Wow. ¿Has it been really been February since I put up my last installment of Never Too Short... Oh well, better late than never, right? ¿Isn't that what they say? I could offer excuses, like I've been busy setting up and promoting From the Bottom Up, my new column on The Urban Twist which is 100% true... I guess I just offered an excuse. I'll shut up, now. Without further ado—
So where was I? Oh yes. It didn't take too long to recover from the heartache of The Buxom Virgin. Let's face it. Although they feel pain rather deeply, young hearts have an immense capacity to recover quickly. By the time I met Sissy, her given name was Juanita, I was over Pam. Only the occasional surprise letter would remind me of the hurt, like peeling a scab before the wound's fully healed. But I hadn't lost site of my mission, to get laid before I turned eighteen.
I met Sissy through Patty, a girl I went out with for less than a day not long after moving to Baltimore City. I remember on the walk to school, Patty was telling me how much she liked me, and on the way back home, she was telling me she couldn't get over how much shorter I was (all of 2 inches!). It didn't bother me much because at fourteen she was already a heavy smoker, and kissing her was like licking the bottom of an ashtray. We stayed friends though, until her only friends became the glue and paints she huffed to get high, and Patty started looking like a forty-year-old teenager.
She did, however, introduce me to Sissy in the spring of 1986. Sissy seemed like a simple Girl-Next-Door type—subdued and maybe a little shy. She was a year older than me, but light years ahead as far as sex was concerned. Needless to say, I was a little shocked when I learned she danced on The Block. For those not familiar with Baltimore, The Block is the local red light district. It’s exactly what it implies, one square block of strip joints, peep show booths & adult novelty stores. She had lied and said she was eighteen so they would let her dance, albeit I don't believe they asked for ID. Not yet twenty-one at the time, I never did get to see her dance.
I thought I'd hit the jackpot, though. Here was a girl I could take home to mom, pass her off as this sweet homespun girl, and would show me the frontiers of sexual ecstasy once mom went off to bed.Well, my place never worked. My mom thought Sissy was a slut, and with four siblings in a small rowhouse, it was impossible to get privacy. Her place was no better. Her mom and little sister liked me just fine, but there was just never a right time. That right time finally came many months later.
We had actually broken up for a while. As Sissy's dancing schedule became more hectic, she had less & less time for me. I was also more than a bit jealous as I realized how much, and what kind of attention she had to pay to her customers. However, when I ran into her and Patty that winter, we were both more than eager to rekindle what little we'd once had. She and Patty were house sitting for some rich guy that had bought two adjacent rowhouses in Butcher's Hill, a fancy name for Upper Fells Point. He had converted it into one large house, so large that he was having a pool built in the huge basement. I suspected he was a customer of Sissy's, but thought it better not to ask.
Regardless, Patty was hanging all over this dude, and Sissy was alone. I was convenient & available. I went in and got the grand tour, which ended upstairs in a tacky bar & lounge with these Indian wall hangings and a bench that was a lot less comfortable than it looked. Patty had stayed downstairs with her friend, so Sissy and I tried to get comfortable on that god damned bench. After a bit of flailing I got Sissy down to just her panties. 
Once he was done, he said he was tired and asked the ladies to escort the young men to the door. I begged Sissy to come with me, that we could finish our night elsewhere. When she said no, it was obvious that she was beholden to that man in some way. I decided then to leave Sissy alone for good. She really wasn't worth the blue balls. Granted, if the opportunity had presented itself again, I know I wouldn't have turned her down, as horny as I was.
My next good chance at getting laid was Marilyn. I first met Marilyn when she dropped in unexpectedly at my sixteenth birthday party on July 4th, 1985. She was a cute Nuyorican girl from New York, kind of like a young Rosie Perez—sexy accent & all. She was here with her brother & sister spending the summer in Baltimore with their grandparents. I was immediately in love. Granted, my sister saw Marilyn as her friend and didn't want her to spend any time with me. “She already has a boyfriend in New York,” my sister would tell me, “His name’s Chunky. Besides, she's not interested in your scrawny little ass.”I took my sister at her word, but I spent what time I could with Marilyn discussing New York—my old stomping grounds— & music. We did this for two summers, each summer bringing talk of a new boyfriend. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, so I said nothing about the way I felt. That wasn't too hard for me, anyway. I was still painfully shy, and it usually took the girl saying something to me for anything to happen.
The summer after I finished high school, I didn't see Marilyn around. Maybe she got tired of Baltimore, I thought. I finally ran into her at the tiny carnival held by St. Elizabeth's Church on Lakewood Avenue. Ironically, that same night, I ran into the woman who would end up being my first—lay, wife, mother of my children. Anyway, Marilyn was excited to see me. We decided to get on a ride together and catch up.
We actually didn't say much until she asked me, “Freddy, why haven't you ever asked me out?” I told her about my sister, about her boyfriends back in NYC, and her only being here during summers.
“Besides, Kyra always told me you weren't interested in me,” I admitted.
“Well, Kyra shouldn't have said that,” she tells me, “I was always interested.” I immediately felt the need to do backflips, but the ride had us up pretty high, and that would have resulted in death or serious injury. Instead, I directed that pent-up energy for what has to be one of the most magical kisses I've ever experienced, to that time. I remember the ride operator repeatedly, testily having to ask us to get off.
That summer was one of the best ever. She had had a fight with her mother’s boyfriend and decided to move to Baltimore permanently. We spent almost every waking hour together. We even discussed marriage. I wanted to wait until I had a degree and a decent job. She was ready—almost in a rush, it seemed. We were both virgins, and decided that we would have to handle that together, at the right time. Alas, that time would never come.
As autumn crept around the corner, we both got ready to start classes. I had bumbled through my last year in high school, so I was going to start at Baltimore City Community College. She was going to do her senior year at Patterson High. I came home after my second day of classes and my mom was yelling at me before I even made it through the door. Nothing new, but she was going on & on about Marilyn. As I start to make sense of it, I realize that Marilyn had lied to her grandfather telling him she had spent a recent night at our house. When my mother told her grandfather the truth, he was not very happy.
Marilyn wasn't very happy, either. She was mad that my mom didn't just go along with the lie. She was also upset that her grandfather had slapped her. She changed her mind about staying in Baltimore and opted to go back to New York after all—at the end of the week. The rest of that week was pretty miserable. We talked about staying in touch, but something told me it wouldn't be that easy. Look at what happened with Pam.
After we said our goodbyes, I went home and spent the weekend in tears in the tiny basement bedroom I shared with my little brother listening to a mixtape she's made me of her favorite New York Freestyle songs. I became a stereotype. Every song on that tape was about her, about me or about us. The chorus to Noel's Silent Morning—Silent Morning, I wake up and you're not by my side/ Silent Morning, You know how hard I tried/ Silent Morning, They say a man's not supposed to cry/ Silent Morning, Why did your love have to be a lie—became my anthem as it played over & over again. Only the desire to eat, and class on Monday, drew me out.After class that Monday my mother volunteered me to pick up my little stepsister from kindergarten at the elementary school right down the street. Still depressed, I sauntered to the school, grabbed my sis and began to head home. Imagine my surprise when I saw Marilyn in the middle of the schoolyard. I forgot about my poor little sister. Marilyn had come back. ¡To me!
She noticed me approaching and offered the slightest of smiles. Nothing more. I started off the conversation. “¿So you decided to come back?”“No,” she said, “I never left.”
I was confused. “¿Never left?” I asked, “¿Where were you?”
“Married. ¿Just like that? ¿To who?” but I barely heard her answers as I could feel the anger in me surging. Suddenly I remembered my poor little sister, waiting patiently, her teeny hand in mine. “Well, good luck with that,” I blurted out, not meaning it, as I took my sister and walked away.
There’s a strange irony to the story. Marilyn had married this guy named Wilson. I knew Wilson in passing, but mostly because Peggy Puddles, the girl with whom I’d perfected my cunnilingual skills, had dumped him for me way back when.
Marilyn and I would actually cross paths a few times after that, most notably when she sat me down to tell me that my wife (at the time) had admitted to her that she had slept with six other men while married to me. She felt I should know. She also told me that there were things going on at the time she decided to get married, things I didn't know about, but that she wasn't quite ready to tell me.
She never did tell me. I suspect that she was desperate to get out of her grandfather's house. When she realized I wanted to finish my schooling before starting a family, she turned elsewhere. She had got herself pregnant by Wilson, and felt obligated to marry him. Had she just been honest about what she felt she needed, I would have married her the next day. Another irony—that child, Wilson Jr., looked like he could have been mine. I may never know the actual truth, but I’ve been told by mutual friends that it didn’t slip by her how much her first son resembled me. Penance, perhaps. Marilyn and I even dabbled with reuniting when both our marriages were breaking up, but I suppose its one of those things—a love combusted and turned to ashes whose embers you just can’t rekindle. Nevertheless, I still think of Marilyn fondly as my first true love.
That's about it, folx. A year later I would meet Maria, the woman I would finally go all the way with. I would also get her pregnant and end up marrying her. You can find that story in Smile Hon, You're in Flagrante, the sex issue of Eight Stone Press' popular award-winning zine Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore. I will eventually get around to posting it here, but you already know how slow I am about things like that.
That's about it, folx. A year later I would meet Maria, the woman I would finally go all the way with. I would also get her pregnant and end up marrying her. You can find that story in Smile Hon, You're in Flagrante, the sex issue of Eight Stone Press' popular award-winning zine Smile Hon, You're in Baltimore. I will eventually get around to posting it here, but you already know how slow I am about things like that.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the thief. Not much to tell, really. Having turned eighteen by then, I had already missed my deadline. I was living with a buddy of mine, Chris Mills, before I met Maria. Chris and I were hanging out a friend's house, one of those places you hang out at because the parents are never around. We had met up with these two girls, good friends who both went to St. Elizabeth's—remember, the church/school where I hooked up with Marilyn and met Maria? Chris was making out with one of the girls; I made out with the other. 
I remember I was on my back on the floor of the darkened living room with the girl on top of me. My wallet was digging into my ass, so I slid it out and laid it on the coffee table next to us. A few minutes later, just as I let my hopes rise, once again, that I was about to get some, her friend comes over and tells her that they have to get home. Curfew. Chris & I walk them out and talk about hooking up again the next day. I go back into the living room, grab my wallet, look inside and see nothing. The couple of hundred dollars I had saved up for an end of summer trip to Ocean City was gone. I never saw her again, but the chick left me with nothing but an empty heart and an empty wallet.
