“I wish it were that cool,” I admitted. “But no. We laid on her bed, doing our druggy thing. Listened to music. Talked in that stupid spacey way. I’d never done ’shrooms before, and Mandy was a good person to do them with, because she seemed to know what should happen. And I guess she thought sex should happen because she just rolled over on me, and since I was out of my mind, I let her. So. We did it and in the morning I walked home and slept for eighteen hours and my father thought I had the goddamn flu and I let him think that. There. The End.”
Baker, surprisingly, didn’t talk for a minute.
“Feel more complete as a person for knowing that?” I asked, gulping a bunch of water.
“Didn’t you guys use birth control?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, a little surprised at the question. “I had condoms.”
“Well, how did you get the condom on? If you were so wasted?”
I thought back to that night at the cupcake shop. The Cupcake Lady unwrapping it, rolling it onto me. I had sat there like a complete moron while she did everything, like a baby getting his diaper changed. God. Where the fuck was Tom?
“Jesus, Baker. It’s a condom, not a graphing calculator. It’s not that difficult to figure out.”
She laughed. “And did you like it? The sex, I mean, not the condom.”
“Well, it happened, didn’t it? I must have liked something about it.”
“How do you know you actually did it, then?”
Now I laughed. “Baker, I don’t think a guy can be so high he doesn’t realize that is happening to him.”
But she said, “That kind of sucks, though. That you weren’t really there for the whole thing.”
Jesus, Baker was naïve. Didn’t she realize that if guys were really “there” during sex, they’d probably come before the girl’s pants came off? There was no “being in the moment” for me, not with sex. Not after the Cupcake Lady. Not if I didn’t want to feel like a complete idiot. (And even then, a lot of times afterwards, I did feel like a complete idiot. Hence, the ritual phone number deletion.) For me, sex was a matter of thinking about everything else unsexy in the entire world in order to keep it from ending too soon. Were all girls this clueless? It seemed so luxurious, being a girl. Just getting to lie there, completely unconcerned about how the whole thing depended on the behavior of your dick.
“At least I wasn’t as caught off guard the next time I did it,” I said.
“You and Mandy did it again?”
“No. I never talked to her after that.”
“You mean you’ve done it with more than …”
“Hey!” I shouted. “You asked for the First Time story. Not the Every Time After That story. So, that’s all you get. Be sure to have your friends be specific about what level of absorbency they prefer when they ask me for tampons. Is that Tom’s boat? Yes. Thank fucking god.”
“You know, Evan? You really are hilarious when you start to tell a story. You really need to talk more.”
I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. But I held out my hand to help her climb down the rocks.
Dear Collette,
One of the last things we talked about (to the extent that we talked about anything) was condoms. Like, you said to buy some and I said I had some already. But what you didn’t know is that I had some there in my track bag right at the moment. I always had condoms. I mean, even now I have them. Though they’re pretty dusty under my bed at this point.
ANYWAY. I was sort of a freak about carrying condoms. Usually chicks make you jump through hoops before getting down, like first kissing, then boobs, then down the pants, etc. But it took just one instance where things went straight to fucking and that made me a believer. Lucky the chick had condoms that time. But every time since, I’ve had them in my wallet. I know that’s supposed to be bad for the latex, but I think that’s only if you leave them in there for a hundred years in the heat of the desert or whatever.
So, now you’ll imagine me like some soldier of fortune, with condoms like ammo wrapped around my chest. But I believe strongly in condoms. They avert babies and disease. They make you seem responsible, not slutty. They make the girl relax too, because you’re taking care of the risky part. Like you’re a professional. Roll it on, squeeze the tip, turn back to her, ready, set go. Like I’d just done a little disappearing act on myself and became something confident and wonderful. You can’t see through my latex disguise! You will love this so let’s get down! You don’t want to know how many times this worked in my favor.
God I feel like a fucking asshole sometimes. All the time, really.
CHAPTER TEN
My father was bugging the fuck out of me.
It wasn’t just the hanging around with Brenda and the Tonnesons, acting like he was this charming, talkative person who lived for whiskey sours and endless hands of Spite and Malice on the deck. Which was phony enough. But then he’d be the same as he always was toward me. Silent. Nodding. Giving me like two sentences of information per day. His son—the person he actually lived with. It was like he finally figured out how to be normal with other humans but didn’t think I deserved the same treatment. As if the fact that he’d sent me to therapy, that I’d almost died, and everything with Collette—meant that I was some psycho foaming at the mouth that you had to treat with caution.
Not that I knew what I wanted him to do or say to me. All his rambling the first few weeks we’d been here hadn’t been any better. Made me worried he’d just start bawling again, thinking about my mom.
At least at Pearl Lake, there was always something going on. When I wasn’t at work, there was always someone hanging around the lake.
Mostly, I hung out with Tom. Tom was very easy to be around, like he’d taken his personality from a template marked “Boy” and just followed it to the letter. Not that he was boring as a result. His hippie parents probably wondered why he didn’t like community theater and eating lentils, I’m sure. But Tom resisted all of his parents’ weirdness.
In addition to fishing and baseball, Tom also talked a lot about cars, since he worked at a car wash. He was going to some college in Iowa I’d never heard of—the same place as Kelly— and he had no underlying angst aside from the fact that he was a virgin and his girlfriend wouldn’t give it up. But he didn’t complain about that much, either. He liked Kelly, you could tell, even when she squeaked cutesy crap all over him. Even when she dyed her hair from Charcoal Briquette to White Blond (which was a huge improvement).
So when Tom left for a weeklong baseball tournament, and Jim texted me to come over to his cabin and hang out, though I hadn’t ever hung out with just Jim and Taber before, I took one look at my father socking away beer and kettle corn while playing poker with Brenda and Mr. Tonneson and the choice was clear.
Taber and Jim were eating a bucket of chicken and watching TV. Jim had this giant black dog that was slobbering and begging for the chicken and Taber would go to give the dog some and Jim kept freaking out: “Don’t give her table scraps! She’s enough of a fatass as it is!”
“Dude, you’re such a cock to your dog,” Taber kept saying.
Jim offered me some chicken, but I shook my head. Pulled out my pipe and a bag of weed I’d bought from the dishwasher kid at Mackinanny’s a week earlier and offered it up.
“Can’t,” Jim said. “I’m driving tonight. We’ve got plans. There’s a party we need to attend.”
So Taber and me smoked out while Jim took a million years in the shower. Probably bleaching his fucking teeth too.
Meanwhile, Taber had turned on a movie, Jim’s favorite, A Clockwork Orange. I’d never really seen the whole thing, but it inevitably showed up in the background at some point at every school I’d attended. Wherever guys congregated and were comfortable enough to scratch their balls, this fucking movie was sure to follow. Anyway, I recognized the awful old ’70s colors instantly. It reminded me of a children’s educational show but all demented and gross.
“You have to see this one p
art,” Taber said. “He’s chasing around this old lady with, like, this giant statue of a dick.” He was forwarding scenes and couldn’t get the remote to work right.
I wasn’t too high but was high enough to feel a little shitty. Watching this movie wasn’t helping. It reminded me of Remington Chase, for one thing. Plus everyone was so ugly and awful-looking. At least in modern movies, chicks look decent. Even naked, the chicks in A Clockwork Orange skeeved me out. And I really didn’t need to see the main character walking around his apartment in his underwear (scratching his balls, of course)—even at fast-forward speed.
Finally, Jim got out of the shower—still shirtless, smelling like body spray, and—yep—scratching his balls. He said we needed to go. All bossy, like we’d been the ones holding shit up.
“Hang on, I’m getting to this one part,” Taber said.
“Baker hates this movie so bad.” Jim sat down and put on his shoes. “You even quote it and she starts yelling.”
“Where is Baker?” I asked.
“Doing something with her friends.”
“Here it is!” Taber said. We all sat there for a minute and then on the screen there was this lady in a horrible orange jumpsuit and everything was like space-age furniture and one of the guys in white wearing the nut cups was singing “Singing in the Rain” as he kicked the shit out of this old guy. Then the nut cup guy cut out holes of the woman’s orange jumpsuit so her tits hung out and then basically made his friends hold the old guy down, forcing him to watch while he jumped on his wife.
“Hey, should we go … ?” I asked. Because right then, I wanted to throw up everywhere. Splatter barf all over the bucket of chicken on the coffee table that Jim’s dog kept sniffling around. I kept seeing Collette and her face screaming in a way I’d never seen it, would never see it, and her crying, and it felt like it was me being held down to watch her, not the old man in the movie.
“Wait, this isn’t the right part … ” Taber fiddled with the remote again. In my experience, this was easier with YouTube, where apparently thousands of guys like Taber and Jim had lovingly curated and tagged the most ultraviolent bits for all our viddying pleasure. But I wasn’t about to tell Taber this—at least not without throwing up on his shoes.
I got up and went to the bathroom. Which wasn’t any better. It was all steamy from Jim’s shower, plus I could have sworn he used the same body spray as The Rammer. I regretted smoking out. Coming over here. All of it.
Then Jim yelled, “Come on, Evan, we’re going!”
Jim drove us in this tiny little woman car. A hatchback of some kind that he said was Taber’s mother’s. Tom would have known the make. Taber could barely cram his body in it, and I had to sit behind Jim, because Taber’s seat was so far back.
“I found us a loadie party, dude,” Jim said. “Guy who sold me the mushrooms told me about it. So you and Taber can get lucky.”
I tried to imagine me getting some game. Even though I still felt like shit.
“I won’t even get drunk, so you don’t have to worry about getting home,” Jim continued. “Unless you go back to her trailer. Then you’re on your own.” He laughed.
“Fuck you,” Taber said. Like he was sensitive about his loadie chick’s feelings in advance.
“I’ll steer them toward you guys,” Jim continued. “I mean, they probably aren’t used to anyone who has all his teeth.”
That was true, if Terry Gribbener, my Cub Foods coworker, was any indication. The few teeth Terry had were a slimy yellow, and his breath was worse. So probably Jim’s blinding white dentures would be especially dazzling.
“We going to the south side?” I asked.
“No, a trailer park in town,” Jim said. “Riverbend Estates,” he added.
“Stop at a gas station,” I said.
“What for?”
“I need a couple of supplies if we’re going to make this happen.”
Plus, I needed to get my head right. If there were hot chicks at this loadie party, maybe that would be all I’d need. Maybe Lana’d be there, even.
Taber stopped at a Spur, and I ran in and got a couple packs of Marlboro Lights, some gum, two lighters, and a three-pack of condoms. Back in the car, I divided it all between me and Taber. Jim couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t know if it would work because I never scammed girls in a group before, but I thought it couldn’t hurt.
Fast forward to being at a shitty trailer park party, where it was all grass stamped down to dirt and crappy laundry lines and a rusted-out carousel at a playground area holding a keg wrapped in a black trash bag full of ice. Jim kept approaching little groups of chicks with his big fat smile and corny-ass lines that somehow made them open up and talk to us. Which was helpful, because me and Taber got completely shitfaced, me kind of rushing Taber to drink more and more with me, in order to shake my shitty feelings.
Which was fine—the dose of Clockwork Orange’s greatest hits seemed less gross the drunker I got, though reality started to resemble the scene where Alex gets down with those two chicks he meets in some fucked-up mall (though that scene was for shit, because the director ran it in quadruple speed, as if he knew it would be less enjoyable that way). The main thing I remember is what happened with these two girls, one in a red dress and one in a turquoise tank top. The red dress girl smoked all my cigarettes like some kind of nicotine pig and wouldn’t stop hollering at me in this scratchy man’s voice. She had big tits, but beyond that she was annoying and gross. Turquoise Tank Top was at least cute and normal about being flirty, and soon she and Taber disappeared.
I was out of cigarettes and feeling awful, but Red Dress chick wouldn’t quit dogging me. Finally, I went behind some bushes and made myself barf just to feel better. Jim found me and asked where Taber was.
We didn’t have to wait long to find out. A few minutes later, while I was shoving three sticks of gum in my mouth to kill the barf taste, Turquoise Tank Top was back, giggling with her girlfriends.
Instantly, Jim and I ran back to the tiny car. Where Taber was passed out in the backseat, half-naked, still wearing the condom.
“Jesus!” Jim yelled, slapping Taber awake while I pretty much collapsed laughing.
“We gotta go home,” Taber moaned. “Please. I don’t want to see her ever again. Please. Once was enough.” Taber struggled to clean himself off and piss in the bushes and then squished into the backseat again in misery while Jim started the car.
“Jesus, it reeks in here!” Jim bitched, cranking down his window. “Roll yours down too! That must have been some funky-ass chick!”
“Fuck you,” Taber muttered.
“I feel like we should contact Ford about this,” Jim said. “Tell them it’s possible to get laid in the back of a Fiesta.”
“Get those cigarettes outta here, will ya?” Taber groaned. “I don’t want my mom to find them.”
But as Jim started turning the car around, Turquoise Tank Top came running toward us, two other girls with her, including Red Dress Chick, and I yelled at Jim to drive, but he didn’t get it at first. The girls shouted at us, and one of them bombed the soda cup full of Coke and Cherry Lick against the roof of Taber’s mom’s car, where it rained down into the open windows, and we peeled out of Riverbend Estates laughing like fucking idiots.
Dear Collette,
I’ve never gotten down with a chick when we were both all the way naked.
Shocking confession. Have you ever done that?
I always laugh when I watch a movie where people have sex and everyone’s fully stripped down. Or the girl’s stripping off her stuff all slow in front of the guy. As if there’s time for that. As if you don’t need to have your shoes on in case someone’s stupid parents come home earlier than expected.
I learned the importance of the half-dressed bangage from this one chick I met at a house party. She made me hold onto her bra, so I left it on my wrist like a bracelet the whole time we got down. Sure enough, not five minutes after we finished, this drunk guy barged into
the room and puked on the carpet. Good thing we were dressed and able to exit quickly, right?
I think if that were my Last Chance Thing, that would be it. To be all-the-way-naked with a girl, in a bed. A comfortable, real bed. And all the time in the world. No worries, everything safe. Nobody barging in barfing or interrupting or laughing or busting us or anything. We could see everything of each other, and I wouldn’t freak out about it, because I’d have time and she’d be understanding and everything would be good and slow and nice and fine and I wouldn’t care if she liked me because I’d like her, like a normal person for once, and not be all sorry for her and manwhorey about it.
Maybe you have to be married to get down like that? I can’t imagine being someone’s boyfriend, much less husband.
Later, Evan
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Since Taber, Jim, I had to clean out the Cherry Lick and cigarettes and the condom box and everything else from Taber’s mom’s car at a self-service car wash at two in the morning, I woke up pretty late the next day, on the couch at Jim’s cabin— his parents nowhere around and not giving a shit what he did, apparently. Beside me was Jim’s dog that wouldn’t stop licking me. Covered in dog hair and Cherry Lick and feeling like a pile of ass, I walked home. Before the loadie party, I hadn’t had time between work and appointments with Dr. Penny to bathe. And now everyone was out on the Tonneson’s deck, eating and playing cards, Baker included, so I could hardly use my usual mode of getting clean.
I went into the bathroom for my daily shower staredown. The bathroom door was lightweight; it made a fluttery sound when you shut it, like it was made out of cardboard, not wood. Completely shitty. If it were up to me, all bathroom doors would resemble those terrorist-proof reinforced steel cockpit doors on airplanes.
But shitty door or not, I still reeked like the bags of onions Layne and I unloaded the day before, with Cherry Lick and cigarettes on top of that. So I decided to turn on the shower. Just turn it on. To get used to the sound. Dr. Penny said you had to go slow. That avoidance made it worse.
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