my first girlfriend.

i met tara in sixth grade.
we were in the same religious school class.
same synogogue.
i hated her.
she hated me.
i called her tennis ball tits, because, well, at that age - 11 or maybe 12 - her breasts were particularly poignant.
i was awed. and so i stared at them and made fun of them, and i made fun of her. and she spit right back at me.
and i couldn’t stop thinking about her.



she had an ally. and i had an ally.
our best friends there.
hers was hillary. she was sensible, with brown curly hair.  defending and supporting.
mine was jason. i think that was his name.  he was a new friend, but we bonded quickly and tightly, and that's all that mattered.

tara, jason, hillary and i were all thrown out of the class more than once for causing disruption.
we were all supposed to try and get along.
punishment.  
sitting in the rotunda in the middle of all the classrooms. sneering and sniping.
and i don’t know what happened. or how it happened.  
but somehow that virulent hatred spun on itself and tara and i fell for each other in a simplistic way that 11 year olds might fall for each other after teasing and kicking.
but we were both a little fucked-up and we must have just known, as our cilia outstretched and intertwined,
in that simplistic way that 11 year-olds have no idea, but impound the information anyway into a purity devoid of consciousness.  
i miss that manner of relation. flailing about, striking out from emotion. without the whole analytical knowledge about why someone is attractive at a particular time. what fears and roots of functioning the other person is triggering.  its all informative and mature and completely deadening.  

tara was from west orange - not too far by car, but in no way walkable.  we saw each other every saturday morning, but I can’t really remember what we did.  we spent hours on the phone.  i  don’t know what we talked about.  i don’t know if it mattered.  or it just mattered that we had it for each other.

of course hillary and jason also got together.  inevitable by-product consequence.  
i  remember jason saying that he didn’t actually like hillary that much, and that she didn’t really like him that much, and they were just in it for me and tara.  
they had their independent calls but i’m no sure what they talked about.  
but they were the grounded ones. reasonable and mature.
while tara and i, both of us, slashed inside, and not realizing anything about it, or why we lit each other up.

the big plan, of course, was to go out together.  that was the essence of going out. i asked out tara out to the movies, and therefore we were going out.  but to go out we had to go out.
jason did the same with hillary, so we planned for a double date at the movies.  i can’t remember which one.  i wish i could.
so organization was needed - permissions to be granted, logistics, whose mom was going to drive.  where and when.

but before we went out on that date, tara’s mother insisted that i meet her before i took her daughter out.  as if i was going to do something diabolical to her daughter at age 11.  still, she demanded that i show up at a lunch over their house.
her mom was divorced.  the two of them lived together alone in that west orange house - not very far from turtle back zoo and a few streets over from the ground round that i loved dearly (where i could throw peanut shells and popcorn on the floor while watching abbot & costello in black and white).
so i went over the house on a sunny saturday or sunday in early early spring. 1983.
sun poured through all the windows  - a striking contrast to the gloom factory where i grew up.
and they had cable. i didn’t have cable.
and that was the first time i saw MTV.  in a side room next to the dining room that was separated by glass doors.
billy squire on the television, his face a triptych of color.
rock and rolling out of the screen.
surrounded by bright, white and open.
then we had pasta.
and i guess her mom approved.

after lunch me and tara hung out in her front yard, kicking our feet in the thawing dirt and dead grass.  
and then she started telling me stories about her and boys.  and one boy in particular. he was older by a few years. they had fooled around a bit, she said. even though she was only 11, or maybe she was 12 by then.  and more than fooled around, she said.  and more than once.  
he did things to her and she did them right back.
as she spoke her voice gained a slightly grainy sharpness, although not quite an edge.  
but it was no longer the sugarplay pokings of a child.  her tone tinged with a syrupy darkness that i loved and knew myself but couldn’t woudn’t ever possibly convey and give away.   
as i listened to her, i could feel the rough bark of the tree next to and between us tearing into my cheek.  
and the more she talked, the older she got, and the more foreign from me she became.  a sophisticate on the suburban lawn.  
and i turned myself inward to my own tender ball of spiky chaos.
she was free a little bit by then, and i was still locked and locked.   
and i knew exactly what she felt.

and suddenly we were 11 and 12 again.
planning on our movie date with our friends. and whose mom would pick me up, and whose mom would drop me off. and should we all go together or the boys with the boys and girls with girls. or the separate dates in separate cars.  
and somewhere, completely in-line with our insults from our first hated days, during religious school with hilary and jason, close-by, she issued a terrifying warning - and i don’t really remember when she told me this - before or after she told me about her older boy - but she said that last time she went on a date to the movies, the guy tried to put his arm around her.  or maybe even kiss her.  i can’t remember which. but she warned me that if i tried that, she would run screaming from the theater. i believed her. and for years later, i believed she spoke for every girl and lost out on kissing the more than willing dana trouse the next year, who was bewildered by my fear and shame on our big movie date.
but i didn’t want tara to scream and run away.
and i already felt at fault for half the screaming and running away that people did around me. so i promised to behave.  
and so we had the date. and i kept myself to myself even though tara smelled better than a million red candies.  i can’t remember anything else about it other than a vague memory of being in the car and dropping off jason at the end. and tara didn’t go run screaming. i think she was disappointed.

not too long after, she started going on friday nights to the livingston roller rink.
maybe i went once or twice. i don’t remember. maybe i wasn’t allowed.
but she started telling me about new people she was hanging around.
especially how great this one guy, benji, was.
by then hillary and jason had already had broken up.
and one night, just after dinner, i was on the phone with tara.  
standing in the dining room. stretching the cord of the kitchen rotary phone around the corner as far as i could in the dark when she told me that she was breaking up with me and going out with benji.
i cried. and then was pissed.
she fucking dumped me for a guy named benji?
fuck her.
fuck him.
fucking benji.
i was crushed.
that was it.
i called jason. he seemed to know already.

religious school must  had ended by then, so i didn’t have to face her anymore on saturdays.
or at least i don’t remember.
and we didn’t speak for awhile.
and maybe a couple of weeks later, jason told me that his family was moving to indonesia.
like right then. he was my best friend.
we never spoke again.
twin losses.

i think tara stopped going to religious school and i don’t think she was bat mizvohed.
but i used to run into her after that once a year at high holy days.
we would see each other outside and re-connect. always so sweetly.
we talked on the phone a few times and tried to be friends.
the pre-fix for her number was 731.
then things would fade.
then i’d see her the next year. ripe and lovely in the early autumn, standing by the fountain out front.
and then we’d talk again.
and we’d tell each other little things in way that allowed us to transcend ourselves and our age and the daily crappiness that spit and spirled down our necks.  just enough that felt like we had splintered open a little space together.  finding relief like two runaways at home on a hot strip somewhere in a hollywood dream.
one of the last times we spoke, she told me that her mom had met someone.  and he had a son. and that son, it turned out, was someone she had been sexually rampaging with.  and then her mom remarried. and tara had a step-brother living in the same house who she was fucking.  and they kept it up.  
i don’t remember much more.
i knew her father had lived in malibu. and she started to spend more time out there with him.
and maybe she moved there.
and we just faded out.