Neither do I, and I don’t care. I’m too busy thinking about my next move. What do I do now that I know Paul lied to me? I wonder what exactly it is he lied about? Deep down I don’t think he’s fucking another woman, but at the same time, deep down I know there is another woman mixed up somewhere in this story.
It is confusing. But only if I try to make sense of it with my left brain.
Because one thing is immediately, abundantly clear. My right brain has already informed me that I have no intention of leaving this man.
And I know that is seriously fucked up.
I’VE DECIDED TO STOP HAVING SEX with Scott. I’m not really sure why. I suddenly just “got sick” of it. I feel like sex is everywhere—on billboards, in magazines, in movies—and there’s this intense pressure to be having it all the time. I don’t like the pressure.
It’s been a year since I lost my virginity to Scott. I made the decision to go all the way like I make all my decisions: I thought about it, considered all my options, and calculated the best course of action. It was time. After all, we’d been together a year, he definitely loved me, and I had to lose it to someone. Might as well have been him. And to top it off, he and his main girlfriend were clearly on the verge of breaking up.
It finally happened one night at a Minnesota Kicks soccer game. Actually, we never even made it to our seats inside the stadium—probably as a result of the two Big Gulp–size cocktails I’d had of rum and Tahitian Treat. Instead of watching the game, we turn the tailgate party into heavy-duty canoodling in the car. One thing leads to another pretty quick.
“I have an idea,” Scott whispers to me as he turns the key in the ignition of the forest green Pontiac.
“Wha?” I am perilously close to retching. I am a lightweight who can totally hold her liquor. Once I’ve thrown up.
“Yeah,” he says. “This is a great idea.”
I manage to open one eye wide enough to see Scott’s face. He looks even more like a Cheshire cat than usual. He also looks a little frightened. Part of me already knows what’s about to happen—like how people on the news say they definitely knew their assailant was planning to kill them—but the Good Girl part of me feels it would be unseemly to be “okay” with losing my virginity, so I force myself to pretend that I’m too drunk to know what’s going on.
In four minutes we have pulled into the parking lot of a Motel 8. “Wait here,” Scott says. He’s going to take care of everything. I like that about Scott. He disappears into the lobby.
If I were writing this as an episode of a 1980s teen drama, Scott’s absence would be the moment where I reflect on my life as a little girl and my impending transition to full-fledged womanhood. There would be some sort of montage with shots of me on a swing, me blowing out birthday candles, and me getting my very first kiss, set to the sweeping emotion of a big dumb song like, say, “Endless Love” or some shit.
But it’s not. It’s really just me, with my head lolling around on the headrest, hoping that I don’t throw up or chicken out before I get to become “a woman.”
Scott is back in a jiffy, and next thing I know he is guiding me down a brightly lit hallway. “How mush was this room?” I slur. I am very concerned with how much money this little rite of passage is going to cost.
“Forty-two dollars.”
Let’s see, that will come to, oh, seven dollars a minute.
Everything between the moment the door opens and the keen pain between my legs is a blur.
Fluorescent lights. Thin sheets. Kissing. Fumbling. Scott’s nervous. He doesn’t want to seem like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I don’t want to embarrass him. I’ll just pretend I don’t notice. Uh-oh. Awkward. Really awkward. God, this is kind of weir—Shit. What was THAT? Wow, is that it? Is that what it feels like? That’s not at all what I thought it would be like. Weird. I wonder if I’m bleeding. Aren’t you supposed to bleed the first time? Was that my hymen? I didn’t feel anything break. Wow, Scott is kind of embarrassing himself. He’s, like, grunting! This hurts, kind of. I wonder how long it takes. Just curious. This isn’t like bad really, but I wouldn’t really call it good, either. And it’s certainly nothing like those Foreigner songs. Scott’s speeding up. Oh. Wait a minute. I think he’s going to—
Wow. That was quick.
SO AFTER A YEAR OF THAT, more or less, except in the backseat of the green Pontiac or downstairs in the basement in Scott’s brother’s old twin bed, I’ve just decided to stop. I simply don’t like sex all that much. Maybe if I had orgasms from it, it would be different. Maybe if it was more like masturbation. But it’s not. The thing I like most about sex is how it makes me feel that my boyfriend loves me. But now that we’ve been together for two years, I already know he loves me, so I don’t really need to have the sex anymore. Right?
“I’ll give you blow jobs, though,” I offer him. Generously.
Scott doesn’t have the temerity to get angry at my abrupt decision to cut him off. He’ll take the blow jobs. I think we both know that I’m very willing to just walk away from the relationship entirely if he doesn’t.
Unfortunately, abstinence isn’t having the intended effect. I wanted it to help me shake the feeling that everyone else is getting something out of sex that I am somehow failing to get. Madonna is the face of this feeling—when she urges me to be like a slut, but be one like a virgin? To wield sexual power like it’s a big giant bag of money or drugs? To measure myself by how many people want to have sex with me? It makes me want to rebel.
Years from now I will make the connection between my feelings about sex and the fact that I spent the first three years of my life steeped in the energy of people who trade sex for a living. But right now, I hate this idea that my sexuality is my worth. Not only because it feels hopelessly archaic, like I’m some slave girl or a geisha, even if I’m a well-paid, well-dressed, well-regarded geisha. But also (mostly) because I feel I don’t measure up.
And I don’t really feel like trying to.
MAYBE THERE’S ANOTHER reason I don’t want to have sex with Scott. Because I’ve met a new guy. In a bar, one of those places with peanut shells all over the floor. My friend Christie and I started frequenting the place a couple of months ago, after hearing that they don’t ask for IDs. We go on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when drinks are cheap.
The drinking age in Minnesota is nineteen. We are only seventeen, but it takes little more than a warm smile and a short skirt to make up the two years in between. Sometimes I wear my sweatshirt falling off my shoulder just like that girl in Flashdance. (I haven’t seen the movie yet, but people tell me I look like her. I wish.) As an insurance policy, I have a fake ID, but I’d rather not use it, since it’s kind of really obvious that someone took a razor blade and sliced off the “4” in 1964 and used superglue to replace it with a “2.”
I drink gin and sours. Many of them. One night I counted. I drank eight gin and sours between seven forty-five and closing time. That’s a lot of gin and sours.
Good thing I’m not paying for them.
That’s because—as a second insurance policy—I’ve made friends with the bartender. His name is Ken (everyone calls him Kenny), and he’s really sweet. He has thin medium-brown hair and medium-blue eyes. His skin tone is medium too and so is his height. In fact, he is medium in pretty much every way, at least externally.
Internally, he’s one of the more interesting guys you’ll meet in a place like Minneapolis. He’s twenty-six (about to turn twenty-seven), has traveled all over the world, and has a black belt in some random martial art the exact name of which I can’t recall. He’s got a degree in international studies and in two weeks he’s going back to the University of Minnesota for an MBA. He’s all kinds of smart. He also keeps the gin and sours coming.
I am kind of dazzled by him.
I think he likes me, too. The past couple of times we’ve been at the bar, he’s asked Christie and me to stay late after the bar closes and hang out. We turn the music way up and sit in the bo
oths and drink cocktails. I dance around and I can tell Kenny likes watching me. Cham, the Cambodian dish boy, hangs out with us, and so does Bonnie, the waitress, and a couple of the kitchen guys, too. We all play Ms. PacMan with quarters Kenny gets from the cash register behind the bar.
Last Thursday something unexpected happened. Kenny and I were cozied up in one of the back booths, marveling that we’d gone to rival high schools (I carefully avoided saying how many years apart) and had at one time belonged to the same church congregation. (That was during Yvonne’s Lutheran period.) I hadn’t been feeling any particular sexual chemistry (not that I would have, since heavy sexual chemistry tended to overwhelm me, hence the need for all those gin and sours) but suddenly there he was, kissing me.
And he has amazing, cushy lips.
It’s a lot different kissing a guy who’s twenty-six (about to turn twenty-seven) than kissing the fumbling twenty-year-old I’ve been dealing with. Kenny has got skills—Subtlety! Nuance! Technique!—obviously cultivated over years of experience. I’m pleasantly surprised, and where I think I opened this night merely interested in him, now I am downright smitten.
Meanwhile, Christie has hit it off with one of the cooks. She has just emerged from the kitchen looking disheveled. “He’s gonna give me a ride home,” she announces. “Is that okay? I mean, can you get home okay?”
Christie is a bold girl. Usually, this particular girl-girl transaction—where you have to figure out how to bail on your friend to leave with a guy, without looking (or feeling) like a slut—has an element of slight shame to it. Not for Christie. She looks at me. I look at her. She looks at the cook. I look at Kenny.
“I’ll give you a ride home,” Kenny offers. He is a real man, taking charge of the situation like that. “No problem at all.”
“Really? It’s not that far away,” I say. He’s already agreed to drive me, but I still feel the need to talk him into it, I guess because I automatically consider myself a pain in the ass. “Just on the other side of Lake Harriet.”
“I know where you live. You went to Wilson, right? I went to Grant, remember?” he says, tapping the tip of my nose. “It’s absolutely no problem. I’d love to do it.” He smiles, and it’s so warm, and so—what?—loving, I just know I’m in perfectly good hands with this guy. He’s like Scott, in that he clearly wants to take care of me, except he’s better. Way better.
Christie takes off with the cook, and soon it is Kenny and me alone. We make out for a while, and I’m really enjoying it. I feel grown-up, sophisticated. Like I’m finally hanging out with My Type of People.
My mouth is starting to get stubble-burned when Kenny stops kissing me and checks his watch. “What time is it? I’ve got to get you home.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“Don’t you still live with your parents?” He’s very thoughtful. But obviously his idea of parents and my idea of parents are two totally different ideas.
“It’s not like that,” I reassure him. “I can come home anytime I want.”
It’s 3:52 in the morning. “Okay,” he says, sliding out of the booth. “We’ll stop off at my house for a quick nap and then I’ll take you home. How does that sound?”
It sounds like he’s opening the door to having sex with me. But I don’t say that. That would make me sound young and silly.
And I want him to think I’m nineteen.
I WAS HOPING SCOTT would just die a natural death, but it’s turning out that a natural death is just as painful as an unnatural one. At least for him. I’m in college now, having the time of my life.
I’m going to St. Cloud State University, widely known as the biggest party school in the state, but that’s not why I’m here. I chose it because it accepted me. And it’s cheap. If the state of Minnesota didn’t make it so easy—no letters of recommendation necessary, no personal essay, and it’s not very competitive—I wouldn’t be here.
So far my studies are going well. It turns out I am much better at college than I ever was at high school. I am getting all A’s! This is a miracle, seeing as how I drink a lot of gin and sours. Like, every night. Unless it’s not a miracle and the gin and sours are responsible for my new, improved academic performance. Actually, that sounds more like it.
Anyway, everything is great except for Scott, who is gasping for breath, though he doesn’t seem to know it. I just don’t have the courage to break up with him. I know that he will not take it well. It’s not that he will yell at me or cry, it’s that I will feel responsible for giving him pain and I really, really don’t want to inflict pain on anyone. It seems easier to just let circumstances do the dirty work for me—just go off to college and let the relationship drift away.
Unfortunately, Scott’s not allowing that to happen. The phone rings in my dorm room every night, and it’s him, calling to make sure I’m still in a relationship with him.
“How’s my Trace-Face?” he coos. Trace-Face is his nickname for me. It’s a sweet nickname. Much better than Stack-Millan. But hearing it makes me feel bad. Guilty. Scott really does love me. How do you leave someone who really, truly loves you just because someone better came along?
“I’m fine,” I say. There are six boys and girls in my dorm room playing Quarters. With gin. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.” He sounds needy. He wants something from me that we both know I can never give him. “Good news! I’m coming to see you.”
“This weekend?” There go my plans for Saturday night.
“Tomorrow!” He thinks this is a wonderful surprise. I think it is a bummer. “I have the next two days off from work.”
Scott has this crazy job where he sprays pesticides on people’s lawns to kill crabgrass. This being Minnesota, business drops off substantially come September. When it snows. (Just kidding. It won’t snow until Halloween. Though I hear global warming is changing all that.) “And your birthday’s almost here.”
It’s true. My birthday is really soon.
I wave the party out of my room, since it’s obvious Scott’s going to need more extensive servicing tonight. The boys and girls reluctantly get up, en masse, and head to Heather’s place, two doors down. I mouth the words I’ll be there in a minute and shut the door behind them. I’m sad to see them go. We were having such fun.
“I thought I could drive up and give you your birthday gift in person,” he says.
Ugh. “You don’t have to do that!” I’m hoping I sound thoughtful, like I don’t want Scott to go to all the trouble. Not uninviting, like I would dread his visit.
“No, I want to. I have something special for you,” he says. “You’re going to love it.”
Probably not, I think to myself. Whatever it is, it will make me feel worse than I already do.
The next day Scott shows up on my doorstep with his own stereo, a very fancy (for the early eighties) Technics setup that includes a turntable, cassette deck, radio/tuner thingy, and speakers. I am…pleased. And guilty.
“Oh my god. It’s great.” I try to sound excited, but in my heart I’ve already written him a dear-John letter and mailed it—by Pony Express. It’s just going to take a few weeks to get there.
That night I have mercy sex with Scott, in the bottom bunk of the bed I share with my roommate Penny, a farm girl–slash–homecoming queen whose feathered-hair game is seriously world-class. Penny is staying with her boyfriend tonight, so she is spared the pain of listening to a long-term teenage relationship in its death throes.
It’s the last time Scott and I will be together, and as usual, it kind of sucks.
On my eighteenth birthday, I come home from class to find a bouquet of flowers on the doorstep of my dorm room. Pink roses. The card says: Happy Birthday! It is signed, Kenny.
I can’t believe it. I haven’t heard from Kenny since the second weekend in August, before I came to St. Cloud. I thought it was over. We had that one cool night where we made out in his bed as the sun came up. But since then, we’d both had major life changes—he returned t
o school, and I started college. I thought he’d forgotten about me. But apparently not.
It’s official now. Scott is toast.
Not because I don’t love him, I do, in this one way. But I’ve always suspected I could do better—not in terms of looks or money; I don’t seriously care about those things. But in terms of being with someone who is more interesting, more challenging, and who is going more in the direction I see myself going in life—a better overall match. The flowers are proof positive that I can.
Actually, they’re proof that I already have.
I WAIT FOUR MINUTES before confronting Paul about the movie ticket. I pick up the ticket stub and, still in character, pretend like a thought just occurred to me. “Wait a minute. This ticket says May seventh. Isn’t that when you were out of town visiting your son?”
I watch Paul’s face carefully. It betrays nothing, which should scare the bejesus out of me, but it doesn’t. Probably because I’m a hunter right now, closing in on a big ol’ moose.
“Hmm. I don’t remember.” He shrugs.
No way am I letting him off. “Yeah! I remember it now,” I say, not breaking character. “You called me on Sunday morning. It was Mother’s Day. That was the eighth. And you said you got home late the night before. Wait. I can show you.” I lean over and start rummaging through my purse. “I have my calendar right here.”
I can feel tension coming from Paul’s direction, but I don’t stop. There is a small part of me, the part of me that is always observing myself, that can’t believe I am putting the screws to him like this. I know myself as a person who doesn’t have the balls to confront people directly in this way. It’s pretty much the entire reason I’ve spent my TV news career behind the scenes rather than sticking microphones into people’s faces.
I produce my date book, a ratty old thing I got at Sav-On. “Right. See here? The seventh was a Saturday. I have it marked down—Paul returns, Sunday the eighth.”
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