by Amy Bryant
“We could be alone,” he said.
“I’ve never taken the public bus,” I stammered.
Jason was all business. “You can get it right near you, I’ll find out where. It usually still runs when it snows. It stops right at the end of my street.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can probably figure it out.”
When we got off the phone I lay on my bed and listened to the radio. I was too lazy to put a record on. A DJ was interviewing an ecstatic caller about how many hours a day he listened to the station.
“Man, you should see my electric bill!” the caller exclaimed.
“We’ve got a WCXR fan on our hands, you better believe it,” the DJ answered.
Maybe this would be it. I got up from the bed and stripped naked. I studied myself in the full-length mirror. I saw myself naked every day, but now it was different. I wanted to see what Jason would see.
I put my right foot on my wicker laundry basket. The basket was low and wide, and looked like the sort an Indian snake trainer would use. I looked at my tiny, A-cup boobs. Maybe I could convince Jason to keep the lights out while we did it. He’d already felt me up enough times to know what he was in for, but I still wished I could somehow grow some curves overnight. Every other girl in my school was trying to lose weight, but I hated how skinny I was. My hips were nonexistent. My elbows were sharp. My wrists were like a child’s. I wore long johns under my jeans to thicken my legs, but people still stared. I looked like a boy.
I tried to look on the bright side. I had pubic hair; that was something. I’d gotten my period three years ago, but since then it only came once in a while. I loved it when my period came, cramps and upset stomach and all. It reminded me that even if most of my body refused to cooperate, I was still technically a woman.
I pulled my T-shirt and sweatpants back on. Maybe sex would be great. I thought about calling Theresa and grilling her, but I didn’t want to tell her about tomorrow yet. I wanted tomorrow to be just mine, at least for a while.
Before William, when Mom and I were living in Twin Oaks, I woke up once in the middle of the night to the sound of someone bumping against the hall table, where we kept extra place mats and candleholders. After the bump I heard a deep voice swearing. I was scared, but then I heard Mom giggle and say in a loud whisper, “Be quiet, you’ll wake my daughter.”
I didn’t know that Mom had a boyfriend, and he was gone when I woke up the next day. I met some of her later boyfriends, but William was the first one Mom let me see her hold hands with. Gradually I saw him kiss her on the cheek. Then on the mouth. It wasn’t too long after that that I heard them say I love you to each other.
Sometimes on the weekends Mom and William went into their bedroom in the middle of the afternoon and locked the door. When we were first living together, when I was still young enough to ask, I wanted to know what they were doing in their bedroom in the middle of the day. Mom told me the truth: they were having sex. She told me that they were in love, and when you were in love you had sexual intercourse.
“But what’s sex?” I asked. I knew it had something to do with a boy and a girl, something dirty. I’d heard kids at school talking, and I knew that sex was the same as fucking. I didn’t want Mom to know that I knew the word fuck.
“It’s when the man puts his penis into the woman’s vagina.”
I gasped. “That’s gross!”
Mom smiled. “Someday you won’t think it’s so gross.”
The next morning I was both excited and dismayed to discover that the roads were mostly cleared and the bus was running. Mom waved at me through the windshield of her Honda, the wipers straining against the snow. I stood in the doorway and waved back at her, the garage door groaning shut between us.
I called Jason for the directions to his house. He rattled them off, as if he had given the route between our neighborhoods some thought.
“See you soon,” he said before he hung up. He sounded nonchalant. I couldn’t tell Jason the truth about me. I was probably the only virgin over the age of fourteen in Reston.
I dressed mechanically, pulling my tall, red leather boots over my jeans. I loved these boots. No one else at school had them and they actually made me feel cool, like I stood out, but not too much. I brushed my hair for a long time and put on makeup, but not so much that Jason would notice I had done anything different.
I got off the bus a stop early and walked the extra few blocks to Jason’s house. I had the directions folded up in my coat pocket, but I had memorized his address: 1347 Rainwash Way. I watched my red boots darken as I crunched through the snow. It had warmed up, and the snow was already melting. School would be back in session tomorrow, and I would be there like always. But I would be different, even if nobody knew it but me.
Jason opened his door right away, as if he had been waiting on the other side of it all morning.
“You made it,” he said.
There was a plastic mat by the door. I pulled my boots off, hopping around to keep my balance. My socks had gotten wet, too, but I left them on. I could see the living room from where I was standing. There was a floral-print couch with a glass coffee table in front of it, and beyond that a TV in a blond wooden cabinet.
How much trouble could go on in this living room, where the tan drapes picked up the darker brown shade of the rug? I was confused. Why didn’t Jason come to school more? Why hadn’t his brother been home in days?
“Let’s go listen to records in my room,” Jason said.
I followed him upstairs. My wet socks pressed against the carpet. One of Jason’s belt loops had separated from his jeans on the bottom. It was frayed at the end like someone had taken a lighter to it. I had an urge to pull on it.
The only furniture in Jason’s room was a single bed, a dresser, and a stereo that was set up on the floor. Next to the stereo there were two orange crates full of records. There was a KISS poster hanging on the wall above the bed, along with a lot of flyers and record inserts from bands like Minor Threat and the Clash.
I sat on the edge of his bed, which was unmade. Jason crouched down in front of his stereo. He removed Licensed to Ill from the record jacket and placed it on the turntable. There was a heap of clothes in the corner near the closet. A black backpack I had never seen before hung from the doorknob. The music started, and Jason began nodding his head. I crossed my legs and stretched a hand out behind me. I was going to lose my virginity to the Beastie Boys.
Jason came over and sat beside me. Then we were kissing and then we were lying down, and it was just like at the construction site only on a bed, and then Jason took off my sweater and my T-shirt, instead of just rooting around under them like he usually did.
He unhooked my bra. I turned my head and kissed the place where Jason’s neck met his shoulders, just above the collar of his T-shirt. I couldn’t remember if I had ever kissed him there before. I didn’t think so. I kissed him again, further up on his neck.
He was lying flat on top of me now, one arm over my head and the other hand brushing against my hip. My stomach growled. Neither of us said anything. His bedspread felt thin and scratchy underneath me. Not like my own down comforter at home. Jason grunted and shifted his weight, and then he sat up and took his shirt off. He was almost as skinny as I was. He had a zit on his shoulder, a blackhead in desperate need of popping. Maybe last night Jason had looked at himself in the mirror and worried that I would notice it.
It came out before I had time to think about it. “I’m a virgin.”
Jason looked at me for what seemed like the first time since I got there. “I thought maybe you were,” he said.
“You did?”
“I love you no matter what,” Jason said. “I hope you know that.”
“I know,” I said.
We made out some more. I liked the way it felt to have our chests pressed together with no shirts on. “All the fly ladies are on my jammie,” Adrock whined. Maybe it was Mike D. I got them confused. I felt Jason’s fingers unbuttoni
ng my jeans. I raised my hips slightly to make it easier for him to pull them off, keeping two fingers crooked around the waistband of my panties so they wouldn’t slide down with my jeans.
Jason pulled his own jeans off and shoved them onto the floor on top of mine. He rested on top of me for a moment in his boxers, which were blue and white striped and much too big for him.
“I have a condom,” he said.
“Okay.” My voice sounded normal enough, in spite of the fact that my heart was pounding and my legs were shaking.
He left the room and came back a few seconds later with a condom and a ratty blue towel.
“I had to get it from my brother’s room,” he said.
I assumed he meant the condom. I wondered what the towel was for.
Jason gestured for me to move over and laid the towel on top of his sheets.
“You should lie down on this,” he said.
I got on the towel. I shut my eyes as he took off my underwear. The overhead light bored through my eyelids. I felt like a patient on the operating table. I opened my eyes to a squint and watched Jason unwrap the condom. It had a strong smell, kind of like a swimming pool. I shut my eyes again when Jason got on top of me. His boxers were gone.
I stopped shaking. Everything slowed down. Jason’s movements became deliberate, the guitar riff on “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” lengthened, and my breathing dragged to a halt. I felt the push of him against my vagina. It hurt, but in a bearable way.
Jason grunted and pushed. The pain got less bearable. He was moving back and forth, and I wondered if I should be moving back and forth, too. I tried to lift my hips up, but it was impossible with him on top of me.
He pulled away. “This isn’t working right,” he said.
I felt the blood drain out of my head all at once. I tried to read his face, but his expression was blank. “Maybe you could try again,” I said.
He climbed back on top of me. This time I tried pushing back and widening my legs, which resulted in a splintering jab of pain. There had to be something else I was supposed to be doing, something I hadn’t heard of. I thought of the song the boys used to sing on the bus in junior high. Polly Clark is so tight, you can’t get in with dynamite. Maybe there was something really wrong with me.
The record ended. Jason rolled off me and onto his side.
“Maybe we should just do oral sex,” he said. He sounded irritated.
I sat up on my elbows. Tiny beads of sweat had formed at his temples, and I could hear his soft breathing now that the record was over. I felt a lump in my throat. I couldn’t tell Jason that I didn’t know how to give a blow job. That I hadn’t laid eyes on a penis before today.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to,” he said, less irritated now. He put a hand on my calf and stroked it.
“What do I do?” I asked.
Jason showed me. His same smell was down there too, but stronger, more pungent and salty. After only a few seconds he shuddered and placed both hands on my head and raised me off him. I thought I must have done something wrong until I felt his stuff on my neck and chest.
“Sorry,” he said. He dabbed at me with the towel. “I didn’t think you’d want me to come in your mouth.”
I stared down at myself. It was all milky and sticky, like what a baby would spit up. I took the towel from him and pressed it to my chest. Jason put his arms around me and I let myself hug him as hard as I could.
We got dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Jason heated up canned chicken noodle soup in a pot on the stove. I sat on a tall, wooden bar stool at the counter. The kitchen was immaculate.
We ate at the kitchen table while we watched The Price Is Right on a little TV that was on the counter. During the commercial break I mentioned that a bus was coming soon.
“I guess I should get back, so my parents won’t start freaking out,” I said.
Jason ran upstairs to get his leather jacket out of his room while I sat on the floor by the front door, pulling my boots on.
The sun outside was so bright we had to squint to see. Jason shook two Marlboros out of his pack and lit them both before handing me one. Puddles had formed where the street dipped, and Jason plowed his motorcycle boots into them, spraying water up into the air. It was still cold despite the strong sun, and his ears had gone red. I took a deep drag on my cigarette and fingered the dollar for the bus in my pocket with my other hand. I felt closer to him now. I tugged the sleeve of Jason’s jacket and he smiled around the cigarette that was clenched between his teeth.
He waited with me until the bus came, telling me a story about the time he almost got caught shoplifting at the mall.
“I never ran so fast in my life,” he said. “I fuckin’ outran that security bitch by a hair. She must’ve been some kind of a marathon runner or some shit.”
My bedroom was just as I left it, oblivious to the great changes I had undergone. I was glad to have the house to myself. My bed was unmade, my comforter spilled halfway onto the floor. I took off my boots and jeans and climbed under the covers. I wasn’t sure if I was still a virgin or not. I didn’t feel like a virgin. I pulled the bedsheet halfway up my face and peered out. There were two empty wine bottles sitting on my dresser, one green and one brown. They were left over from a dinner party Mom and William had held a month earlier. I planned to soak the labels off and put candles in the necks, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Light streamed in from the window, and the bottles glowed.
Mom and William knew I had a boyfriend named Jason, but that was all. We’d had only one conversation about him, soon after Jason and I had started going out, at the dinner table.
“This Jason who keeps calling the house—is that your boyfriend?” William demanded out of the blue.
I shrugged, smiling into my plate. “I guess so.”
“When is he going to come over and meet us?”
Never, I thought. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Give her some privacy,” Mom snapped. “It’s none of your business.”
Privacy was one of Mom’s things. She refused to open William’s mail, even if it was just the electric bill, and became angry if anyone so much as looked at her junk mail. She and William were exceptionally clean—you could perform open-heart surgery on any of our floors, and there was never so much as a newspaper out of place. But Mom stayed out of my room, even though she hated the mess and complained about it.
Mom pretended that my love life was none of her business, but I had the feeling it made her uncomfortable. And William wanted to know only so he could ridicule me. If I told him about Jason he’d tell me that I could do better or—worse—he’d act like Jason wasn’t important.
I imagined myself at the dinner table tonight, asking how everybody’s day went and then casually announcing that I’d lost my virginity.
“You know that boy who calls here? Jason? We had sex for the first time today.”
Grinning, I pulled the covers over my head and let out a scream. That’s when I noticed that I smelled like him. I sniffed my forearm. It was faint, but there it was—cigarettes and Tide and that specific sourness I loved. I rested my arm on my face and inhaled. I fell asleep like that, breathing Jason in.
I didn’t see him at school the next day. I felt sore whenever I sat down, which made me feel strangely proud. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Theresa everything, but I told her about the soreness. She groaned in sympathy.
“It’ll stop hurting eventually,” she said.
I decided if it didn’t work between Jason and me the next time, I would ask her what I was doing wrong.
He was waiting at my locker the next morning before first period. I smiled and sped up as soon as I caught sight of him through the crowded hallway. He didn’t smile back. At first I thought he didn’t see me, but as I got closer I could see that his face was purposefully solemn.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. Out of habit my fingers fell upon my locker and I dialed the combination.
He held
up a folded up piece of paper as I yanked open my locker door.
“I thought I should give you this in person,” he said.
I took the note from him. All around us was the roar of other conversations as people passed back and forth in the hallway, backpacks dangling from their shoulders.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The five-minute bell rang. Jason pointed at the note and backed away from me. “Just read it,” he said, the crowd closing in around him.
I unfolded the note. Dear Polly, he had written (not Sweaty, I noted), I’m sorry but its not working out. Things have gotten too intense. We should just be friends. –Jason
I found Theresa at her locker. We went out to the parking lot to share a cigarette. I kept expecting to cry, but my whole body had gone numb.
“What a rotten prick,” Theresa said. She brought her cigarette to her mouth. Her nails were cut short and painted a pale, funguslike green.
I shook my head. “I just don’t get it. I mean, yesterday we were fine.”
“I swear, once they get laid it’s all over,” Theresa said, like she knew. “That’s why I’m not touching anyone at this fucking school.”
“Jason’s not like that,” I said. “There must be something else wrong.”
I considered the possibilities. Maybe he was upset with me for leaving his house so abruptly. Or maybe he was hurt that I hadn’t called him. In the back of my mind I knew better. I was bad in bed. That was all there was to it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this to you so soon,” Theresa said. “But you might be better off without him.”
I stared down at the slush at my feet. “I don’t feel better off.”
School went by even slower than usual. When Mrs. Prigman called on me in analytical functions class it was all I could do not to jump out of my chair and run screaming into the hallway. I found myself thinking about junior high and Katie. I’d gotten over being separated from Katie—we rarely even talked anymore—but now I wished Mom had let me go to Catholic school, too. Then Katie and I would still be friends, and I wouldn’t have met Jason. I wouldn’t have to feel this way.