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“Not happenin’,” My dad tells me.
I just explained to Dad the reasons why I want to go to the school dance and why he should let me.
Reason #1: He can trust me
Reason #2: I’ve been very responsible minus the whole nose piercing thing, but I still don’t think that’s a big deal.
Reason #3: I should be allowed to go because he went to dances when he was my age and so did Mama.
But my reasons fall on deaf ears. Dad’s not having it.
“Why can’t I go?” I ask him.
I’ve dared to challenge my father and he stares at me with a blank expression. I swear I don’t think anyone has a father as strict as mine. I’m over all these rules that I’ve never questioned. Why can’t I go to the dance? What’s the point of not letting me have my phone when I really only have three good friends that I talk to on a regular basis?
I’ve asked my dad both these questions and he didn’t have a valid reason for the phone so he gave it back. “I know what these young boys think they can get away with at dances,” he says.
“What can they get away with?” I ask honestly because I don’t know.
He fidgets and rubs his head. “Well, for starters, I know that the dance starts at seven and this boy-Terrence-”
“Trevor, Dad. His name is Trevor,” I correct him.
“Well whoever, he’s already starting off all wrong here, by trying to pick you up an hour late. Second, there’s the music that they play. It’ll influence you, it’ll make you feel things and if not you, then him and he’ll try to...um...he’ll ...How old is this guy?”
I ignore his question because it’s irrelevant if he’s not going to let me attend.
Dad seems very uneasy. He shakes his head. “Look, you just can’t go, alright?”
No, it’s not alright. And that type of response is not good enough for me. Why deny me the part of high school that is high school?
“Did you go to dances?”
He smooths his hand around his goatee. His silence tells me everything. I already knew the answer anyway.
Dad sits on my bed and takes a very deep breath. “Are you...are you sexually active?”
Where did that come from? How did we get from going to a dance to sex? Now I’m the one who’s uncomfortable. I squeeze my hands between my knees.
“No. Never even had a boyfriend so definitely not. What does that have to do with this dance?”
“Sometimes guys think it’s an expectation at the end of the night.”
“But I don’t have that expectation for myself. I just wanna dance. I’m not trying to get busy.”
There will come a time where I will want to have sex, but that’s not the case right now. My parents had given me the bare minimum on the birds and the bees talk, but now I wish they had told me more.
In fifth grade, there was “the talk” at school about what changes would start happening to our bodies. Both my parents signed off to let me go. It was girls and boys combined so that the guys would know what we go through and the girls would know what the guys go through. Dad said that was different from how he grew up; they used to separate the boys and girls.
In middle school, there was Health Science as that talked about the male and female reproductive system. But even with that, there was nothing about the act of sex or what happens when you want to have sex with someone or someone wants to have sex with you. I knew about sexual assault, rape, stds, pregnancy prevention, condoms, birth control, and abstinence. But what about the basics? What about feelings and urges?
I knew plenty of girls who were having sex and others who started in middle school. They’d talk about it after class or in the locker room. It’s how I know most of what I do know.
Jessa was a virgin as far as I knew, and Xavier too—but he’d never confess that to anyone other than within our friend circle. JJ was definitely a virgin and had made it clear that he’d remain one until he met his wife, or married his wife rather. If there were other virgins at our school, I didn’t know about them because that’s not something anyone would openly admit.
“You may not be trying to get busy but guys are," Dad tells me.
“Not all guys are the same,” I interject.
“True. Not all guys, but the majority of them. And there are ways that...” Dad keeps trailing off and I don’t understand. “I can’t do this,” he mumbles to himself. He walks out of my room, shutting the door behind him.
I go back to my work convinced that I’m going to this dance. Dad hadn’t given me any good reason to believe that I shouldn’t go.