“Eric.”
“What’s the matter with Eric?”
“I dunno. We used to… I’m kind of the only…” I try to think of a way to say it that isn’t explicitly “We’re a couple of losers with no friends other than each other,” but I can’t think of one. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Oh! You miss your friend.” She makes a face at me like you make at a dog when it does a trick. She seems to do this a lot when I have visible emotions.
“I mean…”
“Well, you guys should hang out more. I mean, I’m not trying to take you away from your friend.”
“I know. Yeah. He doesn’t have, like, a lot of other friends.”
“I feel bad now. I didn’t mean to be like, depriving him of you…”
“You’re not! You’re not. It’s nothing you’re doing. I just have to like, make a point of seeing him.” I’m not used to doing that. Negotiating more than one person’s attention. “Y’know. Dude stuff.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s not anything you’re doing. Like, at all. This is… this is amazing.”
“Us, you mean?”
“No, your French homework. Yes of course us.”
“Ohh.” That puppy face again. We kiss. “Hang out with your friend,” she says. “Everybody needs guy time.” She laughs. I laugh. We kiss some more. She starts taking off my clothes, and I start taking off her clothes, but she’s taking her clothes off faster than I can keep up with and I’m really more of a hindrance.
“Whoa, naked girl,” I say. It’s sort of a joke but it’s also my sincere God’s honest feeling. The naked girl laughs at my remark and then she’s all over me. You can guess what happens next even if I can’t, in the moment, it comes as a complete and total surprise. I get to another base without even trying. And another. How many bases are there? I hope my brother’s not home. I hope my dad’s not home. Actually, I kind of hope my brother’s home. Is that weird? I should stop thinking about this right now, I think. I use the naked girl to distract myself. It’s pretty easy.
The naked girl scoots off of me and I go to say something about how fucking floored I am by the whole of everything that’s going on right now, but I think I might talk as much when I’m not supposed to as I don’t when I am, so I stop myself, and the naked girl is reaching into her purse and pulling out what looks like, yes, is in fact a condom. I schlubbed into my bedroom today a boy, I think, and it is entirely possible I will leave it a man. If I ever leave. Don’t want to if I don’t have to, the way this is turning out.
In the headlights of this moment I stop to think about who keeps condoms in their purse, and some part of that must read on my face because the naked girl says, “I’m not a whore, I just figured we were coming up on this.” We were? I guess we were. Of course we were. I was pushing and conniving and manipulating everything so this moment could happen, this is the sum total of my chess-game-like dating strategy, of course we were coming up on this, I brought us here. I have forced her hand with my cunning make-out-when-made-out-with-and-talk-on- the-phone-when-called technique. I am a master. The naked girl is rolling a condom on to me. The naked girl knows I have no fucking clue.
So much skin. We’re miles of skin in my bed. Whole landscapes. Hairy pointy jagged ones and rolling smooth ones. Scattered around the plateau of the bed, math and French homework. I won’t do it. I’ll hand in my math homework tomorrow half-done and just look into Mrs. Rammlyttle’s eyes and she will just fucking know. We’re miles of skin lying around in my bed after we’re done.
“I should exercise more,” I say.
“You did amazing,” the naked girl says.
Two piles of exhausted fucked-out kids kiss in my bedroom, all soft and jelly-fied, and when they re-form in a few minutes, when they become solid, they’ll be adults. Maybe one of them was already.
“Uhm, so what I was saying earlier? Yeah, I don’t need to see friends or anyone ever again.”
The naked girl laughs and kisses me. I kiss back and she breaks away and puts a bra back on, and underwear, turning back into Christine in the process.
“Soon you’ll have all the time in the world to see whoever,” she says, “when rehearsal starts up for the theater piece.”
“Yeah? When is that?”
“Afternoons. Nights when the show comes up. It’s going to be really intense since it’s such a short schedule. So enjoy me now.”
I nod hard. Ice water becomes necessary, and maybe Red Ropes or whatever’s in the pantry. I ask Christine who was the naked girl if she wants anything from the kitchen.
I put underwear on. I don’t think anybody’s home and if anybody comes home it’s not totally completely unrealistic for me to be around in my underwear at five fifteen on a school day. It’s much cooler outside my room and with sweat still drying on me it’s almost cold. I feel all rubbery and high and good. I don’t know if that’s what you feel like after sex or just after exercise, which I don’t get.
The fridge is full of leftovers. I want to eat all of it. It is all owed to me, virginity-less sixteen-year-old adult. I pour a big glass of water from the Brita and drink it down and pour another one. Carrot sticks seem like something you could eat in bed after you were just naked with somebody in it, so I grab those. I think about eating a whole slice of pizza right there in the kitchen, but if I take too long and come back with breath that smells like pizza… I’ve never lost my virginity before. I have no idea what the etiquette is.
On my way back upstairs with the water and carrot sticks, there’s a knock at the front door. I look through the peephole. A balding dude in a pink polo shirt is out there, wearing sunglasses. Fuck it. I go back upstairs.
Christine is almost fully clothed now.
“Awww,” I say.
“What?” she says.
The doorbell rings.
“Who’s that?” Christine says.
“Dunno,” I say, “some guy. He was down there when I was.” The doorbell rings again.
“Maybe you should get it?” Christine says. Shit. Now everybody’s going to be wearing clothes.
I get dressed, go downstairs, and open the door. A thrill of this-square-looking-adult-has-no-idea-of-the- depravity-I-just-perpetrated-up-in-my-bedroom shoots through me. It gets even stronger when he tells me he’s from church.
“Your brother comes to our services. He told me, he told me something really very interesting about a friend of yours.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“That this boy…” the man says, “that this boy claims he doesn’t have to sleep?” He goes up at the end of this sentence like he can’t believe it, so I just decide to play it like I can’t believe it either.
“What? Oh, that was just like, something he said. That I told my brother about.”
“Well, right.”
“I mean, like, it was a joke even to begin with, and it kind of got, I guess, blown out of proportion or misinterpreted or. I don’t know.” It is unbelievable to even hear anybody else refer to Eric’s thing. It’s only been real between us.
“Well, we’re not JUST a church. We offer a wide range of counseling and people who really listen. So if your friend feels the need. You know. Whatever his problem is. Drugs. Here’s my card.”
“Uhm. Thanks?” I want his pink shirt off my porch. According to his card, his name is Craig Haddaridy and he works somewhere called Lunaspa-Albans. “Thanks.”
“Alright, then. And maybe we’ll see you around sometime?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I think about calling Eric, but that’s as good as admitting I told somebody. And I want him to be mad at me for not hanging out with him, not mad at me for spilling his biggest all-time secret and it ending up in the hands of church weirdos. Craig Hadarridy seems to think Eric is into drugs, at the worst. But still.
Then I remember there’s a girl in my room, who was naked and probably could be again.
Christine has to be home for dinner so I decide to go over to Eric’s house and tell him the news. On the bus I think about how I’m going to say it. Shouting “I DID IT WITH A GIRL!” seems too obvious.
