This Fool's In Love Again

In my very first college english class our professor told us about how to break writer's block. "Turn off the screen," he said, "and just write. Write without thinking about what you're saying--it doesn't even matter what it is, just as long as it gets down there. Breaking up that white page is the biggest step."

I am going to call my most influential high school teacher today and ask her to meet me sometime over break. I see her about once a year and it's always enjoyable. I know she likes to keep tabs on her students after they graduate, and I am a second-generation student of hers; she had my father as well. I plan to tell her that I have good news, and I'm afraid that she will assume I'm getting married.

My mother is back to piling on the marriage pressure. She's started buying books strictly for grandkids and showing them to me. Today, as I sit in our computer alcove and look at the bookshelf, I notice a book I read illicitly back in junior high called "The First Time." It's an instruction manual of sorts for losing your virginity. I wonder if Mom intended to give it to me before my wedding, and I am suddenly filled with sadness, for her and for myself.

I wonder if I hadn't been raped how different things would be, sexually. I know I wouldn't have had such a high drive to get experience that wasn't nightmarish. I probably wouldn't have boy-hopped as much freshman and sophmore years, although who knows about that. I wonder if all that virginal inertia would have wound up as waiting for marriage, if I'd be married by now, to whom.