When I refer to "love," I mean an intense, profoundly meaningful, somewhat-exclusive-in-nature relationship with a peer, which radically shaped me. If you're expecting to read about me engaging in teenage exotic lesbian sex, you may be disappointed--or perhaps relieved. I wish I had a story for you like that. But I just don't--and never did--have an interest in vaginas, other than for their comedic value.
As different as Kerry and I were, we were peas in a pod. My guess is because we were the black and the Jew in a sea of whiter-than-white preppy rich kids, and both from bleeding-heart liberal homes in a district of conservatives.
Kerry spoiled me like a grandmother. She would come to school armed with gifts for me. "Here, Sarah. I bought you some candy on my way to the gym." To her, I was a puppy that needed grooming. On my seventeenth birthday she gave me a shoebox labeled "Zit Kit," filled with all the soaps and creams she felt would work best with my skin. She would give me tips, like "Don't touch your face. It clogs your pores." When I slept over at her house, she would read aloud to me from the likes of the fashion magazine Elle, and the Linda Lovelace sex-slave autobiography, Ordeal.
Kerry was adopted. Half black and half white, she had learned her biological parents were a red-headed French woman and a Nigerian prince who met as transfer students in Ohio. Her adoptive parents were white granola-headed feminist hippies, which didn't make sense at all. Though maybe it's why she loved white, granola-headed me.
Kerry and me junior year of high school
Kerry could talk her way out of anything. She would find us days off from school no one else had. She would march to the principal's office and explain, "I am exploring Judaism and tomorrow is Tu Bishvat. Sarah and I will be missing the school day in order to properly celebrate this most precious of days." We would get in her car and just go. Usually to Boston, usually with weed procured, and usually in Kerry-sanctioned outfits inappropriate for school or temple. Such outfits would include tight black jeans, high heels, hoop earrings (all borrowed from Kerry), big hair, black eyeliner with sparkled silver eyeliner liner, and fitted tops with just a promise of cleavage.
Kerry, Nubian princess
I co-opted Kerry's sexy confidence, but it was a chemical compound that combusted when combined with my aggressive juvenility. I would walk the halls carrying my sixty pounds of private-school hardcovers, and if I saw the headmaster, Mr. Hurlbut, I would just throw them all up in the air and collapse on the floor in a dramatic flourish.
"Sarah! Pick that up!"
"What? I fell! You can't yell at me for falling."
I swear to God I wouldn't have done shit like that if I didn't know deep down, that, for whatever reason, he loved it. It was a subtle kind of domination. It got to the point where, when he would see me in the hall with all my books in tow, he would plead with me,
"Sarah, don't..."
Delighted, I would sway, back and forth, like I was balancing on a ship in rough waters--
"Whoooooaaaaaa."
"Sarah--please..."
"Losing...balance..."
Sometimes I'd explode, books and papers everywhere (my own books and papers, that I'd have to then clean up, but totally worth it to me). Sometimes I'd let him off the hook, finding my balance and moving past. Two ships.
Junior year I lost my license for three months for going 90 in a 55, then pulling over to the left side of the five-lane highway when stopped by the state trooper. For three months, Kerry picked me up every day before school. First we'd get some french toast sticks at Burger King, then we'd go to the parking lot and she'd give me a lesson on how to drive a stick shift, then to school. She said every woman should know how to drive a stick.
Kerry could make my day or break my heart. She would sometimes leave me waiting for hours. Sometimes she wouldn't show up at all. But she was unscoldable. I was too in awe. It's the memory of this feeling, of this dynamic, that makes me call her my first love. Ordinary friendships don't have these capabilities. The intensity of our relationship didn't allow room for boyfriends anyway.
I was fiercely loyal and protective of Kerry. Once we went to the twenty-four-hour bowling alley in Manchester. I got my shoes and went to our assigned lane to put them on. I looked up and Kerry was bolting toward me, furious and hurt. She sat down and said,
"The guy gave me the shoes and said, 'Make sure you wear socks with these, you dirty nigger.'"
Before she even finished the word I was flying at the clerk in what I believe was murderous rage. And in the moment just before I got to him, Kerry screamed to me, "I'm kidding! Sarah--I'm kidding!!" I looked back and she was laughing hysterically. I don't know why she did that. I don't know if it was really a joke as much as maybe a test of some kind, but I was so relieved, firstly because of the hate it would so glaringly imply, but mostly because I didn't know what I was gonna do when I got to that fucking shoe stand.
After high school Kerry dropped in and out of my life at her whim, like a fairy godmother I couldn't summon but who came when she felt I needed her. (She still does.)
* * *
Like in Every Young Girl's Dream, My Delicate Flower Is Taken by a Gruff Thirty-Year-Old Comic from Queens Who Is Emotionally Indifferent to Me
* * *
Kevin Brennan was the emcee on open-mike nights, Mondays, at the Boston Comedy Club on West 3rd Street in the West Village of Manhattan. I had a job passing out flyers for the club every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., and besides my ten-dollars-an-hour payment, I could go up on open-mike night without bringing two friends (a prerequisite for open-mikers was that they had to bring two paying customers).
Kevin was tall with dark brown hair and a white-and-red blotchy Irish face. He wore a long army green trench coat and carried a briefcase, which, at nineteen, I found very impressive. And he was thirty--a grown man. He stood outside the club smoking a Merit Light. I went outside and bummed one.
KEVIN: So, you go to school?
ME: Yeah. NYU.
KEVIN: What--are you a freshman?
ME: Mm-hm.
KEVIN: What--are you, like, in a sorority?
ME: Yeah, but you can only be in it if you're really cool.
KEVIN: Yeah? Who else is in it?
ME: Just me.
He laughs.
Let me take a moment to describe myself here: big curly perm, black polyester shirt with long shear sleeves, black miniskirt, and Doc Martens with thick black socks. It was 1990.
I did my five minutes and stayed for the rest of the night until the show was over and Kevin was going home.
"You wanna see my apartment?" He chuckled, I assume at his paper-thinly veiled offer. "It's in Queens."
"Sure. Yeah."
And off we cabbed to Astoria, Queens. We walked up a stairwell and through a hallway to his apartment. It smelled good to me. It smelled like first grade for some reason. Something industrial but sweet, like old paint and licorice. Inside there was a small living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms--one his and one his roommate's. On the coffee table was a Best of Chicago tape. He also had a stack of records, with the Go-Go's Vacation on top.
"Wanna see my bedroom?"
"Okay."
He led me to his bedroom--a bed, a dresser, and an ashtray. He kissed me while he laid me back in his bed.
"Have you ever had sex before?"
"Yes, I've had sex before," I said, insulted.
Here's the thing. I thought I had had sex. My senior year of high school I visited my sister Laura at Boston University, and she fixed me up with a friend who was from all accounts very good-looking. I knew he was the kind of guy girls in my school would think was really hot. He was in college; he was tall and lean and had long hair and a long beard--like a sexy Jesus. We sat on my sister's tiny living room couch and watched Dead Ringers, a creepy Jeremy-Irons-as-twin-gynecologists thriller and fell asleep before anything really serious happened. The next morning my sister and her roommate left early for the AIDS Walk, and this guy and I--yipes, I can'
t remember his name, maybe Brooks or something like that--moved into my sister's bedroom. He put on a condom and pushed against me, but there was honestly no hole there. I figured that was it. The guy just pokes hard between your legs for a while. Sex. When he finally gave up, he said, "It's not like it is in the movies, Sarah. Is that what you thought?" Which was a weird thing to say right after watching Dead Ringers.
"No," I said defensively.
So when Kevin asked me if I was a virgin, I answered honestly: No. Somehow I think he knew better than me, because he pretty much instructed me through the whole process. He talked me through my first blowjob (that, I admitted I had never done before), what to do with my tongue, what not to do with my teeth, and so on. And then, slowly at first, he pushed inside me. All the way inside. And all I could think was,
Holy shit, THIS is sex, Dummy.
He sat up on the side of the bed to smoke another Merit Light, carefully ridding the end of any excess ash, molding the red tip of it into a constant point. He put out his cigarette and pulled back the sheets to get up, revealing a Rorschach-like pattern of blood. Like a red butterfly stamp, getting lighter and lighter with each imprint.
There was a long moment of silence before I worked up the moxie to say,
"That came out of you."
"Um. No it didn't."
Another long pause, broken by him,
"It's okay. Just buy me new sheets."
* * *
I Make the Highly Original Choice of Falling for a Guy Who Treats Me Poorly
* * *
Kevin didn't have much time for me, but I took whatever I could get. I couldn't wait to have sex again and again and again. It was awesome. I was in love.
The feeling wasn't mutual. As it turned out, there's a reason thirty-year-olds sleep with nineteen-year-olds, and it's not because they're looking for something real. I beautified myself in my dorm room, checking the time and myself alternately all night for a date with him that never happened, and when I saw him next and accused him of sleeping with someone else that night, he just said, "It wasn't my fault she tricked me," with an I don't give a fuck half-smile.
After six months of being his if-he-couldn't-find-anyone-better fallback sex, I gave him a letter with the ultimatum that he had to be nicer to me or it was over. He opened it immediately and read it in front of me, laughing, "Then I guess it's over."
Not long after that Kerry came to visit from Washington. Her hair now dreaded and multicolored, she told me all about Howard University and her life in D.C., i.e.,
"Crackheads are the best because you can get your whole lawn mowed for, like, two dollars."
She asked me how I was and I told her that I lost my virginity but the guy dumped me and I was devastated.
"Fuck that shit. I'm a female chauvinist."
"Um...huh?"
"I'm a female chauvinist. I tell a guy, 'When I'm with you I'm with you, and when I'm not with you, you don't worry about where I am.'"
I was inspired. Kerry changed my perspective--changed the way I saw men and changed the way I saw myself, transforming me from prey to predator in one weekend visit. For the next two years I was on a rampage. I was a monkey swinging from vine to vine. I kept Noxzema in my bag because I never knew where I'd end up sleeping or whom with. (Book of Kerry: Never go to sleep with a dirty face.)
The following is a conversation between Kevin and me while I was writing this. I got in touch to make sure it was okay with him and to find out what he remembered.
* * *
----- Original Message -----
From: Sarah Silverman
To: Kevin Brennan
Sent: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 9:00 pm
Subject: Sarah Silverman
Alright, Kevin. Tell me about that night as well as you remember it. Unless you don't want to.
Do you want to? Do you even remember?
Whatever you can recall I'd appreciate.
I'm Jewish,
S
* * *
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Brennan
To: Sarah Silverman
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 3:38 pm
Subject: Got your message
Yes, I remember that night because when you became famous people would ask me about it so I would reminisce. The best part was after I asked you if you were a virgin because there was blood on the sheets and your response was "maybe it's your blood." Then I knew you were a virgin because guys don't bleed after sex (unless you're Mario Cantone, etc) and you would have known that if you had gotten laid before.
* * *
From: Sarah Silverman
To: Kevin Brennan
Sent: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 6:08 pm
Subject: Re: Got your message
I don't think you told me to buy you new sheets, but it seemed like a good ending, and though this is nonfiction, I decided it was completely in your character to do so. You did, after all, jump behind me to protect yourself. Remember? I got hit by a van that just barely stopped in time. Why is that "Wind Beneath My Wings" song suddenly in my head?
xo
sarah
* * *
From: Kevin Brennan
To: Sarah Silverman
Sent: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:14 pm
Subject: Re: Got your message
Your version makes me sound cool and pathetic at the same time like that guy who scalps tickets in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Whatever happened to him? Also, the van didn't hit you, it only came close. And I only did it because I was taping MTV 1/2 Hour comedy hour that week so my life was more valuable than yours.
* * *
From: Sarah Silverman
To: Kevin Brennan
Sent: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:28 pm
Subject: Re: Got your message
Touche.
Xo
s
ps--do you wipe shit out of your baby's asshole?
pps--It's her shit in there, right? That would be gross otherwise.
* * *
SOME OF MY MORE MOVING VIOLATIONS
I've never been raped. Let me rephrase: At 5:38 p.m. on December 17, 2009, as I'm writing this chapter, I have not up to this point ever been raped. But then again, in my youth, there were certain key incidents during which I was treated with such cruel and reckless abandon by the males involved that, technically speaking, I probably have been 10 to 12 percent raped. There were terrifying moments in which rage-fueled assailants physically overpowered me, inflicting deliberate, prolonged, and gleeful torture, while making me fear for my life. These are the kind of moments that, decades later, still haunt my dreams, so I thought it would be fun to share them with you.
* * *
Prelude: My Extremely, Extremely Brief Relationship with a Domestic Turkey
* * *
We lived on a farm, but it wasn't operational like our neighbors' farms, which produced stuff; we bought our meat and vegetables from them. When I was six years old, my dad took me there to see the turkeys. The farmer, Vic, told me to look at all the birds carefully and choose one that I liked. I saw a cute one with a silly walk and said, "Him!!" Before my pointing finger dropped back down to my side, Vic had grabbed the bird by the neck and slit his throat. Blood sprayed as the turkey's wings flapped back and forth in a futile attempt to unkill itself. Without realizing it, I had sentenced that turkey to death, and while maybe this sort of thing gave fat British monarchs a rush, to me it was horrifying. And though I'm probably projecting, I don't think it was in the turkey's top-five favorite moments, either.
I should mention that this was late November, so what I had witnessed was not random cruelty, but a long-standing American tradition. This wasn't just a random turkey killing, it was a thankful turkey killing. Until that day I didn't even know where meat came from, so if that trip to the farm was Dad's deliberate attempt to teach me about the food chain, I wish he'd used a tad more finesse. My parents taught me about where babies come from, but they didn't exactly force me to watch while my f
ather bent my mother over the kitchen table. I'm not saying that children should be shielded from the facts of life, just that six-year-olds don't need them demonstrated in such visual detail.
In hindsight, I'm sure my dad feels bad about our little excursion, but I see it as a gift. My father might not have realized or intended it, but that day he gave me the knowledge to make an informed decision for myself at a very early age: I would never eat turkey again. And once I figured out the connection between Happy Meals and cows, I would never eat beef again, either. Or any other meat.
* * *
Adam Gillan Enters My Life and Mouth
* * *
I didn't exactly make a big deal about my vegetarianism. In my town, people didn't really understand it, and I figured that bringing it up would only cause trouble. But somehow, sophomore year, Adam Gillan found out.
Adam was a bully. He was also tall, strong, handsome, popular, charismatic, funny, and a brilliant athlete who engaged in many extracurricular activities. And while I don't think there was a specific school-sponsored club for it, he excelled at preying on the vulnerable. He was a bully in that '80s teen-movie way, the kind who would have been torturing Jon Cryer.
When Adam discovered that I was a vegetarian, it rocked his world. He couldn't get his head around it. To see his enraged reaction you would've guessed he'd just found out someone had stuck his mother with an AIDS-infected needle. Instead, someone would have had to correct you: "No, Mrs. Gillan's fine. This is much, much worse--he just found out the Jew doesn't eat Big Macs."
The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee Page 5