Go Ask Alice

by Beatrice Sparks

  All my life I’ve thought that the first time I had sex with someone it would be something special, and maybe even painful, but it turned out to be just part of the brilliant, freaky, way-out, forever pattern. I still can’t quite separate one thing from another.

  I wonder if all the kids had sex — but no, that’s just too awfully animal and indecent! I wonder how shocked Roger would be if he knew, and my parents and Tim and Alex and Gramps and Gran? I think they would be mortified, but no more than I am!

  Maybe I even really love Bill, but right now I can hardly even remember what he looks like. Oh, I’m so horribly, nauseously mixed up and — what if I’m pregnant? Oh, how I wish I had someone, anyone, to talk with who knows what they’re talking about.

  I hadn’t thought about being pregnant before. Can it happen the first time? Will Bill marry me if I am or will he just think I’m an easy little dum-dum who makes it with everyone? Of course he won’t marry me, he’s only fifteen years old. I guess I’ll just have to have an abortion or something. I certainly couldn’t stand it if I had to leave school like _____ did last year. The kids talked about absolutely nothing else for weeks. Oh God, please, please make me not pregnant!

  I’m going to call Mom right now. I’ll get Gran to buy a plane ticket and I am going home tomorrow. I hate this rotten place and I hate Bill Thompson and all that crowd. I don’t know how I ever got mixed up with them, but I was so pleased and felt so smart when they accepted me and now I feel miserable and ashamed as though that’s going to do any good.

  August 7

  Mom and Dad think I should wait until next week to come home. I couldn’t really argue, because Gran needs me. But in the meantime I’m not going to answer the phone or step off our property.

  Later

  Jill called, but I told Gran to tell her I wasn’t feeling well. It’s pretty obvious, even to Gran, that I’m really not. I’m living with doubts and apprehensions and fears that I never dreamed possible.

  August 9

  The world has actually stopped in its orbit. My life is completely over. After dinner when Gran and I were sitting out in the garden we heard tappings at the back gate and guess who of all the people in the universe stopped by? Roger and his mom and dad. They got back in the afternoon and heard about Gramps’ sickness and had dropped by to visit him.

  I was beside myself. Roger is even more breathtakingly good-looking than ever, and I wanted to throw myself in his arms and cry my heart out to him. Instead we shook hands and I hurried to get everybody something to drink. Later, after we’d all talked for a while, Gran sent me in to get some chips and dip, and Roger followed me! Can you imagine Roger following me? He even asked me out! I wanted to die right then and there, and later when we were out in the garden he started telling me about how he was going to military school for the next year and a half till he was ready for college. He even said he was a little frightened and lonely about going away by himself for the first time, and he told me how he wanted to become an aeronautical engineer and work on new techniques for air travel. He’s got some wonderful ideas! It’s almost like reading Jules Verne, and he has so many plans for his life, with the Army and all.

  Then he kissed me and it was what I had always dreamed it would be since I was in kindergarten. Other boys have kissed me but it wasn’t the same at all. This was fondness and liking and desire and regard and admiration and affection and tenderness and attachment and yearning. It was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life. But now I’m sitting here and I feel sick to my stomach. What if he finds out about what I’ve been doing since I got here? How could he ever forgive me? How could he ever understand? Would he? If I were only a Catholic maybe I could do some kind of terrible penance to pay for my transgressions. I was brought up to believe that God would forgive people’s sins, but how can I forgive myself? How could Roger forgive me?

  Oh, terrors, horrors, endless torment.

  August 10

  Roger has called four times today but I refused to talk to him. Gran and Gramps want me to stay over a few days until I feel better but I can’t. I simply can’t face Roger again until I get my thinking straightened out. Oh, how did I ever get mixed up in such a mess? Imagine losing my virginity four nights before seeing Roger again. The awful irony of it! But even without that, would he have understood the acid trips? Would he have wanted me after those? I hadn’t really cared before, but I care now! And it’s too late!

  I must talk to someone. I must find someone who understands about drugs and talk to them. I wonder if I could talk to someone at Dad’s university. Oh, no, no, they’d be bound to tell him and then I’d really be in a mess. Maybe I could say I was doing a paper on drugs for a science project or something, but I can’t do that until school starts. I think I’d better take some of Gramp’s sleeping pills, I’m never going to be able to sleep without them. In fact I think I’d better take a supply of them. He’s got plenty, and I’m sure I’ll have a few bad nights at home before I get straightened out. Oh, I hope it’s just a few.

  August 13

  It’s all I can do to keep from crying. Mom and Dad just called to say how proud they are to have me for a daughter. There are no words to express how I feel.

  August 14

  Gran took me to the plane. She thinks Roger and I had a quarrel. She kept telling me everything would be all right and that it is a woman’s place to be long-suffering and patient and tolerant and understanding. Oh, if she only knew! Mom and Dad and Tim and Alex met me and all told me how pale and wan I looked, they were ever so gentle and loving. It’s good to be home.

  I must forget about everything. I must repent and forgive myself and start over; after all I just turned 15 and I can’t stop life and get off. Besides since I’ve thought about Gramps dying I don’t want to die. I’m afraid. Isn’t that ghastly and ironic? I’m afraid to live and afraid to die, just like the old Negro spiritual. I wonder what their hang-up was?

  August 16

  Mother is making me eat. She’s fixing all my favorite foods but they still don’t taste like much. Roger wrote me a long letter asking me if I was all right, but I simply haven’t the energy or the strength or the desire to answer him. Everyone is terribly worried about me and, in fact, I’m even terribly worried about myself. I still don’t know if I’m pregnant and won’t know for another ten or twelve days. Oh, I pray I’m not. I keep asking myself how I could have been such an idiot, and there is no answer other than the fact that I am an idiot! A stupid, bungling, senseless, foolish, ignorant idiot!

  August 17

  I have used the last of Gramps’ sleeping pills and I’m a wreck. I can’t sleep and I’m all screwed up and Mom is insisting that I go see Doctor Langley. Maybe that will help. I’ll do anything.

  August 18

  I went to see Doctor Langley this morning and I really laid it on about my not being able to sleep. He asked me a lot of questions about why I couldn’t sleep, but I just kept repeating I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know. Finally he broke down and gave me the pills. Actually I don’t need the sleep as much as I need the escape. It’s a wonderful way to escape. I think I can’t stand it and then I just take a pill and wait for sweet nothingness to take over. At this stage in my life nothingness is a lot better than somethingness.

  August 20

  I don’t think the sleeping pills Doctor Langley gave me are as strong as the ones Gramps had because I have to take two of these and sometimes even three. Maybe it’s because I’m so nervous. Anyway I don’t know how much longer I can last; if something doesn’t happen soon I think I’m going to blow my brains out.

  August 22

  I had Mom call Doctor Langley and I’m going to ask him for some tranquilizers. I can’t sleep all day long and I certainly can’t walk around like this so I hope he gives them to me. He’s got to!

  August 23

  Tranquilizers are the greatest. This afternoon I took one just before the mailman’s arrival with another letter from Rog
er. Instead of getting all upset, I sat down and poured my whole soul out to him, nothing of course about my acid trips or the Speed, and surely not about Bill and my possible condition, but just about the important things that concern us both. I have even begun to wonder if maybe I could turn Roger on just once so he would understand. Could I? Could I make him take his first trip unknowingly as I did? Oh I wish I dared! It seems like I’ve been held down for so long, maybe it’s the sleeping pills and the tranquilizers, but there are moments when I’d really like to just burst loose, but I guess those days are gone forever! I’m really confused! I wish I had someone to talk to!

  August 26

  What a wonderful, beautiful, happy day! My period started! I was never so happy for anything in my life. Now I can throw away my sleeping pills and tranquilizers, I can be me again! Oh, wow!

  September 6

  Beth came back from camp, but she’s hardly the same person and she met some Jewish jerk that she’s going steady with. They are going to be together all the time, day and night. Perhaps I’m a little jealous because Roger lives so far away and school has started and Alex and her noisy little friends are driving me crazy and Mom has begun to get on my back too.

  Today I went down to this great little boutique and found a cute pair of moccasins and a vest with fringe and a really great pair of pants. Chris, the girl who works there, showed me how to iron my hair (which I did tonight) and now it’s perfectly straight. It’s the greatest! The greatest except that Mom couldn’t stand it. I went downstairs to show her and she said I look like a hippie and that she and Dad and I must have a little talk some evening. I could tell them a thing or two, because I imagine that sex without drugs isn’t even the same thing as the mad, forever wonder of it when you’re really way out there. Anyway I seem to be doing less and less right, I’m getting so that no matter what I do I can’t please the Establishment.

  September 7

  Last night was the bitter end. Mom and Dad flowed tears and flowers about how much they love me and how worried they’ve been about my attitude since I got back from Gran’s. They hate my hair, which they still want me to wear in a flip like the kiddies, and they talked and talked and talked, but never once did they even hear one thing I was trying to say to them. In fact at the beginning, when they were telling me about their deep concern, I had the overwhelming desire to break down and tell them everything. I wanted to tell them! I wanted more than anything in the world to know that they understood, but naturally they just kept on talking and talking because they are incapable of really understanding anything. If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically. However, I’m lucky I have Roger, if I really have him.

  September 9

  Another sock in the belly day. Roger is definitely going to that military school and the first time he’ll be home is Christmas — and maybe not even then! His dad went there and his grandfather did too, so I guess he’s almost obligated to go, but I need him here, not there in that idiot school marching around for a whole year. Now we’ll be a whole continent away. I wrote him a ten page letter telling him I’ll wait for him even though in his last letter he told me that he expected me to date and have fun. But how can I have fun in this hole? ? ? ?

  September 10

  I was so depressed about Roger that I walked down to look at clothes in the boutique where Chris works. It was almost her coffee break so we went next door to have a coke and I told her how low I was because of Roger. She immediately understood. It was great to have someone again that I could talk to. When we got back to the store she gave me a little red candy type thing and told me to go home, take it and listen to some groovy music. She said, “This heart will pep you up like tranquilizers slow you down,” and you know she was right! I’ve been using too many sleeping pills and too many tranquilizers. I don’t know why that dumb doctor didn’t give me something to make me feel better instead of something to make me feel worse. I’ve been feeling great all afternoon, feeling like living again. I’ve washed my hair and cleaned my room and ironed and done all the things that Mom has been nagging me to do for days. The only problem is that now it’s night and I can’t seem to turn the energy off. I’d stay up and write to Roger, but I just wrote him a giant letter yesterday and he’d think I was some kind of nut. I guess I’ll just have to waste one of my good sleeping pills to stop it. That’s life.

  See ya.

  September 12

  Dad and Mom are constantly harping about the way I look. They keep saying that they know I’m a good, sweet girl, but I’m beginning to act like a hippie and they’re afraid the wrong kind of people will be drawn to me. What it amounts to is they are so ultra-conservative that they don’t even know what’s happening. Chris and I talk a lot about our parents and the Establishment. Her dad is an executive with a breakfast food company and he travels a lot “often in the company of other women” she confided to me. And her mom is such a devoted club and civic-minded woman that the whole town would probably fall flat on its face if she took an evening off to listen to her daughter. “Mom’s the ‘pillar of society’ in this town,” Chris told me. “She holds up everybody and everything but me, and man have I been let down.”

  Chris doesn’t need to work but she just simply can’t stand it around her house. I told her I was beginning to feel the same way and she’s going to try and get me a job with her, isn’t that the greatest?

  September 13

  Wow! I’m really living! I have a job. Chris asked her boss last night and he said yes. Isn’t that the greatest?! I’ll be working with Chris on Thursday nights and on Friday nights and all day Saturday and I’ll be able to buy anything my non-conforming little heart desires. Chris is a year older than I am and she’s a year ahead in school, but she really is a great girl and I love her and relate better to her than I ever have with anyone in my life, even Beth. I suspect she knows a little about drugs, because she’s given me hearts a couple of times when I’ve been really low. Someday soon I’ve really got to talk to her about these things.

  September 21

  Dear friend Diary,

  I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you, but I really have been busy with my new job and school starting and all, and you still are my very dearest friend and closest confidant, even though I am really tuned in and receive well with Chris. We never get tired and she and I are two of the most popular girls at school. I know I look great, I’m still down at 103 pounds, and every time I get hungry or tired I just pop a Benny. We’ve got energy and vitality to spare, and clothes, like man. My hair is the greatest. I wash it in mayonnaise and it’s shining and soft enough to make anyone turn on.

  I still haven’t met a guy I really dig, but that’s probably all right because I’m waiting for Roger.

  September 23

  Diary,

  My parents are absolutely and positively going to make me blow my mind. I have to take Dexies to stay high at school and at work and on dates and to do my homework, then I have to take tranquilizers to bear up at home. Daddy thinks I’m blowing his image as the college dean. He even yelled at me at the table last night for saying “man.” He has his words when he wants to stress a point and that is all right, but let me say “man,” and you’d think I had committed the unpardonable sin.

  Chris and I are about ready to cut out. She has a friend in San Francisco who could help us get a job, and since we’ve both had experience in a boutique it shouldn’t be that hard. Besides her parents are about ready for a divorce. They do nothing but fight when they are together and she’s had it. At least I don’t have to put up with that.

  Also Roger says he’s too busy to write much, which is an unlikely story. Like Chris says, “
a man’s blood soon runs cold when there is no one around to warm it up.”

  September 26

  Last night was the night, friend! I finally smoked pot and it was even greater than I expected! Last night after work, Chris fixed me up with a college friend of hers who knew I’d been on acid, etc., but who wanted to turn me on to hash.

  He told me not to expect to feel like I felt with liquor and I told him I’d never had more than champagne at birthday parties and leftovers from cocktail parties. We all got hilarious over that and Ted, Chris’s date, said that lots of kids never try booze, not only because it’s their parents’ thing, but because it’s a lot harder to get than pot. Ted said that when he first started experimenting he found he could steal a lot of money from his parents and they would never miss it, but let him take one swig out of any of their booze bottles and it was as though they had it measured to the ounce.

  Then Richie showed me how to smoke. And I’ve never even had a cigarette! He gave me a small orientation lecture, like I should listen for small things I wouldn’t ordinarily hear and just relax. At first I took too deep a drag and almost choked to death, so Richie told me to suck in openmouthed gulps to mix as much air in as possible. But that didn’t work too well either and after a while Ted gave up and brought out a hookah pipe. It seemed funny and exotic but at first I couldn’t get any smoke and I felt cheated because the other three were obviously stoned. But finally it started to work, just when I thought it never would, and I really began to feel happy and free as a bright canary chirping through the open, endless heavens. And I was so relaxed! I don’t think I’ve been that relaxed in my whole entire life! It was really beautiful. Later Rich brought a sheepskin rug out of his room and we began walking through the thickness of it and there was a sensation in my feet that was totally indescribable, a softness that enveloped my complete body, and quite suddenly I could hear the strange almost silent sound of the long silky hairs rubbing against each other and against my feet. It was a sound unsimilar to any I have ever heard, and I remember trying desperately to give a dissertation upon the phenomena of each individual hair having perfect pitch within itself. But of course I couldn’t; it was too perfect.