Friends: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

me.”
    I also started to straddle Mama’s rules concerning boys. In tenth grade I got a new boyfriend, David, and we liked each other a lot. During this time my mother, who had always told me not to get pregnant, tried to be close to me. She started talking to me about men. I remember that she’d warn me, “The ones you don’t love will love you, and the ones you love won’t love you.” She also started talking about the first time I’d have sex.
    â€œAngela, I want to know. I want to be there,” she’d say to me.
    â€œReally, Ma—physically?”
    â€œNo, not physically. But I want to be there for you.”
    The morning after I lost my virginity I told my mother about it.
    â€œMa, I did it,” I said while we were at the breakfast table.
    â€œYou had sexual intercourse! With who, David?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhy? Why? ” she demanded. “Did he threaten to break up with you?”
    â€œ No, Mama!”
    â€œCome on, let’s go for a ride.”
    â€œMa, can I come?” D’nette asked.
    â€œNo, D’nette, you stay home,” my mother told my little sister.
    Then we drove around and she talked to me for what must have been seven or eight hours—until I was blue in the face. All that openness up front, then after it happened, “Oh, no!”
    After that I decided having sex was not worth braving my mother’s tirades. I thought, “Forget this. I’ll wait and have sex when I go to college!”
    In eleventh grade there was a little college boy who liked me. I’d tell my mother that I had to go to rehearsal for a play I was in. I’d go to rehearsal and do my four lines then my boyfriend would pick me up. We’d go back to his dorm room and start kissing, kissing and hugging and rubbing and kissing. Oh, I could kiss like crazy, but there was no way I was having sex! Each night it would be kiss, kiss, hug, hug, rub, rub and then, “Stop! Take me home.” This went on for night after night. The young man was nice. He wouldn’t push and he always took me home when I asked him to.
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    When I was in high school, I also participated in Upward Bound, an academic and cultural enrichment program for underprivileged kids. We didn’t see ourselves as underprivileged. In fact, in St. Pete’s we were the cool kids. David Davidson was captain of the football team and very smart. He wanted to be a lawyer. Kenny Leon had a mom and a stepdaddy and he was in the program. Today he’s a Broadway director. He directed the version of A Raisin in the Sun with P. Diddy in it. In Upward Bound, I got to meet kids from around the city and different high schools. We did African studies, little plays, read poetry,got tutored—that kind of thing. When I was fifteen, George Langhorne, the program’s director, informed me that he had handpicked and submitted me for a special program. I was being invited to attend the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans. It was supposed to be a great honor, and it was a total surprise! Mama and Miss Mattie got my wardrobe together, bought me a coat and sent me up to Washington, D.C. I lived in a fancy hotel room for a week with three white kids from around the country and around the world. I had never been away on my own, I had never stayed in a hotel and, other than going to North Carolina, I had never really gone anywhere. It was a rite of passage of sorts.
    The Presidential Classroom program was about government, government, government. “When there’s a war, inflation goes up, down or whatever….” “I have a question, Mr. Senator….” Political, political. Well, I didn’t have any questions. I was just sitting there thinking, What the heck are we talking about? This is boring. Are we gonna see some monuments? Then we’d go look at monuments. I took a lot of pictures. Later, I showed them to Mama, who has a way of describing