WrongorWriteBoxedSetstripped

by Sky Corgan

“Ew. Let me see it again.”

  “No.” He quickly buttoned his pants.

  “That was gross.”

  “That's my body you're talking about.”

  “Well, it is.” I shrugged, thinking about how odd it had been.

  “Show me yours now.”

  “I don't have anything to show you.” I gave him a confused look.

  “I showed you mine, now you have to show me yours. That's how this works.”

  “But I don't have . . . one of those.”

  “I know. I want to see anyway,” he sounded as casual as if he was asking to see one of my coloring books.

  Suddenly, I felt embarrassed. Was I deformed? Was I supposed to have one of those ugly things too? I wasn't sure anymore.

  “I don't wanna,” I pouted.

  “Tara, that's not very fair.” He crossed his arms over his chest, giving me a disapproving look.

  “Mine isn't like yours.”

  “Of course it's not. You're a girl. Boys have penises. Girls don't.”

  That did make me feel oddly better. If there was anyone who would tell me I didn't look right down there, it was Darren. Maybe I should show him, just for my own peace of mind.

  “Fine,” I sighed, pulling open my shorts and underwear with deliberate jerking motions. I couldn't even stand to look at him as he gazed down into my pants.

  After a few seconds of Darren silently staring, I let go of my waistband, listening to it snap shut. When I finally looked at him, he had a thoughtful expression.

  “Well?” I asked. “Are you happy now?”

  “It's not what I thought it would look like.”

  “What do you mean?” My mind filled with horrors. Maybe I really was deformed after all.

  “There's nothing there.”

  “Of course there's nothing there. I thought you said you knew that.”

  “My mom's is hairy.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because she showered with me when I was little.”

  Now I definitely thought I was deformed. It depressed me, and while I probably should have asked my mother about it, I didn't. I kept on thinking that my body was deformed until sex education class in middle school.

  ***

  Darren and I shared a lot of our firsts together. He was the first boy I ever saw naked, and he handled our first kiss with the same scientific curiosity as everything else.

  We were ten at the time, and his parents had finally decided that it wasn't such a good idea for us to be sleeping in the same bed together anymore. They made Darren fix himself a pallet on the floor, and I slept on his bed, staring down at him to talk until the late hours of the night.

  That particular night it was storming. I had always been afraid of thunder, and God was being especially tumultuous. In the middle of the night, I found myself crawling down onto Darren's pallet so that he could comfort me while the weather raged on.

  We had got onto a conversation about two kids who had been caught kissing in the hall and were sent to the principal's office. At that point, I was kind of getting interested in boys, but Darren still thought girls had cooties.

  “Have you ever kissed a boy before?” he asked me.

  “No. Have you?”

  “I don't kiss boys.” He smirked, being a smart ass.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No. I wonder what it's like.”

  “I hear it's supposed to be magical,” I replied dreamily, thinking of all the Disney movies I had watched.

  “Magical enough to go to the principal's office for?” He quirked a brow.

  “I guess so. I don't know.” I shrugged.

  “I'd like to try it sometime.”

  “You. Kissing.” I wrapped a hand over my mouth to hold in the giggle.

  “Adults do it. I mean, we're going to be adults someday. We have to try it sometime.”

  “Do you think kissing makes you an adult?”

  “I don't know. I think it's part of it.”

  “I want to be an adult.”

  “Me too. Do you want to try kissing and see if it makes us feel any more adult?”

  I thought for a moment. In all the movies that I'd seen, kisses were reserved for your one true love. I loved Darren, but not like that. Still, the thought of kissing was exciting, and I didn't know if I could wait until I got older. Having a boy as a best friend gave me an opportunity to get ahead of the game, and I did like trying new things.

  “Sure,” I said finally, feeling suddenly nervous.

  “Alright.”

  A bolt of lightening streaked across the sky, illuminating the room. The thundering that followed made me press myself into Darren's chest. He grinned at me, gently rubbing my back and soothing my fears.

  “I hate that,” I grumbled.

  “I know.” He paused for a moment, “So, um, how do we go about doing this?”

  “I think you're supposed to kiss me. The boy always kisses the girl.”

  “Um, alright.” He stared at me awkwardly for a moment.

  “What?”

  “Aren't you supposed to close your eyes or something? That's how they do it in the movies.”

  “Uh, yeah. I guess so. I mean, I think you're right.”

  “So, close your eyes.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. My heart was drumming in my chest, partly from fear of the storm but also from anticipation. Was this the right thing to do? Best friends aren't supposed to kiss each other. But I was too curious to stop it.

  “Pucker your lips,” Darren told me, and I did.

  The moment was far from magical and too quick to calculate. For a fraction of a second, I felt Darren's lips graze mine, as gentle as a summer breeze, and then he was gone. When I opened my eyes, part of me wondered if I had imagined it. Wasn't I supposed to feel different?

  “How was it?” he asked, giving me a look as if he was processing his own feelings.

  “A bit disappointing,” I admitted, trying not to frown.

  “Yeah. I thought it would be different too.”

  “Do you feel any older?”

  “I think so. Maybe a little,” he replied thoughtfully.

  “I'm not sure if I feel any different.”

  “Maybe we should try again.”

  “No. I don't think so.” I shook my head, thinking that it probably hadn't worked because he wasn't my one true love.

  “Oh, alright,” his voice sounded different, but I couldn't quite pick up the emotion. Maybe he was hurt that I didn't want to do it again. I couldn't understand why he would be. Neither one of us felt anything from the kiss. There was no point in doing it again.

  ***

  Everything I learned about sex came from Darren. While my parents sheltered me from the world as much as possible, his parents did their best to educate him. When he was eleven, they gave him 'the talk', which he passed on to me. The whole idea of sex seemed silly to me at the time. You put what in where and a baby comes out nine months later. Why would anyone want to do that? It sounded horribly uncomfortable.

  Darren furthered my education by letting me watch porn with him in his room. While his parents had put an adult filter on his computer, he easily found a way around it. The guy was too smart for his own good.

  The first time I watched porn with him, I remember thinking about how weird it was for two people to do something like that. We were both twelve at the time, and while our bodies were changing, we didn't have a full understanding of what that meant. Still, the act of doing something forbidden was exciting, and I strangely never felt awkward around Darren, no matter what we did.

  When we turned thirteen, Darren's mom stopped letting us sleep in the same room together. My parents put a stop to that long ago. That didn't keep us from winding up in bed together though. It didn't matter whose house we were at or which room I was sleeping in, every night after midnight, Darren would come crawl in bed beside me. He'd wrap his arms around me, and we'd fall asleep cuddled up together. To a
nyone else, it might have seemed inappropriate, but for us, it was strictly platonic, something that we always did—always had done since we were kids.

  Darren would set the alarm on his phone and make sure he was up and back in his room before our parents woke up. It was probably more of a hassle than it was worth, but Darren didn't mind. He said it would feel strange being under the same roof as me and not waking up beside me. I felt the same way.

  In fact, we continued to sleep in the same bed together until I got my first boyfriend when I was fifteen. I felt bad telling Darren he couldn't sleep with me anymore, but it just didn't feel right dating another boy and still having Darren in my bed. It would feel like I was cheating, and I wasn't about to start my love life out on the wrong foot.

  Chapter 2

  Things didn't really start changing between Darren and I until high school. While we still hung out a lot, we saw each other less and less. Instead of spending every weekend together, it cut down to every other weekend. I was finally becoming my own person, able to survive school without him constantly being by my side.

  I enjoyed this new freedom, the excitement of what felt like a new life. I was able to make my own friends, and boys were starting to notice me, which was completely new. It had taken me a while to grow into my big eyes, but it had finally happened. What had once been something that had the boys making fun of me was now what attracted them to me.

  Darren had changed as well. He had traded in his glasses for contact lenses and had grown like a weed. His tall lanky blue-eyed blonde-haired look had lots of girls swooning over him, but he never seemed to pay much attention to it. He wasn't a jock, but being the son of the wealthiest guy in town definitely had its perks, not to mention that Darren was incredibly smart and talented.

  It felt strange having my friends ask me about him. Darren and I had grown up together, and while I could understand why they found him attractive, I couldn't see him like that. He was just Darren to me, my best friend. At least, that's what I thought until I started dating Elias Adams, a junior on the football team.

  I had been so excited when he asked me out. I couldn't wait to tell Darren. But when I told Darren about my new boyfriend, he didn't seem to share my happy sentiment.

  “Good for you,” he said dryly, looking as if someone had just taken the wind out of his sails.

  I had decided to tell him and my mom at the same time so I could reduce the number of times I had to repeat the story. My mom shared my zeal, though her expression quickly softened when she saw the look on Darren's face. I didn't really understand. It was like they were speaking a silent language to each other that was foreign to me.

  “So, tell me more about this boy,” Mom said, though her voice made it sound like she was treading lightly.

  “Well, he's tall, and athletic, and he has brown hair and brown eyes, and he's so dreamy. Oh, and he's on the football team,” I practically squealed, unable to handle my excitement.

  “And how about you, Darren? Any young women in your life lately?” she asked as she went to work rolling the meatballs for the spaghetti that we would be having for supper.

  “Nope. Not interested in anyone.”

  “You know, Irma O'Neill likes you,” I blurted out, trying to keep him from feeling excluded.

  “I didn't know that,” he replied, though there was still no enthusiasm in his voice. After a moment, he stood and said, “Well, I'm going to head home. I'll see you later.”

  “You're not staying for dinner?” my Mom sounded disappointed, but I was kind of glad Darren was leaving. He seemed grumpy.

  “No, ma'am. I have a lot of studying to do for an upcoming test.”

  “Well, alright.”

  He walked around the side of the bar to give her a hug before allowing me to escort him out.

  “Are you alright?” I asked as I watched him climb onto the moped his parents had bought him for Christmas.

  “Yup. See you at school tomorrow, Tara.”

  “See you, Darren.” I waved at him before coming back inside and sliding onto my chair to watch my mom finish preparing dinner. “He was acting kind of weird,” I commented.

  “He's jealous.” My mother smirked.

  “No way. Darren and I aren't like that.”

  “Maybe you don't feel that way, but he does.”

  “I'm sure that's not it. He was probably just having a bad day.”

  She shook her head at me before dropping a meatball into the spaghetti sauce. “Girl, sometimes you are so blind.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “What makes you think Darren likes me?”

  “The way he looks at you. He's been looking at you differently for a while now.”

  “I haven't noticed him looking at me any differently.”

  “That's because you're blind.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I'm serious. Have you ever thought about maybe dating Darren?”

  “Mom! That's just gross. It would be like dating my own brother.”

  “It's not gross. Darren's a good guy. That boy has manners, which is more than I can say for most of those high school boys.”

  “Elias has manners too.”

  “I'm sure he does. I don't know this Elias though.”

  “You'll meet him,” I said cheerfully. “He's so perfect, Mom.”

  “I'm sure you think so now. I'm just saying that if it doesn't work out with you two, I wouldn't mind seeing you and Darren together. I think your father feels the same way. You know that your father and I were high school sweethearts.”

  “I know,” I groaned.

  I had heard the story a million times. They had never been with anyone but each other growing up. It was like a boring storybook romance. So old fashioned.

  My mother got pregnant with me in high school, giving up her dream of going to college to be a nurse. Instead, she ended up a housewife. My father worked two jobs to support us until he got a break working on computers for a big corporation. By that time, I was getting ready to start kindergarten, and they didn't want me to spend my childhood years growing up in the city. We moved out to Castroville so that I could have a simple country upbringing. It was still a struggle financially. Up until my father got a big promotion when I was in middle school, we lived on as little as possible. Sometimes he said he regretted moving away from the city. It cost more in gas to get to and from work, and the car wouldn't last forever. If it wasn't for his promotion, we might have ended up moving back into San Antonio. I thought I would have liked that more and had mentioned it a few times, but my parents felt we were better off where we were at.

  “I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong with dating your best friend,” she continued.

  “Yes, there is. Who would be my best friend if not Darren?”

  “A girl, perhaps. Why not that Krista girl. She seems nice.”

  Krista was my best friend next to Darren. We had become really close as freshman, and a lot of the time I felt like I related to her better than I did to Darren. We were both girls, after all, and we liked talking about boys and doing each other's makeup and hair. Those were things I couldn't do with Darren.

  The only annoying thing about being her friend was that she had a huge crush on Darren. I had told him about it once, but he had taken it with a grain of salt. If I didn't know he liked girls by all the porn he watched, I would have thought he was gay. Darren did like girls though, he just didn't discuss it with me, which suited me fine. I had no interest in the people he thought about dating. That was his thing.

  “Krista could be my best friend,” I agreed. “But Darren holds that spot right now, and I have no plans on changing that.”

  The subject was dropped after that, and I was thankful. Just the thought of my mom actually wanting me to date Darren made me feel weird. It was just so wrong.

  ***

  Like most high school romances, Elias and I didn't last very long. At around the three-month mark, I started getting insecure. He began acting distant, and the rela
tionship quickly crumbled.

  There were other boys after Elias, so many that I could barely keep count, so many that my mother had me put on birth control just in case. I pushed the words she had spoken about Darren liking me to the back of my mind. We weren't like that. We never would be. He was my friend, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  While my dating life had picked up dramatically, Darren still didn't date at all. It was like he had an allergy to girls. He just didn't seem to have any interest in them. When I asked him why he didn't date, he said it was because he wanted to focus on his studies and get into a good college. I took that at face value. Besides, who was I to pry.

  Despite my active dating life, I never let the guys get a home run. Third base was a stretch for most of them. Penises intimidated me, and being fingered made me uncomfortable, but I let the guys I really liked make their way around the bases before I sent them back to the bench. While I would do most sexual things, sex itself was sacred to me, something that should only be done with your one true love.

  Thinking back on it, I couldn't help but grin at how I used to think that way about kissing. It didn't take my one true love to give me the kiss that knocked my socks off. That happened with Elias Adams. That was a real first kiss.

  Sex was more intimate than a kiss, and I wanted to make sure I did it with the right man, so I held off, going as far as I could in hopes that I wouldn't get dumped for not putting out. My resistance irritated a lot of the guys I dated. 'Cock tease' became one of my secret nicknames, but I didn't care. I still had my morals.

  Krista and I were one in the same in that sense. She liked to go far, but she wouldn't go all the way. We'd talk about it late into the night, giggling at how the boys would act when we'd take them to the brink of no return just to pull away. It was all a big game to us.

  As the time passed, Krista seemed to get more and more wild, trying to drag me down a bad path with her. I went part of the way, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol whenever I got the chance. The seedy people she had started hanging out with were a bit too much for me though. Of course, Darren felt the same way, and he tried to curtail me back onto the right path, which only made me want to rebel more. Still, I knew when too far was too far.