At the beginning of eleventh grade I slept with a boy more than once and it made him dishonest. It made him want to do it all the time and it made him do dumb things like have his hands on some other girl’s butt all day and then want me to give him a blow job before practice. So now it’s one time per boy, and when I run out of boys it’ll be time to go to college.
When SLUT got spray-painted in pink letters down the front of my locker at the end of junior year, I had to go to the school therapist to talk about my feelings. I kind of liked the color and I would have been more upset if it had been black or something, but those weren’t the feelings the therapist wanted to talk about. She asked me if I thought I was promiscuous and I said no. She said in that case the other kids were just jealous of me being so smart, and I should try to forget about them. She said she didn’t need to get in touch with my parents because it was just a misunderstanding. I don’t think she was very good at her job. She told me again to try not to think about it. It was easy not to think about girls, but what about boys?
• • •
If I heard of a Barbara the Slut, I would think she was nerdy because her name was Barbara, and that she wasn’t pretty enough to be popular, so she decided to be a slut instead. I don’t know what it takes to be popular, but I don’t think being a slut is runner-up to being popular. The truth is that I am nerdy, and maybe it’s because my name is Barbara and maybe not. Maybe people who think it’s funny to name their kids old-people names like Barbara and George also raise their kids to like numbers and marine mammals more than they like other kids. But the truth is also that I am pretty. My parents are weird but they’re good-looking, and my little brother and I got good combinations of their genes. I got my mom’s olive skin and dark hair and I got my dad’s green eyes. I got my mom’s runner’s body except with bigger boobs. My teeth are kind of big, but it’s not like they’re horse teeth or anything. George got the same green eyes but the light skin and the red hair, and we were the same size for a long time, but then all of a sudden he turned into a giant.
• • •
George started going to my high school my senior year. He had high-functioning autism and went to special ed, and if he were my kid, I would have sent him to a special school. The kids at Ashwell were really mean. But my parents wouldn’t listen. They said they wanted George to have a mainstream experience, like that’s a good thing to have. They acted like nothing was wrong with him, or like it was fine that he was autistic. They didn’t even notice for the first three years of his life—they noticed that he was slower than me, but they didn’t think that meant anything. Sometimes I feel like I should have noticed, but I was three when he was born and six when he was diagnosed. Now he was doing much better. But I still didn’t think he should have to go to my school.
As far as I knew, nobody called George any names on the first day, and nobody called me a slut either. I thought maybe they forgot over the summer. It was good timing because I wasn’t going to have sex until my college application was due in November.
I was applying early decision and my GPA was better than perfect and my SAT score was almost perfect, and I was going to write a perfect essay about how math changed my running game. I calculated my average sweat rate and electrolyte loss, converted electrolyte moles to milligrams, and so determined my nutritional needs to eliminate muscle cramping and fatigue. I did all the calculations over the summer and shaved forty seconds per mile off of ten-mile runs. Anyway, I still had to write the essay, and I wanted to take the SATs one more time. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by boys.
On the second day of school Nick Caruso asked me if I wanted to go for a drive. Nick was nice enough but one of his teeth was rotten, and also I don’t do it in cars, and also I was temporarily abstinent as explained. I told him that I had to take care of my brother, but really George went to the after-school program. More boys asked me that week and I said no, and it turned out that no one had forgotten about the slut thing.
In October I turned seventeen and got called prude for the first time, which was funny. I submitted my college application early and my parents took us out for pizza to celebrate. In the parking lot when my mom thought we weren’t looking, she stuck her tongue in my dad’s ear. Parents of autistic kids are supposed to get divorced, but my parents are still obsessed with each other and it’s disgusting. George thought the tongue in the ear was the funniest thing ever and he tried to do it to me and I had to fight him off.
No one had told George about me going to college, so he didn’t understand what we were celebrating. My mom explained that I was going to go to a different school, like when we went to different schools last year.
“Except my new school is in New Jersey,” I said.
My mom elbowed me.
“Where is New Jersey?” said George.
My parents looked at each other and my mom coughed and my dad adjusted his glasses.
“New Jersey is a town,” said my mom, “near Boston.” We lived forty minutes north of Boston.
“But you’ll pick me up at after-school,” George said to me.
“Uh,” I said. I was starting to feel guilty that George even had to go to after-school. I had wanted to keep my afternoons free, but now that I was trying not to have sex I didn’t actually have much to do, and I went on long runs and made egg sandwiches while George sat in a classroom and read marine biology books and ate saltines.
“We’ll see,” my dad told George. My parents were pretty stupid for a math professor and a shrink. Even if George didn’t look up New Jersey as soon as we got home, when I got in they were going to have to explain that it was three or four states away, depending on which highways you took, and that I was never going to pick George up at five again.
• • •
Three weeks before Thanksgiving, I finally had sex. Jesse Spence showed up at my locker and asked me if I wanted to go to his house after school. I wondered if he hadn’t heard that I was on strike, or if he was just really cocky. He said he liked me, which seemed unlikely, but his smile was sweet and he was the senior pitcher for the baseball team and he had huge meaty hands with chewed fingernails, so I said okay.
Jesse waited for me outside after last period, which was a good sign because some boys didn’t. Then they were so mad at themselves for chickening out that they would tell everyone I wanted to sleep with them but they didn’t want to sleep with me.
Jesse said, “Hey,” and smiled his sweet smile and followed me to my car.
When we got to his house he put carrot sticks on a plate and said he didn’t have any other snacks because his parents were on a diet together. We went up to his room and his bed was made, and I wondered if he always made it or if he was planning on me. I sat on the bed and he sat at his desk.
“How was your summer?” he said.
“It was good,” I said. “It was a pretty long time ago. How was yours?”
“It was good,” he said.
“You can sit next to me if you want,” I said.
He stood up too quickly and his chair rolled back and hit the desk. I laughed and he blushed. I love boys who blush.
He sat next to me and I moved the plate of carrots to the floor. When I sat back up he kissed me and it felt good and warm, like he was still hot from blushing. I kissed him back with tongue because the boys who don’t start with tongue are the ones who are good at it.
Jesse kissed me and kissed me and he was going to kiss me all afternoon if I didn’t stop him. I pushed him back onto the bed and he looked nervous.
“What?” I said.
“We don’t have to do it,” he said. “We could just hang out.”
“I have to go soon,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. He let me kiss him and take off his shirt and pants and boxers until he was naked and I was fully dressed, waiting for him to make a move. Finally he slid his hands under my shirt and they felt like I hoped they would—soft and rough and enough to cover my boobs and a little more. He took of
f my shirt and bra and I slid out of my pants and underwear. He took a condom out of his drawer and put it on the nightstand but he seemed content just to touch me all over. I felt like I was Cleopatra and he was my boy. It never happens like that. I could have stayed in his bed forever, but it was already after four o’clock. I opened the condom.
“Fuck me,” I said.
“Are you sure?” he said.
I laughed and he blushed again.
• • •
I left Jesse’s house at four fifty and was late to pick up George.
“Barbara, did you hear about the world’s loneliest whale?” George said when he got in the car.
“Ha ha,” I said. “No, what?”
“This is not a joke about whales, so you shouldn’t laugh because it’s not a joke. This is a story about a whale with a communication disability.”
He buckled his seat belt.
“This whale sings at a fifty-two hertz frequency. The other whales sing at fifteen to twenty-five hertz frequencies. So that means the other whales can’t hear her. Only the navy can hear her. The navy is listening to her. They started listening to her in 1989. They know where she is. She doesn’t follow the same migration patterns as any of the other whales and the other whales don’t know where she is and she doesn’t know where they are. The marine biologists think she’s a hybrid of two species or the last survivor of an unidentified species. And that’s the reason why nobody can hear her.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yes,” said George.
When we got home George started up the computer to listen to the whale songs and I painted my nails. I replayed the afternoon with Jesse in my head. I wished I could sleep with him again.
“Here is the blue whale song,” George said. It sounded like snoring. “Here’s the fifty-two hertz whale song,” he said. That one sounded like an owl hooting. “Those are sped up so that we can hear them,” he said. “Here’s what the fifty-two hertz really sounds like. You can’t hear it!”
Obviously that one sounded like nothing.
• • •
The next time I saw Jesse he asked me if I wanted to hang out that weekend, maybe Sunday morning. But I was not about to let him fuck me on a Sunday morning if he was only offering Sunday because he had better things to do on Friday and Saturday. Sunday morning is the best time of the week to have sex.
I looked for Jesse after that, but I didn’t see him at all the next week. Instead I started seeing Roger Vasquez around. Roger was the other pitcher on the baseball team and I had noticed him before. He was tall and dark and he had perfect teeth. He started smiling at me in the hallways and I started smiling back at him. It didn’t seem like a good idea to sleep with another boy on the baseball team right away, especially not the junior pitcher. But it was a catch-22 because the baseball team was the best-looking team in school. They weren’t stupid like the football team or assholes like the lacrosse team or pretentious like the crew team, and they looked so much stronger than the track team. I liked the swim team, but the boys’ and girls’ swim teams only slept with each other.
Finally I got tired of all the smiling and decided to talk to Roger. That Friday he walked by while I was waiting outside my brother’s classroom to give him his lunch.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi,” said Roger.
“What are you up to later?”
“Uh,” he said. “Nothing, I’m free.”
Then Ms. Danielle opened the door and let George out.
“I forgot my lunch in the car!” said George.
“I know, dummy.” I handed him the bag.
Roger looked at the door of the classroom. “Is your brother retarded or something?”
“What?” I said.
“Barbara’s brother is not retarded,” said George. “But there is a retarded boy I can show you. His name is Christopher.”
I didn’t look at Roger. “Okay buddy,” I told George, “I’ll see you at five.”
“Okay,” he said. He gave me a hug from the side and when he was done I thought he was going to give me a kiss but he stuck his tongue in my ear and I jumped.
“George!” I said.
George smiled.
“Sick,” said Roger.
“Why are you still here?” I said to him. He looked nervous. “Go away.” I knocked on the door and Ms. Danielle let George back in.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Go away. I wouldn’t sleep with you in a million years.”
“Whatever,” Roger said, and started walking away. “Slut.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”
• • •
Roger told everyone that he fucked me, and he started calling me a slut whenever he saw me. Like, “Hey, slut,” or “What up, slut?” Then the rest of the baseball team started saying hi to me and calling me slut. And then some girls who liked Roger started calling me a slut, but not saying hi. When I finally ran into Jesse again he didn’t look at me and I knew he was mad. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t sleep with Roger but I knew he wouldn’t believe me.
I tried to forget about Roger and Jesse when we left for Turks and Caicos for Thanksgiving, but on the plane George said that he saw my boyfriend, and my mom said, “Boyfriend?” and George said, “I said Christopher is the retarded one,” and my mom said, “What is he talking about?” and I said, “I have no idea.” For the rest of the week whenever I looked at George, I imagined Roger calling him a retard and I felt dizzy.
• • •
Roger did not shut up about me being a slut. I started counting how many times he called me one, and by December 15 it was fifty-four. That was it for the day because at eleven thirty I left school with a note from my mom. At home I logged in to my application account, and from eleven fifty to eleven fifty-nine I ran up and down the stairs. At twelve I got into Princeton.
I called my mom and she started screaming, “I knew it! I knew it!” before I could even tell her. She must have pushed her twelve o’clock back, and I thought about the patient sitting in the waiting room and listening to her yell, “I knew it!”
Then I called my dad and he said, “Congratulations, angel, that’s very exciting,” which is exactly what I knew he was going to say. Everything went exactly the way I thought it was going to go. I had tried to pretend that I didn’t know I was going to get in, but like I said, the odds were pretty good. In addition to my grades and test scores, it just so happened that both of my parents went to Princeton. When I was in the process of applying, the admissions counselor at school told me that one other student from Ashwell had been admitted to Princeton, three years ago, and she wasn’t a legacy but she was black. What she actually said was, “She had a diverse background,” which didn’t make any sense.
I spent the afternoon looking at the course catalog and making a list of classes I wanted to take. When I was done with that I downloaded a picture of four girls on the Princeton cross-country team and Photoshopped my face onto the one who looked the most like me. The girls had their arms around each other like older, sweatier versions of the girls in my elementary school yearbooks. It took me an hour but I did a good job. I printed it out on photo paper and put it in my mirror with the pictures from Turks and Caicos and a math team picture from when we won the New England Meet junior year.
I went for a run and let my parents pick George up from after-school. When they got home with him we went out to dinner at the Indian place, and when we got back my mom took a new Princeton sweatshirt out of her bedroom and a cake box out of the cabinet over the stove. My dad got a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and poured glasses for the three of us and a glass of milk for my brother.
“To Barbara the mathematician,” said my dad and raised his glass.
“To Barbara, my college girl,” said my mom.
“To Barbara the Slud,” George said and thumped me on the back.
I froze.
My dad put his glass down on the counter too hard.
“What?” said my mom. “What did you say, George?”
George looked at her and at my dad. He looked at me and then looked away and drank all of his milk.
“George, that sounded like a bad word,” said my mom. “Did you mean to say a bad word?”
“No!” said George. “It’s not a bad word.”
“Where did you hear that?” said my dad.
“It’s not a bad word,” said George.
“I’m sure that’s not what he meant,” I said. “I’m sure it’s not what it sounds like.”
My mom looked at me and started cutting the cake, a coconut cake like the one from Connie’s on Cape Cod. Everyone was silent. I ate two big pieces and tried to calm down.
“Here come the freshman fifteen,” my dad said when I finished.
“Neil!” said my mom.
“Sorry.” My dad winked at me. “But keep up the running.”
My mom rolled her eyes.
When we were done eating I went to my room. My stomach churned. I e-mailed my guidance counselor about Princeton and finally my mom knocked, even though the door was open.
“Hi honey,” she said. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“No,” I said.
“Is everything okay at school?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, when George . . .” she said.
“George is retarded,” I said.
My mom studied me. “I can tell you don’t want to talk about this, Barbara. But calling your brother retarded is not the way to get out of it.” My mom’s therapy voice makes me want to crawl back into her womb where I can’t hear her.
“Everything is fine,” I said. “I don’t know where George got that. But everything is fine.”
“Okay,” she said. “I need you to tell me if I should worry.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
• • •
The next day was Friday and I tried to forget about my mom and dad and George. I wore my new sweatshirt to show everyone at school that I was out of there. When I got to homeroom Ms. Constantino congratulated me. Then the bell rang and she made announcements about next week’s finals that nobody listened to.
Barbara the Slut and Other People Page 17
