by Gabi Moore
“Now, since you’re only a baby, you should just have a little, ok?” he said.
I snorted. Imagine him, this ruffian, telling me to moderate myself. He pressed his lips together, held it there between them and lit it delicately, focused intently for a second on breathing it to life. Then he turned to me and offered it. I took it gingerly, placed it to my lips, puffed a little then spat out a jagged ribbon of smoke. That’s it? That’s all? I gave it back to him.
He was giggling.
“Yeah, yeah, good job. But try again now, and this time, really suck.”
I shot him an unimpressed look.
“Sorry, I know, you already suck. Just inhale, ok? Like this.” He leaned forward in his seat, the leather creaking under him, and I could smell the smoke on his breath as he hovered his palm over my chest.
“Breath in deep, into your lungs, so that your chest touches my hand, ok?”
He was like a brother. Like a pervy, douche idiot of a brother. And I wanted to kiss him again. How dare he.
I did as he said, and a hot puff of smoke penetrated my lungs, and my chest rose up to gently meet his waiting hand. A wild buzz filled my head; I was so dizzy I felt as though I had been slapped.
“Good …good, ok hold it in now” he said quickly, pressing down hard on my chest and looking at me with laughing eyes. I held on as much as I could, but the burning eventually got the better of me, and I let go.
“Wow,” I coughed and sputtered, giddy.
“What a lightweight” he said smiling. His hand stayed exactly where it was.
“You didn’t say it would hurt,” I whined, “it really burns.”
The leather creaked again as he moved his hand up to my throat and stroked it there for a moment, then dragged it down again to rest on my breasts.
With my buzzing head, I looked down at his hands, then at him.
“Your hands are so soft” I said, which was totally not what I wanted to say then. I wanted to tell him to take his filthy hands off of me, and just what did he think he was doing and did I say he could? But all that came out was, “I didn’t imagine they’d be so soft.”
The moment was so awkward I fumbled and let the cigarette drop. It fell into the seat crevice, not before burning a quick pink hole on my thigh, and we both went scrambling after it.
“Ha! Only users lose drugs,” he said and fished it out, although to do so meant he had to stretch the full length of his body over mine and grope around the other side of my seat. He triumphantly held up the now extinguished cigarette, but instead of going over to his side of the car again, he stayed there, on my lap, smiling. For some reason, this seemed incredibly funny to me. I burst out laughing and he laughed with me.
He was laying on my lap, smiling up at me, striking joke poses like some 50s belle in a magazine shoot. He put his hands under his chin, pouting, pretended to fluff his hair.
“Cut it out!” I laughed. I looked at his face, suddenly seeing for the first time how open it was, how hopeful and simple and playful. It made me feel weird.
“You sell your body for sex,” I said, and instantly regretted it. It was like I was unable to say all the things I should be saying, and could only blather like an idiot.
He didn’t respond. He lit the thing again, took a long drag and blew the stream of smoke out the window, watching it go. He took another hit then stubbed it out on the ashtray. His face changed.
“Mel, I don’t sell sex, you know.”
“Then what do you sell?” There was no more judgment in my voice. I really was curious. I really wanted to know everything. I hated playing the clueless religious girl all the time; was it so bad that I just wanted to know? Did he kiss them? Did they pay for his time? Per act? Per each …body part?
“I provide a service.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah… Look at me, what do you see?”
“An idiot.” I giggled.
“Exactly, you see a totally handsome and charming young buck. I’m a machine, Mel. I can fuck holes into walls, I can ruin a marriage just by looking at a woman’s ass right. I’m young. I’m hot.”
I was giggling uncontrollably now at the thought of him with his you-know-what stuck in a bit of drywall.
“But I give women what they really want, and for that service I get compensation. In this case, money.”
I had never heard him speak with so much passion. “So what do they really want then…?” I asked quietly, the hot fuzzy feeling in my head was starting to creep down to the rest of my body.
“Let me show you” he said, and sat up quickly.
The air in the car seemed heavier all of a sudden. My eyes felt like they were swimming in my skull. The thought of this made me start giggling again. He reached out and placed two hands on my shoulders, shooting his gaze straight at mine, like a laser.
It shut me right up and I stared back, hypnotized.
He began cooing at me softly, with a buttery, unspeakably sexy look on his face. “Mel, oh my god Mel, have I said how beautiful you are? You’re like a sexy witch, I feel like you’ve cast a spell on me… your eyes …”
Here he slowly, slowly extended gentle fingertips and touched the edge of my cheek, as though he was surprised I was made of flesh and blood and not mist. His eyes were riveted right on mine, and as overwhelming as they were, I couldn’t look away. There was nothing at that moment but the stillness in the car and his rapt attention on me, so raw it was more like worship, so intense it felt like a spotlight, but one that was not only illuminating me, but devouring me, seeing down into concealed depths. Blood rushed to my face and I stammered, trying to say something.
“Is this …is this real?” I said.
He smiled one long, slow, languid smile and then snapped his eyes away from mine, throwing himself back into his seat. “Nah. That was just an illustration. That’s what I’m talking about. That feeling, that thing you felt right there? That’s what women want. And how much would you pay for that?”
I tried to think, but my head was a little scrambled.
“Yeah, well, they pay a lot,” he said.
We sat in silence.
“I’ll probably have to pay someone to have sex with me one day you know. Or just die a virgin,” I said, surprised at how easily I had spoken this confession, and how it hurt me the moment I said it out loud. All at once I felt like I wanted to cry.
He looked at me quizzically. “Hey, hey Mel, don’t say stuff like that. God, your family is really fucked up.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
My tongue felt loose and it suddenly seemed like, well, why not tell him all this stuff? He was the last person on earth who was allowed to judge me. Listening to people was basically part of his job, anyway.
“Do you ever, you know, with …younger women?” The voice I spoke with was not my own, and seemed to come from far away, somewhere outside my body. This, I guess, was what they called being “high”. It was nice I guess. He looked at me again, the quizzical look intensifying.
“Well, you’re not really my type, you know,” he laughed.
It was like a stab. The moment was so strange, and I was there, desperately trying to grasp what I was saying and he was saying, that this little quip seemed to me like a sword sunk straight into my heart. Without thinking about it, two fat tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Hey! Don’t cry! Oh man, just chill. It’s OK. OK?’
He looked genuinely concerned. He reached over the folded ends of his hoodie sleeve and smeared away the tears. “Look, no offense, but you’re …how do I put this? You’re young. You’re kind of inexperienced. And you’ve got …issues. About sex.”
I sobbed loudly, “I do not have issues,” I said, realizing that the snot bubble on my nose at that point was seriously undermining my credibility. It felt like one of the arguments I would have with an older brother about whether I was or was not too much of a ‘fraidy cat to ride the same rollercoaster all the big kids did.
“Oh yeah? You loo
k at some pretty messed up shit online.”
“That’s private, you creep.”
“Whatever.”
I was still smarting from the suggestion that he had anything other an all-consuming obsession with deflowering me. For the first time, I found myself with the ridiculous thought that Aunt Carol had something that I didn’t.
The world went on outside us, busy, far removed and uninterested in our little car-sized drama.
“…if I paid you?” I heard myself saying in a stranger’s voice. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was scary. I wanted him. And I wanted him to grab me and throw me around and call me a slut and fuck me till it hurt. Oh God where did that come from?
“Mel, you’re high, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Don’t be so patronizing to me.” It was a word I had just learned, and was proud I had remembered it.
“I’m not! But you’re out of your depth. This was a mistake.”
“No it wasn’t.”
‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m a baby and I couldn’t possibly understand anything. Whatever. You’re only a few years older than me, you know. What makes you such an expert?”
“I never said I was -”
“You don’t do anything mystical, you just sell your body. For sex. Whatever else you say about it, at the end of the day that’s all it is. You’re the one in denial.”
He went quiet. In my small, teenaged way, I felt this as a victory, and pressed on.
‘Show it to me. I want to see it. Show me what my idiot aunt thinks is worth throwing her life away for.” I looked down at the dark wet streaks my tears had left on his cotton sleeve.
“Show it to you? My…? You’re crazy,” he said.
“I’ll give you $100 dollars if you show me your …dick.” I had never said that word out loud, not least to a man.
He stared at me, jaw working silently. Perhaps I was indeed just saying stuff because I was high.
“Ok, fine. What’s the big deal? You think I care? This is so fucking immature…” he said, loosening the drawstring on his pants. The next few moments unfolded quickly, but would remain burnt into my mind for many, many years to come.
He wasn’t wearing any underwear, to my surprise. He yanked down the elastic of his grey track pants and there it was, the first real life penis I had ever seen, a beautiful thing, kind of scary looking. All I could do was stare. With a little flutter of recognition, I realized he was slightly …hard. It was a smooth cock, smooth as the rest of him, dead-straight and milky white, the head of it a bruised pink color ending in a flared rim under which two, just two, fine blue veins disappeared. I was mesmerized. Dicks, it turns out, are rather complicated up close, and not just some devil-tubes designed to poke you and your virtue to hell. It was its own little organism. And it looked so smooth. My mind flashed to how pillowy soft his hands had felt on my chest only a moment ago – or was it hours ago? I couldn’t tell.
“Satisfied? Do they teach you at bible camp what to do with one of these?” he scoffed.
Actually I was mightily satisfied, but said nothing. I hated seeing him so defensive all of a sudden. I wanted him to be playful again, and lighthearted. I wanted him to look at me like he did a moment ago. I guess I would pay for that feeling again after all. I was too tightly wound. I was too uptight. Maybe he had a point and wasn’t a total meathead.
“Well that’s a very nice penis,” I said, hoping for the first time that I hadn’t hurt his feelings. I felt the beginning of a headache forming. He nodded and tucked himself back into the waist band, and I must admit, I was sorry when he put it away again, and I stared for a few moments at his crotch, almost missing the sight of it there.
“Sorry for calling you an idiot all the time.”
“No problem.”
“And sorry I insulted your …profession.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“So …will you?”
He flashed nervous eyes at me. I don’t know if it was because I had just seen his pink, bulging cock, but he suddenly seemed kind of naked in the way he was looking at me.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
He zipped his hoodie up as high as it would go and started the engine, and we drove home in silence. I felt the smoky feeling in my head subside a little, and came down with the strong impression that things were now changed permanently, and would never be the same again. It was comfortable with him now, somehow, and yet deeply terrifying all the same.
He dropped me outside my house.
“Use some eye drops and brush your teeth. If you still feel the same tomorrow morning, I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Eight
I used some eye drops. I brushed my teeth. I lowered my eyes and went up to my room. Even if I had bumped into my mom, she probably wouldn’t have detected anything, seeing as her pamphlets probably told her that those who did drugs sprouted syphilis sores on their forehead in the shape of the word UNCLEAN or something.
I closed my bedroom door and tried to think.
Did I really have issues? Issues about you-know-what? What was the point of being a virtuous virgin if nobody wanted me anyway? It was an ugly thought, that men would want something other than purity in a woman. That Reverend Peters maybe didn’t know everything about the hearts and minds of men. Or women, for that matter. It had never occurred to me before that my virginity could actually be a handicap. I felt thrown off balance. And worse, I now had three secrets. Or even four? Five?
I went to my bed and lifted the covers, pulling out a secret box hidden underneath. Stashed inside the box: a few items that Aunt Carol had mercifully pretended she hadn’t noticed me steal from her Oh! So Good bag of tricks. There was a small packet of “personal lubricant”, which I had not decided how I would use yet, a cheaply made black g-string with a magenta bow at the center, some body glitter, a ribbed condom and a small jar of edible chocolate body paint.
To another woman, all of this might have seemed like tacky junk, but to me it was a little treasure chest of something powerful and dangerous, a dress up kit where I could play at being everything I wasn’t. I wasn’t that surprised to see his dick, honestly, but I was surprised by how much I liked it. I briefly thought about how there didn’t seem to be any room, on any of my Pinterest boards, for such a tacky pink-and-black theme like this one.
These new thoughts thrummed over me: maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe Aunt Carol, with her freckled hands and over processed hair and mid-life crisis …maybe she was right. Maybe he was, too. I stripped down, slid on the g-string and took a long look at my reflection. Wrapped round the mirror frame were faded and torn cherub stickers from first grade, some plastic flowers. But inside the frame was a young girl in black lingerie. It was a striking, and uncomfortable mess. It was an accurate picture of my life, in other words.
I ran experimental hands down over my body, trying to find answers there, trying to determine that precise fold or curve where my virtue was hidden, or else proof that I was as bad as him. I found only soft, warm flesh, and skin that made me think of him again, in the car. Vulnerable and pinkish – how could anything be wrong with flesh?
My nipples protested against the cold. I watched goose bumps form on my upper thighs. Jared didn’t judge me, although I had judged him. I thought again about my request. His open ended answer. My head was no longer as fluffy, and a little ache of embarrassment was growing, but something else: I didn’t change my mind. I had only said what I had been thinking for a long time now, ever since he appeared in my aunt’s life months ago.
I looked at myself once more, then got back dressed. I didn’t want to be like my mother. And I didn’t want to be like Aunt Carol either. I wanted to be my own person, and do what I wanted to do.
And at that point, there were many, many things I wanted.
Chapter Nine
The next day, and the whole of the week after that, I heard nothing
from Jared.
I didn’t open my hidden box again, and tried to pretend I wasn’t offended that he wasn’t just dying to hear what my decision was. I couldn’t bear the humiliation of texting him, even though I had his number. So I waited.
He wasn’t with Aunt Carol either, who seemed disturbingly unaffected by his absence. They had been a little cool with each other ever since they came back from their vacation. Didn’t she care that he was probably off with other women? Throwing that easy smile off to anyone who had the cash for it? But she genuinely didn’t seem to care, and I was irritated, both for myself and on her behalf.
After two weeks had passed, I more or less resigned myself; the weird Jared-shaped hole in my life had been allowed to get way, way too big anyway. Besides, two weeks was just enough for two times at church, which seemed to be the magic number to snap me out of …it. I had gone more than fourteen whole days without watching any porn, and perhaps that many hours without imagining it, with Jared plugged into all the leading roles and with my own innocent limbs instead of that girl’s.
I was doing well.
So, of course that’s when he decided to pitch up again.
My mom and I were at my aunt’s, who was graciously hosting our bake sale prep but not interested in the least in helping, especially after we didn’t laugh at her joke to put booze in the cupcakes. Then he waltzed right in, like he owned the place. My mother’s face, even if it wasn’t already halfway to doing it already, nearly fell to the floor, and she stammered and tried to introduce herself to “Jeffrey”.
My aunt seemed a little boastful and showed him off, proud that her contribution to the day was not a box of baking equipment for a church function, but a hot stud in a muscle shirt.
“Oh hi Jeffrey,” I said, hoping he’d catch a good glimpse of how modestly I was dressed. He didn’t. He was instantly between my mom and aunt somehow, and they were cooing over him like he was a new baby, except the baby had thick biceps and you could see his nipples.
