One of my clearest memories from childhood is ten-year old me overhearing an argument between my mother and father when I was supposed to be asleep.
"Why do you disrespect me so, George; you not only have affairs but you're not the least bit subtle about it," my mother sobbed. "You seem to enjoy rubbing your infidelity in my face."
"Get over it, Joyce," my father replied in a sharp tone. "I'm not the first guy to need sex outside of marriage."
"But you promised to stop; you're killing me; I have no self-confidence and feel less than human," Mom moaned on the edge of hysteria.
"I can't help it that other women fuck better than you do - pull it together or you'll drive yourself to drink," my father responded without any hint of remorse or compassion.
"Don't you care about what this would do to our daughter Jennifer if she finds out?" Mom sniveled now clearly going over the brink.
"Then fucking make sure that she doesn't find out," were my father's last words before he left for the night, obviously to have a tryst with one of his mistresses.
I wanted to go comfort my crying mother, but I didn't want her to know that I had overheard them. From that day forward I grew closer to my mother and emotionally distanced myself from my father, only interacting with him when necessary.
I'm convinced that my father's cheating let to a premature death for my mother. While she didn't commit suicide, I could tell that the only reason that she stayed on earth was to care for me. I don't know why she stayed with the jerk; maybe she was afraid of the economic consequences because she didn't have any marketable skills, and because she did not have a strong personality.
Two months after my sixteenth birthday Mom's life ended in a car crash, as she drove recklessly from a humiliating confrontation with my father about another of his transparent affairs.
My father tried to be supportive of me after my Mom's death, but even though I never confronted him about it, he knew that I justifiably blamed him for it. I did little more than sleep at our house, and tried to have things to do all weekend so as to avoid him as much as possible.
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I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but I worked hard motivated by my desire to get the hell away from my old man; and I was crafty. By my seventeenth birthday I had enough credits to graduate High School.
I was also lucky enough to have a good friend named Tiffany Scalia. Most of the other kids at the upper middle class school that Tiffany and I attended were very wary of Tiffany and never befriended her because her father was - well to put it nicely - in a very "shady" business. I embraced her friendship, however, and always was pleasant when interacting with her parents. Both of her parents, Adolfo and Gina, welcomed me into their home, and liked me a great deal.
Tiffany was on track to go to college, but I needed to get a job as soon as possible in order to get away from my father. To facilitate that, just before graduating from High School I asked for a big favor from Tiffany's father, Adolfo Scalia; a second identity. He was happy to accommodate his daughter's best friend as long as I kept it between us and never let anyone else know. My second identity included a new social security number and birthdate. I became not just Jennifer LaBate, but also Alicia Brighton.
I didn't even bother to tell my father when I got my High School diploma at the end of summer school after my junior year. I collected my personal things, emptied the relatively small joint bank account that my father and I had (separate from his much larger accounts) after forging my father's signature to a withdrawal slip, and left him a simple note:
"Hey George. I'm gone, out of your life. Don't try to find me. Rot in hell, you murdering asshole!"
I think that my note let him know how I felt about him.
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I was confident that I could make it on my own - with a little more help from Adolfo Scalia. Alicia's birth certificate indicated that she was a year older than Jennifer. Eighteen year old Alicia got a job as an exotic dancer at "Bottoms Up," a high-end club that Adolfo was a part owner of. I was perfect for the job because even though I had a shitty father and a weak mother, I had been a winner in the "looks" gene lottery; I had a pleasant face and a five foot nine, one hundred thirty pound, body with long sleek legs, a round ass, and nice C cup boobs, as well as naturally blond hair with red highlights.
Because Adolfo let it be known that no one was to mess with me, and because Bottoms Up had a high-end clientele and some of the toughest bouncers in the country, I was able to work without the fear of harassment that most women in my situation are exposed to. One of the older dancers even took me under her wing and taught me her best moves. That, combined with my daily gym workouts, allowed me to become the headliner at Bottoms Up by the time that I really was eighteen and a half years old.
I had become such a regular patron and so proficient in the gym that as Jennifer I not only got a free membership but I got a part-time job at the gym training out-of-shape older women. I filed tax returns under two different social security numbers; Alicia paid a lot of tax, Jennifer very little.
I worked at Bottoms Up until I was a little over twenty one, and made scads of money; on some busy Saturday nights I got more than a thousand dollars in tips. However, I knew that exotic dancing was not a long term profession, nor one conducive to marriage, which I ultimately was interested in. I decided that a good follow-up would be working as a masseuse.
I became sexually active after my eighteenth birthday, but not as Alicia - as Jennifer. While, as Jennifer, I had had a number of good sexual experiences by the time that Alicia quit working as an exotic dancer, I never had a particularly satisfying relationship. That changed when, as Jennifer, I met Rick Wilton while Alicia was studying to be a masseuse and Jennifer was still working at the gym.
Rick is a big strong guy, and handsome too. My first impression of his looks was very favorable, and he also seemed nice although maybe a little too full of himself. We met one weeknight when he was a guest of one of the gym regulars. While I was used to guys hanging around me and usually just tolerated it, in his case I welcomed it. We chatted on and off for about two hours.
Rick hung around until I was done working at the gym, and wasn't particularly subtle.
"Say Jennifer; I was hoping that maybe we could go out together this Saturday night."
"I don't know, Rick; I think I need to know a little bit more about what you're like before I commit a Saturday night to you. I'm in demand, you know," I said, with a big smile and in a flirtatious manner.
"I have no doubt about that," he chuckled. "If not a Saturday night for a first date, then what?"
"Well Saturday at noon you could take me to that paintball park that opened up last month off of Route 50. Unless you're afraid of getting dirty, or of a girl kicking your butt," I replied with a big grin.
