Teri or Terri

Teri. Or was it Terri? I just can't quite remember. Teresa was her full name but she went by Teri. She was 18, I was 15.....which puts this story at about 1977 or so. And it puts me at illegal. In Boise, Idaho, while Teri and I were both attending Boise Valley Christian Communion....a big church of more than 1,000 that met in a warehouse on the banks of the Boise River. It was filled with the spirit, the church was. Teri was my girlfriend. Well, more of a friend who was a girl than an actual, per se, girlfriend. She scared me too much. Actually all girls scared me too much, now that I think about it. Teri and I were in the youth group together despite the fact that she was a high school senior and graduating already. She had a full-time job and a real, honest to goodness Fiat that was her very own to drive around town. She delivered Meals on Wheels each afternoon to shut-in seniors who needed food. She wore these big old giant glasses that seemed to cover half of her face...the lenses tinted in a lovely shade of purple, blue, or periwinkle. She lived with her mother who also went to our church in a single-wide trailer. Oh, I know I'm supposed to say "Mobile Home" or "Manufactured Home" or something else like that. But, honestly, in the 1970's in Idaho they were trailers. Alright? Seriously.

Teri was the first chick that I, um....ahem.....** clears throat loudly ** .....well, you fill in the blanks here. I'm just too embarrassed to say. She was the one. In the afternoons while her mother was at work. In Teri's big waterbed. In The Trailer! In the Trailer Park! Oh god, this doesn't sound good, does it? It wasn't. You see, Teri was, shall we say, aggressive. Forceful. Demanding. Of me. Remember, she was the first (and practically the only, quite frankly). I swear to god, that girl made me do things I wasn't not prepared to do. Forced my head here and there. Told me out loud and naughtily what to do, how to do it, and how not to do it. She scared the living hell out of me. And we're not talking about normal, run-of-the-mill things here. Some. But some not. I still lay awake nights sweating thinking of her telling me to do it this way or that way. Perhaps I should have been a bit more educated after sneaking peeks at The Joy of Sex while I babysat over at my cousin's house -- but I just wasn't. And so this went on. In the trailer, in the afternoons. And if that didn't work, she'd drive me around behind some school house after dark to perform The Act.

At, or near, the time Teri was graduating from high school, she decided to go into the military. The Army. And also along about that time, she called me one day and asked me to come over to The Trailer for the afternoon. Unable to say no, I drove my 1970 Plymouth Gold Duster with its black plastic seats over. I jumped out of the car and headed up the sidewalk toward her front door. The door was open, the glass screen was pulled shut, so that I could see right straight into the house....to the couch (or "Davenport" as we called it growing up for some reason) on the far wall where Teri was sitting. In her purple glasses. And with her arm draped around the manly shoulders of another woman. "I'm in love with this woman. She is my girlfriend," she tells me. "And I'm going into the Army," she continued. Oy vey.

Teri went into the Army. She ended up at Fort Riley, Kansas, for some time. And she went on to marry a man. A black man. I think they had babies. And I don't know another damned thing except for that. Well, that, plus the fact that her mom tried to get me into Amway shortly after that. I wonder where those purple glasses are now? And that damned water bed.