He raised himself up on one elbow, looking down at me with a combination of glazed passion and annoyance. “What?”
I licked my lips, trying to figure out how to phrase my next question before deciding the blunt approach would work best. “Um…do you have a condom?”
I could tell by the blank look on his face that he didn’t. “Aren’t you on the pill?” he asked.
I’d gone to the gynecologist right before the whole prom thing. Andrew and I had talked about it, and he was super-supportive of my going. He even looked up side effects and all that, and told me that the pill is supposed to help clear up skin, too. Way to go, science.
But then, the morning after what should’ve been one of the most momentous nights of our lives, you know what he said? “Do you know how many idiots had sex last night? Nothing like the anticlimactic aftermath of the oldest high school ritual to tank a relationship, huh? I’m so glad we didn’t end up making that mistake.”
And that was the last I’d ever heard of it. Until now.
Now Andrew was looking at me expectantly, waiting for my assurance that everything was taken care of. “Yes, but…”
“But what?”
This would be so much easier to do if I weren’t lying beneath him, half naked. “The pill doesn’t protect one hundred percent,” I said cautiously, “and it doesn’t protect at all against STDs.”
Andrew’s brows drew together. “You think I have an STD?” he asked incredulously.
I suddenly had a whole new respect for what we ask of thirteen-year-old girls. To expect them to actually discuss these kinds of things in the heat of the moment and practice safe sex was a lot harder than I had thought. And it wasn’t just that I was worried about what my boyfriend would think, either. There was also a part of me that wanted to say: You know what? I’m tired of being the last virgin holdout when everyone else my age just wants to have fun.
“I don’t think you do,” I said, “but I just don’t think it’s safe unless we have a condom.”
There. That hadn’t been such a bad way to put it. Certainly better than the whole no glove, no love claptrap. But Andrew wasn’t buying it.
“Come on, Leigh,” he said, not for the first time tonight, although this time his voice sounded a little whinier. “We’ve been together for a long time. Don’t you think you can trust me?”
I didn’t know. I had no idea if I trusted Andrew. Which could only mean one thing—I didn’t trust my own boyfriend.
“Please, Andrew,” I whispered, wishing I could find some kind of glitch in the universe that would allow the floor to swallow me whole.
For a few minutes Andrew just lay there, suspended above me. But then he rolled away, leaving me staring at his bare back.
“So, what?” he asked. “You want me to go to the store or something? I can pick up a condom if it’s so important to you.”
My eyes were burning, and I squeezed them shut. After a few moments I said, “Maybe it’s just not the right time.”
I felt the bed shift as Andrew turned to look at me. “When is it ever?” he snapped, as though somehow it was my fault we hadn’t had sex up until now.
I can tell you one thing. A girl doesn’t spend thirty dollars a month on birth control just to be a tease. And it is not easy to find one convenient time to take the damn thing, either, especially when you’re a college student who keeps weird hours.
But if I was the one who wanted to take our relationship to that level, why was I balking now? All I could think of was Ami’s earlier question. Do you really think it’s going to be special?
Suddenly I knew the answer—no. Not tonight, at least. I was reminded of the vague uneasiness I’d felt earlier at the party. It almost seemed like Andrew was out to prove something—what or to whom, I had no clue. But I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be part of it.
“Please,” I repeated now. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay?”
I reached out tentatively to touch his back, but he shrugged me off. “Fine,” he said. “Turn off the light.”
He lay down, his back still to me, and I stared down at him for a few minutes before I stretched across him to switch off the lamp. “I really do love you, Andrew,” I whispered into the darkness.
But he had already gone to sleep, or maybe he just didn’t answer, and eventually I settled in next to him. I wished I could fall asleep that easily. I wished I had remembered to grab my shirt, which was still out in the living room someplace.
Most of all, I wished I could go back to that moment by the beach and just say, Maybe another night. And then leave it at that.
When I woke up the next morning, my back aching from sleeping on the edge of the bed, Andrew was gone. It was a Sunday, so I had no idea what would have compelled him to get out of bed before noon, but I tried not to dwell on it as I rifled through his dresser for a T-shirt to borrow. I pulled on an old “You Otter Give Blood” shirt before poking my head out the door, ensuring the coast was clear before stepping out into the common area.
Nathan’s door was closed, but then, it usually was. I wondered if he had ever come home last night, but I quickly shoved the question out of my head.
It was possible that Andrew just stepped out for a moment and would be coming right back. In that case, I didn’t want to miss my chance to talk with him. While I waited, I grabbed a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the coffee table and a pint of milk from the minifridge.
I had almost finished my bowl when Nathan came out of his room, shirtless again. I mean, I know it’s technically his apartment, but doesn’t he have any common decency at all? He stopped when he saw me.
“You’re still here,” he said, more of a statement than a question.
There wasn’t much to say to that. “Yeah…”
His eyes darted briefly behind me, and I realized that, to my utter mortification, my T-shirt from yesterday was probably still lying on the floor. But if it was, Nathan didn’t comment, his gaze settling instead on the bowl in front of me. His eyebrows pulled together. “You’re eating my cereal,” he said.
I glanced down at the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, now just soggy broken-off pieces and cinnamon-speckled milk. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
He snatched the box off the table. “No, you didn’t know,” he said, his voice heated. “You just assumed. You spend the night and suddenly you think you own the place.”
That was hardly fair. “I do not. I was hungry, that’s all. I’ll buy you another box, if that makes you feel better.”
Nathan rubbed the back of his neck, as though the conversation were giving him a headache. “I don’t care about the stupid cereal,” he muttered.
Then why make such a big deal of it? I assumed he was still mad at me because of the whole “self-righteous” comment and the way we left him at the party. “Look, about last night—”
But Nathan cut me off. “I don’t want to hear it, all right? It was bound to happen sooner or later. Just don’t eat my cereal,” he said. “Okay?”
Unable to think of anything to say, I nodded.
With that, Nathan returned to his room. I didn’t think he was still mad, since he shut the door quietly behind him. But I could hear him playing his guitar aggressively through the wall, each chord a jangling assault, and it sounded like he was pretty in touch with his core emotion. Somehow I didn’t think he was writing a song about those cats he seemed to love so much.
Quietly, I rinsed out the offending cereal bowl, grabbed the evidence of last night’s fiasco from the carpet, and slipped out the door. I ran down the steps and got into my Gremlin, driving out of the parking lot much unhappier than when I had driven in, but a lot wiser, too.
I had learned three things over the past twenty-four hours. A) A girl should always carry her own condom. B) Sleeping in a waterbed with a relative you don’t know very well is still way more comfortable than sleeping next to the boyfriend you just turned down for sex. And C) never ever, under any circumstances, touch a guy’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
CONFOUNDING VARIABLES: Variables that could differentially affect the dependent variable, usually as unintended independent variables
BY the time the next mentoring session rolled around, I was both dreading and anticipating yet another foray into the strange workings of the adolescent mind. (Okay, I know I’m only, like, five years older than these girls, but I’ve never watched Hannah Montana, and believe me, that makes all the difference.) On the one hand, last week hadn’t been particularly enjoyable, what with the censorship and all. Then again, it would be kind of nice just to have the distraction.
As if the whole debacle with Andrew weren’t enough, apparently we were supposed to pick our final paper topics for Intro Psych. Sometimes I think that professors don’t understand that, just because students pick topics in early November, it doesn’t mean they’ll do any work on the paper until the week before it’s due. Or at least, I won’t. Ellen was the first one to raise her hand for her topic (portrayal of thinness in television commercials, by the way, which totally kicks ass. Now there’s no way I can do something about stupid Internet personals).
At least Ami and I patched up our differences. Maybe Ami noticed how subdued I was that next morning, or maybe she just decided it was pointless to fight, because she eased right back into our normal pattern with very little disruption. Unlike me, Ami doesn’t dwell—she just bounces right back.
I wasn’t so sure if I could. Things with Ami were fine, and even the Intro Psych paper wasn’t really a big deal. But I felt more conflicted than ever about Andrew. Ami thought he was kind of a jerk, and most everyone else told me that a long-term relationship from high school would never last through college. Then I would remember the good times, like when Andrew bought me a three-foot-tall stuffed bear, just because. Or the time that he stayed up all night with me, helping me study for the European history AP exam. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have my shortcomings—like the way that sometimes, when I get upset, I just shut down and stop communicating. But now, I’d lost the energy to fight about our relationship, or to fight for it. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the way he’d acted or the things he’d said, and he still hadn’t formally apologized for any of it.
But then I thought—does he really have to? I may not be that good at calculus or trigonometry, but this was a simple arithmetic problem that anyone could solve. Boy and girl date for a year + boy asks girl home + girl is on birth control = sex. So why did I overthink it? Why did I have to go and throw in a bunch of variables that weren’t there?
I tried to clear my head of my own problems so I could be a clean slate for whatever thirteen-year-old issues I had to deal with today. So far all we’d discussed was pregnancy, and I couldn’t see any opportunity to get in any good body-image questions. Unless maybe I couched my real questions in mentoring-friendly ones, like When you have a baby out of wedlock during your senior prom, are you scared of getting fat?
Linda brought the group to attention with a clap of her hands. As with every other meeting up until now, she asked us to go around the circle and say our names. Since last week she wanted everyone to say their mythical first baby’s name, this week she asked us all to include a brief story behind our own first names. I knew I had to come up with a lie quickly, because the truth was just way too damaging for me to spill.
See, one thing I don’t usually tell people, something I’ve fought since grade school to keep anyone else from knowing, is that my first name isn’t actually Leigh.
…It’s Tuesday.
That’s right, Tuesday. I’ve heard it all. Over the years I’ve been called Wednesday Addams’s illegitimate sister, been sung the ’Til Tuesday song “Voices Carry,” and even suffered through ill-thought-out references to Ruby Tuesday.
The worst of it is that I was actually born on a Thursday.
My parents, always more counterculture than I’m comfortable with, were going through a “Days of the Week” zodiac phase at the time. Apparently associations with Thursday include abundance, beliefs, wisdom, and understanding—all things my parents were confident they would cultivate in me. So they named me Tuesday to remind me to develop my other side, the one that can be bold and adventurous, brash and strong. Obviously I haven’t had the best of luck so far, or I wouldn’t be in the mess I am now.
It could have been worse. I could’ve been named Pisces or, if they were going through their Chinese zodiac phase, Sheep. Worse still, if they had discovered the Mayan calendar at that point I might’ve been called Galactic Activation Portal (apparently I am one—who knew?).
Now, as we went around the circle, each girl stated her name for what felt like the billionth time (which didn’t mean I remembered them any better). Although I finally verified that Kathy was the name of the girl and not her prospective child, so that’s a plus.
Then it was my turn. “My parents chose Leigh because it could be a girl’s or a boy’s name,” I said in a partial truth. “They didn’t want to know which I was until I was born, so they figured it would be easier just to pick one name.”
I never totally got how people could do that. I’m all for surprises, but the sex of my baby? Yeah, not a good thing to spring on a woman who just went through hours of agonizing labor.
All I can say is, thank God I was a girl. Can you imagine a boy named Tuesday Leigh? He’d probably grow up to be a middle-aged man with a room full of stuffed animals and a predilection for typing out actions with asterisks. *Grins.* *Comforts.* *Eats a sandwich.*
Well, maybe that’s a little harsh. But he’d be messed up, anyway.
After everyone had a chance to talk, Linda made an announcement. “Today we’re going to enter our second phase of the program.” She looked around expectantly, as though we were all supposed to start whispering excitedly about the mysterious second phase. When that was obviously not going to happen, she continued.
“What I’m going to do now is pair you off, so every mentor has a mentee and vice versa. For this first session, you can just get to know each other—your likes and dislikes, hobbies, what’s going on in your life. You’ll be together all semester, so it’s important to find some common ground.”
At this point I’d really rather have had a Mentos than a mentee, but it didn’t look like that was an option. I waited patiently for Linda to finish. “So when I tell you to, just find a partner who you’re going to want to work with—”
I knew Linda already considered me her worst nightmare, but I couldn’t let this go unchecked. “Uh, Linda?” I said, raising my hand. “Do you really think that we should pick our own partners?”
“What is it this time, Leigh?”
I couldn’t say what was going through my mind, not with her looking like that. But her approach would lead to some people getting picked last, which is bad enough on a mandatory PE kick-ball team, when you know you can’t kick the ball for crap, but much worse in a situation like this. Who wants to know that no college-age girl volunteered to guide them? And who wants a room full of thirteen-year-olds rating them second best at giving guidance?
“I just think it might be better if you picked,” I said. “Since you have more experience with this kind of thing.”
Linda beamed. “Well, all right. Let’s see, then…Leigh, you and Rebekah can team up.”
Then again, maybe I should have gotten off my high horse and just let Linda do it her way. Rebekah grimaced at me from across the room. Trying to hide my reluctance but probably failing, I picked myself up off the floor and moved over next to her.
“What’s up?” I asked casually, then wondered if she’d think I was trying too hard to use hip lingo. It’s impossible to tell how old these girls really think we are. Then there are times, like when I had to explain to Molly who Pearl Jam was, when I felt positively geriatric.
“Nothin’.”
At least it wasn’t totally monosyllabic. “Nothing, huh? That’s…cool.” I winced. I was the worst mentor ever. “What’d you do today?”
“Not much.”
I noticed she wore an Oakland Raiders T-shirt, and I figured I would take what I could get. “Are you a Raiders fan?”
She drew her brows together before glancing down at her shirt, obviously just making the connection. “Not really.”
What happened? When I first met this girl, it was like I couldn’t shut her up. Now, getting her to talk was like pulling teeth. I searched my brain for other California football teams. “What about the San Francisco 49ers, then? Or, um, the Rams? They’re in L.A., right?”
Rebekah rolled her eyes. “Not for a jillion years,” she said.
“Oh.” I wished there were another way to get her to talk that didn’t involve me looking like a dumbass. What was I thinking in the first place, talking about football? All I knew about the sport was that it looked like it hurt a lot.
I really wanted to ask her about the question she’d raised last meeting: What about abortion? If only she knew how much that question had haunted me for the past week.
But somehow I doubted that a girl who acted like the most mundane details about her day were state secrets would be dying to have a gabfest. And yet I was strangely determined to make this meaningful. It would take some guerilla tactics—maybe if I spilled something first. After all, what did I really have to lose? This girl was already looking at me as though I were some kind of pocket lint.
“Um…so I have this boyfriend,” I said. “We’ve been dating since high school, and he’s really awesome. Like, he’s practically a genius.”
“You want a medal?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” I blew a couple strands of hair out of my face. “I mean, we’ve been having some problems lately. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“What kind of problems?” she asked. She could’ve been saying, “Fine, tell me about the history of mental institutions in the U.S. if you insist,” for all the interest she was showing. Then again, now that she was asking me point blank, I didn’t know what to say. The whole reason I’d brought this up in the first place was to build intimacy and rapport, kind of like a good therapist does with a patient. Although it would definitely be inappropriate for therapists to start sharing details about their personal sex lives.
Psych Major Syndrome Page 10