People have displayed me as a slut, as a bitch, and my personal favorite, a whiny little sneak. I am the other girl. I am the second choice. I was the woman who fell in love with the most charming boy in Liverpool.
I am Molly Edison. And this is my story.
I remember seeing Jude at the backstreets of Liverpool everyday in high school. He would be standing at the sidewalk waiting for his friends in dark jeans and a leather jacket. Not what he's like now at all. He was one of those boys, those bad boys, those irresistible boys who could make you faint with a glance from their dark eyes.
Me and my best mate Julia would walk by them every afternoon, carrying our books school-girl style. I guess that we were school girls, so that would make sense. Jude would never look twice at us. I don't think he ever noticed us flip our hair as we walked past. He probably didn't even notice that when we were exactly five steps away from him, we would count to three and look back—the classic flirt in our days. No, he wouldn't notice us. Ever. So I had to go up to him.
Jude carried his backpack with one strap over his shoulder. Just something about that fact made him so much more irresistible to everyone in my class.
I remember the conversation that me and the girls had back in class… When the teacher turned her back, we would scribble notes down and pass them around. Usually they were about hair, or movies… But that day, it was about Julian Michael Pheeney.
He wants a bad girl. Was definitely repeated more than once. After asking what a bad girl was, half of them laughed and one of them wrote it down.
He wants a girl that is willing to go all the way.
Being a lady, I hadn't had much talk about this at all. I mean, I knew about it—was there any way to avoid it?—but nobody, especially me and my group of friends, actually talked about it, let alone do it.
But when me and Julia walked past him, my need to run my hands through his hair must have shown, because she pulled me aside and whispered,
"How far are you willing to go to get him?"
And I didn't know how to react. But I saw his dark mop of hair over her shoulder and I let out a sigh of desperation. "As far as I can go." I admitted, my heart throbbing.
Julia then bought me ridiculous costumes, equivalent to what the girls in the whore-house wore. Well, maybe not as bad. But there were fishnet stockings, there were micro-mini-skirts, and tight enough shirts to cut off my stomachs circulation, if that was possible. And then the shoes—the horrible shoes. I was about three inches taller than all of my friends because of those goddamned shoes.
And as me and Julia walked by, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was enough to make me jump right out of my shoes, but I remembered what my friends had told me…
Think natural, act natural, be natural.
And I turned around slowly.
"What's your name?" He asked in his thick Liverpool accent.
"Molly." I said as sexily as I could. If I hadn't practiced it a billion times in the mirror, I would have thrown up all over him.
"Where do you go to school, Molly?"
"AGH."
"Why haven't I seen you?" He asked, and my heart throbbed. I was in love from the first conversation we had together.
"I don't know." I managed to say.
"Let me take you out."
And so it began. Jude began dating me, taking me out every Friday night to the club across the street.
Despite my frustrated protests, Julia insisted on me continuing to wear the skimpy outfits she had put together. "Maybe he likes me for who I am…"
And as the dates began, so did the smoking. Jude smoked like a chimney all through high school, and I ignored it at first… but the second hand smoke took over and I began stepping out of class to smoke with him.
When Jude dropped out of school to work in the docks, he started to take an interest in other girls. It wasn't fair. I had worked so hard to get him to take me on a date, and he was checking out the girls at the docks. I felt so frustrated… I almost knew he was cheating on me. That's when I became 'over-protective' of Jude.
"Where were you last night? I was waiting for you forever last night."
"I had work to do."
He wouldn't even apologize. That's when I decided that it would be best for our relationship if I slept with him… so I did.
That night was very blurry. I remember him picking me up and taking me to Mattie's, which was a popular bar back in Liverpool. I had my first glass of whiskey, because I knew that I was going to want to forget what I was about to do. Then he took me upstairs and had me, right in the bar owners bed room.
I was wearing my best dress that day. He was so eager to have me, he pulled my best dress—which may I add, I wore to church every Sunday—and ripped it right down the sides. When he was finished, lying in the bed, I got up and slipped on my dress, only to find he had made it as exposing as the outfits I wore for him on a daily basis.
I got dressed at Julia's house that night. I was drunk and embarrassed. I couldn't face my parents that way. She dressed me in something decent, which was a great change.
I slept in her room, with a blanket and pillow on the ground next to her bed. I remember crying into the pillow, asking myself why I had to fall in love with someone like him… someone that wouldn't look twice at me unless I dressed in next-to-nothing.
I loved Jude. That was the problem. The huge problem in the puzzle that I was left to piece together after he left for America and became a man.