I Wanted It To Be Different

by Giselle Renarde

Have you read my Adam and Sheree series?  If you haven't and you enjoy extremely taboo erotica, you should treat yourself to a copy of the box set. And you know I'm not a sales-pitchy person, so if I'm telling you this is a kick-ass series, you know it is.

The third novella in the series, Adam and Sheree's Family Christmas, involves Adam finding his sister Sheree's diary--the diary she wrote when she was 19 and sleeping with her uncle (that was years before she started sleeping with her brother. Ahhh, the innocent old days!)

When I created Sheree's diary, I wrote it the way I figured a 19-year-old girl would.  I'd completely forgotten that, at 18/19 I kept a diary too.  In fact, 1999/2000 was the only (school)year of my life I actually kept a diary, if you don't count the dream journals I maintained from the time I was thirteen or so.

I found my diary earlier this year and I was humiliated.  What I wrote back then was just so... so... so what? Embarrassing? Vapid? Selfish? I don't even know.  Maybe I was seeing too much of myself.  Let me tell you, I was jealous of Sheree.  Her diary was so much better than mine.

And yet I couldn't put my diary down.  I read it cover to cover, and then I read it all over again.  I hated it, but I couldn't stop.  See, 1999 was the year I fell in love with my teacher. And he fell back.

12/10/1999

Ha! Wow! I know I haven’t written anything in a long time, but school has been all work and no play. But today was a great day!

Fun stuff first:

Lawrence hands me a set of beeswax candles: “A pre-Christmas present.”

Hi! Thanks! Yum!

“And, if you’re not busy during your fifth period spare, would you care to join me for a coffee?”

Hello! Yes! Of course!

Not so fun stuff:

When Lawrence and I headed to his car after fourth period, we weren’t the only ones in the parking lot. Mr. Dupont was out there, too, and he walked over as Lawrence turned the key in the ignition. He tapped on the window, and when Lawrence rolled it down, he asked, “Do you have written permission to escort a student off school premises?”

Lawrence sort of laughed in a way that I knew he felt awkward and ashamed. He said, “Uhh… no…”

Mr. Dupont didn’t let up. He said something about how teachers needed parental permission to take students off school grounds because the board of education could be sued if anything happened to me. But how stupid is that? It’s not like I’m a child. I’m a legal adult. Maybe Mr. Dupont didn’t know I’m eighteen. I don’t need parental permission to do anything.

I don’t remember what Lawrence said after that. My head started throbbing and I honestly thought I was going to cry. It was so humiliating.

But somehow the issue was resolved. I think Lawrence basically just said, “Thanks for the heads-up” or something like that, and drove away with me in the passenger seat. We didn’t talk about it at all. Far too embarrassing. What a blow to our egos. Thanks a lot, Mr. Dupont.

Better stuff:

As Lawrence parked on one of the side streets around Hazelton Lanes, I was applying Cinnamon Sugar Lipsmackers. I asked him if he wanted some (just being polite; expected him to say no) and he said sure! We browsed for a while at L’Atelier Grigorian, and after that went to buy the coffee he’d promised me. When the coffee woman asked if he wanted cinnamon on his Café-au-Lait, he responded, “Please! It’ll match my lipstick.”

How amused was I?

Alright, so now for the good stuff that has Giselle on an enormous power-trip:

He thanked me for giving him the rest of my half (the smaller one, at that) of the almond croissant we shared. My response was, “You paid for it. [nota bene: I never offer to pay for anything.] It can get expensive to keep a mistress.”

Oh, he came this close to spitting out his coffee, but then he laughed: “I’m not sure we’re quite there.”

I know—I’m sure—that he did not say “yet,” but I distinctly heard it anyway, almost as though it had been implied.

At any rate, he followed that up by saying, “Yes, I can see how it could. I once knew a man who was revered because he could go to dinner parties with his wife on one arm and his mistress on the other.”

“Well, isn’t that ideal?” I asked.

I don’t think he even realized that he said, “Yeah.”

Like It's 1999: Diary of a Teenager in Love with a Teacher is weird. It's so weird. It's not what I want it to be, but it is what it is, and there's something strangely freeing about that for me, as a writer.  I can't change the past.  I couldn't alter what I'd written without making truth into fiction.

And I wanted to publish the truth for once. Like It's 1999 is it, New Age warts and all.  I changed nothing but the names.

03/02/2000

I don’t get it!

Not even close.

What the fuck was that, Lawrence?

How could you have done it?

And not told me!

I’m not even sure whether I’m more angry that you did it in the first place, or that you completely neglected to tell me about it.

Do you know how stupid you made me look? Patrick is one of my best friends. I’ve known him since he was eight years old. I know his sister! I know his parents! And you had to go report him and George to the principal? You are such a hypocrite, Lawrence. I’m not even joking.

It’s because they’re gay, isn’t it? I mean, George isn’t even a teacher. He’s a volunteer! And not a skeevy old man, like some people—he only graduated two years ago. And here you go acting like he’s some kind of sexual predator just because you saw them doing whatever. How is their sex life any of your business? Patrick’s a smart guy. He can make his own decisions.

And did you really think you could tell on another “teacher” without your virtue being called into question? It doesn’t even matter that we’ve never done anything wrong. People see the way I look at you, and see the way you look at me, and they draw their own conclusions.