When I hear The Rolling Stones’ song, Beast of Burden, I think of my first love and a particular night we shared when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. Fall weather permitting, our Catholic high school always had an outdoor bush party at Camp Olalondo after the weekly Friday night football game. My boyfriend was the quarterback and had played in the game that day. I didn’t know if he was going to the party at Camp Olalondo this particular Friday night, but I guessed that he was. I caught a ride with my friend and her boyfriend – her guy went to a different high school. I was hurt that my boyfriend had not asked me if I wanted to go to Camp Olalondo with him, or that he hadn’t communicated with me that he was going to the outdoor party. If he was there, it would be obvious to me that he didn’t want me with him.

When I got to the party, and saw that he was indeed there, I was crushed. As soon as he saw me by the bonfire, my boyfriend was right by my side. He practically ran to me. He was marking his territory to make certain that I didn’t go off with anyone else. I gave him the cold shoulder for a time, but I couldn’t shake him and I could never resist his charms. He could always make me laugh – at myself more often than not – and I would be putty in his hands. As Marilyn Monroe once said, “If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything.”

Once he broke through my glacial wall that night, he grabbed my hand and led me into the woods where we could be alone. He lay me down on a bed of peaty autumn leaves scattered over cold, packed, dry earth before he climbed on top of me. We kissed until our lips were numb and chaffed. He pushed my legs apart with his knee, and crawled between my slender thighs. My tight blue jeans rode slightly up my legs. I wore white sockettes with a pink pompom on the back. He reached down and grabbed my bare ankle, which was exposed to the cool night air. Millions of stars brightly shone in the clear night sky above his head and shoulders. Lying in his arms, covered by his warm body and moved by his deep kisses, I heard the voices of our school friends, their laughter ringing above the rock music blasting from the ghetto blaster as the party continued to rage around the bonfire in the distance. I smelled the autumn leaves and burning wood as I made myself small and snug in his strong arms. We told each other that we loved one another and kissed some more.

I did love that boy. I loved him more than I loved myself and my own life. I never asked him why he went to the party without me. I was too afraid of the truth. He wanted to be free to be with other girls who would have sex with him – the quarterback – since I wouldn’t go all the way. He wanted a girl who wasn’t as guarded as I. I wanted to be with him and wanted no other girl to touch him, but my Catholic school girl guilt wouldn’t allow me to have sex outside of marriage.

When it was time to go home, he and I walked hand in hand along the dark path for the twenty minute hike back to his car. The group always hiked deep into the woods at Camp Olalondo to make our bonfire to evade potential police raids. I broke away from my boyfriend and hid from him perched on a small mound around a dim bend. When he rounded the corner, I jumped on his back and tackled him to the earth. He laughed loud. I loved when I made him laugh, especially like that. I can still hear his laugh from that night.

“You’re not so tough to take down, Quarterback,” I laughed.

“You hosebag!” he teased.

It hurt to be called ‘hosebag’, especially by him. I wasn’t a hosebag. I was chaste. I didn’t tell him that I was hurt by his name calling just as I hadn’t verbalized to him that I was hurt that he had come to the Friday night party without me. I had no voice with boys that I liked and wanted to like me. Instead, we laughed hysterically, lying on the cool earth together, holding one another until he got up and pulled me to my feet. He held me tight and kissed me so passionately that I felt my knees buckle as I swooned in his arms. His eyes were locked on mine with such intensity that it was as though he could see into my soul, and I looked away feeling naked before his gaze. Then he grabbed my hand, turned, and pulled me behind him as we continued to walk toward his car. I loved being led by him. I would have followed him anywhere.

Once we were in the clearing, I saw his older sister standing next to his orange Datsun waiting for him to unlock the car door for her. “About time!” she shouted at us. I put my head down and smiled widely. I loved being his girl and I loved being alone with him and I loved it when people intimated that he and I had been off together chasing the butterflies. They’d be right. We always were.

His sister had already graduated from our high school, but for some reason she felt compelled to come to a high school party with her baby brother. I suddenly realized that he hadn’t brought me with him that night because he had brought his sister. That is what I told myself anyway. I told her to sit up front with him and I sat behind him.

As we drove home, I stretched my left leg and let it rest next to his driver’s seat. I wanted some part of me next to him. I desired to be near him always. Whenever we were alone in his car, and I was seated beside him, we held hands and kissed all the way to wherever we were headed. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. Sensing that my leg was peeking out from the backseat, he immediately reached down and grasped my bare ankle again. Beast of Burden played on his car stereo.

I’ll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad but it’s a-hurting
All I want for you to make love to me
I’ll never be your beast of burden
I’ve walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All I want is for you to make love to me

Am I hard enough?
Am I rough enough?
Am I rich enough?
I’m not too blind to see (Am I enough for you?)

He caressed my leg with his thumb and fingers, tenderly tracing the line of my bones and flesh. We wanted each other so desperately.

I’ll never be your beast of burden
So let’s go home and draw the curtains
Music on the radio
Come on baby make sweet love to me

Am I hard enough?
Am I rough enough?
Am I rich enough?
I’m not too blind to see (Am I good enough for you? I don’t feel good enough for you.)

The sexual tension between us was palpable and it could have been cut with a knife.

Oh, little sister
Pretty, pretty, pretty girls
Ooh, you’re a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl
Pretty, pretty, such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl
Come on, baby, please, please, please

I’ll tell ya
You can put me out
On the street
Put me out
With no shoes on my feet
But put me out, put me out
Put me out of misery, yeah

(Will you put me out of my misery and not leave me behind again and just love me for a lifetime?)

All your sickness, I can suck it up
Throw it all at me
I can shrug it off
There’s one thing, baby
I don’t understand
You keep on telling me
I ain’t your kind of man

Ain’t I rough enough? Ooh, honey
Ain’t I tough enough?
Ain’t I rich enough? In love enough?
Ooh, please. (You’re all I want. You’re everything to me).

I’ll never be your beast of burden
I’ll never be your beast of burden
Never, never, never, never, never, never, never be

I’ll never be your beast of burden
I’ve walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All I want is you to make love to me 
Yeah

I don’t need no beast of burden
I need no fussing
I need no nursing
Never, never, never, never, never, never, never be (Will we last a lifetime? Will we be together forever?)

My heart pounded in my chest as I thought of kissing him and being in his arms for my lifetime. It’s all I wanted.

He pulled into my driveway and parked his car. He stepped out of the vehicle and collapsed the driver’s seat forward to let me out of the back. I wasn’t sure that he would kiss me goodnight in front of his big sister, but he grabbed me and kissed me passionately. My back was against his car and he pressed his body into mine, holding me there. We again told one another that we loved each other before he released me from his embrace and I went bounding into my house as if on a cloud.

Being his girl felt like a wonderful dream from which I never wanted to wake. I never wanted to leave him. I only breathed air when I was with him. He was life to a broken, lonely girl who felt unloved, burdensome and worthless without the warmth of his masculine attention. Before him, I had never been told by anyone that I was lovable or that I was lovely. When he said to me, ‘I love you’, especially the first time he said those words to me, it shocked me alive like a defibrillator to my heart. When he said to me, ‘You’re beautiful’, it was the only time that I had ever been told that by another human being. I had overheard aunts and uncles say of me to my parents, ‘She is so beautiful’ but it had never been said to me. His love and verbal expressions of the affection he felt for me were the only demonstrations of love I ever had access to in my life, which is why it was so difficult to let him go.