Everyone has a story about his or her first time. Some are good, some are bad, and some are really embarrassing. Some are actually just humdrum and ordinary. My own story is probably one of the ordinary ones. Nothing embarrassing happened. It was enjoyable and fun, but I'm sure I wasn't all that great. In fact, the details are probably too boring to even bother elaborating about.
Jeanie Delvecchio, on the other hand, now she has a great story about her first time. And I'm not just saying that because I was involved. Well, more than involved -- I was the one. Still, biased though I may be, it's a great story. And it begins the same way a lot of first time stories begin: long before the actual act.
Jeanie and I grew up in a relatively small town. It wasn't a truly tiny place like in the Midwest, but it was a quaint little town on the East Coast, within driving distance of a few big cities. A nice place to raise a family in the heart of suburbia.
Growing up there had given us both the values and morals of the good, hard-working American tradition, as well as a rather acute sense of wanderlust and a hunger for adventure. But it was a happy upbringing and we were healthy, good-natured, middle-class American kids.
My best friend was Tony Delvecchio, Jeanie's older brother. Tony and I were a year older than Jeanie and a year ahead of her in school. I also had a younger sister, Jocelyn, who was the same age as Jeanie. Our sisters were friendly with one another, but not as close as Tony and I. We were inseparable.
We met on the first day of 6th grade. The Delvecchios had just moved in down the street from us less than a month before. Jocelyn and I had noticed that two new kids moved in on our street, but we didn't have time to play with them right away because we took a family vacation and were out of town during the weeks right before school started. Consequently I met Tony while waiting for the bus on the first day of school. Jocelyn and Jeanie met each other later on the bus to elementary school, but Tony and I had to leave for school earlier because we were big, bad 6th-graders.
Our friendship began the second we started talking. Tony and I were pretty much of one mind, and that mind mainly revolved around two things: sports and mischief. We weren't malicious kids, just your average punk-ass pre-teens, thinking we were a lot cooler than we actually were.
In detentions and on sports teams our friendship grew through the years. The names Jim Stillman and Tony Delvecchio became synonymous, and they always meant hijinks. And all the while Jeanie was there, tagging along with us whenever she could, bearing the brunt of our immature antics. Tony was the typical older brother, taunting and teasing Jeanie in sometimes amusing, yet sometimes cruel, ways. I'm sure I was probably the same way with Jocelyn at times, but most of the time I was pretty nice to Joss. I never saw the fun in picking on my little sister. But Tony tended to be a big pain in Jeanie's ass. I never understood why; I think it was just a deep competitive drive that lurked inside Tony. He always wanted to win, and he always had to try to be the best. I think that attitude carried over to his sister.
So he would pick on her relentlessly. But don't get me wrong, he loved her dearly. It was ok for him to tease her, but if anyone else dared cross her, he'd be on your ass in a heartbeat. He had a fiery temper that could be intimidating at times, but since he and I were so close I never really worried about it myself. And, of course, I never crossed Jeanie. Sometimes I'd pick on her in a good-natured, not-too-mean kind of way. But I was never insulting or disrespectful.
I think it was this quality in me that originally made Jeanie take a shine to me. We were in our early teens, just beginning to notice members of the opposite sex. At that age, a single year made a huge difference in the way you looked at the opposite gender. For Tony and I, younger girls were essentially invisible. For a girl like Jeanie though, her older brother's friend was probably pretty appealing. So over time it became kind of an ill-disguised secret that Jeanie had a crush on me.
Her crush really came as no surprise, especially with the way Tony picked on her. I was constantly defending her and taking her side to protect her from his ribbing; it was only natural that she would start to like me. In opposition to Tony's tormenting ways, I became somewhat of a hero figure.
Jeanie was a bit of an awkward girl in her early teens. She wore big, plastic glasses, and she hadn't quite had her growth spurt yet. So she remained shorter than most girls, and a bit flat-chested. Plus, her hair had a natural curl to it that was always difficult to tame. Tony pointed these so-called "faults" out to her on a regular basis, and I'm sure it wreaked havoc on her self-confidence.
To her credit though, Jeanie would fight back. She'd throw barbs at Tony, and occasionally a punch or two. She was a tough kid with a lot of fire in her, and it made her very likable and a blast to be around. For my part, I really did genuinely like Jeanie, but, as I said before, younger girls were essentially invisible in a romantic kind of way.
But the kid had fire, and it made her appealing, there was no denying that. She needed that fire for so many reasons. She had an older brother who took satisfaction in messing with her, and she had the unfortunate curse of having a unique name. For a kid in your early teens, nothing is worse than having a name like no one else's. Other kids will pick on you and think of the most ridiculous jokes.
Jeanie's full name was Francesca Giana Delvecchio. It was a family name from way back and her parents had bestowed that tradition on her. Early on though, she viewed that tradition as a burden. She had abandoned even trying to get any normalcy out of the Francesca name and instead decided to go by a nickname for her middle name. After some time, the Jeanie nickname stuck and it was only on occasion someone would use her full name to poke fun at her. Except her brother, who would constantly call her Frannie, Frankie or any other variation of the formal name she grew to hate.
Which was a shame because I always thought it was beautiful. In her adult life she has come to accept her full name, and even embrace it. But back then she saw it as a curse. No matter how hard I tried to convince her otherwise, she insisted she hated the name and never wanted to hear it. Except, of course, from me. Because I had told her how nice I thought it was, even from the first time I'd heard it, she would let me call her Giana. Or sometimes even Francesca as long as no one else was around to hear.
And so it remained as we made our way through the years of school, up into high school. Tony's rivalry with his sister remained into our high school years, pathetic as it was. And I was always there to defend her. Her crush on me seemed to subside a bit as we grew older. She still always smiled when I was around, but she didn't always fawn on me with her doe eyes like she did when she was younger. As we matured we just became good friends.
