, and just a few days after Christmas, I was talking to her on the phone, as a 'friend,' when she asked me if I wanted to be her girlfriend again.

I didn't understand. I thought that was impossible. But she told me she missed me. And all the work I had done came undone. My heart took over and swallowed my mind, swamping the ethical misgivings I had.

I started trying to fuck the girl I loved in our high school's bathrooms every day at lunch, but she was resistant, and there was never enough privacy. One night I walked the several miles to her house, dodging an attempted assault, arriving just after her husband had left (they weren't even living together yet). I ended up having to hide in her closet when I made her moan so loudly she woke up her parents. She walked with me home, late the next morning after we escaped out her window, and, in the moment, I thought we shared something special. I discovered my parents had called the cops when they couldn't find me at home. After that, my parents started sensing something was up, and would almost never let me see her.

Around that time, I was on the phone with Lydia, and just chatting. (This was back in the day of home phone lines.) My parents decided we had been talking too long, and told me to get off the phone. I said no. Their response was to pull the phone jack out of the phone at its base.

I went apeshit, and my dad responded by pushing me against the wall to try and calm me down. But he had just separated me from Lydia, the drug to which I was addicted. So I shoved him, as hard as I could, away from me. He flew across the room and hit his head on the bottom of a china cabinet as he crumpled.

I was horrified. I asked if he was ok. He was physically mostly fine, but he was enraged. He sent me to my room, humiliated that his fat, teenaged daughter had just pushed him over (he had been an Army guy). I was so ashamed, I ran to my room, and events unfolded such that I ended up in the psychiatric hospital, in the minor's ward, for the first time.

It was not a good experience. That hospital was later shut down.

A few weeks later, Lydia casually informed me that she just wanted to make out, and that she didn't want to have sex again. That she didn't really consider me more than a friend.

I talked to her on the phone for a long time. Then I wrote a long letter by hand, went to the basement, and got some of my dad's alcohol. I took all of my depakote with it and went to bed. I soon found myself in the hospital again.

After that, my school told me that if I was hospitalized again, I would be expelled. The few people I told about what had happened with Lydia resented me for rocking the social status quo.

My heart was shattered as I discovered how terrible love was. I took great solace in the music I loved. Marilyn Manson, Metallica, Aerosmith, Jack off Jill, Psychotica, Type O Negative, Vampire Love Dolls, the Genitorturers, Drain sth, Queen, White Zombie, the list went on...

When it came time for senior prom (I had never been to a school dance), I would listen to Lydia tell me about her plans with her husband silently. I went to the Ozzfest to go see Black Sabbath, Rob Zombie, and Type O Negative by myself instead.

One of the last times I talked to Lydia, she told me she didn't consider me her first, as sex between women didn't count to her. A while after that, she did something unspeakably shitty to a mutual friend, so I called her out on it. We never spoke again.