Maidenhead

I got out of the bathtub and ran past my mother, then my father, to the chairs near the window. I was mad and it felt good.

‘She is not coming anywhere with us,’ my dad said to my mom. My dad’s eyes were alive, like the lids were peeled back. I tried to stay still. He was never really that nice to my mom; he never asked about her, or about what was she thinking. Now he was trying to defend her against me. It was a total joke. Even my mom knew that. I wasn’t going to the beach, anyway, looking like a freak. My dad’s too-open eyes made me queasy and hateful.

‘I just want to be alone, all right?’

‘Neil, go. We don’t need you right now.’

It took a minute before he left, before he tried to slam the door shut even though it was on one of those non-­slammable hinges. We heard him say goddammit in the hall. My mom walked over to me near the air conditioning. She had to fiddle around with it to stop it.

‘Fuck this thing,’ she said. She looked out the window. Three guys were doing cannonballs into the pool.

When my mom looked at me again, my big red fat cheek, I thought she was going to say something like, ‘I think you should try not talking to me like that.’

But I heard my mother breathing too fast. She kissed me on the forehead.

‘Bye-bye,’ she whispered as if I were a baby. Her breath was sour. My throat instantly swelled. My mother stayed close to me like that, not moving. I wanted to apologize: Bitch just flew out of me. I met this guy who called me bitch ...

I heard my mom swallow inside her throat. I was staring at the floor watching her feet. For a while I didn’t think she was going to leave.

‘Can you go now?’ I asked.

My mother moved away. I knew I didn’t sound nice. I stared through the screen doors at the kids at the pool, their burnt red shoulders, their string bikinis. The palm trees were waving, dry at the tips. When I heard the door click, I ­couldn’t believe that my mother had listened to me.

I had the TV to myself. My cheek was really hurting. I rubbed those little melting ice cubes on it, flipping channels. I stretched out. I got past channel sixty when a pink leg filled the screen. There was stuffed nasal breathing. Then a girl’s face with the hair drawn back too tight, her mouth ringed with lipstick and spit. It was only a second before a body slid in and covered up the face. Then the camera circled around and found the girl again: she had a wide-open mouth and something was in it. You ­couldn’t tell at first that it was a cock. It looked like an arm. Her eyes were shut, she was gagging. Our room was freezing. My mother hadn’t shut off the air conditioning right. The girl was about to open her eyes but then the screen went black and a message came up: Charge to Room? Press One to Continue. I wanted to watch it. It was synchronicity.

My cheek was numb from the ice and I pressed one. The movie started up in another scene, though, as if it didn’t pause in the right spot. I put two pillows behind my head. I stuffed one in between my thighs. Another girl was there now, a different girl who was blond and chubby, kneeling on a glass table. This girl was wearing a purple thong and see-through high heels. A penis banged her across her cheeks. She was laughing at that. My heart was going crazy. ‘You like sucking me?’ a guy’s voice said. ‘Yeah? You wanna suck me? Do you? Yeah?’ Then, that second girl, her mouth red and wide, looked right at the camera. She was so different than that first girl who’d kept her eyes tightly closed. This girl was actually talking with that penis and trying to play with it to get it in her mouth, going, ‘Yeah, gimme, yeah, gimme. I wanna suck you so bad. Gimme.’

‘Look at her,’ a guy’s voice said. ‘Look how much this slut wants it.’

I didn’t feel the pillows behind me anymore. There was air in my chest where there was supposed to be beating. This wasn’t like masturbation at all. I wasn’t even touching myself. I was going to come without touching myself.

That girl’s cheeks were so red, her eyes always stayed open, she was looking up at the guy and literally begging for it. Gimme gimme gimme, please! I realized, then, that her hands were tied behind her back. Her hands were tied and it popped in her mouth. She was laughing, she was so happy and tied. Her ­sucking was limbless, magnetic. I felt my head moving in time; I didn’t have thoughts. Then all of a sudden the guy pulled out of her mouth and the cock was hot red, he was shaking it, squirting her lips with this cream. God, I’d never seen that before, all that stuff spraying out of him! The tied-up girl, she started going crazy, like groping around for it with her head like a baby bird, and his fingers were pushing the white stuff that landed on her face back into her mouth. She wanted that cock back in her too, she was groping and panting and I could barely watch her like that. Then another guy untied her and immediately she started rubbing herself, lying down spread on the glass table. Her wrists were all red and she still had drops on her face that looked like glue. She was rubbing herself furiously, she started pushing her thong inside herself and humping the air towards the camera.

‘She loves it, she loves it, look at her go!’

My eyes were slit, I couldn’t look straight at it, her pussy, her thong, how much she was rubbing herself and pushing that thong up inside of her and pulling it out and they showed that, in close-up, the most close-up I’d ever seen, her fingers rubbing and fabric going inside herself, everything was red and swollen and hospital-like.

My cheek started to hurt again. Then the first girl came back into the picture. She bent down and opened her fresh lipsticked mouth into the mouth of the second girl and they started kissing, there were guys around them, cocks pointed out at the top of the screen, and the first girl, she had something in her mouth, it was globby and creamy and she dripped it out of her lips slowly into the second girl’s. They were moaning and passing that stuff between them, opened lips, like spit, white glue, and they were licking each other’s tongues and lips and both of them were moaning together, one’s eyes open, one’s eyes shut. I felt so woozy and high that I shut my eyes and came; it felt painful and electric, like a shocking inside-out. Hot water gushed from me. I grunted. Fuck. I wet my side of the bed.

I couldn’t find the TV converter. My legs ached. I needed a towel. The converter was on the floor. I didn’t know how much that cost.

When my family came back, I was outside on the balcony waiting. The sun was as hot as it could be in the day. My mother came in last, behind my dad, then Jody and Jeff. No one was talking. My mother shut herself in the bathroom right away and didn’t even look to see where I was. Jeff stared at me through the screen doors but he didn’t say anything or smile. It was like he was fascinated by my new face. My cheek must’ve been glistening from the sun. Jody jumped on the bed, the dry side. ‘Where’s Myra?’ she asked. Jeff pointed at the balcony. Jody looked like she felt sorry for me. Maybe they’d all made a pact or something. Don’t talk to her until she talks to you.

Wind cried through the ribs of the palm leaves. My dad turned on the TV. It was going to be that channel! I opened the screen door to come in and stop it. The channels were flipping.

No one could fucking look at me anymore. Because I got pissed on and slapped, called my mom a bitch and watched porn, my whole family hated me now.

GAYL: Nice, nice. Pornography and shame.

LEE: Listen, come on, it wasn’t her fault.

GAYL: Again with the fault. So whose fault was it?

LEE: It was Myra’s instinct to apologize to her family to make everything better and, like, she didn’t realize that that was the problem, not the piss, not the s

lap, not wanting to get fucked, not the porn. She wasn’t coming back from this trip as herself. She wasn’t coming back the same safe little person she left as. Her monstrous new face was a sign of that.

GAYL: Okay, fine. I’ll accept that for now.