I'm nineteen years old, and I've lost count of the amount of people I've taken. Some might see it as a badge of honor, others see it as one of shame. One of my friends asked a few weeks ago if I had ever considered working in the porn industry, since I'm promiscuous. I told her no. One, because I want to enjoy sex on my own terms, and two, I'm planning to ditch the habit at some point, since as much as I enjoy the moment, the excitement tussling in the sheets with a stranger, I hate the emptiness afterwards. A voice of shame chants at the back of my mind of all the things I've done, all the mistakes I've made.
Not all one-night stands end well.
Over the course of the next few months, my mother continues to snipe at me, but she's otherwise as pleased as she can be with the fact that I'm busy working. She's obviously not kicked me out, but the threat looms, along with a sense of relief that she won't be put in a position to feel guilty if she ever did act upon her words. I don't tell her that I have a new job, I just tell her I've increased my hours at the waitressing joint, which I've scrapped since accepting the new offer.
If I'm honest, I find it easy, far too easy, to point the finger at my mother and blame her for all my problems. Just like she does to me. She claims I'm just like my wretched father, ungrateful and slovenly. But I suspect I take after her more.
I work hard in my job, discovering that the writing comes naturally, and the structures and mechanisms of the workplace all being something I can sink into – but I'm still finding my gratification off-scene. Sometimes it's a quickie, in time for me to go home, with the gross feeling of my dirty panties clinging to me as I hobble awkwardly back. Other times I go to their apartment or house, but I've not had another motel incident since Ria, whose number is still tucked in my purse, though I'm not sure why.
I get to know Wendy better, and it sucks that she fits into the stereotypes, because I actually do like her. Unfortunately, she's exactly the kind of person who likely got bullied at school, and learned to take massive offense if someone even crept along the subject of her weight or how woman look at her in disgust.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all up for respecting people. I appreciate people have problems. For Wendy, however, her problem is solely located in her head, like mine – and she refuses to address it simply by lashing out at anyone else who does. I want to help her, but I suspect she might not accept it.
“I'm looking forward to eating my mac n' cheese,” she told me one time, as we were preparing for our break. At this point, I've seen her eat absolutely nothing else but mac n' cheese, and I was fairly certain she probably consumed this meal three times a day.
“Do you ever eat anything else?” I asked her, and this instantly triggered a defensive posture.
“Of course,” she said.
The fact she reacted so ashamed told me a lot, so I said, “Why are you acting so ashamed?” Because I'm smart like that.
This made her flush more, and she wanted to leave the room, just to avoid talking to me. I had to block the doorway. “No, seriously. Don't do that. If you storm out, all you're doing is running away.”
However, before I could deliver my reasonable speech about the fact that somewhere deep down she knows there's a problem, because why else would she act so ashamed about it, the woman actively started screaming for me to get out the way, and shoved me aside, sobbing like I had just murdered her first-born child.
I stared after her in baffled astonishment, unsure of what to do. I had good intentions, to try and help her address her problem, but she panicked and flailed, and slapped me aside. She chose the coward's way out.
Two days after that, my boss pulls me into a staff meeting, and tells me that he's so impressed with my work, that I'm getting an early pay raise.
Wendy in the meanwhile delivers blatant attempts to avoid me, which is so ridiculous and frustrating because I don't understand how she thinks acting like that will solve anything – since she's basically burying her head into the sand and pretending nothing is wrong, when it clearly is. Her reaction, along with the oncoming pay raise, makes me stop and think. Really think.
I'm no better than Wendy or my mother if I keep diving into every bar and sleeping with every breathing thing when the nights grow lonely. Being up for anything leaves me with nothing. I have nothing to hold after the night, except some memories of the better romps I've experienced over the years.
Well. It's something.
I'm not going to solve my addiction by sitting around whining about it, or denying it.
I'm going to solve it by doing something to stop it.
In the evening, after work, as I'm sat in my room, I take out Ria's number, and stare at it for a while, heart making queasy lurches. She's the favorite of my recent romps, and something about her has stayed in my mind. She might be a lost soul like me, but I wonder if I can persuade her to date me.
If she's not in bed with someone else right now. If she's not in a relationship already. And if this isn't actually a fake number that I've been treasuring for the last few months.
Taking a deep breath, I punch in her number to my phone.
Chapter Three
We meet up two days later, and it's by the park where I go running. She strolls down the street, smoking at a cigarette as I spot her. Again, I'm reminded of those stunning blue eyes, those thick, pink lips, the long eyelashes that flatter her expression. She's not dressed in leather this time, which might be wise, since the sun is slowly cooking my flesh a lobster red, and I feel a huge need to glug through a liter bottle of water. She wears a soft yellow top and blue pants, and her shoulder length blonde hair glows with life.
“I'm glad you want to try this dating thing out,” I say to her truthfully. I actually feel a little shy and awkward, because I've never dated a woman before. My longest relationships have been over before they really began, and now I'm trying out a woman, the gender which has that unfortunate reputation of being hysterical and emotional. “I'm kinda doing it to try and cure a bad habit.”
“Nice,” Ria replies dryly, a smirk uplifting her mouth. She doesn't seem in the least bit offended by this admission, and it gives me hope. “'Spose I can help with that. You're good in bed, you're pretty, and with the few words we have exchanged, I like you. And, well. Been a while since I tried out a relationship. So I'm up.” Her voice is deep, projecting from her lungs with confidence. It's sexy and does all sorts of nice things to my nether regions.
“That's good. I warn you, I've never officially been with a woman in this way before.”
“That so? Hmm.” Ria rubs her chin. “We can do something about that. You trying to get on the straight and narrow, right?”
“Define 'straight',” I reply, with a grin. She laughs.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I am. My life's been drifting and sleeping with random strangers. I wouldn't mind trying the monogamy thing for a while, instead of sleeping around. Feel more respectable.” When I finish the statement, she grasps me by the shoulder.
“I'll help you on this. But don't expect me to compromise my ways. I like to go out. I like to have a good time. You stop this, I'm out the door.”
What does that mean? She's planning to mess around or what? I voice my doubts. “When you say 'good time', do you mean you're not going to consider yourself in the same deal as me?”
Ria looks irritated by this question, but answers, “No point agreeing to this relationship deal unless I plan a little monogamy myself. That satisfy you?”
I weigh the merits of this. It makes sense. If she planned to act exactly like before, she wouldn't agree to this arrangement in the first place – and I know for a fact she's like me. She takes legions of people back to her bed to keep herself warm during the night. She's the kind of person who you'll spot at the heart of a party, grinding against other people as they dance under flashing neon lights.
There must be something inside her that wants to tackle this problem, just like I am. Being a party girl never leaves you happy in the lon
g run. People start seeing you as the easy one, the person anyone can go to because they always put out, because they don't see you as a person to respect. The attention feels good. The way it happens doesn't. “Fine. I'm not expecting anything lovey dovey. Just lots of sex with one person” I confess. “I don't know how to do anything else.”
I know how to flirt, to lure someone into my bed and to turn nightly sessions into orgasm factories. I also know all the various ways to exit a relationship or a one time fling, from sneaking out silently in the morning, cooking a goodbye breakfast, or kicking them along the floor and locking them outside. Actual relationships and dating like what normal people are supposed to do is an alien concept that exists only in the cool romantic comedies, and not currently in my life. Even what I'm doing with Ria right now is likely to go horribly wrong. But I need to look respectable, at least on the outside.
If you wanted to look respectable, maybe you should have hooked up with a man rather than this marble statue of a woman, I think. Of course, there is one huge benefit to sleeping with a woman. No need to worry about pregnancy. It's sex with all the pros and none of the cons.
Ria examines me speculatively. Again, I'm struck by her confidence, the purpose in her stormy gaze and dominating body language. Even just by standing, she somehow owns the space she's in. It's something to do with her slouch, her spread, her upright posture and the way she rolls words over her tongue. “Fine by me. So.” She takes slow, prowling steps to me, and seizes me by the waist. “I don't have a job.”
“I don't care.”
Ria smiles. “I don't have much money, or rich nice parents ready to support me.”
“As long as you don't sleep with anyone else, I don't care,” I say. Already, I'm positive by this. Neither of us have beaten about the bush with our intentions. It leaves me positive that maybe I will be able to clean up my act after all.
“I know a nice hotel nearby that's cheap enough for our purposes,” she purrs, when I confess to her that it might suck to bring her back to my house to where my jealous, bitter mom resides.
Naturally, we tear at each other's clothes when we get there, and give into the passions of a steamy night. The second time is better than the first, and I look forward to many more times with her.
There's a spring in my step as I launch myself back into work. Right now it pays double the wages of my waitressing job, and there's a yearly payment rise scheme which means that as long as I stick at the job and not royally fuck up, I have it good. I'm already browsing around for a cheap apartment, because I've almost saved up enough for a deposit and advance rent.
I had to lie to my mother about the new job, because I know she'll try and use the opportunity to milk more money out of me. She already had me paying part of the rent when I was 16, with two years left of school – maintaining that since she was paying for my education, this was the least I could do.
It annoyed me, because I started the job at sixteen precisely so I could prepare to escape from her clutches by the time I finished school. I didn't have plans or aspirations to go to college, despite scoring top marks in classes. My biggest priority was to get out and make money, and believe me, I've heard far too many tales about students launching themselves into crushing debt when finishing college to want to take the same plunge.
Fuck my mother. Seriously.
The thought of finally moving out sends me almost delirious with happiness. The weeks pass with vigor, hard work, and the flourishing of a new relationship. The good, regular sex I'm getting with Ria as well is awesome therapy. It feels so much better to wake up next to a familiar face who isn't planning to sneak out the door than a pockmarked stranger who might also be carrying something deadly, like a disease or a knife.
Wendy, to my complete astonishment, approaches me one break time, after weeks of tactical avoidance. That woman has seriously been ducking out of my way like I'm about to gun her down in the middle of the complex, always with a panicked look which prompts amusement and jeers from the other staff members, who are apparently well versed to her neurotic ways. It disappoints me each time I see it, but no one seems to think it's a problem. It's just an eccentricity of hers, according to them.
“Maya,” she says, voice trembling like a wind-blown leaf. I see her knees are visibly twitching. I'm at this point blowing the steam off a coffee mug, having just heated it for thirty seconds in the microwave so the milk doesn't make it too cold, and I spin around to gape at her.
My instant impulse is to go “Holy shit, you're speaking to me?” But I get the impression that might not be the best thing to say in her circumstance. If you snap at the person making the effort to come to you and speak, you may as well go and arrest yourself for being an asshole. So, instead, I rein in my automatic tongue lash to say, “Hey, Wendy.”
“Can I speak to you for a moment? If you're not busy, of course.” Her bottom jowls quiver. Her blue-rimmed glasses droop to the tip of her nose, and she shoves them back up again.
“Sure,” I say, keeping my tone soft and pleasant, as if I'm talking to a scared animal that is about to bolt off at any second. I have no idea what she plans to say, though my mind is whirling through several possibilities right now.
“I'm. Um. I just wanted to say.” She takes a gulping breath, like a stranded fish. “I might have overreacted to what you said to me the last time we um, spoke.”
Overreacted? More like go nuclear for something tiny and insignificant. I refrain from stating this and nod understandingly, plastering on a wide smile. “Thanks. Why are you apologizing now, though? What's brought this on?”
She looks instantly ready to shy away from even just this question, but manages to stay her ground. “Because I'm tired of being me. Of... panicking whenever someone looks at me because I'm afraid that they're going to comment.”
I process this logic. Taking a shot in the dark, I say, “Can I be frank and you promise to listen? Not run?”
She nods, though she appears utterly terrified.
“You know that doesn't make sense at all, right? Your thinking is like this. I don't like my body. Because I don't like my body, I try to not look at it because I feel disgusted by what I see. I eat bad food, even though it makes my body worse. So I feel even more hatred when I look myself in the mirror. I hate my body so much that I'm afraid of people talking to me, in case they mention it.”
Wendy appears transfixed, which I take as a good sign. I lick my lips and continue. “So what you do is perpetrate that cycle of hatred by not doing anything about the thing you hate. You complain, you probably cry about it at night – but rather than do something about it, you prefer staying as a victim of your own thoughts.”
She starts crying silently, taking great, heaving swallows of air, and wipes her eyes with the back of her flabby hand. However, she doesn't run, and although the tears make me feel like a miserable piece of shit, and I want to try and stop her leaking them, I also know that she needs to hear this. It's ironic in a way, because the problem I'm presenting to her is precisely the one I suffer regarding the need for attention, along with my mother who drowns her self-loathing in blame.
Hey. At least I can try and teach other people, even if I struggle to teach myself.
Eventually she gives me a tiny nod and collapses into a chair, slumping on the table. I ask her calmly if she wants a coffee with me, and she nods to that as well. I quickly make her a coffee from the still hot kettle, pour milk and heat it up, before giving it to her with one spoonful of sugar.
“Hey,” I say gently. “At least you didn't run this time.”
She laughs bitterly, before taking a swig of coffee. She runs a hand through her scraggly dark brown hair. “It feels worse, having to listen to that. To hear the thing I don't want to hear.”
“It's supposed to,” I say. “That way, you remember why you hate it so much. And so you change. The truth,” I raise a finger in the air as I say this, “will set you free. Want my suggestion?”
“Go for it,” s
he says. “I already feel like shit. What more can you do?”
I know this is her self-loathing acting out, but it still strikes a nerve inside and irritates me. I suppress that emotion as best as able. “Take a long, hard look at yourself. List everything you don't like, and why. Then, list solutions for each negative thing you've said. Here's an example. I hate my drinking habit. Why? Because it's destroying my health and pushing my friends away. What can I do about it? I can go to AA meetings. I can talk to friends or family about it. I can cut down my drinking. I can find alternative things to do.” I make sure she's paying attention, and not wallowing in self-pity. “In short, always approach your problems with a solution. Otherwise they will remain problems. I do a lot of running. If you want to lose weight, poke me. We can run together.” I reach into my bag for a scrap of paper from an envelope and a pen, and scribble my number to her.
She clutched my number like a lifeline, and past the mascara-stained cheeks, I see a hopeful smile on her face for the first time.
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