Sound bitter? Narcissus’s burn still stings. His betrayal, his borderline abuse, his manipulation—I have not fully healed from any of it. So this new thing, this situation where this girl chases me and spends her money on me instead of me spending my money on him, well it is intriguing to say the least. She isn’t my type, but rejection does not slow her down any. If anything, it motivates her even more. I told her straight up that even if I give in and let her lick me, there is no way I am putting my face between her legs. Nope. Nothing. Not even a solitary finger. She claims she is OK with these rigid giver and receiver roles, claims she even prefers it that way. Weird. She tries to act tough and domineering in spite of my obvious upper hand, and she pouts each time her performance is brushed aside. She pouts when she finds out about Luz and Israil too, says she wanted to be my first. I tell her she was not worthy, and she tells me I am mean. Still, she revels in my meanness; that is no secret. She even solicits it.
And I will keep on taking if she will keep on giving: food, clothes, drugs, alcohol, movies, whatever. Logic says it might be worth giving her a little taste if it will keep this up. The expiration on her generosity looms without a little something-something in return. Still, it is a difficult thing to do in spite of the payoff. It is one thing to get drunk and sleep with a stranger, quite another to hook up with a close friend with whom attraction is in complete and utter absence. Then again, it is not like I really have anything better to do anyway; there are no other options on my plate. My trust has been broken, and men are no more than appetizers on the menu. Except for the occasional one-night stand, I really have no use for dicks. That is not to say that I am going to get involved in a romantic relationship with this girl. Furthermore, I have made my ridiculous and unbalanced stipulations clear to her: One, I reserve the right to have sexual relations with men at my leisure without it being considered cheating. Two, she does not get the same rights. Three, I will not pay her way nor will we go dutch. Four, I retain complete control of when and where we have sex. Five, she does not get to tell people that I am her girlfriend. And six, she can pay my bills and buy me shit, but I am not babysitting when she has her son over on work days. With every declaration, I have defined a lopsided relationship built on her money and loyalty and my hedonism. And yet Angela has agreed, step after ridiculous step. Her pursuit has escaped unscathed and remains full force in spite of all the bullshit I hurl her way.
Tonight we are going to the local gay club with Sami and her bitch-ass girlfriend. Angela will pay my cover and buy all of my drinks.
She buys me a lot of drinks.
There is a gram of coke too. In between vodka Redbulls, we go to the bathroom and lock ourselves in the big stall. We take turns dipping the tip of my car key into the white powder. We dance to techno and hip-hop. We grind our bodies together under colored strobe lights and a real-life disco ball. It would be sex on the dance floor if not for the shield of clothing between us.
My buttons are easy enough to push already; with enough drugs and alcohol, it is that much easier to close my eyes, forget the inevitable strings that will be attached, and open my body for pleasure. One moment we are dancing away to some awful Justin Timberlake remake, and the next we are back at her house wrestling around on the bed. I am fast, but she is bigger. I get away quite a few times, but she does pin me down in the end. Her face is inches from mine. She stares deep into my eyes. Drunk and high, it feels like another kind of competition. Then, suddenly, she unzips my pants and slips two fingers inside of me so quick I do not know what she is doing until she has already done it. It feels good, so I go with it.
But it does not go as far as I first imagine myself willing to let it. Angela seems awkward and unsure of what she is doing. My buzz wears off and boredom soon follows.
"Get up, I’m going home."
She sulks and frowns, her beady eyes now hidden below her brows. "You’re too hard to please."
I laugh and agree sarcastically, "OK." Luz had not had any trouble pleasing me, and it was her first time with a girl. It begs the question, is Angela actually a practicing lesbian or just a lesbian in theory?
"Do I get to try again later?" she begs.
"We’ll see." No promises. She will have to buy . . . er . . . earn it. "Doubtful though," I add, disappearing out of her bedroom door and down the stairs. It is a terrible feeling to be horny and unsatisfied. Girls get blue balls of a sorts too, don’t you know?
I like to call the generation after mine generation lesbian. Pop culture has dubbed them generation sex, but that does not distinguish them from teenagers at any other point in history. What really sets them apart is that so much of their sex is girl on girl. When I was in high school, it was rare to see a girl hold hands with another girl. Lesbian kisses were one-hundred-percent scandalous and just as uncommon. It was not until college that we were free to explore. But these girls are getting with each other before they even get with boys! Of all the high-school girls that I have met through Cherry, each one is perfectly content to swap spit and lie in the arms of another girl. It is a biased sample, true. But the same is evident wherever teenage girls congregate. They walk through the mall with their elbows interlinked. They make out in front of schools and bus stops. They cuddle in movie theaters. Perhaps they just feel safer among other women. They do not have to worry about another girl getting them pregnant, after all, and it seems only logical that date rape would be a hell of a lot rarer. Experimentation may just be more comfortable with members of the same sex. And easier! The last thing on parents’ minds is to separate the girls before the lights go out. As they age, they may very well change course, follow the more traditional route or find freedom in bisexualiy. It remains to be seen.
Then again, what if this shift in sexual identity is not part of a new sexual revolution? What if it is biological? Mother Nature pulling the reigns in on our exploding population. To quote Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way." In this case, maybe it is finally putting our rabid procreation in check. After all, never-ending growth is not sustainable. At some point, maximum capacity will be reached, and demise is imminent at this rate. God, send us lesbians to save us! Of course, lesbians do reproduce some: in vitro donor babies and one-night stands alike, some methods more common than others, but still a lot less than us breeders anyway. And then, what happens to all the leftover men? Do they adapt and partner up with what is readily available, other men? Surely that would be the lowest rate of procreation of all, what with the hassle of a surrogate. It all makes perfect sense. Screw the tired Sodom and Gomorrah tirades; it will be homosexuality that saves this planet from its full-throttle decline into an overcrowded cesspool.
3
(Elisabeth) "I don’t think I can pass for seventeen."
"Eighteen. You were a senior," Cherry points out in her most matter-of-fact tone. This isn’t the first time she’s explained it, and her patience with me is wearing thin. "You just graduated this summer. You’re eighteen."
"No, actually I’m twenty-three," I giggle.
Cherry rolls her eyes. "You can pass for eighteen."
It’s been five or six years since I’ve been to a high-school sleepover.
This girl’s house we’re going to, her name is Tasha. She has short platinum hair. I mean really short, like a boy’s hairstyle. It is usually spiky, but sometimes she combs it forward and flat against her head with gel. She always wears baggy stonewashed jeans and a logo T-shirt. They’re probably hand-me-downs from her older brother or something.
"Are you sure we are going the right way?" The way Tasha always wears hand-me-downs and never has any bus money, I didn’t expect to head up a hill in South Salem with stone archways and Mercedes in the driveways.
"Yes." Cherry snaps her gum. "I have been here before." She guides me through a couple more turns. "There!" She points at a huge brick-front home, its entryway framed by a two-story arch. It looks like something off the cover of Home and Garden, a manicured lawn framed with equally perfect hedges, sculpted rose bush
es, ivory statues, and a marble birdbath. "Do you think they would mind if I moved in?"
Tasha’s sister greets us at the door. She looks to be about the same age as me, which is a little unnerving. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to care anything about us. "Tasha’s room is up there," she says as she points up the stairs. "You can tell which one is hers by the smell." She saunters away.
"Wow, Tasha’s sister is hot!" I whisper once she is out of earshot.
Cherry chuckles. "That isn’t her sister; that’s her stepmom!"
"Oh . . . wow."
"You wouldn’t believe how many times Tasha has ‘accidently’ walked in on her in the shower."
"Yeah, I would."
Tasha’s door is locked, so we knock and knock and knock again until she finally lets us in. What was only a faint odor in the hallway has a life all its own when she throws the door open. I scrunch my face up and cover my mouth. Her stepmom was not joking!
"Whooh!" Cherry exclaims. "Oh shit, what the hell is that smell?"
Tasha sniffs at the air and shakes her head. "Smell? What smell? I don’t smell anything . . ."
Cherry and I exchange glances. Tasha is so used to the stench that she does not even recognize it. The room smells like it belongs to a teenage boy, full of sweat and musk covered with the putrid after scent of Axe and molding food scraps. One thing is missing: the mineral stank of wet dreams and loads busted into socks and tissues. In its place, however, there is something sweeter with a hint of iron.
"Holy fuck, why don’t you clean up?" Cherry complains.
Tasha just rolls her eyes. "It’s my room, and this is how I like it!" She makes a space on the floor for us by kicking dirty laundry into a pile against the closet. "Come in, sit down."
I try. I really try to just sit there and chat. But I can’t. I can’t focus on catching up when my skin is crawling. I feel like I’m covered in bugs. Tasha asks me why I keep scratching, and I try to find a nice way to say it but I can’t, so I laugh instead. "I’m sorry it’s just . . ."
"It’s just disgusting in here," Cherry finishes for me.
"Yeah, I’m sorry." I shake my head. "I just can’t . . ." Standing up, I brush myself off and start with the clothes on the floor.
"You don’t need to do that." Cherry says it to me, but she’s looking at Tasha.
"Oh, yes I do." I laugh. I don’t know if the girls can tell how annoyed I am. I try to keep it to myself, but then that makes me feel a little resentful too. I turn to Tasha, "Sorry, but I just can’t handle this. Either I clean up or I leave."
She shrugs but doesn’t bother pitching in. After a few minutes of silence, Cherry sighs loudly and says, "Aren’t you going to help? It’s your mess!"
I find a cardboard box and load it up with the dirty dishes that are scattered all over the room. There are old cereal bowls with solidified milk and glasses half full of moldy orange juice. There are a plenty of scraps and a variety of bones. The over-easy egg is the worst. I put the box by the door, thinking maybe, just maybe, Tasha will take it down to the kitchen.
"Candi will kill me if she sees that!" she laughs.
Cherry rolls her eyes and says, "That’s so gross! You need to take that down and load up the dishwasher."
"The dishwasher won’t get those clean," I point out. "That is going to take a whole bunch of soaking and scrubbing."
"Ah shit. Maybe if I take it down in the middle of the night, she won’t know if it was me or Todd. She won’t be able to make me do it."
"Dude, she’ll know it was you," Cherry says matter of fact.
"I’ll just throw them out when no one else is home."
"No! They stink! You’re not forcing us to smell that shit all night!"
"Well, I’m not fucking washing them!" They stare at each other until Tasha concedes. "Fine! You distract Candi, and I’ll take the box down to the trash."
"Oh my god," I mutter. How lazy can this girl be?
"You wouldn’t do them!" she retorts.
She can’t be serious. "You’re right," I agree. "This would never happen at my house, so no, I wouldn’t."
While they talk about how to carry out their plan, I turn my attention to the trash that clutters the room. I collect it into plastic shopping bags I find on the floor. With each surface that I uncover comes another sticky, dusty mess. From start to finish, it takes two hours to clean up Tasha's mess, and when it is over, it looks like a whole new room. I clap my hands together and smile big. "Finished!"
"Wow," Tasha says. "Thanks."
It won’t last of course, but at least now I can relax without worrying about what I might touch or inhale.
"So can we smoke some pot now?" Tasha asks as if having to wait while I cleaned her room was a terrible inconvenience for her.
"Um, where?" I ask.
"Here. Where else?"
"What about your parents?"
"What about them?"
"Aren’t they going to smell it?"
"Pssch," she scoffs and hops up. She grabs something out of her top dresser drawer. A paper towel roll. Something white is rubber banded around one end. "They sure as hell won’t smell marijuana."
She hands me the homemade contraption. "Is this a dryer sheet?"
"Yup," she smiles. "Blow in and it comes out the other end smelling like flowers and shit. I do it all the time!"
"Wow. That’s ingenious. I wish I would have thought of that when I was a kid!" It works like a charm. Even after two bowls, the room still smells like fresh laundry. Cherry reminds me of the rum in my bag. "It’s a little early, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we wait until her parents are asleep?"
Tasha looks over at the digital clock next to her bed―9:00 p.m. "They’ll be in bed in about an hour; we’ll be fine."
So we trudge down to the kitchen with squinty, bloodshot eyes for glasses and ice and Coca Cola and munchies. My heart races and a nervous pool forms in my armpits. I might even hold my breath until we get back to Tasha’s room.
I could go to jail for any number of things here. I know that. But it doesn’t feel wrong, so I do it anyway. I supply marijuana to minors. That’s what the cops would call it if I got caught. But they smoked weed a long time before we met. And it’s not like they can’t get it on their own just as easily. And the alcohol? How wrong can it be when Tasha digs a bottle of Jack Daniels out of her own closet?
"I stole it from my parents’ liquor cabinet," she boasts, making it all too easy to rationalize my actions.
The rest of the house’s lights go out like clockwork at ten. Now I can relax and stop worrying about getting caught.
Tasha jumps up and rushes over to her laptop. "You guys have got to see this!" She pops in a DVD and mutes the sound.
A tangle of bodies fills the screen.
"Wow," I mutter, a little shocked. I never expected to be watching porn with underage girls.
"I know, huh?" she says excitedly. "I stole it from my brother."
It’s not like I brought the porn. Or even asked to see it. Besides, Cherry is seventeen, and that’s almost legal. And Tasha is almost seventeen.
Tasha maneuvers past food and drinks to turn off the lights then jumps onto the bed. When I look back at her, she winks. I take it as an invitation. Nonchalantly, I slide up onto the bed and wait innocently. Between the liquor and the orgy of girls on screen, my juices are flowing. I wait for her to reach over and grab my breasts or slide her hand down the crotch of my pants.
It’s not a very long wait.
4
(Cherry) It isn’t the boys climbing the trellises that parents need to worry about anymore. These days, the action is invited to the slumber party.
5
Moving here was a terrible mistake. I cannot do this. It is way too much, way more than I bargained for. A week of calm and the tornados touch down. Once again, Aunt Rose is absolutely fucking insane! She ought to be a princess for all of the attention she demands: refill her water and her coffee, grab her a snack real quick, call her doctor, do
her laundry, drive her to the mall, count all of her meds again to make sure that she did not take too many of one or not enough of another, the list goes on and on. I did not sign up to be a personal assistant, and this is not worth the free room and board. Then there are all her weird behaviors and rituals, like the salt border around the corner of living-room floor that she sleeps on. And she still refuses to get a bed! Claims she has not found the right one yet. How hard can it be to find a bed better than that nest of blankets she has crumpled on the hardwood floor? And that damn green soap was just the beginning. Not only does the bar soap in the shower have to be green, but the hand soap has to be green, the dish soap has to be green, the laundry detergent, and the fabric softener all have to be green. Some of these products are kind of hard to find. But Rose knows where to get each one, down to off brands sold at supermarket outlets and dollar stores. Come to find out, my aunt also has an "allergic" reaction to brooms. Seriously. One day, I brought home a really nice broom with natural bristles, no plastics or other synthetics, and a real wooden handle—just a good, quality broom. She freaked! She screamed and grabbed it from me and threw it out the front door. Then she went on and on about how it had burnt the palms of her hands. And of course her palms were bright red, testament not to her allergy but to her uncanny somatoforms. The only broom allowed in our home is the one from the dollar store; not even worth its weight in pennies, it never makes it ‘til the end of the month. The handle is made of aluminum not much thicker than a soda can, and it twists and bends out of place while I sweep. The yellow bristles come off all over the floor so that I have to go back and pick them up by hand when I am done. I hate these brooms. The real broom is hidden in my bedroom closet. I get it out when she is not home.
Home has become a place to dread, a place to avoid whenever possible. I sniff out as many extra shifts at Heaven & Hell as possible and spend days at a time with Angela. In a frantic attempt to get away from my aunt’s ridiculous demands, I end up neglecting some of my responsibilities to her. Pills are not always out on time. A few doses get forgotten here and there. We missed her last therapy session, and she is overdue for a blood draw. Eventually it will all catch up with me, a crisis will manifest and the axe will fall, but in the haze of escapism that the Circle provides in the now, there is no time to worry about the future. Consequences be damned. I am guilty of looking forward to her stays in psych. And every night before I go to sleep, I beg for the next to be the day she is removed from my care. It would crush Aunt Rose if she knew how I feel, if she had any clue how desperate her niece is to get OUT.
Jane. Page 16