by Gigi Anders
“Thanks,” I told him. “It’s been groovy. You really taught me some things, huh. ‘The new algebra.’ Haaa.”
“You make it sound so final,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Not right away.” He was planning a move to a new job out West. “I still have some stuff at work to finish up.”
“Oh.”
After a pause, Teepee said, “I think we should be lovers.”
“What?”
He had to be on junk. I mean, making out behind my parents’ and Rebeca’s backs was one thing; it was safe-naughty and something to do all summer long to break the ennui and I could feel as though I had a kind of boyfriend. But I knew I was no more ready for Actual Sex than I was for a Pythagorean Theorem.
“Yeah,” Teepee said, holding my hands. “It’s time.”
“Don’t you think I’m a tad YOUNG for that?” I asked, pulling my hands out of his.
But Teepee had listened to me too closely, become my confidant, and studied my mother at work and my family’s dynamics at home for months. He was much too sophisticated and cunning to ever force himself on me the way you usually hear about these things. In other words, my mind had been the first organ he’d penetrated.
“I think,” Teepee said, “you’re every bit as much of a woman as your mother.”
I somehow managed to pass my algebra final, and Teepee and I set up a “celebratory” tryst in Arlington, Virginia. I was a new tenth grader, at least a year younger than my classmates (thanks to Mami forcing me prematurely into kindergarten), with a big secret. The ’rents had taken off the entire month of September to vacation in Israel or Europe or South America. I really had nothing better to do; that was why I told Teepee yes. What I told myself was that we were like Romeo and Juliet, misunderstood by Society. Or like David and Bathsheba, sinful and secret. Or like Dimaggio and Marilyn, luminous December-May stars. Sure, I was jailbait and sure, Teepee was, like, about a decade older. But he’d marry me. He would. Probably. Right? I’d marry me. I was a saucy señorita, ready for love and ready to please my man, though I had no idea what that meant or what I was doing or why, exactly. I wanted to be like Bathsheba, bathing on the roof, and, to rearticulate Leonard Cohen, make my beauty and the moonlight overthrow him. But that was in another country. Virginia struck me as the kind of state that would take prisoners, take Teepee prisoner, I mean, if anybody found out. That would be bad, him being a felon. But look at the risk Teepee was willing to take, for me. Isn’t that so touching? What had already been seduced in me from the neck up was really compelling. Was it panic or excitement?
As it always does for weeks after Labor Day in the swamp that is Washington, it was sweltering on the appointed day. I told Tiny and Rebeca I was going ice skating at an indoor rink after school with some girlfriends and would get my own ride home. It wasn’t a total lie; I had taken ice-skating lessons the previous winter at the OUTdoor rink of a Virginia Marriott. My poor teacher. She had to practically hold me up the entire time. Meanwhile, all the other Sidwell girls whizzed by us like athletic sylphs, casting slush, although I will say my teacher remarked favorably on the bouquet of my Agua de Violetas. Nonexistent arches like mine cannot cope with laced-up, structured ice skates, we discovered. And no matter how cute your outfit is, you’ll spend the entire time either grabbing on to the rail or your teacher, or on the ice on your color-coordinated ass.
It’s a cold, hard country.
In Teepee’s VW bug, as we crossed the Potomac into Dixie, I saw monuments and planes and the Pentagon and a lot of nondescript office buildings and high-rise apartment “complexes.” Teepee and I were heading into Crystal City, a part of Arlington that’s as antiseptically Republican as its name. I’d changed clothes in the bathroom after school, opting for a more event-appropriate cha-cha outfit. I borrowed my friend Mara’s halter top with tiny red and white roses on it and paired it with my own very low-waisted hip-hugger jeans and caramel leather and wood platform sandals. I thought I looked like I had sex appeal, but this is what you think when you’re fourteen. Teepee complimented me, and the radio played a Jimi Hendrix song: “You’ve got to be all mine, all mine…/ooh Foxy Lady.”
Before going to Teepee’s apartment, we stopped at a Safeway to scan cheeses and other snackies for a light postdefloration repast. It was over-air-conditioned in there, but my sweat glands were kicking into high gear and I had the shakes. Terrible combo platter. Teepee was asking me questions, something about “laughing cow” and “baby Brie.” Bree? Bree Daniels? From Klute? She has a cheese? God, I was so out of it—my body, that is—and floating up above us, looking down dispassionately. This is weird, even for me. Only a man would think of food products at a time like this.
What I recall about my First Time:
The look of lust on The Prick’s face (an expression I’d seen before only on Kevin, the scissor-wielding twelve-year-old St. Elizabeths patient: lidded eyes, open mouth—both kind of ick).
How messy and sticky the white contraceptive foam was that The Prick had bought and how it mixed with my blood on my belly and thighs and the sheets (ick).
How I could feel The Prick’s but not my pleasure because he never pleased me, not that a Jubana who’s told from day one that nice girls always wear panties—and occasionally bras—to bed would have any clue about her own sexual potential in the first place (ick).
How after a shower I changed for The Prick back into my very Audrey Hepburn original school outfit (sleeveless tomato-red cotton linen pique dress with navy Nehru collar and vertical seams all across the bodice, and navy Ann Taylor ballet flats—both fabulous).
How I passed on The Prick’s après-sexe fromage product (ick), chain-smoked Trues (fabu), and chewed Dubble Bubble all the way home (fabu-fabu).
But here’s the thing. You must have noticed I’m no longer disguising my feelings by referring ever so gently to Teepee. Let’s call T.P. The Prick. It’s as close as I can get without terrorizing the lawyers to characterize the older man who deflowered me when I was below the statutory age of consent, The Prick.
The Prick dropped me off at the top of my long cul-de-sac and I walked down to my house, explaining to Rebeca that the school bus didn’t do door-to-door. That night I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. Did I look any different? Not really. My complexion still resembled Manuel Noriega’s. Was I any good at Actual Sex? Well, I may have been clueless, but I must have been clueful enough to be asked back, because The Prick wanted to see me again. A Friday night sleep-over this time. Wow, I must be pret-ty hot stuff. Foxy, foxy!
It’s the price of tafetán color champán, I kept thinking. The ’rents were still shoplifting their way through foreign countries, stealing fancy hotel ashtrays and sterling antique sugar bowls from assorted room services and restaurants. I told Rebeca I was spending the night at my Sidwellemy friend Pam Palmer’s house. Pam’s Chicago forebears built the Palmer House Hotel on East Monroe Street and the Cubs’—originally known as the Chicago White Stockings—first ballpark. (I went to the Palmer House with the flaxen-haired Pam once. It looked like a gilded castle inside. Almost twenty-five years later, in 1995, I stayed there again to do a cover story profile for USA Weekend on Heather Whitestone, the first deaf Miss America. It still looked like a gilded castle inside, only now they had modems, ATMs, and fitness centers.) Anyway, I told Pam I had this “friend” and he’d be picking me up chez elle, so she only had to entertain me for a little while, just a couple of hours until The Prick could leave work. Although people in our immediate circle didn’t have “jobs,” Pam didn’t ask too many questions; she was good that way. She didn’t come to Frenzy until ninth grade, in 1971, so despite her family’s wealth and stature, she lacked that typical “lifer” conceit. But Pam was in the affluent cool white gringa girl gang, so I was cautious around her. Not that she was superior to me—please, the girl spelled all right as one word with one l—but still, hers could be a vicious little clique, so you never knew. (One time things got so bad bet
ween those girls and me that Mami Dearest stepped in for a “tehrahpooteek eentehrvehnshohn cheet-chat.” To their credit, las gringitas all came over on a Sunday morning, sat in the family room, and ate up all the empanadas and blintzes Rebeca had prepared ahead of time. Then, they proceeded to ignore me utterly and spent the rest of the time talking to Mami, praising her stunning red hair, her gorgeous figure, her adorable accent, her magnificent makeup, her dramatic ankle-length sleeveless cotton empire hostess dress with bright green, orange, hot pink, yellow, red, purple, and turquoise-blue birds of paradise, hibiscus, and ginger flowers all over it. I couldn’t blame the girls for their adulation; I knew I couldn’t compete with Mami. And academically, I couldn’t compete with the Sidwellemies. I mean, I could, but even getting straight A’s couldn’t beat or even equal the reality of Eric’s and Big Red Al’s superior phalli. So why bother trying?)
The Prick picked me up and this time we went out on a proper date, to the Japan Inn on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, the oldest Japanese restaurant in Washington. (I’d have preferred HH, but whatever.) We sat in the so-called teppanyaki room, where a severe chef cooked our food on a flat grill before us. I passed on the tako su (vinegared octopus and cucumber), and went with the miso soup, lobster, and filet mignon (The Prick did say to order whatever I wanted), and chocolate ice cream with mandarin oranges. The couple sitting across from us kept staring and whispering to each other. The Prick and I must have looked like a mismatch; he looked older than he was (balding head and newly sprouted Fu Manchu mustache) and I have always looked much younger than I am. My entire life, people, perfect strangers, ask me how old I am. Why is this? I’m guessing the combo of Jubana genes and tiny body with abnormally large head. Mami Dearest says, “Ees because joo look so johngh but soun’ so ol’.” So at fourteen I must’ve sounded sixty-seven but looked eleven—except with big bazoomies. Foxy, foxy!
In the morning in his Crystal City apartment I awoke before The Prick. I put on his cotton bathrobe and wandered out to the kitchen for coffee. A woman was sitting on a dining room chair, bent over and lacing up the long, thin white straps of her gladiator sandals. Her hair was a rat’s nest from the back, and rolls of fat hung over the sides of her waist. On the table was an open pack of Virginia Slims Luxury Lights 120s, a lighter with peace symbols on it, a full ashtray, a key chain with 116 keys, a bad faux leather purse, and that morning’s Washington Post.
“Hello?” I said.
She slowly turned with a haggard, puffy, pasty face that needed major concealer, loose powder, and blush. Not to mention mascara. Lipstick. Eyebrows.
“Morning,” she groaned. “I’m Sylvia. Syl. And who’re you?”
“Hey, you must be Gigi,” said a tall, dark-haired guy with a beard. He was coming out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee in one hand and two mugs in the other. “I’m [The Prick’s] roommate. Well, one of [The Prick’s] roommates. There’s three of us—sometimes. Coffee?”
“Sure,” I said, completely perplexed. I knew The Prick had two male roommates, but who was the broad?
“Sylvia?” he said. “Coffee?”
“Yeah, coffee,” she said, lighting a Virginia Slim. “Coffee and cash to go, honeybuns. Gotta hit the road.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, disappearing into a bedroom.
“How old are you?” Syl asked me. See what I’m saying? People never stop with the fucking question.
“Old enough, it seems,” I said.
Syl gave a dubious look and went to the phone. I poured some coffee in the mug, lit one of her cigarettes while her back was turned, and walked over to the balcony window. Gray high-rises. A sliver of sky. Virginia sucked.
“Honey? Yeah. Mommy, who the hell ya think it is? Yeah. I’ll be home in an hour, maybe less. Uh-huh. Baby okay? You watch him good? He did? Good. Anybody call? Huh? Watch that tone, missy. Yeah. See ya soon.”
“So come ’ere and talk,” Syl said. I sat down at the table and put out her appalling cigarette. Syl was right out of a Raymond Carver story. “Met him in a bar last night.”
“Mm!”
“Yeah. But I think I had one too many. My head’s crackin’ open, I swear to Christ. You got any aspirin?”
“No, sorry.”
“It’s all right. That was my kid on the phone. My daughter. She watches my son while I’m workin’.”
“Oh, uh-huh.”
“You look about my daughter’s age. What are you, like, twelve?”
“I’m almost fifteen,” I said, wishing the Prick would wake the hell up.
“Well, ’cause if you was my daughter,” Syl said, crossing her fleshy white veiny legs, “I’d beat your sweet little ass black-and-blue and twice on Sunday. You shouldn’t be here. What’re you doin’ here, kid?”
“I don’t…I don’t really know,” I said. “It’s like a mini runaway, I guess.”
“A what?”
“It’s like running away but not all the way.”
The roommate emerged. Syl wearily got to her feet, stuffed her cigarettes and lighter in her bag, yawned, grabbed her 116 keys, and talked to her “date” by the front door as I pretended to read the Style section.
“This ought to do it,” I heard the man say.
“Cool,” Sylvia replied. “Thanks. And hey, Gi-gi.” She pronounced my name with a hard G, like giggly. She walked over to me and whispered, “Don’t forget what I said. Black-and-blue and twice on Sunday. Get the hell outta here and don’t come back. You don’t belong. Don’t be me.”
They say the third time’s the charm, but not for me, unless we mean “charm” ironically. The ’rents had returned from their holiday, and on this final, fatal school night I was late getting home from Crystal City, Vagina, as I’d taken to calling it. The Prick and I had fallen asleep. I’d called home around 8:30 or 9 P.M., assuring Mami Dearest I was fine and that the (fictional) ice-skating lesson had run long. She said, “Okay an’ by de way I bought joo some cute panties on sale at Lor’ an’ Taylor.” Panties. That’s funny. But just between Jefferson Davis Highway and I-395, there was a major backup, and the drive that normally took half an hour was three times longer. So by the time I got home the frantic ’rents were in the carport, about to go to the police.
We went inside, Mami Dearest screaming and cursing Cubanly the whole way, Papi silent.
“WHERE WERE JOO?” Mami shouted. At the moment I was out of my body. And, now that I was alive, Mami could kill me. “WERE JOO WEETH [DE PREEK]?”
“Who do you think?” I said. Rebeca looked at me quickly and scrammed. I knew it; she’d known all along what was happening and had ratted me out. AFTER I’d phoned home. What. A. Bitch.
“JOO WERE WEETH [DE PREEK]!” Mami yelled.
“Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you wanna think.” My voice sounded mechanical, remote, unfeeling. Statue Voice. This would be bad. Really bad.
“JOO WERE! WHAT WERE JOO DOEENGH WEETH HEEM?”
“Doing?” I said, Bree Daniels irony mounting. “Talking. We were talking. I fell asleep on his couch. Sorry.”
“¡LO PROVOCASTE!” You provoked him!
I sighed numbly and looked at my father. He was crying. He looked so sad, like a helpless, lost child. Sadder than the only other time I’d ever seen him cry, over a decade ago back at Las Casitas Verdes when the Bay of Pigs invasion failed.
“DON’ JOO SEE JOOR FATHER EES CRYEENGH?” Mami shrieked. “DON’ JOO THEENK JOO SHOULD GO AN’ COMFORT HEEM?”
“Comfort HIM?” I said. That was rich. “No, I don’t think he wants me to touch him right now.”
“WELL, JOO ARE BEYON’ GROUNDED!” Mami continued. “JOO ARE EEN SO MUCH TROUBLE! HOW DARE JOO WORRY PAPI AN’ ME. HOW DARE JOO. JOO ARE SO SEHLFEESH. JOO LIE, JOO DEESREHGAHRD CURFEWS. JOO DON’ CARE ABOU’ ANYBODY BUT JOORSELF. JOO BLEW EET!”
“Oh I blew it,” I said. My voice sounded tinny and flat, as if it were inside a cartoon bubble. “I see. Okay.”
“NO!” Mami screamed. “JOO DON’ SEE. EE
S NOT OKAY!”
She went to the kitchen, found one of Papi’s ubiquitous prescription pads, and handed it and a black Magic Marker to him. On it he wrote the word NO, underlined several times. Underneath was a list:
TELÉFONO
COMPRAS [shopping]
CARRO [car]
AMIGOS
AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
FUN
Mami posted her NO prescription list next to Dr. Kanoff’s. My parents couldn’t even be original to punish me; they had to rip off other people’s Nazi NO lists.
“READ DAT EVERY DAMN DAY,” Mami bellowed, “AN’ MEMORIZE EET. FOR LIFE.”
My “life” sentence lasted a week, maybe two. The ’rents caved and we never talked about It again. It was as if It had never happened and The Prick as anything but a nice colleague and family friend had never existed.
Mami insisted on giving The Prick, whose move West was impending, a friendly farewell brunch. At our house. With all of us there. And the huevos a la Malagueña. It had a nice circular arc to it, I had to admit. We’d started out on a Sunday with the huevos; we’d end up on a Sunday with the huevos.
“If that cabrón comes in my house,” Papi impotently told Mami, “I won’t be there.”
“We’ll mees joo,” Mami replied, exhaling her Kool and checking her manicure for chips.
I knew Papi would never NOT be there, but I could not believe The Prick would have the chutzpah to show up, especially after I’d warned him not to. While I was on parental probation, I’d talk to him from the pay phone at the Roy Rogers just up the street from Frenzy. He said he was sorry I got busted and that he loved me. He said we’d write to each other (my Temple Shalom Sunday school pal Sherry had agreed to have the Prick send his letters to her house). He said the world would never understand “our special secret love” and that we’d be together forever “someday soon.” Even I had to laugh at that one.
“I think you’d better hightail it outta Dodge for good,” I told The Prick. “It’s not good for you to be around here.”