Maidenhead

‘His body is so amazing. It smells like caramel.’

‘What did you guys do together?’

‘No, I mean. We didn’t do ... No, I mean, fuck, I can’t say it.’

‘Say it, Myra. Just talk.’

‘It’s my hair, he’s grabbing my hair and he’s got it pulled back too tight and he’s naked and my mouth is messed up with lipstick and spit and his cock’s right there ... ’

‘Yeah?’

‘And it’s in front of my face and I’m dumb and I’m mute and he’s calling me a bitch. Then he forces me to suck him or whatever, and when he takes himself out he sprays all over my face.’

Lee looked at me. I felt better and worse.

‘You’re not dumb,’ she said, poking my shoulder.

I had no idea what she was thinking. We didn’t know each other at all. I didn’t even know what high school she’d gone to.

‘It’s okay that you see that,’ Lee said slowly. ‘I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Well, I mean, what do you think that fucking is about?’

I felt relieved at first, that Lee was experienced. That she knew about fucking, that maybe she’d even watched porn like me, porn criss-crossing in my head every time I thought about Elijah: girls on glass tables, glue-shooting cocks, cunts in close-up.

Lee stood up. ‘Myra, I asked what you thought fucking was about.’

‘I don’t know what fucking is about.’

‘Well, I know. You mind if I say it?’

‘No. Say it.’

Lee pulled me up off the floor. We were standing face to face.

‘Fucking is dirty. You want to not have it all romantic and drippy. It’s okay that you want it dirty with this guy. It’s okay that you want that picture in your head to be true.’

Lee got quiet. I blushed. Heat shot through my thighs. What I thought was shame, she was saying, was not shame at all.

GAYL: True. Our bitch wants her backward-ass dreams to come true. Me and the man can make these kinds of dreams true.

§

There he was, shivering in a white robe. Elijah stood on the street across from my school, scanning the tops of the kids’ heads for me.

The wind blew through him. He wasn’t dressed right: head to toe pale and billowing in a thin-looking robe, dreadlocks up in a turban that looked like soft ice cream. He shifted from one foot to the other, searching me out. He was not half-naked and glistening like he was in Key West. I felt my heart pound. I could not cross the street.

I saw Jen and Charlene coming up arm-in-arm through the bodies of kids from our school. I took off my knapsack, dropped it on the ground pretending I needed something in there. I didn’t know if Elijah had seen me yet. But I could feel Jen’s body, her smell when she got close. She wore some fancy Holt Renfrew perfume.

‘Look at that crazy guy,’ I heard Charlene say to Jen. ‘Look. Across the street.’

Jen and Charlene stopped about three feet away from me. I dug deeper in my bag. I found an old pear. Jen dropped her bag on the ground too. It was like she was copying me or something. Fuck.

‘Weird,’ Charlene said loudly. ‘He’s looking at us.’

I don’t know why, but it felt like for a second that Jen was going to apologize to me. I imagined us being friends again, everything going back to normal. I took a bite of the mushy pear.