There was one boy who liked me. His name was Alan and I think he would have liked it if I stopped seeing other boys and just went with him. One thing that I regret is that I didn’t do that, but I guess I only realized afterward that he was that serious about me. He would take the trouble to talk with me, not just making conversation but really getting into each other’s heads.
You read about girls who were promiscuous, which is what I was, let’s face it, and there’s always the impression that the boys involved had tremendous contempt for her. For the promiscuous girl. That they used her but didn’t give a shit about her and thought she was disgusting.
I don’t think it was ever like that. Guys would enjoy my company and give me free dope and generally enjoy having me around.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just kidding myself by saying so. Maybe I was just a doormat or whatever they call it. But I was always treated decently. Even in some scenes, well, there were some group scenes and like that, but even there I felt a kind of respect, that they liked me as a person. Of course the reason they wanted me around was basically sexual. I mean, you go out in a car with four guys and give each of them a blow job and they take you home and that’s it, I mean, that’s a sexual thing. But they were nice to me. I suppose there were jokes about me and everything, but not in my presence. I was treated with respect.
Or else I wanted to think of it that way.
For a long time I stayed a virgin. I guess for about a year. I would give blow jobs or hand jobs and that was all. Sometimes guys would finger me but I would say the majority of the time they wouldn’t bother. I didn’t really want to be touched as much as I wanted to, you know, make them come. I got more satisfaction out of their orgasms than having an orgasm myself. I would get a tremendous rush of pleasure just out of touching their penises or having them in my mouth.
I never said I was a virgin. If anyone would ask me why I wouldn’t fuck, I would say that I just didn’t like it and was afraid of getting pregnant. I don’t know why I more or less concealed the fact that I was a virgin. I suppose I was ashamed of it in some way. Also, I think I felt that they would regard it as a challenge, whereas this way I just got a reputation as a girl who didn’t like to fuck, and so they settled for oral sex, which I think most of them preferred in the first place, since most girls wouldn’t do it or weren’t really good at it. I had the reputation of being really sensational at blow jobs. Maybe because I really enjoyed doing it, which I guess most girls don’t, and also because of all the practice I was getting.
I got very heavy into drugs around this time. My schoolwork improved, which I suppose is weird. My mind didn’t seem to wander as much. I don’t know whether it was because I was getting steady sex or because I felt important because boys were interested in me, but whatever it was, my marks went way up right away despite all the sex and dope. I’d sit in class whacked out of my skull on ups or downs and blast right through a test. I don’t know why. It’s supposed to be the other way around. It wasn’t because I studied. I never studied or anything.
Of course, in the past six months everything must have caught up with me, because my schoolwork went absolutely to hell.
• • •
While her acceptance as a sexual object by older buys seems to have done wonders for Debbie’s self esteem, she still had a need to prove herself by having sexual relations with adult males as well. Perhaps this represented fulfillment of her earlier fantasy of finding love in the arms of a child molester. Perhaps it represented the search for the father she barely remembered, or derived from her initial sexual experience with her mother’s lover. In any event, she took to hanging out downtown and learned how to make herself recognizably accessible. She had relations with several adults, and one of them ultimately took her virginity.
• • •
There was this bowling alley I would go to. I picked up a couple of men there from time to time and I had this general reputation there as a girl who would go down on men. Frank was the assistant manager there. His older brother was the owner. Frank was about forty, I guess. He was bald and I guess he wasn’t terribly attractive but he was always nice to me. He never made a play for me for the longest time, but he would always joke with me in a very friendly way.
He was married. In fact, he had a daughter a year behind me in school.
One night I just hung around, and when he closed up I was still there. I was kind of down. A couple of guys had come on to me but I wasn’t in the mood. I was never a complete pushover that all anybody had to do was ask me. I had to be in the mood, and I sort of was and wasn’t at the same time, and I was still there when Frank was closing up.
We went into his office. He got out a bottle of whiskey and started drinking, and I was drinking Cokes, and we had this long talk. Actually it was him talking and me listening. He just rambled on. He was really depressed. He talked about never having enough money and different problems and how he was crazy to have gotten married so young and everything else that came to mind. Then he got on the couch with me and started kissing me, and he would stop from time to time and start crying and saying it was wrong for him to be doing this, and then he would start in kissing me some more. I had this enormous urge to make him feel better and I took the lead and opened his zipper and went down on him.
This was the first time he had ever had oral sex in his entire life. I guess his wife wouldn’t do it, or maybe he never asked her to, and he didn’t play around. He really went wild, and afterward he held my face against his chest and kept telling me how much he loved me and how he wished he were free to marry me, which was weird when you think of it because I was all of thirteen, thirteen and a half, a year older than his kid. I guess he was pretty drunk at the time.
I don’t know how many times I saw him after that. It was very weird. He would get very moral and talk about how we could never be together again, and then he would get very horny and very convinced that the two of us were in love, and then afterward he would go moral again. The second time we were together was the time he fucked me. I had said that I didn’t like doing it and it became very important to him that he be able to make me enjoy it. Then when he found out afterward that I was a virgin he went crazy and talked about killing himself. He had all this terrible guilt.
After a while it just got too heavy for me and I stopped turning up at the bowling alley. By this time I guess I got over my thing for older men because they seemed to have hang-ups that kids my age or a few years older didn’t have. All of this guilt, and they either convinced themselves they were in love with me the way Frank did or else it was obvious to me that they thought I was a tramp and someone filthy, which was a terrible down for me.
Once I had had intercourse with Frank, there didn’t seem to be any point in not having it with other people. I don’t know why I had made such a big deal of it. I guess the big thing was an idea of saving it for the right person. I don’t think I had that idea consciously but it was there somewhere in the back of my mind.
I guess I still believed in Prince Charming on a white horse. I guess I still do even now, for that matter, although I know better, or else I wouldn’t have bothered writing you all that bullshit about David, who doesn’t know I exist. It wasn’t exactly a fantasy, I don’t think, because I mostly had those thoughts about David when I was writing to you, and I didn’t have them as thoughts so much as I wanted to impress you as being, I don’t know, normal, I guess you would say. I didn’t want to rap about what I was really into, so I figured I would make myself into a normal kid, and I figured going steady with someone like David was what a normal girl would be into.
As far as lying about my age, I didn’t think you would take a fourteen-year-old seriously. So I made myself seventeen in order to be taken seriously.
Anyway, once Frank got my cherry I would fuck if somebody really wanted to, but I still preferred giving head, and still do for that matter, but I would fuck if that was what a person wanted.
• • •
&nb
sp; In recent months Debbie had begun coming unglued. Her schoolwork suffered and her dependence upon drugs increased markedly. She last weight and her complexion deteriorated. Her mental health also declined. She would have periods of blackouts, especially following amphetamine use, during which times she would lose great chunks of memory.
• • •
Also, I began to despise myself, which I honestly hadn’t done before. You would think it would be the other way around, that a person would be more upset with herself for being promiscuous when she was first getting into it, but for me it was as if I was so young and innocent at the beginning that I didn’t have the brains to be disgusted with myself, and then gradually I came to see what I was doing.
I wasn’t in one mood all the time. I had my ups and downs on the subject. In fact it would be related to drugs, because when I was into a good high I felt very good about the life I was leading, and when I was strung out it would come to me what a mess I was making of everything.
I guess my mother more or less knew I was fucking around. I don’t know. Sometimes I think she’s a mental case herself. She never had a breakdown or anything but she’s so completely into herself and so turned off by the rest of the entire world. She knew I would get phone calls all the time and keep odd hours and everything, and she must have seen how I was going to hell physically, but nothing registered on her, or if it did she just didn’t give a shit about it, because she never really came right out and said anything to me.
I keep thinking about starting all over. Moving far away where nobody knows who I am and getting a job and living a clean life. Staying off drugs and staying away from sex and making a life for myself. I don’t think I’m hooked on drugs or on sex either. I think they’re both habits but not addictions, that I could give them both up without any trouble. Because I don’t get that much pleasure from either of them anymore.
I wish I were older. I couldn’t get a job now. I suppose I could run away and it would be cool because I don’t figure my mother would bother filling out a missing persons report. Maybe I’m not being fair to her. I don’t know. Maybe she thinks of herself as giving me independence. Or maybe she’s just got her own problems on her mind so much that she can’t handle anything. Her health is not very good. And ever since my aunt died, she’s been convinced that her own death is just a matter of time. Like she’s sitting around waiting for it to catch up with her.
I don’t know.
If I were older I could get a job and support myself, but I’m only fourteen and I’m not big or mature-looking for my age, and I don’t think I could pass for eighteen or anything like it. And if I didn’t get a job I would just be a hippie and wind up back in the sex and drug scene and sooner or later I would be a whore.
It’s easy to be a whore. All you do is do it. That’s how I got the money for the abortion, and to come to New York. I told a friend of mine I was pregnant and he and a few of his friends chipped in some money, but it only came to about fifty dollars, which was nowhere near enough, and he suggested I go to the nearest city and he would find men to have sex with me. I think he got a kick out of pimping. It was a new experience for him and he thought it was very far out. He went into bars and lined up men and we would drive them in his car and I would suck them off in the back seat. I got ten dollars for each time.
It was disgusting to think about but I had so much speed in me it didn’t get me down at the time.
I sort of wish I hadn’t had my baby killed but I guess it was the best thing for everybody. Especially for the baby. Imagine having me for a mother and nobody for a father, some life for a kid.
Shit.
I guess it’s a miracle I never got pregnant before. Or caught a disease.
I wish I could just curl up in a ball and stay here forever. Don’t worry—I’m not hinting or anything. I know it would be a down. And it wouldn’t be a life for me, either. I have to find some way to make it myself.
I guess I’ll flunk most of my subjects this year.
If I even go back.
• • •
She went home because there was no place else for her to go. A clinical psychologist I know made arrangements for her to get twice-a-week group therapy at a public clinic not far from her hometown. The therapy evidently helped, probably because she had bottomed out, had reached a point in her life where she was ready to be helped.
I hear from her every once in a while. Here’s her most recent letter:
Dear Jack,
Sorry I haven’t written in so long. Things are going pretty well here . . . Believe it or not, I’m in an English honors program this semester. There’s an emphasis on creative writing and the teacher is impressed with what I have been doing, so maybe I will wind up a writer and follow in your footsteps . . .
I’m going with a very nice guy who graduates this June. He’s going away to school in the fall so I don’t suppose it will turn out to amount to anything but it’s good for me at the present time. He knows all about my notorious past and accepts it. Still, I think it’s something he can accept in a girlfriend but not in a really heavy romance, and that eventually I will have to get away from here and start life fresh, but at least I’m getting myself squared away in the meantime.
We have a good thing sexually. I am on the pill, though, so don’t worry that I will again turn up on your doorstep with a stuffed womb!
I’m doing okay . . .
Love,
Debbie
I think she’ll make it.
A Letter From Nick
Dear Mr. Wells:
I need some help. I’m fourteen years old and have changed my image from a ninety-pound weakling to an okay guy. The problem is girls still don’t take me seriously. Which means I can’t get girls to stand me being around.
I’ve only had two girls. The first one I went around with for a while, and as soon as we broke up she became a prostitute. I had nothing to do with that. I think she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
The other girl I met on a vacation. I was only there for a little while and we had slight sex. The next time I saw her I could tell something was wrong. When I asked her what it was she told me that since I left she had been going around with another guy and had gone to bed with him just the night before. Whether this was for the first time or not I don’t know. I later met this guy and found out he was kind of dense and uglier than me.
For the next couple of days I made an ass of myself, thinking up all kinds of stupid ideas and schemes, until her sister told me not to bother. Her sister’s a sexy blonde only a year older than me, but alas she’s going steady with a guy, a big guy. The last time I was there both sisters were still going steady and I’m sort of a friend of the family.
My problem is how can I get a girl without buying one on the corner for a buck or going all over hell to get one.
I tried the trick of letting myself grow on a broad but she saw me once too many times and told me off in what you might call bad language.
Even my best friend, who can have any girl in the city, can’t give me any advice.
I’m getting that kid-in-a-candy store feeling only I don’t know how to buy . . .
Nick
Maria’s Rap
Maria is in her late twenties. Her photographs were once under consideration for a Playboy center spread, but she missed out because her face was “too European.” She has done various sorts of modeling, has acted in pornographic films, and is presently employed as a masseuse in a West Side massage parlor. As with most of these establishments in New York, “massage” is a euphemism for prostitution. Maria is a hooker.
• • •
I don’t know if you ever met Eileen. She worked here up until six or eight months ago. A really dirty girl. I mean like physically dirty. Unclean. You could just about smell it when she walked in the door. I don’t know how the customers stood for it, to tell you the truth.
Well, this friend of mine, her husband was a photographer, and Eileen wanted some pictures take
n of her and her old man and the kids. She had two kids, a girl about four years old and a baby boy. So Barbie and Don went over there, and Don was going to take pictures of all of them.
Barbie said she never saw anything like it. Like the place was filthy, cat shit all over the floors, dirty clothes everywhere, filthy dishes in the sink, everything. Barbie brought her own cat along and asked where the litter box was so her cat could use it when it had to, and Eileen didn’t know. Said they had a cat box somewheres once, but it was lost or something, so Barbie’s cat could just use the floor the way their own cats did. And you could tell Eileen’s cats just used the floor because you couldn’t walk around without stepping in it.
So they’re sitting around, and the four year old calmly drops her pants and squats in the middle of the room and takes a massive crap. Just like that, and nobody says a word, not Eileen, not the father. Barbie was like flipping out. She told Eileen to for Christ’s-sake-pick-it-up or something, and Eileen nonchalantly takes a paper towel, makes a swipe at the crap, picking up about half of it, and throws it across the room at the wastebasket. But she misses, and it hits the wall and stays there for a minute and then plops down onto the floor.
Well, at this point Eileen gives up.
Anyway, Don’s taking pictures, and everybody’s sprawled around smiling and all, and Barbie notices that the four-year-old girl is sitting in an armchair with her dress up and no underpants on. And drinking milk out of a bottle, and sort of flashing her box at Don—who isn’t all that interested in the boxes of four-year-old kids, but manages to ignore it all pretty well. And then Barbie sees the kid very deliberately take the baby bottle and spread her legs wide and start working the nipple in and out of her snatch. Four years old, and very calmly jerking off with her milk bottle, and her parents either aren’t paying any attention or don’t care.
Love at a Tender Age (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 7