Maidenhead

The guy opened his door without a key. The room was small and blasted with sun. I was thinking that he was going to play the ocarina for me, he was going tell me what kind of music he liked. I stood at the doorway, not going in. Why’d he ask if my dad gave me money? I wanted to be with a musician. This man with big hard brown shoulders, no hair on his chest. He dropped my hand. I scratched my arm. I made a note of where the alley was, the direction of the sun.

‘Enjoying the sun?’ That was the first thing he’d asked me.

‘Everyone likes the sun in Florida,’ I should’ve answered.

The guy was waiting for me to come into his room. I noticed his nipples for the first time. They were black, poking out, encircled by hairs.

‘Please come in now. I welcome you.’

I heard the door close and then lock behind me. There were two beds in his room, some clothes on the floor in a pile. The table had a hot plate on it.

‘I need the bathroom,’ I said.

My heart was racing and spherical. I turned the taps on full blast, locked the door quick. I realized I didn’t have my towel around my waist anymore and I didn’t know where I had left it or my book. My bathing suit looked skimpy, it was more like a bikini than a one-piece. I heard the guy outside the bathroom door.

‘Okay in there?’

‘Yo!’

The guy laughed. He knew I meant to say yes. I took off my bathing suit. His hands were so big. The guy’s bathroom was exactly like ours at the motel. There were two thick toothbrushes in a dirty white cup and a bar of green soap that had fallen in the sink.

I was sitting on the toilet with my bathing suit off with both taps running but I couldn’t pee. Maybe I’d waited too long. I could feel it almost coming but then it wouldn’t come. I ­couldn’t push it out either. His shower had rust around the drain. My vagina was killing me now.

Then the guy knocked on the door and I thought he was going to come in.

‘You okay in there, girl? Everything okay inside there?’

‘No!’

I grabbed my bathing suit and I tried to get it back on and turn on the shower at the same time, and I turned the shower on and got in it when I started peeing, finally. The water was burning. I didn’t feel relief. My suit was half off and half on and I felt pain shooting up as I peed. I was too hot with hot water all over me.

When I walked out of the bathroom it took a few minutes for my eyes to see. Everything had gone grey. I was soaked in my bathing suit in this room with two beds. There was incense burning, a spark on the table.

‘Open the curtains,’ I said. I heard speed in my voice.

The guy was sitting in an armchair right by the screen doors.

‘I said I can’t see.’

The guy reached his arm behind him and fiddled with the curtains. There was a screech and rings clanked. A white stripe of sun rippled down his brown chest.

I stood there, arms crossed, testing the light, prickly in my stuck-on suit.

The guy’s finger drew figure eights in the line of sun on his chest. Tickling. He had taken off his bathing-suit shorts.

I stood there and I was just watching him: watching him in that white line of sun watch me. Then I saw his penis move and I started to laugh.

‘Take off your bathing suit.’

There were drips dripping from the shower, drips dripping from my suit. It felt like an army of ants down my legs. If I could’ve ignored that ti

ckling I would’ve just taken off my bathing suit like the guy said to.

‘Don’t you like me?’ the guy asked from his dark chair.

I couldn’t respond, but I nodded heavily.

‘Well, I like you,’ the guy said. ‘I already know that I do.’