“So wait, were you on the slut list this year?”
“Yeah.”
“What did they say about you? Was it nasty?”
“Not really. Something about being a refugee, or something like that. It really wasn’t that bad.”
“Jackals.”
“No, it’s okay. A lot of those girls are like, super nice to me now.”
“Well, at least you guys made history. You’ll likely be the last slut-listed class in Millburn history.”
“What a pity.”
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons interrupted our conversation.
Click. “Hey Dad.”
“Vito? It’s your father. Just letting you know we’ll be home in about… forty-eight minutes. We’ll use the front door. Do you need anything?”
“No, thanks.”
“Vito… do you have… condoms?”
“I’m okay, Dad. See ya later.” Click.
She moved closer still, and as if preprogrammed from Freshmanning 101, Ivanka dropped to her knees and undid my belt. I remembered when the girls in my grade started giving blowjobs to condoms filled with water at the end of eighth grade as practice for the upperclassman. I remembered barely seeing them outside of school, sometimes when the upperclassmen on the football team brought me to parties, but even then they were merely an extension of a senior’s arm. Now it was my turn. Now I sat atop the social hierarchy with my pants rolled down to my ankles.
Ivanka took me as much as I would’ve expected the freshman could, just enough for me to go “Awww” as she lifted her head up and gave a coy smile, as if to say, “Let me try that again.”
I tried to picture Ivanka’s tight body in a strap-heavy lace concoction from Spencer’s, but all I could see was jet-black latex that went squeak, squeak, squeak while she cracked a whip—I have to jettison these preconceived notions of Eastern Europe!
“Vic, are you… okay?”
I had gone soft! To battle against the forces of gossip and rumor-spreading throughout the halls of high school, I pushed Ivanka onto the couch and began to kiss the white of her neck and shoulder. Surely a surprise to the young Ukrainian, whose freshman manual did not surpass the equation of Senior = Vodka + Blowjob. She lifted her hips so I could tug down her black jeans and underwear, and from the waist down, she was bare. I tried to fit a couple of fingers in and—stopped. I tried to fit one finger in and—stopped, swatted. She was the Martin Brodeur, the Dikembe Mutombo gate-keeper of the box.
“I can’t, Vic. Just kiss me.”
Just kiss her? Kissing was for lovers, the chivalric knight and the maiden faire, not half-naked high schoolers fooling around on the basement couch. Ivanka must’ve still carried the notion—poor girl—that there was a certain timing for sex, that sex was beautiful. There was no good time. Sex wasn’t beautiful—it wasn’t supposed to be. Sex was supposed to be savage, dirty, intense. Art was beautiful. The naked body can be beautiful and therefore can be art, but not when it’s engaged in the throes of sex. I couldn’t imagine something less beautiful than sex—medieval torture, perhaps.
I guided her hand back to my penis—hard as an obelisk—and she began to tug, dry. I attempted to subtly push her head back to position one, but she resisted—truly an unprecedented feat. I attempted once again, but the Ukrainian was locked to my lips, tugging and chafing and tugging and chafing as if there were a genie inside.
When I had figured that all hope was lost, when I had just begun to accept that the freshman had gone rogue and realized she never had to suck a dick again, a finger must’ve slipped over the tip or dragged down the base, because I felt a bolt of orgasm cut through me, and that was when I choked her.
“What are you doing?!” she screamed as she popped me in the ear.
“Shit, I’m sorry. Some people are into that.”
“Like who?! Your crazy ex-girlfriend? Yeah, I heard she was nuts.”
“Well, no. You see, I just said she was crazy so…”
“I don’t care. I’m leaving. I’ll call someone to pick me up,” she said as she put on her underwear and pants.
She grabbed her bag and the crinkling water bottle of vodka off the coffee table and headed for the door.
“Hey, please don’t say…”
But she slammed the door shut before I could finish. The sound reverberated around the basement and knocked the framed recruitment letter from the University of Hawaii to the ground, breaking the glass.
I picked up the broken shards and tossed them in the garbage can over by the wet bar. I could see Ivanka surrounded by cigarette smoke in the darkness out my window. Then a blinding light pulled into the driveway and when my eyes readjusted, I saw the bumblebee-yellow Hummer H2 of Pierce Stone idling at the threshold of West Road as the pretty blonde stomped out her cigarette.
Luckily the buzz around Millburn High School had not been the asphyxiation debacle that occurred in the Ferraro basement Saturday night, but the suspension of a handful of soccer players, for drinking.
I passed Ivanka in the hall between second and third period and attempted to get her attention with a light—just the faintest, gentlest touch on the arm—but she looked through me like a ghost with what can only be described as a perfected, cold Ukrainian indifference.
And it wasn’t just Ivanka who dismissed me like some throwaway piece of garbage, but the Jew Crew (closely linked to the soccer team with significant overlap) also completely ignored me when I attempted the slightest bit of human connection, as if I had rendered the verdict on their compatriots—why are sons punished for the sins of their fathers?!
I approached Silas in the weight room during fourth
