Positive Achievement = Healthy Self-Esteem - A Love Story

(aka: "the one I almost called 'A Slut's Odyssey'")

Prologue

Attachment Disorder (n) ~ a behaviour disorder caused by the lack of an emotionally secure attachment to a caregiver in the first two years of life, characterized by an inability to form healthy relationships.

Chapter 1

We are standing at the top of a hill, Nick and I. A crisp autumn breeze blowing, with miniature cyclones of copper-coloured dead leaves drifting everywhere around us. Turning to face me, he gently wraps his plush wool scarf around my neck to protect my bare throat from the cooling air. “I care about you,” he says softly, gazing into my wide open eyes.

His four words, they intoxicate me more completely than all drugs combined. Jerry Maguire had Dorothy at “hello” – Nick had me at “I care.”  In this moment and forever after, I am his - thoroughly heart-and-soul, fully and totally.

It was my fourteenth birthday.

Chapter 2

Don’t get me wrong. My heart and soul weren’t given to Nick in vain or out of naiveté. There were others before him:

When I was ten there was Diego, an overly flirtatious youth volunteer at the pool I went to in the summer.  My mother routinely locked me out of our home in summers from 7am – 6pm, her working hours (her severe trust issues are the seeds from which my own have blossomed; I come by my mental health issues quite naturally), and the regular free public swim at the YMCA gave me up to five hours of somewhere to be every day.

The daily game was Tag, and all the kids spent hours jumping in and out of the water, laughing and evading whoever was “it.”  Small and fast, I was adept at diving into the crowded shallow end and threading myself quickly through bodies without touching anyone. Diego was the only one who could ever follow and catch me, and when he did he’d always delay his pronouncement of my new status as “it” for a minute, wrapping his arms around me while I squirmed and giggled with delight at the extra attention.

One day and rather suddenly, he slid his right hand inside the crotch of my bathing suit and shoved his middle finger deep and straight up into my otherwise unsuspecting vagina. My breath stopped abruptly with my instant confusion, and for the briefest moment our eyes locked.  Diego was smiling and laughing, already swimming away and yelling “she’s it!”  His reaction indicated very clearly that there was nothing to react to. I concluded that his unexpected gesture was only part of the game, and this evidenced itself when he tagged me the same way repeatedly and daily for the rest of the summer.

It only hurt the first time when, as I came to realize years later, he broke my hymen. I always wondered if he tagged the other girls the same way, but never knew any of them well enough to ask.  It’s only as an adult that I realized everyone else tagged the next “it” with a simple and usually fleeting touch of the hand, and that Diego never appeared to give anyone else those extra moments of special attention I received. We’re all fucking geniuses in hindsight, apparently.

~~~

When I was twelve there was Ethan, the French Casanova in grade eight who would meet me on the leather couch in the posh lobby of the last condominium complex I delivered to on my after-school paper route.

We met two to three times a week at 4:30 sharp for an hour of voracious necking and hormonal groping à la PG-13.  Together we mastered the new-found art of kissing, licking and mashing our prepubescent lips with an almost Darwinian urgency, stopping only with the intermittent passing through of the residents who lived there. Starland Vocal Band eat your heart out: I craved these afternoon delights with Ethan like a hard-core addict craves any garden-variety fix: they bolstered my otherwise non-existent self-esteem and my sense of personal worth began growing in direct proportion to the physical arousal I, with my lips and mouth and hands, could successfully elicit in his body.

Ripe with as yet unrecognized attachment disorders, I assumed our regular afternoon encounters rendered a meaningful bond between us, a commitment as sure as any spoken vow.  Needless to say, I was thoroughly devastated when, eight weeks into our relationship (a veritable lifetime for an adolescent) I learned that Ethan had standing dates of the same nature with at least three other girls.  Heartbroken, I ended our afternoon trysts (even at the age of twelve, I knew with certainty polyamory wasn’t my thing).  Ethan displayed obvious indifference, never spoke to me again, and presumably encountered no difficulty in filling the new vacancies in his afternoon calendar.

At the time, I liked to think that Ethan’s allocation to me of up to three afternoons each week had meant he viewed me as somehow more special than the rest – or at least, more skilled at firing his hormones.  In retrospect, he probably just capitalized on the fact that my weekly calendar had the most room for him.  My textbook desperation for approval and love meant that, literally and figuratively, I was most available indeed.

~~~

After my earth-and-soul-shattering heartbreak with Ethan, I ultimately formed my closest bonds with the circles of people who best reflected my rapidly increasing feelings of fundamental alienation: street kids, punks, skinheads, dealers… the visible outcast social dropouts who lived sheer worlds beyond the outer fringes of the west side middle class in which my court-mandated foster-placement had landed me.

Well beyond the apathy of the relatively privileged high school potheads and Goths, the edgy underground cultures of the actual guttered streets of downtown Vancouver appealed to and engaged me far more effectively than any school clique did or ever could. It was only a lovely coincidence that the motley assortment of people I came to know all shared my primary interest in regularly consuming the mind-altering substances most easily accessed on Granville Street circa 1985: alcohol, acid, and pot.

And really, they all simply looked and were Way Fucking Cooler than anyone else in my world at the time, school or otherwise: Roots Prep vs. Safety-Pin Punk, Danielle Steele vs. Hunter S. Thompson, The Bangles vs. Skinny Puppy – do the math.  I’d been in foster care for nearly three years and my repeated lessons in how unwanted, unlovable and unpardonable I was were by then long and thoroughly cemented.

I embraced my “street family” fully, and found their often belligerent defiance of the cultural status quo and social norms totally inspiring. For regular attention of any kind I blindly exchanged my unwavering loyalty.  With no capacity whatsoever for nuanced discernment, I was oblivious to disparities between actions and words so any and all "red flags" fully eluded and were otherwise of no concern to me.  At the age of thirteen, the belonging and acceptance I experienced with my chosen family fully trumped any brand of self-medication I could get my hands on, and I was wired through and through.

~~~

When I was thirteen, there was Terry, a twenty-something low-track hustler of mostly dime-bags and stolen fare bound for the piles of crap that lined shelves in the seediest pawn shops of pre-gentrified East Hastings Street.  His first words to me were Lynard Skynard’s well-known chorus, which he sang with gusto: “What’s your name little girl? What’s your name?” 

He was friendly and after his memorable introduction, we hung out often.  One time, when we were alone in his room, Terry gave me a cigarette laced with heroin and assuming it was no more than the Dunhill King Size I expected, I smoked it.  I fell quickly and deeply into a thick opiate haze and he fucked me. I was so far outside of my body while it happened that the memory is smoke itself, blurry light and groggy shadows through clouds long faded.

Two weeks later, haze gone and stark, ugly realities rearing, I learned I’d scored a lesser-known hat trick: Chlamydia, Gonorrhea and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (beat that, Beckham!).  The disdain and judgements from others – my social worker, foster family, the staff at the STD clinic, the kids at the school I was attempting to continue to attend with any regularity, and my street friends – was increasingly profound.  By then, my skills at inner numbing (aka: “dissociation”) were quite developed, and with these admittedly undignified turns of events they accelerated accordingly.

I tried to find Terry to let him know he needed the treatments too (letting him know was, after all, the respectful thing to do), but the crack shack he lived in had been cleared out, and he was long and forever gone.  All that was left of my friendship with Terry was follow-up appointments at the clinic and the pervasive rumours that spread both at school and on the streets that I was a SLUT of inconceivable proportions.

I mentioned casually to my social worker a few weeks later that I thought I had maybe been raped and, upon hearing the details, she corrected me in no uncertain terms: it was not rape because I was clearly a drug addict, and I had clearly consented to Terry’s penetration by being there in his room in the first place.  The disgust in her voice and scowl on her face spoke volumes on everyone’s behalf, and I heard and felt the sentiment loud and clear.

~~~

Mick was a hardened twenty-something skinhead I also knew at the time.  A native of a small town in eastern Canada in which prospects were limited mainly to child abuse (giving and/or receiving it), working poverty within trades labour, and recreational drinking and fighting, Mick was by then a veteran of male-specific horrorshow hard knocks.  In retrospect, his resultant sociopathic tendencies were contextually quite natural. I thought he was dreamy. (It was his eyes, I think. I mistranslated “seething rage” for “smoky mystery.”  See above note re: “hindsight”.)

About a month or so after Terry’s departure from my life, Mick took me to the roof of an abandoned building regularly used by squatters.  Every floor had its regulars and the standard pockets of filth and stench (Squatting Rule #1: first rule of order is to always find out which corner serves as the bathroom). As every contemporary “rom-com” director understands, rooftops are quiet and typically offer a spectacular view one way or the other. It is empirically lovely to “get above” the concrete jungle that is urban life, and this rooftop, regardless of its location in pre-Yaletown industrial downtown Vancouver, was no different.

Mick and I kissed and he groped for a while, and then he unzipped his pants while saying something about wanting some “head.”  When I shyly let him know that I didn’t know what he meant, he grabbed my head, pushed it between his legs, and demanded with an instant urgency “Suck it! Suck it!”  Alarmed at the sharp turn of events but nonetheless submissive and wanting to comply (see above note re: “approval and love”), I made my best attempts to satisfy Mick’s sudden and apparently Very Important Need, but I failed. Ethan and I never got this far (a lobby, posh or otherwise, is still less private than the rooftop of a dilapidated building left vacant for tax purposes), and I hadn’t been conscious enough with Terry to gain any transferable sexual techniques (heroin negatively affects cognitive learning).

Placing one of his hands on the back of my head and the other on the back of my neck, Mick thrust himself hard and quick, his erection slamming through my mouth and down my throat. I gasped air between thrusts, tears welling as I choked. And then, as quickly as our PG kisses had metamorphosed into an R-Rated sequence of events, his need was met, evidenced by his relaxation and thickly viscous, salty, disgusting warmth sliding down my throat and out the edges of my mouth. I was frozen still and time was momentarily suspended (what is the protocol in such circumstances?  Like Ginger let Fred, I allowed Mick to lead the way).  My mother having taught me the importance of good manners, the single thought clearly and quietly running through my mind was, “don’t puke - that would be totally rude.”

The inside of my throat was bruised and sore for at least a week. I think Mick held my hand as we descended back down the stairs, but I can’t remember for sure.  I never bothered to tell anyone what happened with Mick. After all, I had gone up to the roof with him willingly, right?

~~~

Kyle was an early-thirties drifter of unspecified origins, with a colourful, magnetic charisma only heightened by his relentless devotion (aka: “addiction”) to mind-altering substances.  We shared an affinity for acid, although his commitment to substances surpassed mine and he would go even to the lengths of huffing solvents or glue to escape sobriety.  I drew the line at huffing, but it was only one line among various substances at our disposal and we became friends nonetheless.

His magnetism combined with a well-versed knowledge of esoteric fare like Crowley’s Magick and Castaneda’s Wheel of Time rendered Kyle’s company infinitely more interesting than the rest of my life’s menu at the time: school, social workers, psychiatrists, counsellors, and my remaining follow up medical appointments (symptoms aside, STDs are a seriously time-consuming bitch).

By the time I found myself alone with Kyle one night in the same building a few weeks after my rooftop lesson with Mick, I knew exactly what to do when he began kissing me and lowering his zipper in obvious expectation.  No tears, no choking, no bruises… Kyle was fully satisfied and my throat was fine.

Chapter 3

“I care about you.”  Spellbound, I drank Nick’s words and they warmed me like the smoothest heroin-absinthe cocktail ever.

He was handsome, a cross between Billy Idol and Hugh Laurie: Punk meets Sensitive, Intelligent Brit.  Nick was a Good Guy who came from Good People.  His parents, Ann and John, exemplified the best elements of their boomer/ex-hippie generation (example: when I met Nick, they were in the process of adopting Nick’s aboriginal foster-sister, who they’d taken in six years earlier). Ann was a Social Worker and John was the Principal at a local, secular private boy’s school.  

They lived in a picture-perfect two-storey house in Kerrisdale, a residential area on the south-west side of Vancouver ripe with manicured lawns and the smell of modest financial security drifting through hanging flowered baskets on every front porch.  These were ‘80’s upper-middle class folks, yes, but with no airs of snobbery or judgement whatsoever.  Ann and John were to their social class as red-letter Christians are to fundamentalist bible-thumping Nut Bars: the truly decent and good and kind counterparts who tend to get less media portrayal or coverage.

Nick’s achievements were lengthy and ongoing: he’d sustained a paper-route for five years by then and also worked odd jobs to earn his spending cash.  He regularly enjoyed snowboarding and rock climbing, and liked to build furniture and salvage small antique items in his spare time.  He had actually built his own two-level tree-house in his back yard.  It had a skylight in the roof, wall to wall carpeting, and a padlock to keep his aforementioned sister and other unauthorized entrants out.  Still, despite his arguably privileged upbringing and circumstances, Nick displayed enough social defiance to woo every budding, hormonal adolescent female in his vicinity. He liked punk bands: The Damned, DOA, Death Sentence… he had the coolest attic bedroom I’d ever seen, and he grew a real, live, (and if you didn’t know, illegal) pot plant.

With no obvious socioeconomic or generational predispositions to addiction, he enjoyed consuming alcohol and acid on a recreational and entirely non-problematic basis.  He was smoothly skilled at skateboarding, wore tastefully tattered, non-label clothing, and sported hair that was an attractive mess (à la Robert Smith).  Nick was physically active and fit, but hated jocks and mainstream high school culture, and he disliked the Queen of England and every bourgeois molecule she represents with the same passionate vehemence as the Sex Pistols themselves.  With his square jaw and blue eyes, Nick truly embodied the chick-magnet prowess of the current contemporaries Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling combined  (yes really!!).

Nick was enrolled in the Klatwa Trek Outdoor Program at the school we went to, so he was often away on the lengthy educational field trips and excursions that comprised the elite program’s “outdoor” components: character-building exercises like kayaking and survival camping and building igloos (what a few extra thousand in school fees can buy!). Subsequently, my personal and widely remarked upon reputation as a SLUT evaded Nick’s awareness entirely (lucky for me, the world was yet to be infiltrated by the communication contagions Facebook and Twitter).  I had completed my STD treatments by then and was making a concentrated attempt to focus on school for a bit (as though that would, you know, “help”).   My becoming Nick’s girlfriend – him asking me to be his girlfriend that day on the hill – was a genuine Miracle.  Fast forward to our blessed wedding: I do, Nick - I do!

A few weeks into our relationship, Nick and I were laying down together in his tree-house one night, looking out through the skylight at the stars, drinking gin and agreeing that ditching the school dance earlier that evening had been a good decision.  We made out for a bit and between soft caresses and gentle kisses, Nick shyly asked me if I’d ever “done it” before.  Without a moment’s hesitation, I giggled and said “no.”  I can’t remember much of the rest of our interplay that night, but I do know for certain it was as lovely and awkward and fumbling and sweet as I imagine such rituals only ever are or can ever be between teenage virgins who consensually agree to engage in the “full meal pre-marital deal” with each other.

It could be argued, I suppose, that I lost my virginity to Diego’s finger when I was ten, or that Terry took it when he fucked me three years later.  These notions, while valid, are technical arguments at best.  Myself, I choose to believe that my virginity was never lost to or taken by anyone.

I gave my virginity to Nick when I was fourteen, and I gave it willingly, with the whole of my heart and soul, fully and totally.  And this memory will to the end of my days give me the warmest feeling in my heart, and a smile on my lips.

Chapter 4

Nick and I went steady for an entire school year. That’s ten whole months, which is, like, the equivalent of several lifetimes in adolescent years. 

After our beautiful first union in his tree-house, we did what any normal, sexually active adolescent couple does: we copulated like bunnies, fervently and as frequently as possible.  My long-percolated-though-as-yet-unidentified attachment issues having brewed to perfect pitch by this point, my sexual relationship with Nick entailed a truly and seriously and deeply meaningful, fully spiritual bond between us… a literal, physical commitment way surer than any vow, spoken or not… like, really for real (right?).

Needless to say, I was thoroughly and profoundly devastated when, after having been away for a few weeks that summer, I came back home to Nick’s message on my answering machine (“I think we should see other people”), and the ugly surprise that I’d been dumped for Thea, a blond, amply-breasted cheerleader from Shaughnessy, an area in Vancouver where the ostentatiously wealthy live in mansions with sweeping lawns, unseen servants and winding, gated driveways that are almost but not quite as long as the gilded stock portfolios that line them.

Thea’s father was a published poet, her mother was a wealthy debutante, and there were certainly no pending adoptions of visible minorities happening in that household.  In my brief absence, as it turned out, my modest-yet-apparently-thorough adolescent infamy as a SLUT finally threaded its way into Nick’s periphery, and he (understandably) made the sensible choice to select from the social menu closer to his own class (the dessert portion, apparently).

The emotional annihilation I experienced at Nick’s departure from my life trumped the soul-crushing heartbreak I’d lived through with Ethan a trillion-times-infinity-to-one: I had really loved Nick. I had trusted him completely and had given him as much of me as there was to give – my body and heart and soul, fully and totally.  The lesson from the immensely crushing pain of our separation was obvious - I’d never do that again.

Still, my primal need for belonging, approval and acceptance hotly burned in the core of my being, and I mused hard on the options I could see and the lessons I had learned.  By then, it had become impossible not to notice that I seemed to be liked best - that I was rewarded with the most positive attention overall - whenever I was performing sexual favours for boys (or at the very least, accepting their sexual advances).

Other than getting a gold star and a “Super Reader!” stamp from a nameless librarian for reading all 30 books on the Vancouver Public Library’s “It’s Summer, Let’s Read!” booklist when I was eleven years old (an achievement totally unnoticed by everyone on earth other than me and the nameless librarian), my greatest, actually-recognized-by-anyone accomplishments in the years since had been mastering the art of the blowjob (and with little formal instruction, I might add), and honing the technical skills with which I otherwise “put out” (that 50’s-nostalgic celebration of heterosexual premarital teenage sex “Grease” came out in 1978 and the musical incarnation still packs theatres to this day, so no judgements thank you very much).

I quit school within weeks of hearing Nick’s last message on my answering machine (the all-encompassing power of social rejection thoroughly trumps any and every incarnation of a “Stay In School” campaign, past or present: this is an Ancient and Universal Truth).  I returned to my chosen family of outcast dropouts, where, with crystal clarity, I knew I belonged: where everyone shared an indescribably powerful, unspoken knowing, a timelessly woven bond transcending judgement and extending immeasurably beyond words.

Gutters, grime, crack shacks and sexually transmitted infections aside, I didn’t have to risk giving my trust to anyone for their acceptance and approval (I just had to earn theirs). I didn’t have to risk soul-crushing pain by giving my heart to anyone (as a rule, figurative hearts have no street value and are generally excluded from the endless exchanges that occur on the street).  I didn’t have to strategize when and where to drink and drug, and (perhaps not just a lovely coincidence) the drinks and drugs were abundantly plentiful.

All anyone ever wanted in exchange for them was my body… my mouth, lips, hands and vagina, to be exact.   For me, just being wanted was enough.  In any downtown core, a SLUT , as I quickly learned, is not only a widely-regarded hot-ticket item, but a hot-ticket item in endless demand – always and forever, fully and totally.

I was fifteen.

Epilogue