Character introduction: The wife, HIS wife, me.
Jessica, that’s my name. It’s the 26th most popular name of 4,276 names and Hebrew for “rich” or and/or “God sees”. I guess that’s comforting, or at least could mean I have an audience member to amuse.
I am the first born of three children. Conceived during a suicide threat/attempt, in the back of a Dodge van. Classy roots, classy fruit, what can I say? The good old fashioned Catholic shotgun wedding that followed was the only evidence of religion in the family. Except, I went to church once and cried the whole time because they were killing some guy named Jesus.
Childhood was a pretty useless time in my life. It was nothing like the “Ma and Pa scenario” Michael would have been used to. Dad? I guess he was a nice guy. We took vacations and drove a beamer for a while, big thing was he just couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Probably not that bad of a deal, that is if mom wasn’t THE SUICIDAL LADY HE KNOCKED UP!!! Needless to say, her already fragile state was always in jeopardy of crumbling completely. I wonder if sometimes I am not sad it hadn’t, there is compassion to be gained when your mom’s in a rubber room.
I was a below average student in school. I got my first F in 5th grade English class. Ironic. I thunked I could write real good, they musta not really learned me right. I didn’t have a paper route. I did the dishes and hated it like little else then or since. That was my at-home chore. We got paid at the end of the year, because we, at least I, was not the kind of kid who saved money and/or spent it responsibly. I remember getting a camera one year. That was cool. If I’d been paid weekly, I would have only had candy bar wrappers and cavities to show for it.
I never participated in a sport, I even tried hard to get out of gym class. I avoided it well enough my freshman year it had to be taken TWICE my sophomore year. That’s about as far as school goes. I dropped out, or just never really showed up for my junior year. I couldn’t figure out the point of “traditional education”. So I moved on. The next couple of years are a little fuzzy. Unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled and admit it. Also, unlike our buddy Bill, I admit “I had sex with that man (those men).” A few years of schizophrenic tendencies, a diagnosis of PTSD and a some numbing rounds of Lithium. I marry the first guy who would have me and we had four beautiful children.
Throw in a divorce, a fight for my mental health and a run in with God and it brings us up to about the time when I met the man I that would clog up my head everyday since the first.