After my brief encounter with Kach, I moved on to Alfonoso Salazar. Al and I went out off and on throughout the year. His MySpace profile (yes, MySpace, not Facebook—I know, I didn’t know anyone over 14 still used MySpace) currently consists of a picture of he and his wife lying down, looking up, with their tongues out and touching. The classiness of the guys I choose just never quits. However, I shouldn’t be surprised. It was while I was going out with Al that I had my first experience with public displays of affection. Al and I stayed late after school one day, prolonging our walks home, both in opposite directions of town. We stood on the sidewalk outside of the Enterprise Building, me on the sidewalk, he on the street, and he still a couple inches taller than me. We stood there with his arms around me, periodically making out between periods of gazing into each other’s eyes and laughing. Mr. Bates—the sixth grade social studies teacher, whose dad used to be the principal and, being Catholic, was good friends with my dad—yelled out his window for us to get on home. He then proceeded to call my parents.
That night, I received “the talk” from my parents. I had already had the talk, in a roundabout way. The summer before seventh grade, my parents, sister, and I took a family sex-ed class from Planned Parenthood. So I knew all about the birds and the bees. I had learned all the facts. But this talk was different. This wasn’t about the facts. After hearing about what I had been doing after school that day, my parents proceeded to lecture me about reputation. Perception. What people would assume about me if they saw me engaging in this behavior. “When people see you engaging in that kind of behavior, they make assumptions about you and what kind of a person you are.”
My parents seemed more concerned about what other people would think of their sweet little girl than they did about the fact that their sweet little girl was making out with some guy at the tender age of twelve. Besides, my reputation as a slut had already been established due to my rapid growth from an ironing board to a C cup during the summer between sixth and seventh grade. It was in the seventh grade that I obtained my nick name: Stuffy. Excerpts from my seventh grade yearbook include, “To Stuffer, Hi, Ryan” and “To, Stuffer don’t stuff to much Sam Morales”. Whether or not I made out with Al in front of the school was irrelevant. They had already made their assumptions and determined my reputation. My fate was sealed.
