It's not my fault! Men couldn't control themselves around me, especially when the demon liquor loosened us up.

We finally learn about Lorna’s Sizzling Summer (and it wasn’t due to temperatures)…

Surprise 7: Until my husband-to-be dumped me, I only had “relations” with one male. I may have been underage when I lost my virginity, but at least I was monogamous. My Catholic upbringing wasn’t a total waste.

See? I wasn't the only lost lamb in the flock...

I was alone and adrift, having always defined myself relative to someone else–never as my own person. I was a sentence fragment: to the untrained eye, a noun able to stand alone; but to the trained eye,  obviously in need of a strong (masculine) verb to complete me.

Don't give up on me just because I'm complicated...or compound.

Trying to find Mr. Hope-You’re-Right was hard. I lived in a small town. My self-esteem was in the toilet. I trusted Mr. Vodka more than anyone else in my life. It was time for something new: one-night-stands (ONS). Why are they called “stands?” I don’t recall a whole lot of standing…

I didn't say it was pretty, just that it was new to me...And why didn't he wait around until I woke up?

My first ONS was with the one guy on the Research Assistant Team. The four  of us went out after one Happy Hour blitzkrieg and ended up in the only gay bar in town. The two other females, B and MA, were lesbians, but I had no idea. I just thought they really liked each other. We “girls” danced together to a DJ during the fast dances, but when they danced the first slow dance together, I finally caught on. I really regretted going camping with them the week before and our skinny-dipping adventure.

I should've listened to my gut and not exposed by butt...

I turned to M (the male in our group) to see if he wanted to dance. A man in the bar was hitting on him. I was beginning to wonder if I knew anything about my co-workers who I considered friends. M gave me the help-get-me-outta-here look. I guess it wasn’t a case of mutual attraction, after all. We left the bar, leaving B and MA to their public gyrations. My apartment was just around the corner.  He asked me if I wanted to “do it” with him. I think he needed to prove he was still heterosexual. I obliged because I was his friend and I had nothing better to do. We only “did it” once, pretending like we didn’t remember anything about the bar or the “doing of it.” At least I pretended.

M wanted to be this guy. M wasn't this guy. That much, I remember.

My second and last ONS was with a guy I call “Philadelphia” because he was wearing a “Philidelphia” baseball cap. I was with some friends in a bar and he came in: tall, blonde, cute and ripped. We noticed each other. Again, my apartment was conveniently nearby. Location, location, location. He left the next morning promising to call. I’m sure he called someone. If he had called me, I wouldn’t have known it was him because I failed to catch his name.

"So, when you call me, what name will you be using?"

Another thing I failed to catch were any STDs. I think they were invented back then. Maybe my blood was sterilized from the alcohol, thus discouraging any viral shenanigans.

Surprise 8: Summer ended. I was the only Research Assistant asked to stay on the project (probably because the others all came in with hangovers every morning). I also enrolled in Graduate School for a Master’s Degree in Counseling. A life plan was forming: I would work as a researcher whiling learning to become a helper of human strays. Perfect! I could empathize with my clients.

Probably not exactly what my professors had in mind...

But would Lorna stop drinking to achieve her goals?