But then he stood and took off his own clothing—not with care or grace, but quickly, sloppily, his undershirt catching on his nose and ears, the cuffs of his jeans clutching his ankles, so that he’d had to bend down and tug them off. And his body—the mat of gray curls on his breastbone, his penis, which was large and erect and pointed right at her—terrified Tanya. He walked toward her and she knew that this had gone too far.
“Your body,” he said, reaching into her bra to touch her tiny breast. And though she realized it was a compliment, she was flooded with shame.
He seemed to realize that she had no idea what to do and he led her to the bed and asked her to take off the rest.
And that was what she’d come all the way there to do—wasn’t it? It didn’t seem right or fair, or even possible, to say no at that point. It was already too late, Nessa out on the porch waiting for her, Tanya’s shirt and shorts in a pile on the other side of the room.
So Tanya pulled off her bra and underwear and lay down on his bed. She closed her eyes and waited. Waited for it to start—for him to do whatever it was men did to women when they had sex with them; she didn’t know. All she’d ever done was kiss.
But he didn’t climb on top of her, or even touch her at all, and when she opened her eyes, he was staring at her.
“Have you ever given a blow job?” he asked, the same polite way he’d asked them if they’d found his house alright.
She shook her head no.
“Here.” He took her hand then, pulling her up. “I’ll show you how.” He arranged her so that she was on her knees on the floor and he was sitting on the bed, facing her.
“It’s just like kissing,” he said, and then he took her face in his hands and pulled her toward his crotch.
“Open your mouth a little more,” he said. She obeyed, tears burning in her sinuses, threatening to break through at any moment.
And then it was in her mouth.
“Curl your lips over your teeth,” he instructed. “There you go. Good girl.” He started off slow, but after a minute he began thrusting her face up and down with so much force that his penis jabbed the back of her throat and, without warning, she vomited and started, finally, to cry.
She looked up at him, relieved that she’d finally broken, relieved to finally be done. But either he didn’t register the vomit or he didn’t care. He tightened his grip on the sides of Tanya’s head and continued to pump himself in and out of her mouth, the expression on his face taut and constipated. There was the taste of her vomit and the taste of him, and Tanya began having trouble breathing. She closed her eyes and focused on inhaling through her nose. That was when she stopped being able to remember very much.
She knows that eventually he pulled her up on the bed, that he forced his fingers inside her. Then climbed on top of her. When he penetrated her, she yelled out in pain, the first real noise she’d made the entire time, and he seemed surprised. “I’ll go softer,” he said, though softer hadn’t hurt any less.
At the end he gave her money—five twenty-dollar bills, just like they’d asked for in the ad, and an extra ten, he told her, for a cab.
She dressed quickly and ran downstairs, almost tripping and falling, she was so eager to find Nessa, to throw herself into her older sister’s arms. But when she’d come face-to-face with Nessa on the front porch of Dan’s house, her sister’s face streaked with tears, all of a sudden Tanya closed up. That was the only way she could think to describe that moment. She simply closed up; shut down. She no longer felt the urge to cry, and when Nessa tried to touch her and ask her questions, Tanya recoiled.
* * *
—
BACK AT HOME she saw that she’d bled through her underwear and a few days later her vagina hurt so badly, burned with such intensity every time she tried to pee, that she became convinced that Dan must have broken her in some fundamental, unfixable way.
When she finally went to the doctor one excruciating week later, the doctor prescribed antibiotics for a urinary tract infection.
“You’re not sexually active, Tanya, are you?” her pediatrician had asked after the urine test had come back, and she’d shaken her head so vehemently that Dr. Essinger had laughed and patted her knee: “I didn’t think so.”
* * *
—
TANYA MET DYLAN STARR at a party shortly after. She already knew who he was. Everyone did. Dylan Starr was the captain of the lacrosse team. He was eighteen. He had bright blue eyes, a car, and a reputation for “going down” on girls. This phrase, once mysterious to Tanya, now triggered in her a sort of baffling comprehension.
When Tanya caught Dylan looking at her from across the room, she felt that surge of power she’d experienced at Dan’s. She locked eyes with Dylan, smiled right at him, and then turned back to the girl she was talking to, knowing that he would find her later.
He did. “Tanya, right?” he said.
“Mm-hm.”
“You play beer pong?”
“A little. Do you?”
“I dabble.” He smiled. “I’m up next, want to be my partner?”
Tanya followed Dylan to the Ping-Pong table where cups of beer were arranged in pyramids on either end. When Tanya got the ball in a cup on her first try, Dylan whooped, giving her a high five before pointing tauntingly at the boys at the other end of the table. She was aware of people watching her—watching them—and it satisfied her. There she was, at the center of everything.
When Dylan missed two shots in a row, Tanya turned to him and said, “Guess lacrosse doesn’t really translate to beer pong, huh?” and this made him laugh.
They kissed later that night in Dylan’s car, Tanya straddling him in the backseat.
“Where’d you come from?” Dylan murmured.
“Ninth grade,” she answered.
“You’re a frosh?”
“You knew that,” Tanya said.
“I didn’t.”
“Well, I am.”
He bit his lip and looked at her, his blue eyes soft and drunk. “You ever given head?”
“Have you?” she asked.
He laughed. “I like you.”
“You don’t know me,” she said, but she tightened her legs around him and dug her fingernails into his back.
* * *
—
SHE STARTED HANGING out with Dylan and his friends after school and on weekends. Her new social life made it so she could avoid facing her sister and mother at home, which was good, because she found she could barely stand being in the same room with either of them.
Her mother’s life revolved, pitifully, around Jesse. It had for years, but it was only then that Tanya was able to articulate to herself why this bothered her, and it had to do with that hunger. She resolved never to need a man the way her mother did, and never to compromise her dignity for one, the way Nessa had wanted to—and the way Tanya had that night with Dan.
* * *
—
TANYA LIKED DYLAN. She liked the way it felt to walk through the hallways with him. She liked his confidence and his easy laugh, especially when he laughed at something she said, which was often. She liked watching his lacrosse games, how skilled and serious he was out on the field. She liked the way other girls looked at him—longingly—and the way they looked at her—with admiration.
She hated having sex with him, though. She did it partly because he wanted it, but also because she was convinced that if she had enough sex—normal sex, fun sex—the nightmare at Dan’s house might eventually go away.
But the sex was not fun, and Dylan wanted to have it all the time. Usually they had it at his house. His parents were never home, and when they were, they’d have it in the back of his car or sometimes extremely quietly in his bedroom. They always had it the same way: Dylan on top and Tanya lying on her back, her legs curled around his waist. Sometimes he lifted
her legs, propping them up against his shoulders, and sometimes she let him go down on her, though this made her uncomfortable. When he asked her to return the favor, she simply said no, and he didn’t push.
He was always asking her if she had come, if she was close to coming, and what did she want him to do in order to make her come. His questions annoyed her. She could not be any further away from having an orgasm, but she knew she couldn’t tell him this.
His insistence on making her come started to become a problem. He told her he wanted to slow down, to figure it out, to experiment. So eventually she began to lie. Within the first few minutes of sex she’d fake it, and then, relieved and proud, Dylan would kiss her, go at it for another forty-five seconds before finishing himself and collapsing on top of her. Then they could be done with sex for the day and move on to something else.
Tanya was fifteen by then—still under the age of consent in Massachusetts. From an outsider’s point of view, the power dynamics were straightforward. Dylan was a senior; he was popular; he was male; he was the more experienced of the two. If an identical situation appeared on her desk at the DA’s office, the verdict would be clear. Statutory rape, no question.
Tanya, however, did not feel taken advantage of. If anything, she felt she was taking advantage of Dylan. Dylan worshipped Tanya. He couldn’t get enough of her. She liked him fine—she was attracted to him. But she didn’t worship him and she certainly didn’t love him. When he broke up with her during the fall of his freshman year of college, she didn’t cry or even feel particularly sad. It came as no surprise to her.
* * *
—
SHE STILL HADN’T TOLD anybody about what had happened, though she thought about it every day. It was there in the front of her mind when she went to sleep, and there first thing when she woke up. Sometimes she’d be sitting in class and, without warning, a moment from the night would flash before her like a movie: Dan, naked, walking toward her. The saggy insides of Dan’s thighs, the snarl of his pubic hair. The images themselves embarrassed her, consumed her; but the fact that she’d sought him out, that she’d felt proud—excited—when he chose her, wrecked Tanya. Nobody could ever know, she decided.
Meanwhile, Nessa had grown more sullen than ever, sleeping and eating in excess, looking at Tanya from across the room with sad, woeful eyes, practically daring Tanya to yell at her. Tanya didn’t hate her sister, but she couldn’t bear to be around her. It wasn’t until Nessa left home after graduation to go on a road trip with her boyfriend that the feelings from that night with Dan began to fade a little. Dylan had broken up with her by then, and she had stopped hanging out with the popular crowd as much. She was more interested in the classes she was taking, especially an elective called Law and Civics, and teachers had started paying her more attention. She’d always gotten As, but it wasn’t until her junior year that she began thinking of herself as smart. One day her Law and Civics teacher, Ms. Lowe, asked her where she was planning on applying for college.
“I have no idea,” Tanya admitted. Her father had started to ask her this question, too, but each time he’d brought it up, it bothered her. He seemed desperate for Tanya to succeed, now that Nessa was off the grid.
The question felt different, though, coming from Ms. Lowe. Like validation, rather than something about her father’s ego.
“You should start thinking about it,” her teacher said to Tanya. “If you put your mind to it, you’ll have a lot of options. And you know I’ll write a letter of recommendation for you, right?”
“You will?” Tanya asked.
“Of course. You’re one of my best students, Tanya.”
“Where did you go?” Tanya asked.
“Smith,” Ms. Lowe said. “It’s a small liberal arts school in Northampton. All women.” Her teacher smiled. “I know that’s not always very appealing to some girls, but you work around it. It’s never that hard to find boys, if you want to.”
During her senior year Tanya applied to Smith early decision and she got in with a full merit scholarship.
College was a relief. It was good to be out of the house, away from her mother and Jesse, and surrounded by new people. The only men she came into contact with were professors and the occasional Hampshire or Amherst or UMass boy who came to campus to take a class. She rarely went to the parties at UMass on the weekends with the other girls in her dorm, particularly the straight ones who were looking to hook up.
She made it through her entire four years at Smith without having sex once. She thought about sex. In fact, she thought about it a lot. She wondered if she might be gay, and she experimented a few times, first drunkenly with a girl from her dorm named Emma, and then, for half a semester, soberly with Irene from her Modern Literature class.
Irene streaked her hair with mint green. She wore oversized tortoiseshell glasses and silver rings up and down her ears.
They bonded over their mutual irritation with another student in the class, a girl from Amherst, one of the dominating types with no self-awareness, who spoke too loudly and too often, always relating the conversation to something personal in her own life. Tanya and Irene started catching eyes with each other every time the girl spoke. Soon they began eating lunch together each week after class.
Irene was relaxed and confident. She was observant, especially about people, and Tanya enjoyed talking to her. It never felt like gossiping with Irene because she seemed to see the people around her so fully. She was an English major, with a creative writing emphasis. Tanya asked to read some of her work and Irene gave Tanya a story she wrote for her fiction class about a high school girl coming out to her parents. Tanya was impressed by her acerbic descriptions of people. She didn’t sugarcoat things. In the story, the fictional father was fine with his daughter being gay, but the mother was not. Tanya’s favorite scene was the one in which all three characters were at the dinner table together. It was interesting, seeing the particular way tension played out in another family.
“Is this about your family?” Tanya asked, and Irene had laughed. “My parents are under the impression I’m straight. How about yours?” Tanya didn’t know how to answer. She could never imagine telling her family about Irene. She didn’t tell her family anything about herself.
They spent several winter afternoons their junior year lying in bed together. Kissing a girl was no different, really, from kissing a boy. There was the thrill of being that close to somebody, the thrill of wanting and of being wanted. Without clothes and without glasses, Irene looked softer, and somehow it made the green in her hair less edgy and more tender.
When Irene put her hand between Tanya’s legs, however, Tanya stopped her.
“Are you into girls?” Irene asked, not unkindly, after this had happened a few times.
“I don’t know,” Tanya said, although she did know, and she wasn’t. “I know I like you, though.”
“We can take it slow,” Irene assured her. But eventually they stopped getting together, and by the end of the semester Irene had a girlfriend, and though she and Tanya still said hello when they saw each other around campus, their friendship faded.
* * *
—
BY THE TIME TANYA met Eitan, she’d grown to tolerate sex, even enjoy certain parts of it. To Tanya, sex was kind of like taking a shower in the winter. She dreaded walking into the cold bathroom in the morning, taking off her clothes, and waiting for the water to get hot enough to step in. But once she was inside, it felt nice. Warm, a little bit invigorating, like a reset button. But she was always relieved when it was over, and she could dry off and bundle up and finally start her day.
When she met Eitan, she’d been seeing another law student, Nate Oliver, for almost a year. Nate was serious and studious and, like her, a perfectionist. They joked that they brought out the elderly in one another—spending their days in the law library together, taking lunch and coffee breaks, holding hands on their
walks to and from their apartments and the campus. They talked mostly about their classes and professors. When they had sex, it was on the rare night when neither one of them was up late working and always after a few glasses of wine.
But then she met Eitan, and something felt different. Tanya was drawn to Eitan.
Like Nate, he was driven, but he was less serious. He was playful. He made fun of her. And she was attracted to him.
Tanya loved Eitan’s hands. The sureness of them, the mixture of confidence and gentleness in their movements. When she fantasized about Eitan, she fantasized about his hands. Sometimes she’d sit in class, imagining him touching her, and she’d get so worked up that, given the right pair of jeans, even the slightest movement—sitting up straighter, leaning forward—brought her close to orgasm.
It was the first time Tanya had ever had sex with someone she loved. And she told him this—the very first time they slept together.
“You love me?” He looked surprised. They had been dating for months at this point; but they’d done things backwards from their friends, getting to know one another first, before anything else.
Tanya nodded. “Does that freak you out?”
Eitan returned her gaze. “It makes me maybe the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Still, though, she struggled. She desperately wanted to enjoy sex with Eitan, and she wanted to please him. But she was always relieved when it was over.
“Please tell me what you like,” he’d ask, again and again, but Tanya was stumped. She was quiet during sex—quieter than she was anywhere else. His questions reminded her a little of Dylan, with his constant insistence that she finish. With Dylan, though, it had been a point of pride; her orgasm equaled his victory. Eitan’s questions stemmed from a place of confusion and curiosity.
She didn’t attribute her discomfort with sex entirely to Dan. One night didn’t have that kind of power, Tanya told herself. And she’d be damned if she’d let one man—one sick, twisted man—have such an effect on her. No, the lasting effects of that night had less to do with him and more to do with something about Tanya and Nessa. Who they’d become sitting beside one another on Dan’s couch. Not Lola and Layla—that was nothing more than fantasy, than play. It was something about them—their appetite: the way they let it get the better of them, the way it made them turn on each other. She’d always thought of her and her sister as fiercely loyal—they protected one another growing up. But that night, pitted against each other, they turned into the ugliest versions of themselves.
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