I was ready to date!

Now that I had gotten a car to go to high school, I was looking forward to setting my sights on perhaps the most important part of teen life: Getting a girlfriend.

I honestly had no idea what to expect or how to go about getting a girlfriend. As I mentioned before, my father was no help in this area. One of the things I knew for certain: None of the girls in my grade wanted to have anything to do with me. This meant that I had to either find someone new to the school or try to date a junior or senior. I was aware that the chances of the latter happening were very slim.

What I was looking for in a girlfriend was someone who was very smart. I wanted to spend time with someone who could also be a "study buddy." The looks weren't that important to me. (However, I should qualify that by saying that I was not attracted to girls who were very overweight. There was one who was really smart, but I had a hard time getting past her size. Many years later, that issue would cease to be a problem.)

I also was not looking for sex. I was brought up in an environment in which sex was considered wrong, and specifically, wrong for me. So, I was not in the mindset that I needed to get laid as soon as possible. Honestly, actual intercourse was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to get to the hand-holding and kissing that I had seen on TV and movies for years.

And that was the thing. I was completely unaware of this, but I was in high school about the time that the American attitude toward sex was changing. People were starting to become aware that they did not need to get married first to have sex with someone they desired. I guess the girls at school somehow had it in their heads that if they were dating someone, that meant they had to have sex with him. So, if they were going to have to have sex with whomever they were dating, they wanted to make certain it was someone they really wanted to have sex with. Thus, the Alpha males and the seniors got most of the attention, even from the girls I considered my "league."

This means that girls who might have been willing to go out with me on friendly little dates or study sessions were not interested because they thought I was going to try to have sex with them. They were so wrong, but even if I knew that this was what was going through their minds, there wouldn't have been a whole lot I could have done about it. I couldn't just go up to a girl and say, "Hey, do you want to go out with me? I swear I don't want to have sex with you!"

I have no idea how much sex was actually taking place among my classmates. I would hear guys talk about certain girls, but those girls were always the stupid ones I had no interest in. And I would hear several different guys talking about their sexual encounters and they were always with the same girl. Even if I was desperate enough to hook up with one of those girls, they still had no interest in me.

There was also the issue of there not being anything worth doing in Artesia on a date besides going to the movies and going to eat. By the time I had gotten to high school, they had closed the miniature golf course and the roller rink. The arcade was full of the scary punks from the refinery. (I remember one student commenting in the school paper that he enjoyed taking a girl out to Hope to watch the grass grow.)

All of these elements combined to make my teen years very frustrating (and of course, I am talking emotionally, not sexually.) But I did find someone who was willing to go out with me. You will read more about her in a future post.