by Gabi Moore
These new thoughts thrummed over me: maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe Aunt Carol, with her freckled hands and over processed hair and mid-life crisis …maybe she was right. Maybe he was, too. I stripped down, slid on the g-string and took a long look at my reflection. Wrapped round the mirror frame were faded and torn cherub stickers from first grade, some plastic flowers. But inside the frame was a young girl in black lingerie. It was a striking, and uncomfortable mess. It was an accurate picture of my life, in other words.
I ran experimental hands down over my body, trying to find answers there, trying to determine that precise fold or curve where my virtue was hidden, or else proof that I was as bad as him. I found only soft, warm flesh, and skin that made me think of him again, in the car. Vulnerable and pinkish – how could anything be wrong with flesh?
My nipples protested against the cold. I watched goose bumps form on my upper thighs. Jared didn’t judge me, although I had judged him. I thought again about my request. His open ended answer. My head was no longer as fluffy, and a little ache of embarrassment was growing, but something else: I didn’t change my mind. I had only said what I had been thinking for a long time now, ever since he appeared in my aunt’s life months ago.
I looked at myself once more, then got back dressed. I didn’t want to be like my mother. And I didn’t want to be like Aunt Carol either. I wanted to be my own person, and do what I wanted to do.
And at that point, there were many, many things I wanted.
Chapter Nine
The next day, and the whole of the week after that, I heard nothing from Jared.
I didn’t open my hidden box again, and tried to pretend I wasn’t offended that he wasn’t just dying to hear what my decision was. I couldn’t bear the humiliation of texting him, even though I had his number. So I waited.
He wasn’t with Aunt Carol either, who seemed disturbingly unaffected by his absence. They had been a little cool with each other ever since they came back from their vacation. Didn’t she care that he was probably off with other women? Throwing that easy smile off to anyone who had the cash for it? But she genuinely didn’t seem to care, and I was irritated, both for myself and on her behalf.
After two weeks had passed, I more or less resigned myself; the weird Jared-shaped hole in my life had been allowed to get way, way too big anyway. Besides, two weeks was just enough for two times at church, which seemed to be the magic number to snap me out of …it. I had gone more than fourteen whole days without watching any porn, and perhaps that many hours without imagining it, with Jared plugged into all the leading roles and with my own innocent limbs instead of that girl’s.
I was doing well.
So, of course that’s when he decided to pitch up again.
My mom and I were at my aunt’s, who was graciously hosting our bake sale prep but not interested in the least in helping, especially after we didn’t laugh at her joke to put booze in the cupcakes. Then he waltzed right in, like he owned the place. My mother’s face, even if it wasn’t already halfway to doing it already, nearly fell to the floor, and she stammered and tried to introduce herself to “Jeffrey”.
My aunt seemed a little boastful and showed him off, proud that her contribution to the day was not a box of baking equipment for a church function, but a hot stud in a muscle shirt.
“Oh hi Jeffrey,” I said, hoping he’d catch a good glimpse of how modestly I was dressed. He didn’t. He was instantly between my mom and aunt somehow, and they were cooing over him like he was a new baby, except the baby had thick biceps and you could see his nipples.
“Carol you’ve never bought him over, I keep telling you, why don’t you bring him over for dinner.”
“And share him? Never”
“Carol!”
“He’s not interested in old fart things like dinner you know.”
“Now ladies, ladies…” he said, as though he was born to fend of stay at home moms throwing themselves at him. I knew my aunt had fully lost her senses but I had to say I was surprised my mother seemed to like him. He had both his hands raised, and both his eyebrows too, as if he’d be breaking up a fight between them any second now.
“Come help us in the kitchen Jeffrey,” mom said, but my aunt had pulled him onto the couch with her. He scarcely looked at me. In fact, I wondered if he remembered our exchange at all. What a slut. Can you call a man a slut?
The two women then busied themselves with fixing him something to drink, and they both simply had to do it, and they were both sure the other one wasn’t doing it correctly. I was alone in the living room with him, again, because of course I was.
“Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” I said.
He beamed.
“Aww… little Mel missed me! Well, I missed you too.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“Yeah OK, you got me, I don’t usually miss people. Let’s get out of here – your mom’s going to make me frost cookies or something. Wanna go for a drive?”
I eyed him suspiciously. Not much of a gentleman. “Fine.”
We made our excuses (we’ll go to the mall to fetch more sugar!) and were back in the car again, which was strange since the day before I had vowed up and down that nothing he could do would make it up to me, and I didn’t care how sorry he was for ignoring me for ages, I was a good girl, and he’d better not dare treat me like that again.
But instead, I sat nervous in the car – this time, his car – and I didn’t know what to say. It seemed pretty useless, in hindsight, to read about all those parables and fairy tales if I was just going to lose my virginity to some toy boy in a car. Oh my god where did that come from?
By the time we stopped in the mall parking lot, all two weeks of my church-going had been undone. He turned off the engine. But instead of saying something, anything, he moved to get out and go into the store. Didn’t we have the hugest thing to talk about?
“Jared…” I started.
“Yeah?”
This was all wrong. He hadn’t even glanced at my skirt, the shortest one I owned. “Well, I went home and thought about it…”
“Thought about what?”
I wanted to die. My face stung, but he laughed,
“Hey, I’m just kidding! Chill. You take things too seriously.”
“I want to,” I said quickly. Perhaps a bit of romance could be wrangled from this wreck after all. It had to be him anyway. All the boys in my youth group were hideous.
“You want to …what?” he said, teasing, then ducked out of the way as I tried to punch his arm. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you say it, I know how you Christian girls are.”
I suppressed a smile, even though I was majorly offended. Seriously.
“Good. Ok. I’m busy this week. I’ll come and fetch you on Thursday and we’ll go to my place. Bring $800.”
I swallowed hard. Was he joking again? This was outrageous. Surely he didn’t expect me to…?
“What, you thought you wouldn’t have to pay?”
I would have died rather than admit that I did think that, actually, and assumed that only, well, older ladies had to pay. Surely he should be grateful that I was letting him… and not the other way round…
“No, of course not,” I said, not wanting him to catch even a whiff of desperation. Just business then. Nothing funny here at all. There was the small detail of me not actually having $800, but I pushed away the thought.
We sat silent for a while.
“I’ll bump the price down a bit, if you’ll agree to let me do things my way.”
I stared at him.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and he laughed. We went inside the mall and bought sugar.
Chapter Ten
The only thing I had in my sexual arsenal was a stolen black g-string and my one short skirt, which I already knew had absolutely zero effect on him. Everything had been fastidiously organized: I was “going to Alice’s house for a sleepover” and both my mom and aunt were too engrossed in chatting a
bout when Jared would come back they barely noticed. He would come at 5, when I was the only one home, and Alice had been bribed and threatened to within an inch of her life to play along. The stage was set, and I was realizing with some irritation that I had no outfit for the occasion.
It didn’t matter, because the second we arrived at his house, he ordered me to strip down. No hello. No jokes, no anything. Just, “Take that off. Anyway, don’t you wear that to church?”
I did, but tried to act as though a response was beneath me. In truth, the most shameful thing at that moment was that I had managed to scratch together just $641, but what was he going to do? Call the police? ‘Hello officer, this lovely girl has robbed me of one sex and didn’t cough up, please arrest her’ – I think not.
“Take it off? I’ll get cold” I said.
“Oh, you’ll warm up.”
His house was sparse, a bit like I had expected, the den of someone who was a High School student only a second ago, and the recent money that had come into the decoration hadn’t quite pushed out the Playstation or frat-boy posters. The entire place smelled like his cologne.
I walked to the bathroom to get out of my clothes and get things underway.
“Where are you going? I said strip.”
Oh.
I cautiously unbuttoned my skirt and took it off, then removed my top as well, lingering a little in my bra and the g-string, wondering what he would have to say about them.
“All the way, everything off,” he said. He was sitting on a bar stool and running his eyes over my body. Did he like my breasts? Was I turning him on at all? Was this just business as usual? It was hard to say.
“You know it’s my first time, right?” I said as I peeled off the bra and panties and laid them down over my clothes, folded neatly on another bar stool.
“Yeah it’s my first time, too. My first time deflowering a bratty little princess like you. And I’m going to enjoy it.”
I was too shocked to say anything. I didn’t know what to think first; that he thought so little of me …or that he seemingly enjoyed thinking it. You know, for a guy who had talked me into this and basically led me astray, you’d think he’d take more responsibility for all of this. I stood still, waiting for my next order, I guess. Could he call the Better Business Bureau if he found out I didn’t have the cash? What do you think $159 worth of “his way” would look like, anyway?
I straightened my shoulders and stood tall, stark naked. Let’s see what everyone makes such a fuss about.
He slid off the bar stool and sidled up to me, then, maintaining an excruciating inch of distance at all times, he moved round my body, top to bottom, the front and the back, as though sizing me up. Each little hair stood on end under his gaze. I had the dumb realization that of all the porn clips I had seen, curiously they missed all these beginning parts. Were we officially started now? Was I, you know, “on the clock”?
“You need to relax,” he said, still surveying me. “You can almost see the tension in your muscles.” He stepped back and delivered his diagnosis: “You need some weed.”
I shook my head. Once was enough, that’s for sure.
“Ah, I thought we were going to do this my way?”
“But …weed makes me cough. And say stupid things.”
“Incorrect. That was a stupid thing to say, and if you smoke now with me, then you’ll start speaking sense.”
“But…”
“You didn’t come here with any money, did you?”
My mind raced. I said nothing.
“No, you didn’t. So it’s on the house. But on my terms. And I say smoke, so you must.”
I could have protested there, could have told him I had indeed brought money, that he had to do what I said, but something made me bite my tongue. I was curious about where this was going. I could stand to listen. At least for a little while, right?
I nodded, and he turned and started to fuss with something inside a little tin he had on the table. It was pretty inconvenient, having to stand there like an idiot while he chopped and rolled, but I bet he kind of enjoyed it, what with me being such a despicable Christian girl. If I’m honest, I also get irritated with how much of a killjoy I could be. Maybe he could beat it out of me. Oh my god where did that come from?
“Oh Jesus will you just relax? You look as though I’m about to bite you,” he said, handing me a faintly glowing joint.
I took the joint. Apparently, it doesn’t take very long to get completely used to being naked. By the time he had turned around again, the whole thing seemed almost boring to me. Maybe all this sex business was actually easy as pie. I took it in my hands and inhaled a long, careful puff.
“Don’t forget to inhale! Here,” he said, tapping his own chest. I liked that had taught me something. That we had this secret between us. But the secrets sure where racking up.
The smoke went in me, again, and this time I knew to relax into the weird, warping sensations it brought to my head, my face, my lips, the tips of my fingers. I started giggling, then I giggled at the fact that I was giggling. I took another drag, just to see if I had the technique down. I did.
He was leaning back on his bar stool again, one hand casually propping up his head, looking at me with an amused expression.
“You know, I had my doubts, but you really are a pretty bad girl after all,” he said.
“Bad? No way, I’m a good girl.”
“Uh huh, that’s why you’re standing here buck naked and smoking a blunt in my house right now.”
He had a point.
I was reminded again how smoking seemed to take the edge off things. How the stakes just didn’t seem that high anymore. And how he looked different somehow. Cute, even. My head fell back, of its own accord, and I relished the sensation of my ponytail brushing the skin on my lower back.
“Loosen your hair,” he said.
And I did. For a brief moment, a little bubble of my shampoo scent puffed into the room against his overwhelming cologne. It died down instantly.
He stood up, grabbed my hand and led me to a low, distressed looking futon. We sat, and I swear I was overcome for a moment by just how comfy, how lovely that futon was. I briefly considered a nap.
“You’re cute when you’re stoned,” he said. I laughed and snorted. I wanted to tell him that I had waited all day for this. That I was so horny I had had to sneak to the bathroom every half hour and touch myself. I had snuck all the way up to the brim of an orgasm and then backed off, saving it for later. For now.
He was up close all of a sudden, and every bit of my body seemed at that point to be made of feelers, of little receptors that prickled when he touched my shoulders, my neck. He leaned in and kissed me, and I melted. It was a quiet, unsure kiss, hesitating on the lips, not quite fully committing. It drove me nuts. I leaned further, trying to kiss him more deeply, but he pulled back, teasing a little.
“Ok, so first, you’ll have to suck me.”
Ok. Fine. I had seen this done. Piece of cake.
Slowly, he took off his shorts, then his white gym shirt. I gasped to see a massive, intricate black tattoo on the side of him, big as a shark’s bite, and made of complicated geometric shapes. “I never knew you had a tattoo!” I said, and momentarily forgot my assignment. He smiled and dutifully showed me all his other tattoos, watching my face as I looked at his hard forearms, his tight hips, and the one on his back.
“Now stop stalling and suck me,” he said again, and brandished a cock that had been rapidly growing while I was distracted with other things. It wasn’t nearly the same creature I had met the first time round. No, this was a mean, dangerous looking thing, more purple than pink, the dimensions of my forearm, only far more obscene somehow. I giggled. There was no way I was going to fit that in my mouth.
He playfully pushed me down on to the futon and I fell easily. Kneeling over me, he placed it right up to my lips, and I clasped two hands round it, thinking about how those girls in the clips seemed to swallow everythin
g so easily. It smelt warm. Underneath his obnoxious cologne smell was a subtler, more powdery scent. The scent, perhaps, of his unadorned skin. I nuzzled his cock against my cheeks for a moment and then closed my lips around the tip, and heard him murmur his approval. There was something warm and delicious growing inside me as well; a diffuse, inner itch. I lowered my lips and tried to find space in my mouth for some of the length. The taste was something entirely new to me, like watermelon flavored gum completely ruined with too much salt. Like something faintly sour. Like accidentally licking iron.
“Don’t be shy, more,” he said, and I obeyed. I worked my lips and tongue up and down the length, which seemed only to get bigger the more I tried to fit it in. Those two small veins were there, bigger now, the same dim, washed out blue of this tattoos. His hand gripped the hair at the back of my head and tugged me forward, bringing all of it deep to the back of my throat, where I reflexively gagged, opening my mouth even more.
“Good. Go that deep,” he said softly.
I pulled back, sucked him in again, learning what made him swell on my tongue, and which angle I needed to tilt my head to accommodate the most of him. He pulled his dick out eventually, and it was wet and red. I felt my body twinge in anticipation of what was coming next.
“It’s always the most uptight ones that turn out to be such sluts…” he said to nobody in particular, absentmindedly stroking himself. I felt my own familiar wetness growing between my legs.
“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? After I fuck you, that’s it, you won’t be a virgin anymore.”
“I know.”
“And this is going to hurt a little.”
“I know.”
The inner itch was growing, and, perhaps because of the buzz in my head or because I was tired of having everyone tell me what to do and what not to do, I flopped back onto the futon and splayed my legs, hands clutching under each knee. It was such an outrageous gesture, I couldn’t help but start giggling again. A little drop glistened at the tip of his cock, menacingly. I could feel how excited I was. I could almost smell it. He smiled and leaned in again for a kiss, but didn’t linger this time.