Shhh…. I have a secret

*Note: Still in either 2011 or 2012. I think

At number 11…

So I left off with number 11 on my list. Why? this is where things start to get a little more… complicated.

11.) James C. I was a junior in high school. He was a transfer student. He was cute and he had an accent. Nothing to fancy, just southern, but at the time he seemed… well, exotic is the only word that seems about right. Something about him fascinated me, kind of the same way that a snake can enthrall a mouse. My very best friend liked him too. After Duane, whom she had also liked, I had tried very hard not to get involved with anyone that she liked too, since I always won. Always. But Jim, Jim I wanted in a way that I didn’t understand.

I am still not sure how he manged to do it, but he separated us in such a way that we didn’t know that he was dating the other one. In fact we rarely saw each other when he wasn’t right there with us. We almost never spoke to one another alone. (Remember this was way before cell phones or texting).

It was hard on us, Uncomfortable at time because we both thought that the other one was blind to not see that he was in love with us! WHen we were together he did a good job at keeping the level of attention pretty equal. It was hard to keep such a secret from each other, especially since we had been best friend since before kindergarten and several people at the school knew us only by our joined names (some weren’t sure which of us were which. Seriously! And we had gone to school with the majority for our entire lives!) He told us both, that the time he spent with the other was simply as friends. I believed it. Maybe I wanted to believe it a little too much.

He introduced me to ‘second base’, and rounded ‘third’. He might have made it all of they way ‘home’ if he hadn’t decided that he wanted to go to Prom. I don’t know if he couldn’t decide which one of us he wanted to take or if he thought that if he did things the way he did, we would never know he was trying to date us both.

Anyway, he convinced me that I could always get a date with someone else, but that she couldn’t. Plus he knew that Russ and I had an on again off again relationship, and I think they were vaguely friends. So he arranged for Russ and I to go to Prom while he went with her. We went together as a foursome.

So the four of went together to Prom. Russ who had never tried to do more than kiss me was encouraged to do more than kiss me. But he never pushed things as far as I would have let him push. I dunno. I was always a sucker for him. He could easily have been my ‘first’. Later I heard that he had too much respect for me to push farther. Silly boy, I thought I knew what I wanted.

After Prom we four hung out together for a few weeks. There was never anything exclusive between Russ and I so Jim and I still fooled around once in a while. Although, he quit pushing the boundaries. Until…

One night, I spent the night at my friend’s house and we compared stories. Eye-opening. I decided then and there I was done with Jim. And I was. unfortunately, I was also done with Russ. He got into trouble shortly afterwards and his parents sent him off somewhere. (Again, a boyfriend left. Not sure if you have caught the recurring theme here… and yes we did write and tried to keep in touch, for a while.)

Then one night while out with a couple of friends, I met the next one on my list. I started dating him and Jim suddenly didn’t have two girls fighting over him and he dropped my best friend like a hot brick too. (And shortly after that moved to Florida.)

Now I can see he was a manipulator. I probably would have seen that sooner except it was around this time that I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my head. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID for short). But that is a whole ‘nuther story that probably deserves its own space.

I made sure Jim was invited to our last class reunion (I did the finding and inviting thanks to the web) and he stated he was coming. Of course at the last-minute he decided he couldn’t leave Florida. He says that he is a Doctor now. I remember his grades, and somehow I doubt it. But as long as he never shows back up in town, he can claim to be whatever he likes. Frankly, I no longer care.