This story is about a friend of mine whom we will call Kate, because there is actually no K, no A, no T and no E in her real name. During my senior year in high school, several of us had lunch in the cafeteria together every day, including Kate and me. I developed an intense (though fruitless) crush on Kate that year for the following reasons:
1. I regarded my family as the ultimate dysfunctional family, and I was looking for a girlfriend whose family members were closed and cared about each other. Kate talked about her family in nearly reverent tones during lunch every day, which I thought was awesome, because I had lost my reverence for my own family.
2. Kate was one of the best students in our senior class.
3. One day during lunch, she asked us what alcohol tasted like. Her parents had made sure she never had any, and she didn’t seem to mind. She was just mildly curious about it. My father was an alcoholic who beat my mother in front of us, tried to strangle her and fired a bullet into our ceiling on one occasion. My parents divorced when I was nine. Kate’s virtues and innocence were just what I was looking for. I loved that girl.
Unfortunately, over time I awkwardly and painfully discovered that I had nothing to offer Kate, which she wanted, and we went our separate ways.
We went to universities in different states, and I remember something she told me about one of her college experiences. She had dated one of her fellow students, who lived off campus. One day he invited her to his home. While she was there, she noticed the names on his mailbox, the name of the boy she was dating and the name of his wife. Kate broke off the relationship immediately.
Fifteen years after high school, I was still single, I no longer had a crush on Kate, but I wanted to know what had happened to her. So I called her and arranged to fly back to my home state for a visit.
Kate was also still single, and I enjoyed seeing her again. But while I was with her, she told me that she had recently had a steamy affair, which she called explosive, with a married man who lived in San Francisco. She also said that she had had a two-year affair with another married man. I don’t know how, when or why she changed, but I noticed a more hardened and cynical attitude than I had ever seen in her before. She was a bit like a turtle, who still had a shell, but the soft and vulnerable part of the turtle under the shell was missing. She lost more than her virginity, she lost the best part of herself.
Kate and I both eventually married. Neither my wife or I have been married before. But Kate is her husband’s third wife. She says his prior divorces were not his fault. Perhaps that’s true, but third wives don’t fare well statistically. I hope they beat the odds, and I went to their wedding.
I will close by saying that Kate has always been polite and gracious to me. I haven’t seen or spoken to her for nearly a decade, and I’m almost sure I could still find things to like about her today, which is why I won’t post her real name. I hope she doesn’t have to pay the full price for her mistakes and her carelessness, because I still care about her.
