THIS HAPPENED TO ME | PERSONAL ESSAY | TEEN YEARS
My Boyfriend Left Town When He Thought I Was Pregnant
I thought my life was over at 17
In junior high, roller skating and boys were my passions. My cousins and I always went to the local roller rink, but there was another rink on the other side of town.
Born curious, I wanted to check it out, but Mom said, “No, that’s where the boys from the wrong side of the tracks skate.”
Now, I wanted to go even more. I begged and pleaded, and finally, Mom gave in; she dropped me off on a Saturday night. That’s where I met Bob and Terry, two boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Damn, Mom was right. I guess she’d been around the rink a few times.
Terry was the cuter of the two, but Bob honed in on me. They were cousins, but their blonde hair and blue eyes were the only features they had in common. Terry was tall with dimples and long feathered bangs, while Bob had short hair and acne. They both seemed dangerous.
“Do you want to leave and go for a ride with us?” they asked.
Terry had his license.
“Sure, why not,” I said.
As we walked to Terry’s Chevelle, I felt excitement mixed with fear. I knew I shouldn’t be leaving the rink, but I wanted to hang out and be one of the cool kids. Bob and I got in the back seat while Terry drove us around town. Journey played on the radio.
Bob and I made out, but I felt awkward, knowing Terry could look in his rearview mirror and see us. Bob got more aggressive and stuck his hand down my pants. That made me nervous. I’d seen what happened to the girl in the backseat of the car in Saturday Night Fever.
“I need to get back to the rink. My mom’s picking me up,” I said.
Terry headed back to the rink before Bob could make his next move.
We meet again
Four years later, as a senior in high school, I crossed paths with Terry at the arcade. He still looked the same. He had that classic cute ’70s vibe with his flared jeans and a comb sticking out of the back of his pants pocket. His dimples and beautiful shoulder-length hair, along with his blue eyes, made my pulse pump harder.
Terry wasn’t a high school boy; he was 20, a young man. I’d never dated a man before. I wasn’t sure what my dad would say. After Terry called me one night, I expressed my apprehension about my dad letting me go on a date with him. Terry, in his soft-spoken voice, said he’d come over to meet my dad face-to-face. Whoa! This dude was serious. This was like the shows I’d seen on TV where the boy went to the door to pick the girl up for a date, but first he had to meet her father. Dun Dun Dun!
I felt so flattered that Terry liked me enough to put forth this amount of effort and bravery.
Terry not only met my dad, but he stayed and watched TV with my family. I didn’t know what to think. My previous boyfriends and I always wanted to get away from my parents to be alone. Terry seemed at ease around my parents. Maybe this was a sign of his maturity.
After he left, they told me they liked him. This was good news. It meant that I’d be able to date Terry.
Let the courting begin
That week, Terry said he’d picked me up for lunch at school. I bragged to my friends that my older boyfriend was coming to take me to lunch. I felt like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles when her crush Jake is waiting for her outside her house in his Porsche. Terry picked me up in a pickup truck, but I didn’t mind. I was crazy about Terry. That smile. Those dimples. That voice.
After lunch, he drove me back to school and handed me a note.
“Read it later,” he said, giving me a kiss before we parted.
As soon as I got home, I ran upstairs to my bedroom to read Terry’s note. He professed his feelings for me in his beautiful handwriting. I smiled and clutched the note to my chest.
That night Terry called and I told him I loved his letter. He asked me if I wanted to come to a party at his place that weekend.
“You can stay the night,” he said.
How could I pull that off? My parents liked Terry but they certainly wouldn’t let me stay the night with him. I concocted a clever plan. I asked my dad if I could stay the night with my friend Teresa and he agreed.
I’m one of the cool kids now
Saturday night could not arrive fast enough. Finally, it was time and I drove my Camaro to Terry’s. He lived in a trailer park in a town across the river. I parked in front of his trailer and knocked on the door. Terry let me inside.
Terry’s friends, including a beautiful woman who was Terry’s age, sat around smoking weed and drinking beer. I felt threatened by this woman. She was older, prettier, cooler, and had bigger boobs, but Terry made it evident that I was his girl. He put his arm around me while we drank beer late into the night.
After midnight, we headed to Terry’s room and got into his bed. We began kissing and he took my clothes off. Although I wasn’t a virgin, I wasn’t experienced. Terry got on top of me and I lay there, stiff as a board. He made a comment about it and I felt so inadequate and embarrassed.
Afterward, he lit a cigarette and said, “Are you on the pill?”
“No,” I said.
We fell asleep and around 3 a.m. I awakened to a loud banging on the door. Whoever was knocking was extremely persistent. The knocking sounded aggressive. I tried to wake Terry.
“Someone’s knocking on your door,” I told him.
He just mumbled something and went back to sleep. I crept from the bed and went to the front door. The living room was dark. I peeked through the blind on the door window, and to my utter shock and horror, I saw my dad and stepmom Dora on the front porch! My dad looked pissed.
I fell onto the floor and started crawling backward, away from the door. I didn’t know if he’d seen me, but my car was parked out front. After a few more minutes of loud knocking, they finally left. I crept back to peer out the window again and the coast was clear.
Fear swept over me. How was I ever going to get out of this? They caught me red-handed. I called my mom since I knew she worked the third shift.
“Mom, what should I do? Dad just caught me at my boyfriend’s spending the night! I don’t know how they found me.”
“You better go home,” she said.
That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but I took her advice. It was a long drive home.
When I walked through the front door, Dora said, “Your dad is so mad at you, he doesn’t want to look at you or speak to you. He’s out in the garage.”
I hung my head in shame and went to my room to cry myself to sleep.
My life is over
The next morning when I woke up, dread hit me like the sledgehammer in Donkey Kong. Not only did I fear my dad’s wrath, but I also feared the possibility that I might be pregnant. I tried to call Terry and the woman from his party answered the phone.
“Terry’s not here. He went out of town and I don’t know when he’ll be back,” she said.
Terry ran off to hide somewhere. He knew I wasn’t on the pill and my dad had discovered I’d spent the night with him. I guess he wasn’t a man after all. Now, I had to suffer the consequences alone. Terry, my mature boyfriend, who’d watched TV with my family, abandoned me.
Like a prisoner, I stayed in my room all day and all night. I wouldn’t come out. I didn’t want to face my dad. My life was over at 17. I thought about jumping out of my upstairs bedroom window to end it all. Just then Dad came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed.
The pain of disappointing my dad was all over my face. Dad looked at me and said, “Don’t worry about it. You’re just a normal teenager, but you’re grounded for two weeks.”
A huge weight lifted off of me at that moment and a bond of understanding passed between us. I felt love and admiration for my dad.
Later that week, Dora took me to Planned Parenthood to get on the pill. Luckily, I wasn’t pregnant.
Oh, and how did my parents catch me? Dora said that a week earlier I told her I was in a fight with Teresa. She put two and two together and told my dad I was lying about staying the night at Teresa’s house. I also told Dora where Terry lived. Me and my big mouth.
Dad could not believe that his little angel would lie, but surely he understood teenagers and hormones. After all, my grandpa told me a story about the time my dad, in his youth, took a bus to another state to visit a girl without telling them.
On my graduation night, my friends and I went to the arcade in our caps and gowns. I saw Terry playing pool. He tried to talk to me, but I ignored him and walked away, laughing with my friends. I was 18 now, a woman, with a little more wisdom under her belt.