Polly

by Amy Bryant

  “Seriously,” I said. “How did you manage to get so many records?” There were even a few in the kitchen, in a stack on the counter.

  “It’s what I do,” Ian said, a note of pride creeping into his voice. “I don’t know if you’ve heard my radio show, but a lot of what I play I bring from home.”

  “I’ve heard you a few times.” In fact I had recorded every one of Ian’s radio shows since the first radio station meeting. I listened to him over and over on my Walkman.

  The microwave beeped. Ian took a paper towel in each hand and popped open the door.

  “It’s not too hot,” he said. He handed me a bowl.

  It wasn’t because it was hot that I dropped the bowl. It just slipped from my hands somehow, and before I could get a grip on it again the bowl was spinning and ringing on the floor, unbroken. I let out a shriek as the soup, which appeared to be vegetable beef, seeped through my shirt to my skin. The shriek was more out of embarrassment than pain.

  “Are you okay?” Ian picked up a roll of paper towels from the counter and began to unroll it.

  “I’m fine, but I think my shirt is dead,” I said. I slouched forward in my seat. My shirt was dark green and buttoned up in the center, and I was grateful that Ian couldn’t see through it.

  Ian retrieved the bowl from the floor and put it in the sink. Then he crossed the room to examine my blouse. I laughed, my voice booming in the still kitchen. His hands were full of paper towels. I stood up so he could wipe off the chair.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said. “I guess I’m a little drunk.”

  Ian straightened up before me. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident.”

  That’s when he kissed me. At first he was sort of formal about it, but then he reached both hands around my shoulders and pulled me toward him. The soup on my shirt oozed onto his.

  He backed me out of the kitchen. As we moved down a short hallway there was the light and breathy sound of our kissing over our footsteps. When we reached his bedroom I grabbed both sides of the doorway and braced myself. We tilted backward, like unsteady dance partners.

  “I’m not going to sleep with you,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  I let go of the doorjamb and we backed our way over to the bed and dropped down on top of it, our bodies bouncing against the mattress. He had made his bed. I could see the shapes of records everywhere.

  Ian unbuttoned my shirt. Soup had soaked through to my chest and stained my bra. He took his shirt off and tossed them both over his shoulder. For the first time I wasn’t nervous in his presence. This was something I knew how to do.

  Ian climbed on top of me. “It would be so easy,” he whispered.

  “I know,” I said. I wriggled away from him. He pulled me back and we kissed.

  “Don’t you want to?” he whispered a few minutes later. A condom in an orange wrapper had materialized beside us on the mattress. I left my eyes open when he kissed me again so I could look at it. One side of the wrapper was folded over, so the condom sat at an angle. He must have carried it around in his jeans all night.

  I was still. I let him take off my underwear. I watched him put on the condom. I waited. Everybody lost their virginity at some point.

  It didn’t hurt like it had when Jason had tried. And although it wasn’t pleasure I felt exactly, it wasn’t painful, either. It was mildly uncomfortable, just like my tenth-grade health teacher had promised. Up until now I hadn’t been sure whether Jason had taken my virginity. Now I knew he hadn’t. What Ian was doing was something new. I studied the shape of his shoulder in the dark, listened to his quick breath moving in and out of him. I wanted to remember everything.

  Afterward we propped ourselves up against the pillows and shared a cigarette. I hugged my knees to my chest and smiled. I was capable of having sexual intercourse. I told myself that even if Ian never spoke to me again, I would always be happy about tonight. When he got up to go to the bathroom I checked the sheets for blood, but there wasn’t any.

  I still went to the radio station after class, but things were different now. For one thing, as soon as Cynthia realized Ian and I were together she stopped showing up. Andrew was still nice to me, but he didn’t joke around with me like he used to, and he kept quiet when Ian came by to talk to me.

  “I guess we know who’s getting the first DJ slot that opens up,” Andrew said once while we were filing records.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  “I’m just kidding,” he said. But I knew he wasn’t.

  Ian’s radio show was on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from ten P.M. to two A.M. Usually I hung out with him in the DJ booth. I drank beer and watched Ian choose records, put the headphones on and take them off, make announcements every fifteen minutes, check levels, and line up the needle in the right place on the record. There wasn’t much more than that to being a DJ. After his show we would go back to his apartment. We stayed away from my dorm room.

  I put asterisks in my schedule book for the times we had sex. If we slept together more than once in a day I would put more than one asterisk down in the space where I should have been writing the dates papers were due and quizzes were held. When I showed Julie my schedule book, she insisted on going with me to Planned Parenthood to get on the pill. Ian and I had been using condoms, but I didn’t think the pill was such a bad idea.

  Planned Parenthood’s waiting room was as calm and plant-laden as every other doctor’s office I had been in. I beamed at Julie after I signed in, and she shrugged back at me over her People.

  When the nurse said my name I sang out “Here!” as if roll were being called. I followed her down a carpeted hallway to an examining room. The nurse had oversized glasses and a no-nonsense tone. She instructed me to put on a paper gown and rest my feet in a set of stirrups at the bottom of the examining table. Julie had complained about the stirrups on the way over. She said they made her feel like she was being experimented on.

  The nurse disappeared, and a few minutes later the doctor showed up. I was relieved to see that she was female; I had been too shy to ask when I called to make the appointment. She had a round, kind face and a bobbed haircut that made it impossible to guess her age. She picked my chart off the counter and studied it. Her placid face reminded me of a nun’s.

  “Are you and your partner monogamous?” she said by way of introduction.

  “Yes.”

  The doctor sat down on a stool with wheels on it and rolled over to me. I leaned back on the table.

  “Scoot down a little,” she said. A few seconds later I felt pressure against what I guessed was my cervix. The instrument she was using was cold.

  “Are you satisfied with your sex life?” the doctor asked. “Do you have any questions you’d like to ask me?”

  “I think I’m okay.”

  I hadn’t thought about whether I was satisfied with my sex life. It wasn’t so much the physical aspects of sex that I enjoyed. What I liked was the fact that it was taking place at all. It reminded me of how it felt when I learned to drive—I knew it was inevitable, but until I was actually behind the wheel, piloting the car myself, I hadn’t fully believed it was something I could do.

  I loved waking Ian up in the middle of the night to do it again half asleep. My mother was bedtime conscious: the rule had been off the phone by nine thirty, in bed at ten. She made a big deal out of the health reasons for a good night’s sleep, but now I suspected she just wanted me out of the way so she and William could have sex.

  When Ian and I did it, I thrashed around on the bed under him for a spell and then came with giant thrusts and moans. I wasn’t really coming, at least I didn’t think so. I knew there was something more to orgasms than what was happening to me. I opened my mouth to ask the doctor about orgasms but then shut it again.

  “I want you to consider using a backup method of birth control in addition to the pill if you’re not completely sure that you can remember to take it every day,” said the doctor w
hen she was finished examining me. “We don’t want to see you back here with a pregnancy scare.”

  “Okay,” I said. I thought about Carrie. “And if I take my pill at the same exact time every day I definitely won’t get pregnant, right?”

  “Right. If you have any questions just call the office.”

  “How many people have you slept with?” I asked Ian. He was standing in front of his bathroom sink, shaving. I was perched on the toilet seat with my knees folded in front of me. Watching Ian shave made me feel like I was ten years younger than him instead of two.

  “Seven,” he said, tapping his razor against the edge of the sink. He hadn’t had to think about it. “What about you?”

  “Oh, like three.” I moved my gaze away from Ian to the orange and black can of shaving cream that sat next to the toothbrush holder.

  “How come you shave every day?” I asked. “It’s not like anyone minds if you have stubble.” Although Ian’s hair was medium brown, his beard grew in darker.

  “My face gets itchy,” he said, screwing his mouth to the left as he brought the razor down his right cheek. He turned on the faucet. “You’re not going to tell me about the other people you slept with?”

  I felt my cheeks redden. “Is that something you want to know?”

  He lifted his razor off his cheek and smiled at me. “Well, yeah, sure.”

  “Well, you know. They were old boyfriends. From high school.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  I stretched my legs out and rested my feet on the edge of the bathtub.

  “Jason, Mike, and Joey,” I said.

  “Jason, Mike, and Joey. Was this all on one occasion?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “Which one did you go out with the longest?”

  “Mike, for like half a year. It was sort of off and on.”

  Ian was almost finished shaving. He leaned forward and splashed water on his face. I pulled his towel down from the rack and handed it to him.

  “There were other guys, too,” I said as he patted his face dry. “I just didn’t, you know, do them.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling him this. Maybe because I was Ian’s seventh.

  “Do them? Is that how you refer to it?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “What do you say, make love?”

  “Sometimes. Not always. I always make love to you.”

  “Oh, well, me, too, monsieur.”

  Since my birthday fell on a Thursday, Ian found a sub for his radio show. Laura had gone home for the weekend a day early, so we celebrated in my dorm room. Julie gave me a bottle of spiced rum she’d bought from a senior who’d been a friend of her brother’s in high school. Ian gave me a cactus and a mix tape. He gave me the song list separately, with descriptions like “representative of their raw, earlier work” and “a nice blend of new wave and plain old rock” next to the song entries.

  That night Ian spent the night in my dorm room for the first time. We huddled together in my narrow top bunk under my comforter, which still smelled new. When we did it Ian’s head came precariously close to the ceiling, and I put a hand in between to protect him.

  “I’m glad you’re my girlfriend,” Ian said when we were finished.

  “Me, too.”

  We hadn’t said I love you yet, and since it was my birthday I wanted to. Except I wanted him to be the one to say it first.

  Julie and I were trying to study on the floor in her room, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  “What’s an orgasm feel like, exactly?” I said.

  Julie marked her place in her Intro to Psych textbook and shut it. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I don’t know if I’ve had one yet.”

  I stared over her head, at the plastic fishbowl on her dresser that was full of bottle caps.

  “You know when it happens,” she said. “It’s kind of like fishing.”

  I’d never been fishing. “Well. I guess I haven’t had one then,” I said.

  “Haven’t you masturbated?”

  I shook my head no. Every time I reached a hand down there a silly feeling came over me, killing any arousal that had built up.

  “Does an orgasm from masturbating and an orgasm from sex feel the same?” I asked.

  “Basically, yeah. There’s just somebody there for the one.” Julie ran a hand through her hair, spread her fingers to release the tangles. “I’ll tell you this, though. It’s way easier to give yourself an orgasm, once you figure out how to do it. Most guys I’ve been with didn’t know what was up in that department at all.”

  I picked at Julie’s royal blue rug. Ian knew what he was doing. He’d been with seven girls.

  “So what’s it feel like?”

  Julie put a cigarette in between her lips and lit it with my yellow plastic lighter. She was wearing white boxer shorts with red chili peppers all over them. “It’s like, a big release. And it feels really good all the way through your body, like this big, huge, full sensation. But it’s not like being stoned or drunk or anything like that. You can’t even compare it to being high.”

  “It’s better than being high,” I said. Like I understood.

  Julie opened her psych book back up. “You just need to relax, and it’ll happen,” she said. “The first time I came with a guy I was totally surprised.”

  I was waiting in Ian’s car while he went into 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes. The 7-Eleven in Blacksburg was different from the ones in Reston: Reston 7-Elevens had trees planted in front of them and were built with the same wood as the houses so they would blend into the neighborhood. The Blacksburg 7-Eleven stood alone in a parking lot and had a neon sign. Neon wasn’t allowed in Reston.

  Mark, Andrew, and Sam crossed in front of the car without noticing me. Mark was carrying a guitar case with stickers all over it. I tapped the horn and they looked over and waved. I wondered if they were starting a band.

  Ian came out and nodded at Andrew without stopping. When Ian opened the car door I could hear them laughing. I rolled down the window.

  “Need a ride?” I asked as Ian started the car. Mark and Sam were already halfway inside, and Andrew smiled and shook his head no.

  Ian tossed one pack of Camel Lights into my lap and put another pack on the dashboard.

  “Freshman idiots,” he said as we pulled away.

  I pushed my pack of cigarettes into the backpack at my feet. “Why don’t you like them?” I asked.

  Ian shrugged. “I barely know them.”

  “You just said they were idiots. Freshman idiots.”

  “You’re not like them,” Ian said. “I wouldn’t be going out with you if you were.”

  “I think they’re funny,” I said.

  Ian told his parents that he was spending Thanksgiving with my family, and I told Mom and William I was going to Ian’s. Mom didn’t agree to it until I said that I could really use the quiet time in the dorms to catch up on studying. We spent the long weekend in Ian’s apartment, ordering in Chinese food and pizza. It was fun not having turkey on Thanksgiving; I felt like I was getting away with something.

  Ian played me record after record that he thought I should hear. “You really need to check out this band,” he’d say, or “This is the only album you need to know by this band.” When I wondered aloud if he was going to test me at some point he wrinkled his nose and said, “Don’t you want to know about cool music?”

  Saturday night we took a walk. The whole town was shut down. Even the doughnut shop, which was popular with the locals, was closed. We stared into the windows of closed-up stores. I couldn’t understand it. It was two full days after Thanksgiving, and it looked like there’d been a power outage. Suddenly I missed Reston. I wanted to be home with Mom and William and my friends.

  We walked to the edge of town and over to the side of campus where most of the academic buildings were. It was strange to be here, too, especially at night. The buildings loomed larger, and our footsteps echoed on the sidewalks as we walked. My geology professor ca
lled the stone of the buildings Hokie stone. The football team was called the Hokies, and so were Tech students.

  “What’s a Hokie?” I asked.

  “Who cares?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “That’s where all my math classes have been,” Ian said, pointing up at a large, modern-looking building that stood in contrast to all of the other buildings with their stone exteriors.

  “I guess I’ll take classes there next semester,” I said. I shivered against the cold. I was doing so poorly in the rest of my classes, I wasn’t even sure whether I’d do well in math.

  Ian pulled me against him and kissed my neck above my scarf. The top of my head fit just under his chin.

  “Next semester we might run into each other on campus,” he said into my hair.

  I thought of Ian coming toward me through the daytime crowds, a backpack tossed over his shoulder. I stepped away from him and he extended an arm. I took his hand and he spun me in toward him, catching me in his other arm and holding me there. I wondered what song he was thinking of.

  In the dining hall the following week, Sam dumped half the salt-shaker into Mark’s drink while Mark was telling a story about his roommate, and Mark drank it all in one swig before spitting it across the table onto Andrew. When I told Ian about it later at his apartment, I had to stop twice to laugh.

  Ian gave me a tight smile before turning back to the TV. He was sitting on the floor, watching The Young Ones, cracking up every four seconds. I was on the couch behind him, catching only every third or fourth joke.

  “It’s because you’re not English that you don’t get it,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s just not that good,” I mumbled, peeling a slice of black polish from my toenail and letting it fall between Ian’s couch cushions. I slid to the floor and picked up Ian’s course catalog for next semester.