Oh Jan

Jan, who was Steve's Mom, drank

way

too much.

I didn't have a problem with her drinking. How could I? I mean, the first time I got drunk was in 8

th

grade, when I raided a bottle of my parent's bargain basement blended scotch that I found in their wet bar. Damn, but they had shitty taste in liquor! The next morning after that was my first hangover. History class was not fun that next day, let me tell you!

So, I was okay with drinking, just not all the time. Not like Jan did it. Every time we'd visit Steve's house, she'd have a beer can in her hand. And she didn't drink good beer, either. She drank crappy Bud Lite or something like that. Low-caloric swill, as far as I was concerned. Even though I was still in high school I had already developed better taste in alcohol than either she or my parents had.

Me and my buds would get together at somebody's house—whomever had a free house with parents out of town—and we'd explore. We'd do "taste tests" and "flights." We would line up like ten different beers, from all over the world, and talk about what we liked (or didn't like) about them. You know, like we were some kind of liquor connoisseurs. "Connoisseurs-in-training," let's say. The point is, I was drinking dark beers from Germany and Switzerland before I was sixteen. I was drinking single malt scotch (and sneering at blends) before I was seventeen. By the time I was eighteen and a senior, I was pretty well-versed in knowing what I liked to drink and what was crap. When I would go to high-school parties, the keg needed to be at least Heineken. If not, I wasn't drinking it.

Anyway, the beer in the keg didn't really matter because I had probably brought my own six-pack or bottle along with me. I was tall for my age and I knew where to go so that I wouldn't be carded. You see a six-foot guy with big shoulders buying top-shelf scotch and imported beer, you tend not to worry about that guy, is what I'm saying. I was like ...

confident

... in my alcohol knowledge—even though I was only eighteen and still a senior in high school. You know what I mean?

What Jan drank was crap. She drank a shit-ton of crap American low-calorie beer. She drank that crap beer all the time, as far as I could tell.

Jan's drinking was like the first thing I noticed about her. I mean, it was probably the first thing anybody would notice. She was not especially attractive, is what I'm trying to convey here.

Jan was not tall—maybe about 1.6 meters—and she was heavy for her size. She had a beer belly. Maybe the belly was from having two kids—Steve and his older sister, Lisa—but I was pretty sure all the beer she drank didn't help with her weight problem. Drinking low-calorie crap wasn't helping with weight-loss as much as she probably hoped it was.

Jan had long straight hair that was probably really brunette but which she dyed blonde. She could have maybe done a better job because her dark roots showed pretty clearly. Her breasts were pretty good, I guess. Kind of big for her body—maybe C cups? They were a little saggy, but what are you going to do about that? She was in her early forties. Gravity is a bitch, am I right?

But her ass was pretty fine. I mean, she had broad hips but her big ass was just

fine.

If you saw her ass first, you'd probably be kind of into her. But if not then, well, she was okay, at best. Better when she didn't wear her heavy-framed glasses, 'cause she had pretty blue eyes.

(I am an eye man, for whatever reason. How weird is that? My wife has multi-colored eyes with gold flecks in them. I married her because of her eyes. She's also pretty hot, but I didn't notice her body when we met because I was staring into her eyes. It was love at first sight.

Hah.

)

Jan wore a bikini when we hung out at Steve's family's pool, so I guess she didn't care about what she looked like. She wore a bikini and I noticed that her breasts were kind of nice and big, and that her ass was fine ... and I also noticed she probably didn't shave her pubes as much as she should have. Her pubes were midnight black and thick, and stuck out from her bikini bottom. Not that I looked. (

Sarcasm.

)

She would lay out on one of the lounges while Steve and I—and sometimes a couple of our other buds—would splash in the pool. Usually we'd play "Marco Polo" or something like that. We would all be high when we did that, 'cause it was SoCal in the eighties and weed was pretty much everywhere. We would get high then goof around in the pool while Jan watched us from her lounge, wearing dark glasses, a smile on her face and a can of crappy beer in her hand.

*****

I grew up in a pretty nice neighborhood. I guess you'd call it "upper-middle-class" or something like that. The schools were good. The homes were pretty posh; they were set on pretty big lots. Most people had pools. Many people kept horses. Barns and stalls were common. Most of the kids got cars when they turned sixteen. Not fancy cars, but new cars like Fords or Hondas or Toyotas or Mazdas. A few got Beamers. Not me, though. My family was not particularly well-off. We lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but we didn't have much money. No pool. We had a couple of horse stalls and a big corral but we didn't have any horses of our own. My father rented out the stalls to other people, which helped with the monthly house payment. I guess you could call us "house-rich and cash-poor" and that wouldn't be wrong.

Even though we lived in LA, we were out in the country. LA isn't all city, you know. I didn't realize that we grew up differently from a lot of kids; it was just how I grew up. Riding horses; walking on the horse trails. Getting high behind the bushes far from any observing eyes. Going to parties on Saturday nights where crowds of teens got high and got drunk, and threw up into somebody's parent's toilets. Almost always, the parties get busted by the sheriffs and then I'd bum a ride home where I would lie in bed watching the ceiling whirl round and round until I finally passed out. It all seemed so

normal,

you know? I thought that life was how everyone grew up.

I was pretty normal, as well. Decent grades. I got accepted into a decent UC school. (That's the University of California, if you didn't know). I did a couple of sports, badly. Swimming (Junior Varsity). Wrestling (Junior Varsity). Like, I was the slowest guy on the Swim Team. As for wrestling, I can proudly say I never got pinned in three years of competition. I never won a match—true. But I never got pinned. No Varsity Letter for me.

I had a girlfriend for a couple of months during my Junior year, but she broke up with me because I didn't ask her to the Winter Formal. I didn't ask her because I didn't know how to dance and I was too embarrassed to admit that to her. I guess maybe I should have talked to her about my issues with dancing, but I never did and then she broke up with me. Looking back, I think the fact I partied with my buds and got high most every night (never during school hours) may have also been a slight factor in why the girls weren't so into me. I wasn't ready for a girlfriend at the time, I guess.

Another thing about me was that I got my height early. I was done growing when I was fourteen—just a freshman in high school. By then I was six feet tall (1.8 meters). The football coach wanted me to play on the high school team, but I wasn't having any of

that.

I mean, I was having too much fun partying; I didn't need long-ass practices and games to cut into my party time. Swimming was okay, because morning workouts were done before school started, and the afternoon workouts were done by four. As for wrestling, the workouts were also done by four or four-thirty. I could handle that.

It was weird, though, to see my friends—the same ones I had towered over in middle school—grow up to look me in the eyes and then keep growing. Too soon, I had to look up to meet their eyes. That was a weird feeling. It kind of sucked, to be honest.

It also sucked that I was a virgin. All my friends—especially those on the football team—were going to dances and getting laid; but I was too shy and too high. Looking back, I can see that I was not exactly presenting an attractive appearance, even though I had a decent body and kept in shape through my sports. It wasn't my body that was the issue, you know? It was my emotional state. I was kind of fucked up emotionally, I guess—and it showed enough to keep the girls away. Without my buddies to party with, I was pretty much a loner. When I was home, I was in my room, reading. With the door shut and locked.

*****

Steve's dad was definitely weird. No; not weird: he was an asshole. He had no idea about what it was like to be a teenager.

I didn't know what the fuck he did for a living, nor do I know today, decades later and five states away from where I grew up. Steve said his dad was a banker, but he wasn't like any banker I ever heard of. He sat in a big office in their separate house, where he had this big leather chair and a big desk, and where he smoked his stinky cigars. I mean, why smoke cigars when there's weed around, you know? What's the point of that?

Yeah, about the separate house. Steve's family had this really huge lot that went down a hill, into a small valley thing, and then up again on the other side of the valley. On one side was their house, with a pool in the back yard. On the other side was the barn and riding ring. In the middle—the little valley—there was nothing except a driveway and some dirt. So, Steve's dad built a second house—three stories—on the other side of the pool. The second house started in the valley and went up from there. That was the garage part. It was a huge garage where Steve and his dad would work on cars—especially his dad's rusty old pickup truck, which was a complete POS. (Piece of Shit.) What kind of banker drove a POS pickup truck? Then above the garage was another floor with that big office, plus another bedroom and a kitchen and a pretty large living area with a cool stereo system we were never allowed to play. The second floor was level with the main house. A sliding glass door opened to the pool deck, so you could walk from the main house over past the pool and hot tub (jacuzzi) into the other house.

Above the second floor was the roof, which was set up with solid walls that rose about three or four feet, so you could hang out up there and catch rays, or barbeque—or do whatever you wanted to do, like get high—and nobody could see you from the ground.

Whatever Steve's dad did, he must have made good money doing it. Even if he drove a POS pickup truck that he was too cheap to replace. But the dude was really weird.

I mean, for one thing, he was a member of the Sheriff's Mounted Auxiliary force. As far as I could tell, the only thing that "force" ever did was to ride in city parades.

Whatever.

But the dude said he was a part of the Sheriff's Department and I guess he was—technically. So, he was kind of a pain in the ass about us getting high and going to parties where there might be underage drinking taking place.

(

Might be.

Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, what an ass he was! Not only was there drinking, but there was plenty of high-quality weed being smoked. I'm talking fresh Humbolt sinsemilla straight from NorCal. And there were also other drugs being openly consumed. A quarter-gram of coke was sometimes the price of admission to the better parties—the ones with live bands. When there were no bands playing, there was music played as loud as the stereo would go. I mean,

this was high school in the eighties. Nobody

was quietly discussing world events whilst sipping Bombay Sapphire martinis at those parties. If you can't picture a raging high party attended by way too many teens with way too much disposable income, I don't know what else I can say. You should have been there, I guess.)

The point here is that we had to sneak around Steve's dad most of the time. And he was always an asshole whenever he thought we were high. He acted like he could smell the weed on us or something, you know? (Maybe he could.) If he thought we were high he would yell at us about breaking the law and ruining our futures.

Which was pretty stupid, because I got accepted to a good college and made a decent career for myself. Steve ended up at another college where he got an engineering degree, plus later he got a law degree as well. So, our futures were not as fucked-up as Steve's dad wanted us to think they were—even though we were high a lot. Like, a

lot.

Jan was really helpful when we needed to sneak around Steve's dad. I think she sympathized with our need to party. For sure, she was partying just as hard as we were—even harder. She was drinking her crappy Bud Lite piss like it was water, you know? She must have gone through a case as day of that stuff. So, when we needed to get our party on, she was, like,

complicit

in helping us. I mean, not to the point of buying us booze. But if we "borrowed" a half-bottle of Steve's dad's whisky, she was willing to look the other way. Then if Steve's dad accused us of breaking into the liquor cabinet, she'd say it was her, not us. If we needed a ride to a party, she'd drive us. Like that. It was like she understood what it was like to be a teenager.

This one time, Steve's dad caught us red-handed smoking weed out of this cool purple plastic bong I had. We were fuckin' high as kites and he walked into the room in the second house just as I exhaled a huge cloud of cannabis smoke. I was aiming for the open window but I'm pretty sure not all of that smoke left the room—you know? Plus, I was literally holding the bong in my hand at the time. We were busted.

I thought maybe as quick as I ever have and I tossed that bong right out the open window so that it flew about 10 yards and landed in a bunch of bushes in the neighbor's back yard. Best throw of my life. That bong was

gone,

you know?

No bong, no evidence, right?

Damn, but he was pissed off that afternoon! He started screaming at us and ... I don't know what to tell you. We tried to keep cool but his face was all red and his voice sounded distorted. Spit was flying out of his mouth! The whole scene was objectively intense, but it just seemed so fucking funny at the time! Steve and I both broke up laughing and we rolled on the floor while he was yelling at us at the top of his voice, calling us losers and stuff like that. We were crying but it was because of our laughter. Not because he was yelling at us.

We couldn't stop laughing and that just made things worse. I thought the asshole was gonna hit us or something.

Then Jan came into the other house (a can of beer in her hand, of course) and defended us. Steve's dad was ranting about illegal drug use and drug abuse and jail time; we were laughing our asses off—but trying not to, you know? She defended us to her own husband! She told him that we weren't drug users and that we seemed just fine to her. She asked him for the proof that we were abusing marijuana. But there wasn't any 'cause by now that bong was far, far away, over in their neighbor's backyard.

No evidence, no crime. Am I right? You know I am.

At that point, it was three of us against him, with his own wife on

our

side—not his. We were all gas-lighting his red-faced, spit-flinging, ass. He didn't know what the fuck to do! After a couple of minutes of being gas-lighted, he got all quiet then he stomped the fuck out of his own house and peeled away in his ratty old pickup truck, leaving a cloud of smoke behind him that smelled way worse than the quality weed we had been bonging.

When he was gone, Jan just looked at us and shook her head. She didn't say a single word. That's how fucking cool she was to us. Then she drained her Bud Lite and went back into the main house to get another.

Of course, after the confrontation was over, I went into the neighbor's yard to get that bong back. It was a

really

cool bong. Plus, we still had more weed to smoke.

*****

When I was eighteen things came to a head between me and Jan.

But before I go there, let's do a quick level-set to make sure we're all on the same page, as we say in the corporate world. Let's look at some important data points before we rush to any decisions about the situation.

Data Point One: Jan drank a lot. A fucking lot. She was drinking beer almost every minute I ever saw her. Was she an alcoholic? I don't know. I'm not qualified to make that call. I just know that she was drinking all the time. As far as I know, the alcohol didn't affect her to the point that she was obviously drunk or to the point where she couldn't function. She could

maintain,

as we would have said at the time.

Pink Floyd would have called her "comfortably numb."

Data Point Two: Steve's dad—Jan's husband—was a fucking asshole. He was rarely home and, when he was, he was in that big office of his in a separate house, smoking his stinky cigars and making phone calls. When he wasn't there, he was down at the barn, taking care of the horses and doing whatever else he wanted to do. He certainly wasn't being a loving father to Steve and Lisa—his two kids. And he certainly wasn't being a loving husband to Jan—his wife of like twenty years or more.

Take points one and two, above. Connect them. You think Jan drank so much because she was married to a husband who was absent most of the time—and when he was around, he was an asshole to her and her kids? Yeah, that's what I think, too. I think she drank so much because of

him

—because she wanted to numb the pain of knowing who she'd married and who'd given her two kids that she basically had to raise on her own.

If she was an alcoholic, it was because he had made her into one. That's what I think, looking back on it.

So, the rest of this story is about me and Jan, and how I lost my virginity to her.

*****

Steve and Steve's dad had to take off for a week to do some Boy Scout shit. Did I mention that part? Steve was a Boy Scout and his dad was like a den master or pack leader or whatever you call the dudes who escort the scouts on their wilderness adventures. Boy Scouts and fixing cars were about the only things they did together. I didn't participate in either of those activities with them.

Steve was gone for a week, so that meant my best party buddy was out of commission. I was on my own. That sucked. I hated to party alone. Though I was pretty much an introvert, I liked to party with my buds. Partying was my entire social life, you could say.

Jan was left behind as well, to take care of the house and the horse. Yeah, you got that right. Steve's dad took off and told her to do

his

chores—feed the horses, clean the stalls, et cetera. It was a lot of work, actually. Like taking the bales of hay and breaking them apart for the horses. Those bales weighed like 50 or 60 pounds (25 - 27 kilograms).

Each.

Jan was gonna work her big ass off while her husband hiked in the nearby mountains, enjoying the views—probably smoking his cigars the entire time.

No wonder she drank so much, right?

Then Jan got the bright idea of calling me. She called my mom and asked if I could help her out on Saturday afternoon. She would make me dinner as payment for all my hard work, before I came home.

I should mention now that my own home life was not so great. I still don't like to talk about it, even to this day. All my friends know not to bring it up. Even my wife knows not to ask about my family life growing up. (She met both my parents before they died. They attended the wedding.) Let me just say here that my mom was grateful not to have to cook for me. I was grateful for any excuse to get out of the house for any length of time.