“You know,” his voice was muffled in my neck, “I know we wouldn’t ever do… that.”
“No, never,” I replied, biting his ear and gyrating harder.
“No, of course, never, I would never, but if we did? I think I’d want to lose it with you.”
I paused. I sat back to look at him in the dark.
“You’re a virgin?” I asked.
“Yeah, is that okay?”
I went slightly cross-eyed. He was pure. Well, allegedly. Highly unlikely, but it was an excellent tactic, really. Excellent. I immediately considered letting him go to second base. While I pondered this I sucked his tongue deep into my mouth, wondering how deep it could go, then slid downward so I could lick him from neck to navel to nipple and to… what? Hmm, what was that, that taste? Horrid, chemical, burning… sort of like, oh no. Like DEET. Instantly my entire mouth went numb and I finally understood, with grave certainty, that tonight was the last night of my life. I was about to die of toxic shock syndrome.
I pulled away, bent over, and commenced spitting in the sand. I spit and spit, hocking loogies and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The numbness spread to the inside of my cheeks. I was definitely going to die, but first I would probably have a seizure and then go into a coma.
“You okay?” he asked, sitting up on an elbow. I hacked and retched some more, then staggered away toward the lights of the pool to find water and medical attention.
This has been a test of the Lord’s Emergency Abstinence Protection System. We had to poison her to save her eternal soul. Should this have been an actual emergency, you would have totally scored. Oh, well.
Hours later, back in the condo, I could feel my tongue again and I was still alive. But I was aching, wet, and tense everywhere else. I curled up around my journal.
Oh God, I wrote. Jesus, I love you, you’re the man I need to be with. You’re my first priority.
I turned off the light and lay awake, staring into the dark, thinking about what had just happened.
Was it me?
Couldn’t have been. There were no other girls to choose from. I just got lucky.
I won him. I was beautiful.
You got a tan. They were drunk.
Not just the tan. Not just the beer.
They haven’t even seen how your body looks when you actually eat food.
He was the most beautiful man ever. I was good enough for him.
Well, back to school now. Back to Ugly Girl.
Yeah, but still. You can’t make me forget. When I’m not at school, I’m a completely different girl.
11 | The Art of Sucking
“I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”
—GENESIS 4:1
At the end of my junior year in high school, I papered my bedroom with Greenpeace magazines and NARAL posters and pro-choice banners and petitions to protect the fur seals and the North American cougar. SAVE THE HUMANS, my posters proclaimed. I looked at the photo of Earth from space and felt a surge of righteous pity.
Though I couldn’t relate to being violent, I had grown to hate all earthly powers that be. And since I couldn’t throw red paint on the white strapless dresses of the homecoming court, hating the Republican Party was the next best thing. How dare they reverse pollution standards and protections for fluffy, endangered animals and force women into back-alley abortions! The nerve! I mean, even though I was saving myself for marriage, what would happen if I got raped? The only old white man who could tell me what to do with my body was God. And I was entirely confident the only rape-baby the Lord wanted me to carry was my future husband’s. Problem was, I’d never actually met a card-carrying member of the Republican Party who was friendly. Or gorgeous. I didn’t know such a creature existed. I thought they were born smug and bald and with lopsided mouths.
One Friday night, I borrowed Dad’s car and took two Estonian exchange students (the only friends who would go anywhere with me) to T.G.I. Friday’s.
While we sat in our booth making halting small talk with nods and hand gestures, some guys kept sticking their heads through the plastic plant canopy and leering at us.
One snickered. “Are you gonna eat that?”
I looked at him to see if this was playful or mean. They seemed pretty dumb actually, but in the farthest seat, one of them smiled apologetically. Strong jaw, light eyes, nice hair, polo shirt. I smiled back, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.
“American guys are idiots,” I said to my Estonians, who looked at me blankly. Then we got our check and left.
“Hey!” someone called to us in the parking lot. We turned around to see the nice-looking preppie boy catching up to us.
“My name’s Alex,” he said. “Where you guys from?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Orla, still practicing English.
“I’m sorry my friends are such blockheads,” he said.
“No problem,” I said. “Mine are too.”
Alex lived in Canton, one town over from Avon, in a new million-dollar development built a few yards shy of our exclusive Republican town line, sadly for him. That, he said, put him smack-dab in enemy camp, the economically depressed, Democratic-leaning Canton High School.
“I wish I lived in your town,” he muttered to me, meaning his poorer friends were born and bred without the ability to pull themselves up by even the tiniest of bootstraps. The more he talked, the more I was sure Alex was the kind of guy who’d deregulate seal clubbing and repeal Roe v. Wade. And yet, he had such good hair, and was so hell-bent on being nice to me. Suddenly my principles didn’t bother me so much. I gave him my phone number and he called the next day for a date.
As it turned out, Alex loved driving to my side of the tracks almost as much as I loved driving away from it. And in his Jeep, no less. He had a Jeep. A Jeep with no doors, no top, just a bare roll bar and a stripped-down dash.
“It’s just a junk car,” he said.
But the only junk car I’d ever been in that had its own door in a three-car garage.
After school, when he sailed into the roundabout in front of my high school and cut to a stop before me, it was as if a red carpet had unrolled at my feet. A flash of his sea-green eyes, his hairy knee against the tall gearshift, broad shoulders filling out a striped polo.
Are you getting this, people? I looked around to see if anyone else was sucking in their breath. A handful of nobodies sat on the brick wall outside the school, waiting for their rides, squinting in the sun.
See? I gloated, taking a step toward my destiny. In other towns, people like me.
I took my place in the passenger seat and wondered how long I could keep Alex from realizing I had no friends to wave good-bye to.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said hurriedly, and he peeled out. Suddenly, there was wind in my hair. Suddenly, I had a life. With stipulations.
At heart, Alex was a businessman. He shook Dad’s hand like a corporate interviewee. He had a slide presentation of his productivity and a statistical analysis of his on-time curfew performance. Thank you for the opportunity to prove myself, sir. He was up to snuff on chitchat about the state of affairs and the latest election.
“The problem with most people is laziness,” he said, coaxing the incredulous nod from Dad in our marble foyer. “They want the government to do it for them.”
“I like your dad,” Alex said later, in the car, five minutes after meeting him. “Great guy. He’s worked hard to get himself where he’s at.”
“Mm-hm,” I said, longing to suck the side of Alex’s tanned neck.
“C’mon, ya hippie!” he hollered, shattering my trance. “Move it, fuckpuppy!” He was punishing the horn at a little VW Bug with peace sign stickers and apparently very bad timing at the stoplight. Confrontation terrified me, especially when directed at hippies. It was extra super awkward too, because we had no doors and no roof, and I had only a cheap plastic purse to shield my identity. But when it was over, Mr. Polite returned, smiling and reaching over to
hold my hand. I couldn’t be mad at that. I gave him one quick flash of my loaded expression, which contained a punishing dose of disapproval and just a hint of perfume.
As we drove along, I waxed philosophical about how his anger management issues were probably just y’know, normal Republican behavior. I positioned my legs against the seat, so they did not spread at all, with my left hand carefully covering the dimples of cellulite. The trick seemed to work because on a free stretch of road, Alex leaned over for a kiss.
Oh, he wants me, I thought. Maybe the wind had fluffed my hair up or something! Maybe it was the nonjudgmental way I handled his road rage! Whatever it was, Alex likey. He swerved off the road, drove across the railroad tracks, into the thicket, and down a muddy ditch. I pretended to appreciate the scenery until he turned off the engine, and then we attacked each other. Wanting more, I crawled over to sit on Alex’s lap, a position that skewed all things in my mind. True, I’d been here before, but I had my big-girl panties on now, and they were coming off straightaway. No illegal end zones, no skittering away like a lemming off the cliff. My left hand uprooted hunks of his neatly tucked polo shirt, while my right thrust down into the front of his shorts, yanking his hard dick like a gearshift. One word flashed in my mind like a giddy caution light: big. And I was ready to make out in a way that alarmed me, and probably him.
“Whoa, we gotta stop,” he said. I was both disappointed and relieved that he’d volunteered to be the moral authority here. That was supposed to be my job.
“We gotta.” His breath was shaky, his hair mussed where I’d been grabbing handfuls. “Before this goes… too far.”
He pecked my lips and tucked his shirt back into place.
Ironically, Alex’s virtue triggered the exact opposite reaction in me.
Did his balls really turn blue? I wondered as I moved back into my seat. A single thought came into sharp focus: blow job. I had to. I remembered what Mallory had told me on a long bus trip to a basketball game we would lose: You can’t let him get blue balls. You have to give a guy a bj, or he’ll go looking for it somewhere else. Couldn’t let that happen. But what would God say? And my parents? Oh, the untold shock and horror. But they would never know. And even if they did, at least it wasn’t sex, like the kind everybody else was having. No, wait. Maybe it was worse. Whatever. They would never find out. Ever.
As I did exercises to loosen my jaw, Alex kept calling. Night after night, good hair day or bad, bases loaded or empty, he still wanted to hear my voice. It was a miracle. It really helped that we didn’t go to the same school and that he didn’t witness certain things, like the KICK ME note I’d found taped to the back of my sweater. I framed a photograph of us and set it on my bedside table. Whenever I stared at it, my heart melted. How could he be so nice? Why did I look so pretty next to him? Maybe it was love. Or happiness. Or a ticking time bomb. I had to do something.
A few Friday nights later, we took a blanket and walked across the street from his parents’ castle to another McMansion still under construction. The moon shone through empty window frames, making bright rectangles on the particle board. We wandered in and out of the maze of beams, making small talk.
“Nice view,” he said, looking out.
“I know,” I echoed, staring at the way his hair swept up off his forehead, at the hard, broad span of his shoulders. Within minutes, I was clawing at his upper leg. He kissed me back, dipping his hands cautiously in and out of my clothes, humming a little when I grazed his rock-hard crotch. He threw the blanket on the dusty floor, and I threw off my shirt like an old hat.
It’s okay, I told Jesus as I undressed Alex. We talk for hours. I jangled the belt at his waist and he kicked off his shorts. He pulls out my chair and opens my door and makes really sweet mix tapes for me. I slid the elastic down his hips and over his knees. He even goes to church, albeit a Lutheran one. I took him in both hands, giddy with excitement. And he’s so freakin’ BIG.
I wanted to roll like a dog in his cologne, rev his erection like a gas pedal, spin his dials with my fingertips, make him squeeze me tighter until I felt his devotion, or at least a highly acceptable carbon copy. And although I was pretty sure I was about to shortchange the man I’d marry of first fellatio, I was also pretty sure it would be worth it. And if it wasn’t, I was pretty sure I didn’t care.
On the drive over here I’d been listening to a song on the radio. “How can something so right,” it went, “be so wrong?” The short answer was, if it didn’t penetrate the vagina, then technically it was not wrong. The longer answer was, sometimes getting felt under your panties is so hot it’s almost pure. Pure and right and you can cry about the rest later.
When Alex’s hands started doing that, I fell in step with a completely new signal, one not previously emitted by the heavenly hosts. Hello, I said to the rest of my life and reached down to chuck my underwear across the floor. More, please. I had scrubbed my parts for days, just in case this might happen. I wasn’t planning for it or anything. But, I thought, just in case his face might happen to, you know, accidentally graze my naked naughty bits, I wanted to be spring fresh.
Alex peeked down at my crotch, then began to kiss southward. I held my breath. Here it comes. Down lower, lower still. Hello lover! Then: full stop. Up and over, repeat. Down my waist, up and over, up my thigh again. I awaited approval but instead got cold feet, or worse, maybe panic. The caution flag was definitely waving. He wasn’t teasing me, he was stalling. This was terror, not technique. He was scared of kissing me down there. Was I too hairy? Too freaky looking? But ugh, these were anatomically unavoidable problems!
I pretended to act casual as he rolled over onto his elbow for a pit stop, like he’d thought of a better idea. Should I apologize? I wondered. I’m sorry for having a vagina. But his hand was still touching me, testing to see if it was okay, suddenly making up for everything with a deep stroke between my legs, folding all my years of careful excuses like a house of cards. Buh-bye, third base. So long. Not only was I giving way but I was arching to get more, to completely dissolve his body in mine. For a few minutes, there was nothing else in the entire universe except his hands and his beautiful sea-green eyes, watching me shudder with pleasure.
Then I started to worry.
All of his deep-sea drilling was a means to an orgasmic end, I knew, but what that end was, or how to get there, I knew not. But how could I possibly stop to explain that? The minutes passed, too many minutes of Alex trying to get the genie out of the lamp, solve the Rubik’s Cube, fill in all the bubbles of my anatomical SAT. He was probably getting bored. Maybe we should stop and switch. When do we stop? When do we call in the pinch hitter? I didn’t want it to stop, but the idea of Alex suffering from carpal tunnel was unbearable. I wasn’t supposed to just lie here. Quick, what would the perfect girlfriend do in this situation? She would end it on the right note. She would please everybody. She would attempt a high-pitched sigh, maybe a meaningful hum—something that says “that’s a wrap” without discouraging future attempts. And so, the moment of truth prepared for its hearty smackdown.
“Ahhhh,” I purred.
A bit unsavory, but effective.
“Did you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I lied.
Relieved, we turned to the less complicated arena of his body: this, the plainest view I’d ever had of a hard, naked man. I dusted off my deceit and pinned him against the floor.
“What’re you doing?” He grinned, knowing.
“Your turn,” I said.
I was ready to make it last forever.
I indulged in my face-to-dick introduction, sliding my palm over the silky shaft, liking how he shivered when I cupped the tip in my hand. I kissed his stomach, drawing lower and drooling, licking up and down. How, I marveled, could a girl fit that sucker in her mouth, let alone anywhere else? But luckily, another side of my personality was poised to emerge: Xena the Mighty Cock Lover. You have the gift, said the narrator. Take him. Now! I grabbed the thing and yanked it s
ideways like a dagger, making him breathe harder.
“Alex,” I warned, trying to think of some fitting last words. It’s been fun not being a slut… I’d like to thank God… and my parents…
Then I devoured him, sucked him like candy, battered my gag reflex, pulled until my jaw ached, saliva running down into my fist.
His strong, lean body trembled, and he let out a funny-sounding cry that filled me with giggly prowess. I stamped down the retch and swallowed what came up like it was no big deal, trying not to taste whatever the hell that was. Semen, explained my textbook. That is ejaculate. That is nasty, I thought. It had the consistency of snot and the flavor of bile. I kept hearing Mallory’s voice: swallow it! You have to swallow. Guys like girls who swallow better. I obeyed and wiped my mouth with the back of my forearm, trying not to let him see my whole body convulse with the aftershock retch.
With his lust exhausted and mine still crackling, we curled up together nude, my legs wrapped around his side. But as the high receded, the guilt crept in. I became aware that somewhere, God, the future, and mankind still existed. Soon I would return to my parents’ house fully dressed, acting like nothing had happened. Yeah, Mom, we just went for a walk and got some, uh, some ice cream? I was still a virgin, just a third-and-a-half-base virgin. Future husband would be okay with that, I guess. It was love, after all. Possibly love. A lot like love. And if anyone was supposed to understand the power of love, it was Jesus Christ.
As a bonus, I didn’t have to worry about Alex pressuring me to have sex. He would never go that far, on account of his Republicanesque drive to always first consider my dad’s wishes. So that was great. The making out—that was great too. But the routine began to suck. Literally. I was always sucking on him, right after faking it. My professionally canned reaction was my secret shame, but I decided that was the price of keeping the blue out of his balls and his phone calls coming, and ensuring that punch-drunk gaze would be forever mine.
Until He Comes: A Good Girl's Quest to Get Some Heaven on Earth Page 15