Dennis was one of those guys that meant well.

Even now, when I hear myself say that about him, I still wince a little in a sympathetic pain. I always thought I had the worst luck with women, and then along came Dennis to prove me wrong. Ironically, Dennis had the worst luck and the greatest self-esteem. There were days I envied that streak in him, but most days, that didn t help either of our situations. The year of our greatest discontent started at the tail end of my sophomore year of college. We were working together at a grocery store about equidistant from the both of us. We both started there because our mothers had worked there. Then again, that s how we met too. They were friends and he was the closest of the boys my age. Glen was next, but he and I didn t have anything in common. Dennis and I did. We liked the same stuff in many places; I was just a year older. Hanging out together helped us in a lot of different areas. We could pass the time fairly easily on weekends, sitting in his room playing cards. I got a chance to hang out near his sister. She had blossomed early and though she was only fifteen, she looked more like she was in her twenties. If Peggy would have ever looked my way, I think everyone in the family would have been happy. However, I was such a frequent visitor, Peg looked at me like I was just another of the brothers. That sucked when it came to a few things, but such is life, or so I m continuously told. It was, as I said, late in the school year. I was finishing up a few papers, so my work load was down and Dennis was in the last stages of his senior year of High School. He was about to be the first of the kids to finish and graduate high school. His two brothers dropped out and the elder of the two proved he didn t need the education to help himself along. The next one wanted to be a mechanic so he worked from shop to shop trying to catch on. His younger brother and sister were still in school with varying degrees of success. So, here he was, literally the intellectual flower of the family. He wanted to go to college and learn how to run a business in auto-body repair. I admired that he had a plan, but both of us still had other plans, we wanted to also be dating, having fun, and enjoying life. For Dennis and me both, dating was a rather unusual set of circumstances. I was a sophomore in college and while I went to a university with hundreds of women of various types, I dated, off-and-on, a high school friend who had moved to Chicago. There were times it was very convenient to be dating her and other times it was a pain in the butt. Dennis was over the moon for a girl named Stacey and he was convinced that it was true love. However, every time I turned around, he was forbidden to date her by her father for one reason or another, or she had a boyfriend for a while, so he wasn t seeing anyone. Somehow in the middle of this, he started seeing a girl from his school. Her name was Freda and he was kind in his description of her. Apparently, Freda had known Peggy from somewhere so she started running into Dennis at school and they started talking, etc. They started dating off and on. Dennis told me that he tried to get somewhere with her, but while she hinted and flirted, nothing was going on. Freda s mother, on the other hand, was convinced something was going on, so she told Dennis he wasn t allowed to see Freda any longer. I ended up involved because Dennis hatched a plan to try and get back together with Freda and because he needed a car and I had one. He asked if I would help him out on my days off. The plan involved driving out to the Venture s store she worked at and visiting with her on her lunch break. For me, I would get a chance to get out of the house. For Dennis, this was a chance to meet with Freda and see if

they could start dating again. For the first couple of weeks, the plan worked well. Dennis and I would go in on a stagger, and I would tell him where I would be when it was time to go. I hung out in the electronics and music areas or I would be over by the stationery section. I really never wanted to go to Ventures for clothes, so I just parked in a couple of places and went from there. Dennis would go in, find where Freda was working on the floor, and then she would clock out for dinner and they would sit in the cafeteria and talk. Everything seemed to work well until an accident upset the apple cart. Well, I would say there were two accidents which started the whole mess unraveling. The first was Dennis mouth. Apparently, I was one of his favourite subjects of discussion when he was talking about things with Freda. I do not understand how I was so fascinating, but I guess he wanted to explain how he was getting rides and Freda saw a guy with a car and started asking questions. Dennis wasn t the sharpest knife in the drawer so he gleefully filled in as many details as he could about me. The second was more serendipity than planned. I walked in ahead of Dennis as normal, but this time, I had something I needed to pick up while I was out and I went into the HBA area to find it. Normally I avoided that area because Dennis told me that Freda worked there most of the time. This time, I walked by and didn t see anyone, so I went into the shampoo section and as I grabbed what I needed, there was a blonde girl there blocking off the exit to the aisle. I didn t think anything of it, having never met Freda yet, and went the other way to go back and do the rest of my shopping. Freda told Dennis that she would like me to start joining him when they met for her lunch. Dennis didn t bother to tell me this until the next day when we got ready to go in and he told me I needed to wait for a minute. Then he explained that Freda had seen me yesterday and wanted me to join them. I was a little uncomfortable, but I went along with it because I figured if I did this once or maybe twice, I would be off the hook in future. When we entered, he went and got Freda and I went to the cafeteria and got a table. When she walked up, I recognized her as the blonde I saw the day before. Freda and I were about the same height and she was well proportioned. She was decent looking, neither a show-stopper, nor someone you would be uncomfortable with. She was fairly average in most ways. Once she started talking, you understood why she would be attractive to guys. Freda carried herself very confidently and where, in most cases, telling someone that a girl had a great personality was not a true compliment, in Freda s case it was. She shone as she spoke and she was more interesting. At the time, as I felt like a third wheel, I started trying to pass my time with the salt shakers. Apparently, this annoyed Freda no end so she reached out and took them away from me. She put them on another empty table behind us. I looked at her agape and she smiled telling me that it was bothering her. I just shrugged it off and went back to being bored as she and Dennis spoke about school and other things to which I was only half listening. To pass the time, I removed a silver, turquoise, and coral ring I was wearing and started playing with it. I figured that even if it annoyed Freda, she couldn t do anything about that, since it was mine rather than the salt and pepper shakers. I was surprised when she reached out and snatched the ring while I was spinning it. She giggled when she took it and I asked her nicely to return it. She said no and informed me that it was hers. She then, with emphasis, placed it on her left hand ring finger and smiled at me as though asking me what I was going to do about it. Dennis busted up laughing hysterically and thought this was the funniest thing he had seen in ages. I was growing annoyed so I was loathe to see what was so humorous about it. Freda ignored my further requests for

the remainder of the evening and would only smile at me when she glanced my direction. Finally, she got up to clock back in and Dennis walked her back to the back. They returned a few moments later and I asked, as we were going to leave, for the return of my ring. She smiled and said no and that it was hers. I told her she couldn t just take it from me without giving me something of value in return. I also hinted that I would stay there until this was resolved. Finally, her smile widened and she said ok. I thought I would get my ring back and this would all be a good joke for later. Instead, she reached behind her neck and removed her Senior Key. She then stepped forward and placed it around my neck. Then she winked and since I had something of hers, I was satisfied and left. Dennis barely made it to the parking lot before he burst into more laughter. Having recently graduated high school myself, I realized that Freda had just implied something, even if she didn t say it outright. When we got back in the car, I asked Dennis what was so funny to him and all he could answer was congratulations. In the back of my mind, I knew what he meant. Freda had publicly identified me as her boyfriend by giving me her Key. He then tried to inform me that his plan had worked and that Freda and I dating was proof that he could do what he wanted. I was calling him out on that one. I reminded him that he had told me the purpose of the visits was so he could spend time with her and try to start dating her again. He answered that early on, Freda told him she wasn t interested and that she had been noticing me when I went by into other areas and wanted to find a way to meet me. He continued to cackle about it the rest of the way home. The next day, we both went out there again, but as I got to the door, Freda asked me if she and Dennis could speak privately in my car. I handed her the keys and told her not to go anywhere. They spoke for some time and then Dennis came in, found me, and told me in a rather subdued voice that Freda wished to speak with me next. I went out to the car and Freda was firmly ensconced in the driver s seat. She told me that she had spoken with Dennis and let him know that though they were friends, she really had been, since she had seen me, been looking for a way to approach me and try to date me. She told Dennis she was completely in love with me and wasn t interested in anything more than friendship. She then asked me to be her boyfriend. I answered that I thought she settled that last night and she smiled. She said she knew Dennis feelings were hurt because he was still hoping she was just kidding. I noticed she was still wearing my ring, but now on a chain around her neck. She fingered it a little and said while she preferred to wear it on her hand; she was concerned how her mother would react to seeing it, so she kept it hidden. The drive home was subdued. Dennis went from the laughter of the day before to a morose bitterness. Freda was right, in the back of his mind, he hoped this was a joke and that she would really still want to go out with him, or that she would be interested in us both so he could still have a shot at her. He told me that I wouldn t need to bring him around for any more visits. Freda had already asked me to keep coming out and visiting and I didn t see a reason not to, to be honest. From the first meetings alone, Freda showed she looked at me differently than she did Dennis. First, she did not want to meet in the cafeteria any longer. She wanted to meet out in my car. The first few meetings were pretty laid back. We sat, held hands, made out, talked about nothing in particular, etc. The normal sort of teen-age stuff you would expect. We would both sort of accelerate things to feel the

other out and her responses told me she was certainly interested. One night, as we got in the car, she untucked her blouse which allowed me a chance to slip my hand underneath and play. The next night, she not only did that, but she leaned forward and unhooked her bra so my hand could slide up and feel from there. A couple of weeks later, she got in the car and proceeded to unbutton her slacks for me and invited my hand down into her pants. It was the sort of stuff that kids did when they didn t really care. There were times where Freda would back away, saying she thought her mom might be out in the parking lot looking in on things and she didn t want us to get in trouble. She was half right, her mother was watching what was going on in the parking lot, but we never got in trouble. There is a creepy factor to a mother watching her daughter get felt up by a boyfriend in the parking lot, but not saying or doing anything about it. After a few weeks, Freda told me her mother wanted to meet me and asked me to go to church with them on Wednesday evening. I thought I should go. We met at the church which was a small congregation for Wednesday night services. The pastor was rather impressed with my ability to discuss scripture and Freda s parents were thrilled beyond belief. Afterwards, we went out for ice cream and to thrift stores. I knew that I had received the seal of approval from her mother when she told Freda to ride with me in my car. Of course, we weren t going to do anything amiss, but it was nice to know I was trusted. The next major event would be prom. I don t remember asking Freda if she wanted me to take her to her prom, but simply asked her when it would be so I could get time off of work. I went out and got my tuxedo so I would look nice. I did all the normal preparations; I had a gift certificate to a local restaurant so the meal would be less expensive and we could have more fun. I purchased the corsage and bought some flowers for her mother. That evening, I arrived to their house and went in to collect Freda. As normal, she was a little late as she was nervous in getting dressed. I gave her mother her flowers which she promptly placed in a vase and we chatted about the most mundane things. My nerves were getting the better of me. Freda walked out and she looked very nice in her dress. I handed her the corsage figuring she would pin in to her own dress. Her mother stepped in and told me that I had to pin it to Freda. With her mother standing there, I was trying to be as delicate as I could and not appear to take liberties. Sadly, all of my attempts were laughably disastrous. Freda s mother kept commenting that I needed to take care not to stab her. Finally, she realized my plight and took my hand, pulled Freda s dress forward, and placed my hand, palm to Freda, inside Freda s bra. I stood there in shock for a second as I realized her mother just stuffed my hand down her dress and directly atop her breast. I moved my hand off Freda s chest and then quickly and efficiently pinned the corsage in place. As we left, her mother told us she had a curfew of 1 AM that night, so I made note of it and we went to the dance. The dance itself was pretty unremarkable. We mingled, meaning Freda showed me off to her friends. We danced to one song, and then we stood around for a little bit. After about an hour, we left, went to my house, changed into something more comfortable and less formal. We then went to dinner and relaxed. We returned to my house late enough, we only had a few minutes to spare for anything else. The sex which followed was unremarkable and hurried, but it was enough for a pair of 19 year olds to have fun. I got Freda home with three minutes to spare.

The next day, I picked Freda up to take her to work, as her mother couldn t take her. When I got there, her mother said she was surprised and disappointed Freda arrived home before the curfew. She had hoped we would get a hotel room and spend the night there, getting Freda home in time to clean up to go to work. I politely told her if that was her intent, she should have made it a little more clear, to which she smiled and said she figured I would have gotten the hint with my hand on Freda s chest. She later teased me that perhaps she needed to take me out sometime to show me what she had meant in more detail. I laughed since I thought she was only kidding. After that night, things started slowing down for Freda and I. As she was finishing her senior year and closing in on graduation, I would, occasionally, pick her up from school and take her home. She had given up on her job and we didn t meet there any longer. The only big worry was one of her friends, Jennifer, had seen me a couple of times and had told Freda, she would steal me away and seduce me. Of course, the only problem with this plan was Jen had never spoken to me so she didn t exactly start off well. Things would get worse for Freda when I was invited to San Diego by my mother and step-father for the summer. She did the entire maudlin routine when my father and step-mother took me to the airport. I had been out in San Diego about 6 weeks when the bottom fell out from Freda. I received a call from Dennis and he seemed very upset and agitated. He couldn t make any sense, so he handed the phone to his sister and Peggy explained things to me. Freda had just mailed them back all of my jewelry and announced she was in Joplin and four weeks pregnant. She also told Peggy that her mother had thrown her out and she was living with a boy s grandparents while she figured out what to do next. I was hurt as this was the first time in my life I d ever been cheated on by a girlfriend and didn t know how it felt. Right on the heels of this came a tape from my friend Jeni in Chicago telling me she was still in love with me and wanted me to come up and visit her. So I changed my tickets around and would end my summer in Chicago. Upon returning, Freda called me some weeks later and over time, I would receive several different stories about what happened during that summer. The final story, as they were all pieced together, came out something like this: While I was away, Freda withdrew from all of her friends and family, except one friend, a classmate named James who was living with a foster family. His mother had lost custody of him and he was unhappy with his foster parents. So he worked out a scheme with Freda that she would help him run away and get him down to his grandparents around Joplin. When she did this, her mother tracked her down and told her that she didn t need to bother coming home, she didn t have one any longer. She was distressed and scared. She couldn t get a hold of me, so she felt alone. One night, James was supposed to be asleep and she was awake and upset. He heard her crying and came to see what was wrong. In trying to comfort her, he decided to make advances on her. I can understand that from his perspective. He wanted to rebuild things and here she was and available to him. She accepted his advances and, according to Freda, the only time they had sex, she turned up pregnant. She would leave there and end up in a home for unwed mothers in Kansas City. Things between Freda and her mother calmed down and became better once Betty became a grandmother. It s not surprising to me. Eventually, Freda and I

would try again one evening to see if there was anything left there. She had blossomed from being pregnant, but a jealous possible boyfriend spooked her enough to cut short the attempt before anything serious could come about. It was a shame too as maternity had given her very enticing curves and things started moving the right direction for both of us at that time. The next bright spot in hanging out with Dennis came when he was trying to go out with a girl from his school and she would only go as part of a double date. He started explaining all of this and somewhere in the middle, my eyes had to have rolled. However, I had nothing better to do, so I agreed to go on this expedition with him. It turned out that the girl he was trying to go out with was Jennifer, Freda s best friend, and when I walked in the door and she recognized me, the rest of the evening was a little different. Jen still remembered she had been interested in me and now I was sitting in her bedroom with her older sister and Dennis. Jen had two sisters, one older and one younger. We were able to meet all three ladies that evening as Dennis wanted to talk about the double date. The older sister, Rachel, was an attractive blond, blueeyed lady, about a year older than I. She had a boyfriend, currently in jail, but she was willing to do the double date thing for Jen. In retrospect, I think that s cool she would do that for her sister, but it s also really a bummer in the greater scheme of things. While Jen, Dennis, and I would laugh through the evening, she sat there rather withdrawn like this was just a bother. The younger sister, Dixie, was everything that Rachel was not. Dixie had looks which could have stopped traffic. She had a beautiful figure, a great face, and a vivacious personality. I would have loved to have been Dixie s date on a double, but everyone was in agreement, there was no way her father would let the sixteen year old baby girl go out with a twenty year old college guy. Later, we all were surprised to find out her dad actually would have let her go. Dennis told her that I knew how to dance (which I don t.) and she wanted to know if I could do the drop move from Dirty Dancing. You know the one where Jennifer Grey places her knee in an opening formed by Patrick Swayze s hand on his hip and he dips her backward? Well, she wanted to try that with me. I was game, and then she surprised me. She didn t stop at her knee, as in the movie, she slid in all the way to her hip, which pushed her even tighter into me. Just to set the picture, here I am with a voluptuous young lady, who has pasted herself so tight that my hand had to turn and hold her inner thigh right at the groin muscle so she wouldn t slip, then lower her back, which meant pulling her crotch against my leg, then try to lower her back slowly so she doesn t fall and not give away any arousal. Well, I failed on the final score and when she came back up, she didn t want to move her body out of the position it was in. She did shift just a little to set her balance which placed her right over the top of my crotch. She lingered there and smiled. Then she giggled and kept real close to me the rest of the night. Finally, we decided on the set up for the double date. I would escort Rachel and Dennis would escort Jen. It wasn t what anyone really wanted, except Dennis, so there wasn t a lot of promise for the evening. Jen wanted to be my date, I wanted to take out Dixie (who wanted to go out with me too, but no one thought it would be allowed.), and Rachel didn t even want to go, but she did out of courtesy for her sister. We showed up and brought the girls flowers and poetry to set a good start to the evening. Then we went to dinner and everything went well. After dinner, we went to a bowling alley to play pool. When we got there, we switched up partners as Rachel and I were the better players, so it wouldn t be

unfair. I paired with Jen and her with Dennis. Jen tried to flirt with me and get my attention all night, but I was the good boy. After the date, Dennis agreed that we should have switched dates as Jen was really obvious in making clear she wanted to go out with me. I think if we had, she would have tried to get me into an intimate position that evening. After the double date, things quieted down for a while. Jen and Dixie never got my phone number, so I didn t get a chance to follow up with them. I was on again off again with Jen in Chicago, more off than on, but that happens with a lot of long distance relationships. Dennis had now graduated high school and was working at other jobs, trying to get himself ready for the next step in life. He had been talking about going to college and learning both a trade and how to run a business. However, he didn t have the money to go, so he was trying to work to get into that position. I didn t think that was a bad idea for him. During the summer, he would spend time out at Oceans of Fun and Worlds of Fun, two local amusement parks. During one of his visits, he met a young lady and they started flirting, talking, etc. Over the course of a couple of weeks, they went out, they went to bed. One day, now that Dennis had his own car, he decided to pick me up and introduce the two of us. Apparently, since we didn t call ahead, we couldn t visit with Windy in her home, instead, we all went to the park nearby to play on the playground and talk. The first thing I noticed was that she abandoned her shoes fast. Yet, she would admit in the conversations which followed, she hated having her feet touched. Seemed a bit of a paradox, but so be it. I tended to stay more in the background, though a couple of times, Windy did come over and engage me in ways that I had to touch her. I would get rid of her by threatening to touch her feet. Otherwise, things seemed pretty solid with her and Dennis, so I was the third wheel. A couple of weeks later, Dennis came by with Windy in tow. I wasn t certain as to why on the visit, but Dennis was showing her off as his girlfriend, so I figured everything was working well. According to Windy, it was Dennis idea to visit, as he was talking about me all the time. According to Dennis, she wanted to come over because he d been talking about me so much.