guy who played opposite Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. Gorgeous. The other one is shorter and stockier with light hair. I angle my body to catch their attention, especially the tall one’s. I laugh loudly at something Amy says, throwing my hair back. When I bring the cigarette to my lips, I look right at him. Our eyes meet, and I see a flicker. I’ve got him.
That night, we wind up at his place. His name is Paul and he lives in a penthouse apartment on Madison Avenue, not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The apartment itself is like a museum, filled with angled leather furniture, abstracts in primary colors on the wall. The kitchen is pure white—cold, glistening—as though nobody ever goes into it. Only Paul’s room, where I jerk him off sometime before the sun comes up, has some air of comfort to it. When Amy and I leave, I write my number on a scratch pad and press it into his hand.
“You’ll call?” I ask hesitantly.
“Of course.” He laughs and kisses me on the mouth, surprised by my doubt.
Sure enough, Paul does call two evenings later, when I am doing homework and watching television in the living room. We chat briefly and I learn more about him. He’s a wrestler at his school, the same school in Riverdale my sister still attends. He’s sixteen and his parents let him drive their Porsche sometimes. He invites me to watch him wrestle next Friday, and I hang up smiling. I have a boyfriend. Dad is in the kitchen, and he comes around to where I’m standing.
“Who was that?” he asks, seeing my expression.
“A boy,” I say.
He smiles, holding a half-eaten sandwich. This is usually how dinner goes with us. You eat what you can find when you’re hungry.
“Oh, really.” He takes a bite from the sandwich. “What boy is that?”
“He’s from Tyler’s school. A wrestler.”
Dad makes a face that means he’s impressed. Is he surprised? I wonder. Does he think I can’t get a nice guy? Then his expression changes, but I can’t read what he’s thinking.
“What?” I say.
“Just don’t screw it up.”
My stomach sinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He smiles. “You know how you can be.”
“No,” I say, that hollow feeling spreading. “I don’t.”
“Bossy,” he says. “Everything has to be your way.”
“Screw you,” I say. I walk away from him toward my room. Tears prick my eyes.
“I’m just telling you what boys like,” I hear him call after me. I slam my bedroom door and lie on my bed, hating him, wishing I could be someone else. Not this person who’s bossy, who’s always aching with need. I get up, pull open a window, and light up a cigarette, a social habit that has quickly become a plain old habit. At the bar cigarettes give me something to do with my hands. Whether by association or because of the chemicals, turns out they calm me elsewhere, too. I hear Tyler rustling around in her room. She’s probably closing her own window, annoyed by my smoke wafting in. Not that I have any idea, really, what she’s thinking. She never leaves that room, the door is always closed. I’ve lived with her my whole life, shared childhood baths and well-worn blankets. I’ve dressed in her hand-me-downs, all scuffed and threadbare from the points and chafes of her body. Her scent is as familiar to me as my own, yet she’s a complete stranger to me. I try to put my mind on Paul, reminding myself he’s asked me out. Reminding myself someone out there wants to be with me.
Friday Dad drives Amy and me to Riverdale. We step into the gymnasium, where people are scattered in the bleachers. The room smells like sweat and socks. It smells like boys. We take a seat near the front and I spot Paul with his teammates. Like the others, he wears one of those tight halter outfits wrestlers have to wear. They are watching a guy out on the mat who is struggling with a guy from the rival school. Paul’s expression is hard. He takes this seriously, that’s for sure. The whole scene is sort of silly to me—the outfit, the boys pushing and hugging on the mat, the seriousness. But I push these thoughts away. I want to like Paul. More, I want him to like me. And if becoming interested in wrestling is what I have to do, then so be it.
When it is Paul’s turn, he and the other guy thrash about for close to ten minutes, but in the end he pins his opponent. I clap loudly, hoping he’ll see me. When the match is over, the bleachers clear out and Amy and I wait, my eyes flicking nervously back to the lockerroom doors.
“Does he know you’re here?” Amy asks.
I shrug, my anxiety soaring. “He invited me.”
“That was back on Monday,” she says. She speaks nonchalantly, as though she’s not saying something that is making my heart race.
“Maybe he forgot.”
“He didn’t forget,” I say quietly.
Then, like an exhaled breath, the door to the locker room opens and a group of boys pushes through. One of them is Paul. He is freshly showered, wearing normal clothes again. He comes right over.
“What did you think?” he asks.
“You were great,” I tell him.
“I did OK,” he says. “Eight minutes to pinning. But I got him with a neck hold.”
I nod, wondering if it means anything that he didn’t kiss me hello.
“I brought Amy,” I say.
“That’s cool.” He smiles at her. “I’ll bring Davis.” He calls to one of his friends, a nice-looking boy with curly hair, and we agree to meet in the parking lot where his parents’ Porsche is parked.
Back at Paul’s apartment, he orders a pizza, and he and Davis eat the whole pie. We sit in the kitchen, and I keep my hands in my lap, afraid to dirty anything. Paul is friendly and kind. He refills my soda. I look up into his dark eyes, wanting him to touch me, to show me he still wants me. Only once does he put a hand on my back briefly as he passes, and the heat where his hand touched stays there the rest of the night until Amy and I leave. He hugs me at the door, a friendly hug, not the sort of hug you give a girlfriend. And I walk away, untouched and cold, like his apartment. I discuss this with Amy for the next few days.
“Just call him and ask him to do something again,” she says. “If he likes you, he’ll say yes. If he doesn’t, he won’t.”
She makes it sound so easy, but the possibility of his rejection is unbearable. I don’t want more evidence no one will ever like me. At the same time, the wondering is torture. So I call, and, surprising me, he says yes, and we make a plan for the following Saturday. I meet him at his apartment. This time I go alone. We head straight for his bedroom and fool around. My mind slips away, body taking over. This. This is what I want. My body in his hands, his face, his breath right there against my skin. It feels good, but not just sexually. His hands, his body, his mouth. He breathes me into being, making me real. I unzip his pants, wanting him to feel what I feel: beholden to me. I want him tied to the memory of me here in his bed. I want him to remember I made him feel this good. I kiss down his body as he stretches out, letting me do what I want. At his crotch I stop, thinking about how I can trap him. I had read in a Cosmopolitan in my dentist’s waiting room about tricks to drive a man wild. One was to challenge him to a sexual game. Every boy loves games.
“I’ll bet I can make you come in under two minutes,” I whisper, improvising.
“You’re on,” he says.
So I take his penis into my mouth, and I begin. I have never given a blow job before, so I run through everything I’ve read or heard about them. Some spot on the head is most sensitive. Some technique they tend to like best. But nothing seems to make a difference. He is not moaning wildly with ecstasy like in the movies. He is not moving at all. My jaw gets tired quickly. Spittle runs out of my mouth. I feel clumsy, amateur. From the corner of my eye I see the red numbers on his clock. The minute changes, and Paul smiles down at me.
“Ha,” he says. His voice is controlled. “I win.”
I keep going, knowing I have to finish what I started, and after another quick minute or so he comes into my mouth, the hot liquid surprising me. It is gross, but I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow it, suppressing a gag. I heard somewhere guys prefer that. He buttons his pants and gets us water from the kitchen. He remains kind, but a feeling nags at me, staying with me long after I leave. And it’s this: It doesn’t matter what I did to him. He can choose to remain detached, untouched by me. Something I can’t do back. I call him the next day, and we have a nice conversation. He can’t hang out, he says, because he has a lot of homework, but we can make a plan for the next weekend. In school that week I think of him constantly, twice going silent when called on because I haven’t
