Eye Know (I Love You Betta)
1/3/2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHEvjLJgWM8
Today was a day of snow. It was also a day of sitting
inside, taking a few naps with my son. What really captured the mood was
receiving a picture, via text message, of the house that I grew up in. it was
from a female writing colleague, who is also one of my own writing fans. More
specifically it is of the gazebo that is in the front yard to the beautiful
house turned bed and breakfast, in the city of Empire, Colorado. What better
thing to write about then, then to write about an epic love story from my
earliest memories while living in this house.
I moved into this house with my cousin Ace and his dad,
my uncle Curt, back when I was 13. I’ve written about this subject before, so
just to catch anyone up to speed, me and mother were going through some
tumultuous times, and we mutually agreed that I needed to be around a good
strong man, such as my uncle Curt. Ace and I were always growing up together,
so this was a chance for us two best friends to be around each other all the
time now. I considered it a win/win situation for me.
Uncle Curt was a hard man indeed. He grew up in the rough
upbringing of West Virginia. I don’t exactly know the history, but I know that
in some tragedy both of his parents died while he was at a very young age. He
was raised by his older sisters for a while until he moved out into the world
on his own. To be honest, I don’t even know how far he got in grade school.
Because of the death of his folks, he and his siblings were more concerned
about surviving. He never learned how to read.
What uncle Curt did learn was how to be a man in a tough
world. When I moved in with him, he was a coal miner in the Henderson Mine at
the base of Berthoud pass. Most Coloradoans may know this pass, because it is
the steep mountain pass that you must drive through to get to Winter Park. It’s
cold, windy and I’m almost sure it had to be one of the miserable working
environments. This is not even mentioning the dangers that my uncle faced as he
used dynamite to blow holes in a mountain. He never talked about the work much.
In fact, he was a very quiet kind of guy, usually about anything really. But
man, he was a fearful guy to be around because you talked with respect around
him. You didn’t give excuses. You didn’t feel sorry for yourself when life got
hard. You just kept going “Jack”. Jack was how he referred to us boys when he
had something serious to say.
Ace and I had our chores every week. That consisted of
gathering the fire wood from the wood pile and cutting it into big, medium,
small and really small sized pieces for the fireplace. I don’t think the house
even had a heater, but the house always stayed warm. Uncle Curt loved antique
rustic furniture. It’s beautiful to look at, but a terribly tedious chore to
dust weekly. So that was another one of our chores. Of course there was the vacuuming,
dishes, cleaning of windows, and cleaning of our own personal bedrooms. Uncle
Curt would inspect these rooms weekly. He was like a drill sergeant, with the
white glove inspections. He would occasionally tell us that we had more
cleaning to do, but that our try was a good one, “Jack”.
Now I loved growing up for that time in the mountains. It
was the total, Little House on the
Prairie style of living. We went to school with minimal amounts of kids.
Everyone knew everyone. The local police officer knew all of us boys because we
also went to school with his boy. If one of us kids got into any kind of
trouble or drama at school, we knew someone’s parents would eventually tell
another and so on. The snow up in the mountains made for some great adventures.
I still can remember going sledding and inter-tubing down steep hills for so
many hours, that we even got warned about the dangers of frostbite. We simply
would have so much fun that sometimes we didn’t know any better than to come in
earlier than we were.
This was also the time that I began my own experience of
becoming a man. It’s the time that I was not only going through puberty, but
the time that I discovered that I immensely loved the ladies. There were 3
girls from this time in my life that I will always remember. The first girl was
Jenny. She was in my grade, but not in my class. We went to school in
Georgetown, Colorado. I took the bus to Georgetown from Empire. I still
remember to this day the love letters I would write to her. Sometimes I would
be blessed to read one of her many letters to me in which she was making fun of
me for writing her a love letter. Of course, like most ladies, I think she was
absolutely elated by the attention, so this was a constant thing.
The dilemma was that Jenny was not the only girl that I
wrote love letters to. I also wrote letters to her friend, Josie. Her name was
Josie. Her brother was Brook. I will never forget her name or even her family
name, because to be honest, she was my first or maybe I should say my most
intense love interest as a young boy. She was blond. She was growing quite well
for her own journey down puberty. She was also way out of my league and made
fun of me too, which made me love her all the more. The difference between her
and Jenny was Jenny showed her heart and caring side much more, while Josie was
cold and adrift. She was a challenge.
The two girls knew I was writing them both. In our
childhood innocence, there was nothing improper about it, and so I believe it
became a competition for them to see who got the longest letter that day. It
does not stop there. I had mini girlfriends from other classes, with whom I
would write to. I just don’t remember them. I will always remember Jenny and
Josie. Looking back now, I can say that I truly loved the both of them.
What I also remember about growing up during that time
was that I was really getting to understand that as a young boy, I had very
strong sexual urges. But up until I lived with two other guys, I had never had
the opportunity to talk to anyone about that, and besides, this was just now
beginning to happen for me. I literally thought that ejaculation (semen) meant
that there was something wrong. I told my cousin Ace about it. He said, “Nah
cuzzz! That shit is perfectly normal. Just don’t be making a mess with that
shit.” I think Ace showed me his 70’s era playboy stash at around that time.
I’m talking about ladies with big hairy, triangular shaped bush in all its
1970’s glory. I loved woman, and I wanted to kiss all of them.
Now I never got a kiss from Josie or Jenny. They were
both my best friends. They made me aware
of that thing that happens when you are next to a person of the opposite sex
with whom you are attracted to. I was very much into their lives and talked to
them all the time. I loved them and they both loved me. But the first girl who
gave me a kiss was my next door neighbor. To the right of the picture with the
gazebo is a house where lived a girl my age by the name of Emily. Yes I still
remember her name. Our love, although not meant to withstand the test of time,
was love all the same. She kissed me and I knew then that passion was
transferred from her lips unto my heart and soul just as the snow is relentless
in passing from the sky to the mountains. She had an “all girls” slumber party
at her house. Her mom knew us boys though, and for whatever reason, Ace and I
were allowed to hang out with them. In the innocence of our age, I thought the
craziest thing was being in the presence of all these girls with their pajamas
on. I was introduced to the music of De La Soul. The album was 3 Feet High and Rising. The song was Eye
Know. Even to this day, I remember that song. I remember it because Emily took
me out of her mom’s sight after she told me that she has always had a crush on
me. She then kissed me on the lips. It was a peck. There was no tongue. So the
emotion I felt was pure ecstasy and excitement.
I moved back down to Denver not long after that. I missed Jenny and Josie for a year straight. I think I even cried a few times thinking about the letters we would always exchange. I even tried looking them up later in life. I would hope that they both married good men who loved them and took care of them. They and all my ladies of the mountains meant so much to me as a growing boy. So the gazebo in this picture represents more than one thing to me. It represents the innocence of growing up. It also is a symbol of my unsatisfying passion within me, not for just the ladies, but for all the exciting things in life. Thank you for reading my little love story. Thank you for taking the picture. You know who you are.
“Cause it takes two, not
three to seduce. My destiny of love is brought to an apex, sex is a mere
molecule in this world of love that I have for you. It’s true. (Eye know Eye
love you better)” ---De La Soul. Eye Know.
Jissoseph Out!
