There comes a moment in every life when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness. These decisions are made in an instant, but with repercussions that last a lifetime. My troubles began the day I chose the darkness —the day I chose Jack.

Men tend to be power-driven. They measure their lives by their accomplishments. Women are more relationship-driven. They tend to define episodes of their lives by the men they are with. That is, until they learn better. Jack was my learning lesson.

At age sixteen, I finally grew the breasts and pubic hair I had been praying for since sixth grade. It was as if they just appeared overnight. And suddenly I transformed from a homely wallflower to a full-bodied woman who turned heads. It was every father’s nightmare.

“Oh my God, you are your mother,” my father said to me one morning, shaking his head in disbelief. “You look just like your mother.”

As I became comfortable with my breasts, my closet changed too. The stonewashed jeans became tighter; the Flashdance shirts became see-through; the black-and-white-spotted cowboy boots gave way to high-heeled black go-go boots; the T-shirts now stopped at the midriff; and the boxer shorts were no longer something to sleep in. I wore them out of the house, rolled up my thighs as high as possible. I didn’t have any female friends who were intelligent, so there was no one to tell me that I looked like a hoochie mama. That is, a hoochie mama with braces.

When I walked down the Vegas strip, I loved watching men gasp and turn their heads, especially when they were walking arm-in-arm with their wives. I loved the attention. But whenever anyone tried to talk to me, I freaked out. I didn’t know how to interact. I couldn’t even look them in the eye. If somebody complimented me or asked a question, I had no idea how to respond. I would just say that I had to go to the bathroom and escape as soon as I could.

One of my favorite outfits was a tight red cut-off top, Daisy Duke jeans, and black boots with ridiculous chains wrapped around the bottom. I was trying to look like Bobbie Brown from Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” video. When I left the house like that to go to a Little Caesar concert, my dad didn’t even raise an eyebrow. I was always secretly jealous of my friends, who had to change in the car because their fathers didn’t want their baby girls leaving the house dressed like a slut. Since I was four, my father had been letting me run wild in the streets, but the freedom had come with a price: security.

My friend Jennifer was still in her sweatpants and sweatshirt when I jumped into her car. As she changed, I drove to the show, which was the finale to a weekend-long biker rally called the Laughlin River Run. We had to look hot: We were both in love with the lead singer of Little Caesar and wanted him to notice us.

He didn’t.

But the show blew my mind, almost as much as the audience did. We were surrounded by chrome, ink, and facial hair. Everyone we met opened their beer coolers to us, offered us rides on the back of their bikes, and unsuccessfully tried to talk us into smoking their foul crank.

Afterward, some bikers invited us to an after-party at The Rabbit Hole, the most respected tattoo parlor in north Las Vegas. There were Hell’s Angels, Satan’s Disciples, and Outlaws, not to mention the guys from Little Caesar. And for some reason, I wasn’t scared, though I probably should have been. I didn’t talk much, as usual. I just watched, and noticed how all these psychotic guys called their girlfriends “old ladies” and treated them like farm animals. I promised myself that I would never allow a man to take me for granted like that. Sadly, that promise didn’t last very long.

After the festivities, I came home and told my brother, “I want to get a tattoo.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I told him.

So the following Saturday, he drove me back to The Rabbit Hole with his girlfriend, Megan —a mousy, heavyset twenty-year-old brunette who for some reason looked up to me, even though I knew nothing about life or how to move through it. As soon as we walked in, I saw a big sign over the counter: MUST BE 18 OR OVER. I ignored it and pulled my lips taut over my teeth, so that my braces wouldn’t show.

A door behind the counter opened and out walked a slim, well-pierced, five-foot-ten-inch man with a ghostly pale complexion, spiky chestnut hair, and a Satanic-looking goatee. Sleeves of tattoos, mostly of Chinese characters and tribal patterns, ran up his arms and spiraled around his neck. He looked like trouble. I recognized him from the party because I’d met him and his girlfriend there.

“What do you want?” he asked me.

I looked up at the wall and saw two little overlapping red hearts. I bent forward over the counter, trying to show my breasts, hoping that if I worked it a little he wouldn’t question my age. “I want to get those hearts done,” I told him as coquettishly as I could manage with my lips curled over my teeth.

“Where?” he asked.

I needed to put it someplace where my father couldn’t see it. I’m not sure whether I was scared that he would react to it or, even worse, that he wouldn’t. “On my butt cheek?” I replied nervously.

“No problem,” he said. “Follow me.”

I was awestruck: I didn’t expect it to be that easy. My brother’s unoriginal girlfriend decided on the spot that she wanted to get the hearts too and followed us back.

“You are so cute,” the tattoo artist said as he pulled a single-tipped needle out of the autoclave. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” I lied.

His name was Jack and he was twenty-five. He hit on me throughout the whole affair. I was so shy, and nervous about being tattooed, that I hardly responded.

“Do you want to hang out?” he asked when he was through. “There’s a cool lounge upstairs, and we can listen to some music.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I have to go home. But it was nice meeting you.”

“Well, how about you give me your phone number, so we can hang out sometime?” he persisted.

I declined again. I thought of myself as a sweet, innocent, traditional girl back then. In many ways, I still think of myself that way. And a sweet girl such as myself would never hang out alone with a beautiful tattooed boy she had just met. But she wanted to. In fact, she wanted to so badly that she decided to get another tattoo.

I convinced myself that the hearts weren’t enough. They were too ordinary. They conveyed nothing other than the whim of a teeny-bopper who pointed to the first girly image she saw on a tattoo-shop wall. But if the hearts had a crack through them, that would be cool. And if the word “heartbreaker” were inked over the broken hearts, that would be even cooler. And if that rock-and-roll-looking boy from the tattoo shop invited me upstairs again afterward, that would be the coolest. This time I wouldn’t be caught by surprise. This time I would say yes.

Two weeks later, I returned to his shop —alone. When I walked through the glass door, his face lit up. I could tell that he had thought about me, but hadn’t expected to see me again. This allowed me to rationalize that he didn’t hit on every single girl who came in for a tattoo. Just some of them. This time, the experience of getting a tattoo wasn’t like the last one, or any one I’ve had since. Every time he bent over me to apply the transfer or the ink, he’d stroke my leg or brush against my inner thigh. If he had done it the first time I was there, I would have thought he was a creep. But this time, all I could think was, “Right on!”

After he finished, he invited me upstairs for a drink again. My plan was to say yes right away, but I hesitated. I was scared. After all, he had no idea I was only sixteen. When he finally coaxed me upstairs, we sat on the couch and talked about our lives. His was so different from mine —so dangerous, so free, and so sad.

Suddenly, out of the blue, he said, “You have beautiful boobs.”

They were still growing in, and I was really proud of them.

“Why don’t you show them to me?” he asked.

And like an idiot, I did. I didn’t even hesitate. I put my hands under my yellow top, which stopped just below my breasts anyway, and lifted it up as I arched my back like some college girl in a spring break video.

His jaw dropped open. For the first time all night, he didn’t know what to say. That lasted about three seconds.

“Is there anything wrong with you?” he stammered.

We’d broken the barrier: there was now officially a romantic spark between us.

On his left forearm was a row of Chinese ideograms. “Look,” he said, gesturing to one of the characters and then looking at me with his soft, brown eyes. “It looks like a ‘J.’ I’m going to start telling everyone this is your name.”

It’s easy to see now that he used that line on every woman, but I fell for it and thought it was so romantic. He was working me, and it worked.

“What about your girlfriend?” I asked.

“It’s taken care of,” he said.

There it was: a big neon warning sign flashing right in my eyes. But I was already infatuated and oblivious. Most of the guys I had gone out with before were immature high-school brats. Jack was the exact opposite. He was strong, powerful, successful, and in control. I was searching so desperately for someone to take care of me. I wanted to feel safe and that afternoon I felt safe.

But what really got me is a trait that every girl falls for: he was emotionally closed off. And I thought I could fix him. I thought that I could break through the tough facade and find the real Jack, the sensitive man-child hiding behind all those tattoos. Precisely because he never opened up about anything emotional or sensitive, I thought he was the most emotional and sensitive man in the world. And I thought that I —and only I— could break through the walls he put up and turn him into the bad-boy lover man I’d always dreamed of. How ridiculous.

Now I know that if you’re dating somebody to improve him, you’re not really in a love relationship. You’re just being a nurse. The simple truth, and the hardest thing most women ever learn, is that what you see is what you get.

As for Jack, it was no secret why he loved me. He wanted me in the shop all the time, and I willingly obliged, driving forty-five minutes from Mount Charleston every day to see him. He liked showing me off to his friends, who were all even older than he was, and I enjoyed that he enjoyed it. I was the new girl on the block. And I was slowly becoming completely dependent on him. However, I never spent the night there —I had a midnight curfew.

After a few weeks of dating, Jack told me that he was having a party on a boat he had rented. He said it would be good times. There would be lots of alcohol, cool girls to meet, and he would even pick me up in Mount Charleston and drive me there. I told him I could go, as long as I was home by curfew.

If I could look back on my life and change one thing, it would be saying yes to that boat trip. It was the worst mistake I have ever made —and not just because I missed my curfew. If only it had been that painless.