Daddy had an affair, that's why mom threw him out of the house. He didn't just leave - mom forced him to. This happened after he kicked me out of our house, when he found out that I was pregnant. To pinpoint this in my timeline more exactly, this happened just before Regionals in Sophomore year, just before I was rushed to hospital after the competition and gave birth to Beth. Mom sought me out after our performance, begging forgiveness and telling me that daddy had been found sleeping with a "tattooed freak" as she put it, and that she threw him out of the house.
That "tattooed freak" actually happened to be a very nice girl; I searched for her and found out who she was, because I couldn't believe that daddy would be cheating on mom - it was simply inconceivable - and I wanted to see for myself what was so appealing about this girl that would bring him to commit adultery. As it turns out, she was a lovely woman, young, at least half my father's age, in fact, much closer to mine, who was working at a local bar where the two of them met. She was a university student at Ohio State University, and did her best to make ends meet. I'd skipped school one day to go see her and I sat in the dingy bar, arms folded across the counter, introducing myself to this girl.
"Oh," she'd said when I said my name was Quinn Fabray. She looked almost fearful as I stared at her from my side of the countertop, and I wonder what had gone through her mind at that moment.
"Russell's daughter?"
"Yes, Russell's daughter."
"Oh. Well, hey, I don't mean to be rude, but why are you here, I mean, shouldn't you be in school or something?"
"I wanted to see the woman my father cheated on my mother with," I said, rather coldly and watched as the girl squirmed in front of me. Reader, a part of me wanted to make her uncomfortable, to make her feel guilt, even when I knew that it probably wasn't her fault. Already I could tell that she wasn't the seductive type and that she wouldn't have been the one to make the first move; in all likelihood, it was my father who began flirting with her. I could see it being played out, like a movie scene flickering in the cinema of my mind: daddy sitting with his whiskey in hand, looking at this girl with short red hair and an eyebrow piercing, shoulders covered in tattoos and thinking that she was alluring simply because she wasn't prim and proper or rich, and was young. I could imagine him being rather boisterous, trying to grab her attention, flirting with her as she poured him another drink, he, taking care to flash his ruby embedded ring, a family heirloom, so she would know that he was wealthy. She, used to such behaviours from men in such towns, probably brushed off the flirtatiousness; to her, he was just another customer, buying his drinks from her. What she would not have anticipated was his stubbornness, or determination, and everyday, he would come back for more drinks, everyday he would flirt more, everyday he would get more adventurous, and eventually, she, having come to know his face and his ways, would give him a chance when he asked her to share a drink with him for the umpteenth time. I suppose we can guess how it played out after that very first drink.
Her name, by the way, is Jenna and she's a graphic design student; I learnt from our conversation that she'd designed some of her tattoos herself, and she wanted to pursue that professionally, which is why she'd started out down the graphic design path.
"It's not all I thought it would be, but the course isn't too bad, you know? I'll probably just stick it out and keep doing what I'm doing with my own designs and hopefully with a degree, I'll have a higher chance of being hired as an actual designer. I'm thinking I'll try running a business with a tattoo artist friend of mine. I can do the designs, I think probably custom ones for customers, instead of conventional ones that any parlour would have, and then he can ink them. It could work," she enthused, about half an hour later when our initial awkwardness and anger had dissipated and we had started on conversations not revolving around her relationship with my father. Actually, it started out with a question on my part about one of her tattoos. I'd forgiven her for her part in the affair; after just three minutes with her, I knew that none of it was her doing.
"Oscar Wilde?" I asked, nodding at the aforementioned tattoo which read 'we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'
"Yeah. You've read Lady Windemere's Fan?" Jenna said, surprised.
"No, but I know the quote. I love Dorian Gray though."
And that was the conversation which broke the icy glacier which lay between us and began the true conversation. As it turned out, Jenna admired literature as much as I did and we spent a good half an hour discussing and debating the merits of Dorian Gray. But literature was not what I was there to talk about with Jenna, and I soon began thinking about she and my father again. All I wanted to know was why she would sleep with a man like my father when she was so obviously not attracted to men like him, or seemingly, from the impression I was getting.
"Jenna, I need to know why you slept with my father. I've realised that he was probably hitting on you, not the other way around, but I don't understand why you would respond to that. I mean, you probably get it all the time, working in a bar," I'd said, fearing her reaction to bringing up such a topic, but I suppose that she must have been expecting such a change in conversation because she sighed and looked at me, and I could see her choosing her words carefully.
"He was insistent that he and I have a drink together one day. Every day he would come in and insist, and I always refused, you know? It's bad form to be drinking on the job, even if your job is a bartender. I see a lot of guys like your dad, coming for a couple of drinks after work, trying to get drunk enough to face home, and I figured your dad was just one of them. He seemed like a nice guy, and he wasn't pushy about me having a drink. It was more that he just asked every time he was in, like he actually cared about me. One day I came in when I wasn't working and Russell was here. He recognised me and bought me a drink. 'You're not working today so you can finally have that drink with me,' he said, and I thought that if I just had that one drink, he would leave me alone. But one drink turned into quite a few and a beginning awkward conversation turned into an easy one, like it did with you and me, and I dunno, but all of a sudden I was with this man who was treating me better than any man had ever treated me before and we were laughing and talking and drinking and when he asked me to leave with him, it just seemed like the natural thing to do."
Reader, I could relate to much of this, for that is the same technique Puck had used on me. Well, not quite, but similar; the drinking, the easy conversation, which then all turned into something else. In that moment, I blamed Jenna less than I ever had before, because I knew what it was like to be in that position.
"I suppose you can guess what happened from there," she finished, giving me an apologetic look.
"Yeah, I can guess. But why keep it up? Especially after you found out he was married?"
"You have to understand, Quinn, I wasn't emotionally invested in Russell. I could see things for what they were: sex between us was just sex. Talking to him was great and everything, but when it came down to it, he was more of a friend and not even a close one. To be honest, I'm alone in this town; I moved here to go to college and I barely know anyone. It was nice to have Russell to go to when I needed physical comfort, and I don't mean sex. That's what he wanted and I just went along with it because it was like pretend intimacy for me, you know? It made me feel a little more like I belonged in this town, like I wasn't a stranger that nobody would miss. That's why I kept it up, even when I found out about Judy and you and your sister."
I couldn't say, reader, that I was satisfied with this reason, but I've come to accept that what I might deem as a terrible motive to do something, someone else would deem a brilliant one. Jenna didn't want to be alone and did what she deemed necessary to ensure that she wouldn't be; that is something I understand. I don't understand why she felt she had to sleep with my father to feel that way, instead of perhaps looking to make friends, but I do understand that loneliness is one of the worst things to bear and that you would do anything to avoid it. So I found that I could forgive Jenna, more so after finding out that she and my father weren't seeing each other anymore; she said that he didn't want to see her after my mother threw him out of the house because he felt too guilty.
I looked at her, this girl with the artificially coloured red hair, and I thought that although she was probably blonde once, the colour, more of a wash than a proper dye job, suited her; it seemed a reflection of herself, just as her tattoos depicted what she was passionate about and what was important to her. Reader, I'll admit, I wanted to hate her; I arrived at the bar certain that I was going to hate the girl who slept with my father, thus breaking up my parents' marriage, but instead, I found someone who loved what she was doing, who had a goal in mind for where she wanted to be, and I just couldn't. I couldn't hate her. Instead, I found that I actually enjoyed her company, when we weren't talking about my father and had forgotten that the whole affair didn't occur. Reader, during that entire meeting, I could not help but feel sorry for Jenna; I felt that she was made a victim by my father, even though she had not borne any travesty in her own life. She was however, used and then thrown aside by him, and even though she said she knew it was just sex, I knew it hurt her to be alone again. But there was nothing that I could do. So, I thanked her for her time, got up and made to leave.
"Hey Quinn," she said, as I stood, "do you wanna go out with me sometime?"
"Like, like a date?" I said, incredulous. Don't misunderstand me reader, I've nothing against homosexuality and the like, and though I tend to say that I am straight because I've never had strong feelings for a girl the way I have for a boy, I cannot admit that I have never been attracted to another girl, however the mere prospect of going out with the woman who had been sleeping with my father was disgusting.
"Um, well, no, it doesn't have to be a date," she said, and with this reassurance, I agreed, because after all, I found someone who I could talk to about books and not have them want me to join their book club, nor have them ridicule me for my extensive reading. With a time and date agreed upon, I walked towards the door.
"It's a date then!" Jenna called after me and I rolled my eyes, because I knew that she was saying it to provoke me.
Our 'date' went well, I must say. In Jenna I found a confidante, someone I could trust; our personalities just seemed to fall together, as though we'd known each other for a lifetime, and suddenly, for the first time, I had a friend outside of school, outside of church and outside of family, who was removed enough from my life that they wouldn't be biased by the opinions of other people - much like you, reader, though, you cannot advise me to move in the right direction seeing as you are so far removed from my life that I do not, in fact, know you. Or so I hope.
Jenna was only a mere 4 years older than I and had enough experience that she could help me should I require assistance in personal matters, but was young enough to relate to my experiences; she had not yet reached that threshold of life where high school drama was so far in the past that it was completely insignificant. She understood about the pressure with boys and the feuds with friends, and the constant lashings one would suffer from the student body should one be different from the herd, as I was when I was pregnant and as well as because of Glee. She understood the struggle you go through to find yourself in these teenage years and supported me in the things which no one else would support me in or understood, such as my single minded endeavours to win the Prom Queen title.
That isn't to say, reader that we did not have our disagreements; Jenna was a self confessed atheist and while I am not someone who tries to convert people into Christianity, I disapproved of her view. The pair of us had a rather heated debate about the existence of God and the principles of the Church, with Jenna claiming that there was no evidence for the existence of God and that Church people were of a sort who no longer cared about the religion but about the power, wealth and political influence of their positions. I argued the point on behalf of the Church, because reader, while I think there may be people whose concerns are just as Jenna described, I believe a good many people of the Church joined because they felt it was their calling from God, not because they saw opportunities to progress to wealth and power. However, I could not counter Jenna's argument against the existence of God because truthfully, reader, there is no tangible evidence; that is why religion is so often called faith - we must go on the beliefs of centuries, trusting that once upon a time, Jesus Christ had provided the evidence for the existence of His Father. To end the debate, Jenna and I agreed to disagree, and the topic of religion rarely ventured into our conversations again.
However, there were certain points of religion on which Jenna and I agreed, most notably the Church's stance against homosexuality. As it turns out, Jenna is not "entirely straight," as she put it, and in truth, I'd have to agree with that sentiment about myself also. "Not entirely straight" seems a perfect way of saying "leaning towards bisexuality". The two of us agree that homosexuality should not be viewed as a sin and we are both outraged that gay marriage has not been legalised globally. We were ecstatic about the state of New York giving gay marriage the seal of approval and Jenna quoted Neil Armstrong: "One giant leap for mankind." I can't help but agree; we are in the hope that other states will follow and that the U.S.A. can lead the world into acceptance and equality, even if it may be slow progress. It may seem a naïve hope that equality for gay people will be a global occurrence, but once, the same thing was thought about equality for people with dark skin colours, and while there may still be racist undertones buried in the collective subconscious, people are no longer segregated because of their skin colour on a legal level. That acceptance too was a giant leap for mankind. But for now, I suppose we shall turn our focus to baby steps.
It feels good knowing that there is someone I can talk to about these kinds of issues because I know that should I dare to bring them up at home, my mother would most likely go into cardiac arrest hearing her good Christian daughter speaking so, even though we both know that I am no longer the "good Christian daughter"; that mantle belongs to Frannie, if anyone. And should such issues be brought up in the company of my school friends, while many would support it, their first instinct would be to categorise you as gay because you care about issues of homosexual equality, and if there's one thing I learnt about being at McKinley High School, it's that being gay is a stigma. I saw the bullying Kurt went through, I see the talks about Santana behind her back and I don't believe I could face having the entire school turn their back on me yet again.
"But maybe the best thing to do would be turning your back on the school. If you stand up for what you believe in, for who you are, it's not they who'll be abandoning you, but you who's showing them that you're better than they are because you're proud to be who you are. And trust me, once a couple of people are out and doing their own thing, more will come out too. You'll see - the number of people in the closet will astonish you, believe me," Jenna said when I told her about the attitude towards homosexuality at school. I agree, but I lack the courage do come out as "not entirely straight" and even should several people come out, there is no certainty that attitudes would change; look at Glee - there are 13 of us and we are still bullied. People just don't care; if you're different, they think they have a license then to torture you.
As for Jenna and I, while I may briefly toyed with the idea of she and I perhaps becoming something more than friends, I cannot say that the idea is plausible, simply because I do not feel that way about Jenna, and Jenna, as far as I am aware, does not have those feelings for me either. The idea appeared in the moments of despair after Finn broke up with me, but has since disappeared. The two of us are close friends though, and I suppose, should anyone ever ask me about a best friend, I would name Jenna. She is teaching me to be less afraid of being unconventional, and my thoughts currently lean towards shaking up the boat when I go back to school in the fall by taking a leaf out of Jenna's fashion style book; perhaps a semi Goth look, dark clothes, funky sunglasses to make me look as though I belong in the '60s, maybe multicoloured hair. I'm still considering, reader, but I think it would be a great way to shock people, and if there's one thing I learnt about self confidence, it's that shocking people by choice often lead to an increase of it. Needless to say, Jenna fully approves of the idea. She thinks I should push the bad ass image and get a tattoo as well, but I'm worried about going too far; there must be a limit after all.
I'm thinking pink hair. What do you think, reader? Pink hair?
A/N: So, an OC who's providing all sorts of new ideas for Quinn. What do you think?