Voncile Georgette James was a pretty girl of 17 years, with a great body despite a few extra pounds. She was short at only 5'3", had long auburn hair, and hazel eyes. She, like myself, was still a virgin and had not ever been in a very serious relationship before. Her parents treated her about the same as mine treated me, so she stayed grounded for one excuse or another just about all the time. On the week of her 18th birthday, we were going on a double date to see a movie with a couple of her friends. As always, her parents told her she couldn't go. She informed them that she was of legal age now and that they couldn't hold her down anymore, and they said that if she went out with me that night she had better take all her belongings because she wouldn't be welcome back there anymore. Voncile asked me what we should do, and I told her to pack everything into my truck and she could move in with me at my parents' house. I had no idea that my parents would let me move her in, but I felt sorry for Voncile because I saw her going through the same hell that I did with my parents. I took the chance.

By 1997, I had finally been allowed to get a driver's license and had used it and my little Ford Ranger pickup to become quite the popular guy. I had a large circle of friends and went out just about every night to a different party or bar or road trip or whatever I could do to get away from my parents.

I met a girl named Mindy Moore (no relation to Dawn from years before) and we were dating rather casually. Mindy was 8 years older than me and had 2 kids, but she made me feel grown upand that was a great feeling after the childhood I'd had. She and I experimented with just about every recreational drug known to man together, and made just about every party and get-drunk around town.

After about 6 months, Mindy informed me that her ex-boyfriend was getting out of jail and that she intended to hook back up with him when he did. It wasn't too much of a problem for me because I had learned by that time not to get too attached to any woman, because they always seemed to shit on me when I least expected it. Mindy did, however, do me the favor of introducing me to her sister Voncile so that I wouldn't be lonely in her absence.

There were several useless years of riding motorcycles and working on them and wandering around in the woods all by myself because I didn't like anyone I was around, and then I guess one could say that my life started moving forward again.

I had started going to a little church outside of Florence because it was the only form of exposure to the outside world that my mother deemed safe. Soon after I began going there, I met a girl named Dawn Moore. She was absolutely beautiful, a year younger than me, and seemed to take an interest in me. It wasn't long before she and I were spending most of our time together. As it turned out, her interest in me was limited to being friends rather than a dating-type relationship, but that was fine with me because even though our relationship wasn't what I wanted it to be, I did enjoy her company very much and it was nice to have a pretty girl pay attention to me after having grown up so completely isolated.

As was always the case, as soon as my mother realized that I had found companionship outside the prison she had kept me in all my life, she began doing everything she could to end my relationship with Dawn. She tryed telling me that Dawn was a bad person and that I should stop spending time with her before I, too, became a bad person. When that didn't work, she tried telling me that Dawn was sleeping with every boy in town, but I didn't let it bother me because I had given up on a romantic relationship with her long before that time. Mother tried everything she knew in her little pea brain to stop me from interacting with anyone outside our house, but I stood up to her and broke out of the prison she had locked me in at birth. Time passed and before I knew it Dawn had connected me with quite a few new friends around town. Maybe they weren't altar boys and girls, but they aere good people for the most part, and I finally felt like a normal kid for the first time in my life at about age 16. About that same time, I met Jasmin Balback. Everybody called her JJ, and she was pretty cute, with blonde hair and a pretty nice figure. By now I had some idea how the world was supposed to work, so I played my cards right and landed my first real girlfriend.

JJ and I had been together for about a month before I found out that she had been messing around with another friend of mine, Chris Cowan. Chris was a pretty good friend who had been trying to get with JJ at the same time I was, and saw his "borrowing her" as fair play. I should have just told her to get lost, but I was so fascinated by the fact that a girl actually liked spending time with me and kissing me and all those other things that I endured it for another 3 months before I found another, better prospect and told JJ to get bent.

For the next year or two I bounced from one loser slut girlfriend to the next, being glad just to know that a girl was interested in me for any reason (even if it was just money, which I kept plenty of in those days due to my motorcycle restoration gig).

So we came back to Texas in summer of 1984, and my parents decided to build a house outside a small town called Liberty Hill. While the house was being built, we lived in our motorhome in my aunt Janet's back yard. It was ok I guess, but I hated Janet for all I was worth. I don't know what it was about her, but she just really pissed me off every time I saw her.

Pretty soon, our new house was ready to be moved into, and the next chapter of my life was beginning.

A year or two later, Mom had her 2nd heart attack, and that's when everything started going to shit. She was in the hospital for quite a while, and when she got out, things were never really the same again. Dad had been laid off from his job and so we didn't have any medical insurance for all the hospital bills, and we were basically the poorest of the poor people until finally we had our house repossessed in April 1988.

Things started looking a little better when we were able to find a repo house outside another small town called Florence. It wasn't much, and it was nasty and needed to be remodeled, but it was all we could afford. I consider this to be the place I grew up because all my significant memories were here.

The Lesters were our wealthy neighbors to the east, and the Handsels were the neighbors to0 the west. Wesley Handsel would pay me $4.00 an hour to do truly needless work just because he was a good man and wanted me to be able to have some spending money. The Lesters had a daughter named Nancy who I took a liking to. She wasn't worth the time it took to speak to her by my adult standards, but at the time, for a fat kid who was homeschooled all his life, she was the best thing going.