Nick worked for Otis Elevators. He was shorter than she was, and had a baby face, but he made up for it with a mustache.

He was trouble, and she could tell. But she liked that about him. She liked trouble, in a way.

They'd ride home together on the train and he'd be in the smoking car, but not quite. He'd eventually end up on the little platform that connects the cars. The one that people could throw themselves off of, it they weren't careful.

His long auburn hair caressed his collar and his mustache hugged his upper lip, and he seemed, to her, like a child's doll trying to pass as an adult doll.

He was shorter than she was, as I've mentioned. But she tried not to let that get in their way.

She tried to befriend him, but found him unfriendly.

His nerdier, taller friend was nicer to her, but there was no chemistry. To this day she can't remember that friend's name.

But each night after work she'd rush to make the train that she knew they'd be on, and she dressed in the morning in the hopes that they'd notice her in the evening.

Work was just the go-between. The filler in her day. A paycheck, but not the excitement.

And then, one night, there was Dan.

Dan seemed to be a friend of Nick's.

When she left the smoking car to stand in between the cars of the train, there was Nick, as usual. But, that night, he had a friend with him. A friend introduced as Dan. Wearing a jeans jacket, with blond curly hair and the bluest of wide blue eyes.

He was taller than she. By about an inch.

He stayed quiet while she and Nick make their bantering small talk. They passed stop after stop before Dan moved close enough to get his arm around behind her. He held onto the railing that she leaned against.

Eventually, she realized that his thumb was gently trailing her spine as she leaned against him and the railing both.

Gradually, she realized that she liked it.

She melted into his touch.

They smoked cigarettes and talked about art and Manhattan and all that was wrong with the world. Nick hung around, opposing them or maybe spurring them on, adding to the conversation while ignoring the fact that Dan's arm was around her and his thumb was stroking her back oh so gently.

She was not ignoring that fact at all, but she pretended to, for appearance's sake.

She leaned herself into his questing hand as much as she could, while trying to remain nonchalant. He himself seemed almost vacant, his blue eyes staring not at her but at the passing landscape. She had never met him until now, but was welcoming his touch, and wondering what it meant.

Long Island passed by them as Long Island will: Hicksville, Huntington, Stony Brook.

At Stony Brook, Dan suddenly turned to face her and they gazed into each others' eyes and then he kissed her. It was so sudden and yet expected, it made her wonder at the timing of it all. And then he walked down the metal steps and onto the platform of the station and was gone.

She had not even learned his full name, nor his number.

She only knew his name was Dan, and his eyes were blue, and he was sweet enough to stroke her back for miles before giving her a gentle kiss goodbye.

She rode the train back and forth for months waiting to see him again. Hoping to meet up with his friends.

Wait.

Was it before or after Nick took her virginity?

Years later, she's not sure.

Nick took her virginity at her bequest.

She practically had to beg him to take it.

Afterwards, she wished she'd never learned to beg.

But her little sister had just undergone an abortion, and her best friend from college had just lost her cherry too, and she was feeling somewhat outdated, and wanting to join a club of sorts.

So she saw Nick there on the train, and was wearing a dress and trying to look sexy.

Nick wasn't interested enough in the looks, so she one-upped him. She said, "Hey, I want to lose my virginity."

He might have said, "Good luck."

She took that as a challenge, of course. And then talked him into doing it, as only she could.

When the train made its last stop in Port Jefferson, she followed him to his mother's car in the parking lot, and he let her get in beside him.

He drove down familiar roads and then took an unfamiliar turn into the woods, and drove for what seemed like miles to her.

Parked suddenly.

Grabbed her suddenly.

Kissed her suddenly.

She tried to warm herself into the kiss, but he was already pulling her into the backseat.

It was a large car.

She stretched herself out, beneath him, and waited for the fireworks to start.

But after a few kisses, he did nothing but lift her dress, tear off her hose and panties, and push himself into her.

She balked a bit, she writhed a bit, and wondered why he hadn't tried to at least warn her tender parts of the invasion yet to come.

Her head was mashed against the armrest of his mother's car's back seat door. Her legs were spread and taking such that she'd never taken before.

She described it, later, as a hot poker, stinging and burning and somewhat overwhelming...not welcome at all.

The shame of having one's legs spread in the cold back seat of a cold boy's mother's car was just too much to bear. She tried to at least put her arm around his neck and kiss him, but he was not interested in closeness. He was intent upon the job.

When it was over, she felt she only had herself to blame. Especially when he said, "There's something wrong with you. I'm going to take you back to the train, and find a chick who's willing and warm and wants it."

She'd wanted her virginity gone, and he got the job done. But the cost......the cost.....

It would take years for her to get over that night. She'd felt some small satisfaction in going home and confiding to her mother that she'd got the job done. Over with. Messy stockings and all.

So much blood! Her mother cried. She didn't cry. She wanted to stay brave and think it didn't matter.

But matter, it did. And she knew she could never take it back. She could never have that moment back. That first time. It should have been right.

It should have been Dan, or any man, who would've done it right.

She must've met Dan before then, then. Right? Or maybe after, that could've been right.

That being said, there was one point in my teens where I daydreamed about becoming a nun. My eldest sister was becoming a Catholic and there were times when I felt in awe and a bit envious. The ceremony, the let us prays, the faith...that sort of thing. She gave me her CCD booklets to study, wherein I found a lot of stuff about the father, the son, and the holy ghost, and I determined that it was easy to understand the father/son thing, but the ghost made no sense, but that was okay, because I had watched a lot of Scooby-Doo.

I started praying to Jesus, one night, in my long white nightgown, kneeling beside my bed, and I tried to open my heart to him the way my sister's CCD booklet told me to, and then I turned off the lamp on my nightstand (wishing in my heart that I could blow out a candle, instead, because that just seemed so much more appropriate, somehow), and then I went to bed with an open heart and open mind.

The next morning, I awoke with my first ever migraine.

Now, I'm sure the two have nothing to do with each other, but....was the timing not divine, or what?

Anyway, I decided through the years that I'm just not religious. I'm not against the thought of God or Buddha or Allah or anyone else, I'm just not into it enough and, even if I was, I'll be damned if I try to pigeon-hole myself into one little religion. Literally. I'll most likely be damned. I'll decide to become a Catholic only to die and be told at the Gates, "Um, sorry.....Catholics aren't allowed. Go back down there and do ten Hail Mary's, and St. Peter might let you live again to become a Buddhist." Or I'll decide to go to my local Congregational or Unitarian Church only to discover it wasn't DEEP enough, or SERIOUS enough, to warrant God's attention, let alone a backstage pass to his daily concert.

My parents baptized me as a Protestant and I attended Sunday School as a kid, but when it came to my family actually practicing our faith, we pretty much sucked at it. My dad confided in me that the closest he could come to pinpointing himself on the religion map was at "Druid". Years earlier, he had watched Exodus and decided to become Jewish. This lasted all of a few days, because he realized that the only reason he wanted to become Jewish was so that he could be like Paul Newman. He then went through a similar phase after watching Lawrence of Arabia, but with different results. By the time he watched Last Tango In Paris, we were ready to lock him up in the attic. But, I digress. My Protestant mother considered becoming a Catholic once, simply because she found the Pieta so soothing, but once she started reading up on it, she decided being a Catholic was too much work. I tend to agree.

All that being said, I'm rather sad to learn, belatedly of course (these things always come to me belatedly, but without the migraines, thank gawd), that the Catholic Church is losing their religion. Um, their religious women, to be exact.

Seems more and more women want live husbands, and less and less women want humble (albeit pretty)  homes to live in while performing good deeds for little pay.

And this is rather sad.

Myself, I'm thinking it has a lot to do with the Catholic schoolgirl uniform, and less to do with the true calling.

But, call me agnostic.

I posted quite a long time ago that I, myself, had once been homeless...but I was an adult and working at the time, and very few people in my office were even aware of the fact that I was living out of a pickup truck. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be a child in school who has no home to go to at night.

It just breaks my heart.

Time for me to start volunteering at the food shelter up here.  And as soon as I start working again, I'll be donating money as well as time.