by Tx, x
There is no way I am going to wear boy shorts or my mom’s shorts. She actually told me, “It’s stupid to wear pants all summer, Tinker. Why don’t you wear one of my old pairs?” Then she held up a pair of jean shorts that looked like a perfect light blue square. I walked out of the trailer and after the screen door slammed shut I heard her say, “What?” and then, to herself, “I like them.” I could picture her through the side of the trailer, holding them in front of her, against her straight waist, a square on a square. I kicked a rock at the dog and then walked to the Shop N Save to get a Suzy Q.
Even in my cords my thighs rub together. My pants don’t wear out in the knees first. Ever. And, if I ever ran—which I never do—smoke would wisp from the hot friction, especially in cords. Something about the raised stripes mixed with the valleys between them. Air flow mixed with fusion energy or something. I think we learned about it in science class but I sit in the back, in the corner, away from everything, not paying attention, so I could be wrong. There is a window in the back of that classroom that looks out toward the road. Across the road there is an old farm. Next to the farm there is a field. Behind the field there is a row of trees. Behind the row of trees there is another field and then another row of trees and then there is the mill pond. I go to the mill pond a lot and so when I sit in the back of class and Mister Lewis is teaching about fusion energy and molecules and things, I stare out the window in the direction of the mill pond and his voice becomes cicadas.
***
I take the long way to the mill pond now. Last summer I would take the shortcut through Mister Dean’s property because it cuts out almost a mile. I’d duck through the broken part in the fence that separates his property from the road and I’d follow the chicken wire alongside his east garden until it hit his cornfields, and then I’d walk through the widest row until I came to the end of it and go through the fence and down to the dried riverbed before following that to where the field for the mill pond started. If you kept going straight on the riverbed, you’d get to the outside of town and that’s where the Shop N Save was. Cutting through Mister Dean’s property was the quickest way for me to get to both of my favorite places.
He’d always be out there in his garden. I’d hear him first. Whistling and humming, whistling and humming. He wore a ladies straw hat and it would bob above the tomato plants like a lady was there picking the ripe ones.
I never really paid attention to Mister Dean and I didn’t think he paid much attention to me, until one day he was just there leaning against a fence post like he was waiting for me.
“Your name’s Tinkerbell, right?”
“Yes.”
“Where you going all these times you walkin’ ‘cross my property?”
I didn’t want to tell him the mill pond because I didn’t want anyone to know about my secret place, so I just told him I was going to the Shop N Save to get a drink.
“I got a drink,” he said. “I got Kool-Aid. Why don’t you come up? It’s hot.”
I looked at Mister Dean and then I looked at the fence post and then I looked at my feet and then the fence post and then Mister Dean again.
“You come up or you don’t come ‘cross my property no more.”
And because I dreaded going the long way and because it was really hot and because I didn’t know what else to say, I came up.
And that’s how I started having Kool-Aids with Mister Dean.
He had a real house with a porch that only had one chair. He would make me sit on the chair and he would lean against the porch rail facing me or he would sometimes sit on the stairs, sideways, so he could look at me. Mister Dean was about as old as my mom, I guessed. I didn’t like how I could always hear his breathing, this raspy gurgle. It never left him, even when he was speaking. It made me think of the cicadas at the mill pond and how their buzz never stopped, it just filled up the air like a jar. Mister Dean’s breaths were like that, but they never became part of the everything so that eventually you didn’t hear it anymore. His shirts bunched funny in the back and I wondered if he hid black filmy cicada wings under them.
I found out later he did not.
***
I don’t know why they call it a mill pond because there is no mill. Maybe there was one there back in the 1800s or something, but now there is not. I sometimes walk around in the brush around the mill pond looking for, like, relics of a mill. Ruins, I guess, pieces of something that used to be whole. Like old concrete slabs or stones or a broken turny-wheel for energy making, the ones on riverboats like they have on the Mississippi. Maybe some sort of old chutes that look like playground slides, but rusted. Big wooden beams with iron spikes sticking out of them. Big chunky things that look like they were put together with strong hands that knew how to make things that would last forever. They’d be broken but still strong. They would still look dignified, even though they were just old pieces of something bigger.
The brush is high in places and where there is no brush, there are weeds. I have looked as much as I can even though I might get bit by ticks or snakes. I just feel like I want to find proof of something that I feel is true.
I never do.
***
We drank the Kool-Aid out of jelly jars that were always dirty, but I never said anything. We’d sit on his porch and drink the Kool-Aid until it was gone. We would talk about things that people talk about when they don’t really have much to say to each other, water-treading things. I looked at my Kool-Aid a lot; some days pink, some days red, some days purple or blue. Sometimes he’d ask me how old I was even though I had already told him before. Sometimes he’d look at me for a long while and then say, “Tinkerbell…” like he was rolling my name around in his mouth, and then he’d shake his head and laugh a little. He mostly looked at me and did little nods. And breathe.
I must’ve said something about Suzy Q’s once and one day he brought me one with my Kool-Aid. I told him, “No, that’s all right.” And he said, “No, girl, you go on. Eat it.” And I said, “No, I’d better not. My mom…” and he said, “Your mom, what?” And I didn’t want to tell him about how my mom won’t let me eat sweets and how she hides all her cookies even though I always find them and how I heard her on the phone telling her best friend Avery how “Tinker’s just gettin’ so goddamn big.” And, so, I just set that Suzy Q down on my thigh for as long as I could, like it wasn’t delicious, like it was a turd or a dead thing, like I wasn’t sitting there wanting with every part of me to shove it right into my mouth. But after a while, I did. I ate it. I ate the Suzy Q. I couldn’t help it.
Mister Dean watched me eat the Suzy Q. How I unwrapped it and shook it out into my fist like it was a squeezed out pup. How I let the wrapper fall. How it blew across the dirty porch wood and fell off the side. He watched how I took it with both my hands and pulled it apart, slowly. How I listened to the quiet wet split of the cream pulling away. How I smelled at it, the sweet chocolate scent erasing the faint cherry smell of Kool-Aid and the wet dirt smell from his just watered garden. He watched as I placed one half down on my thigh, cream side up, and ate the other half with my eyes partly closed like when I was alone. Shoving and chewing and swallowing until its length was gone and then licking each of my fingers clean of its guts. Mister Dean watched me eat each half like he’d never seen anyone eat anything before.
“You really like them things, don’t you?” His breath, for once, sounded gone.
And I didn’t answer because he already knew the answer.
“You want another one?” He asked me this in a voice meant for church.
And I didn’t answer that question either and he didn’t wait for it. He got up from the stairs and disappeared into the house. When he came out he had the box. He leaned himself against the porch railing, opened the box, got one of the little chocolate cream cakes, and reached it out to me, just far enough to where I’d have to reach.
“Say please,” he said.
I didn’t want to, but then I did.
Miste
r Dean watched and then Mister Dean made me say please two more times.
Later on the only please I would say would be followed by the word, “stop”
On the Kool-Aid days, I’d never make it to the mill pond.
***
There is a little dock on the mill pond. There is a little row boat tied to the dock. I guess it belongs to the farmer, but nobody uses it. It never moves. I know this because I put a rock on it once. I put the rock in a wobbly place so if someone were to use the boat, it would surely fall. The rock is still there. The rope that ties it has moss growing on it and a spider web that always stays the same. The oars sit like an X in the belly of it. It might as well be on land.
After I am done looking for ruins, I lie on the dock, on my back, and pull my tank top up to my boobies. I rub my belly in the sun. I pray nobody comes but I also hope they do. Nobody ever does. Dragonflies land on the rowboat rope and then they fly away and then they come back and then they fly away again. Sometimes they land on my knees. It’s quiet there. The water never moves. It doesn’t really have a shore. Its outsides are mostly cattails, and by the dock, lily pads. Every so often there are clear plops that break the hum of the cicadas that like to do their buzz when it’s so hot outside. Their buzz sounds like how the sun feels hot. The wet frog plops are the only cool sound out there. The middle of the mill pond is a perfect circle. The water is black, like it refuses to reflect the sky or can’t. From the sky, looking down on the mill pond, I’m sure it looks like a big green eyeball, the cattail heads brown flecks in the green, its middle the shiny black pupil, staring up at the clouds. Like me.
I think about falling into that black pupil sometimes. Untying the rope, disturbing the spider web, falling the wobbly rock, and climbing into the belly of the boat. I have never rowed anything, but I would figure it out and paddle through the iris of green cattails and lily pads until I got to the pupil. I could lie on the boat for a while, there in the middle of the pupil. Stare up into the sky with it, just me and the mill pond’s pupil. The dragonflies would find my knees and I would rub my belly in the sun. When I felt ready, I would stand up in the boat. I’d stand there in my too short, too small striped tank top and my stripe in the fabric pants and my blanket fringe hair and I’d think about the ruins I could never find. I’d think about how I knew what it was like to be a ruin. The cattails would watch and the cicadas would hum their buzzy heat song, and when I jumped into the pupil’s shiny black it would make a cool plop sound like the frogs do. On my way down I’d wonder if I would ever be found and how nice it would feel to be looked for.
Good Boy, Fritos
It’s ten a.m. and I’m eating Fritos. I enjoy the word “Fritos.” I’m not sure why. It sounds like a young Hispanic boy who brings me fish tacos on a blue plate and tropical overpriced drinks in glasses shaped like women. It sounds like he would probably adore me in an almost sexual motherly way that I would see clearly in his eyes and how they drop sometimes when I stare at him too intently. He would be almost chubby and I would pay him with hands in his hair.
I feel I would have the emotional advantage over Fritos in that he would need me more than I would need him. This would be a first for me and I would feel a sick power in this feeling.
I know if I asked Fritos to hurt himself because it would make me smile that he probably would.
But I wouldn’t.
Maybe.
Okay, if I did, I would start off small, like telling Fritos to take the plastic sword out of my pineapple, orange slice, Maraschino cherry garnish and poke his belly 33 times. I think it would be cool to watch. I would lie back in my intoxicated haze, under the Mexican sun and trace my fingertips over my tan belly while he did this. I would be smiling and when his laughing stops at around poke number 24, and when his smile disappears at poke 33, I would ask him to start over please, and this time, do it a little harder.
Sure, he’d hesitate at first, but that’s why I’d say, come here, Fritos and I’d smile, and I’d adjust my bikini top so it was not sitting where it should and when he took enough steps to reach me, which was only two, I’d run my fingers through his hair and smile when I notice him readying his sword.
A Brief History of Masturbation
Ages 5–6
I discovered that rubbing a soft bristle hairbrush in a quick up and down motion over the top of my underwear, tickled. I did not think of anything, I only felt. My mom caught me doing this in the living room one morning while I was watching Popeye. “What in the hell are you doing, little girl!?” I had not broken anything. I was not sneaking a cookie before dinner. I was not hitting my little brother. I didn’t know why she was mad; but then I did and quickly pushed the brush into the crack of the couch cushions and pulled the afghan up to my neck feeling a new kind of bad I’d later recognize as shame. On the black and white box Alice the Goon sang, “I love Popeye, I love Popeye…”
Ages 7–9
My dad gave me an old-fashioned school desk from when he was a little kid. It faced the wall in the corner of my room and I kept books and pens in it. The top of the desk chair was even with my crotch and if I used both hands to hold myself up against it, I could do little push-ups on the chair, creating a heavy friction on my privates. I would think about the pictures from the Joy of Sex book my dad kept in the back of his closet. I knew to close the door now, but the desk was old and squeaky so I had to listen for any heavy footsteps coming down the hall. As I got older and bigger, my pumping weight would tip the desk, making it jump off the floor, rattling the books and pens. I’d learn to lean forward on the chair to even out the axis until I was able to finish. I remember my arms were very strong for a grade schooler.
Ages 10–11
One day the desk broke, and when my dad asked how the chair could snap away from the steel base that connected it to the desk part I said I didn’t know and he looked at me suspiciously and I felt my neck and ears start to burn up to my cheeks. That’s when I discovered how to use my hands to do it; wetting my fingertips and rubbing and rubbing. I would think about the naked girls in the Playboys my older brother kept under his mattress. My dad took the desk out of my room and put a bookshelf there instead.
12
My parents had a New Year’s Eve party and I woke up to fat “Uncle” Steve with his hands under my sleep shirt. He smelled drunk and he told me shhhhh and kissed me on my mouth, his mustache bristly on my face. While he did everything I felt bad and good at the same time. I cried with no noise while thinking I wish I could scream or that I should scream. When he finished, he just left. I heard him walk down the hall, down the stairs, and I heard him shout, “Frances, get me another fuckin’ beer!” and everyone laughing in response. I didn’t know if he meant my mom or my dad, because my mom’s name was Frances and my dad was named Frank but “Uncle” Steve always jokingly called him Francis. I remember thinking that it really didn’t matter, that nothing really mattered.
13–Current Day
I kept using my fingers. Sure, once in a while I’ll use a vibrator—spice things up. I watch porn and do it sometimes. Okay, a lot. But most of the time I do it before I go to bed, in the dark, alone. I’ll start out thinking of me with a man, or with men; people I know, people I don’t. I never let the men be kind to me and what always gets me off the quickest is if I imagine myself an innocent girl being taken by a fat man with a disgusting mustache. It makes me feel bad and good at the same time.
Fireflies
This one time I was doing karaoke in a dive bar in Ohio. It was just after I learned that fireflies were real, which, when that happens to you, feels like anything magical could really exist. I was drunk, which really goes without saying when you first say that you were doing karaoke. It was a Sublime song and I forget which one it was, but I don’t think that really matters. What matters is that afterwards, this pretty good–looking Podunk guy we were hanging out with took me by the hand to the bathroom like we were late for a meeting and he shut and locked the door and started kissing me
and he pushed me up against the sink and after about 30 seconds he squatted down and started unbuttoning my jeans. I was like, whoa, nelly! He said, I wanna taste you and the way he was looking up at me… And in my head I was like, you kiss me for 30 seconds and then you go straight to eating my pussy? And then I was like, how the fuck do I get out of this? And then I coaxed him back up to my mouth with something about saving the best for last or something probably lamer or more clever and then I don’t remember but I escaped. My friend who showed me the fireflies drove us home. A deer that ran into the road almost killed us. All the lessons that were learned that night are remembered but not necessarily practiced. What I do remember most though are the fireflies, and how she proved that they were real by squishing one across her palm. It left a fluorescent streak. It made me feel like screaming.
