Laura Ruby - Good Girls (15 page)

I t's one of those fiercely sunny late-April

days that make you think it's warmer than it

really is. I huddle in the pew in the short-sleeve

shirt I thought would be perfect today but totally

isn't and watch the light shoot through the

stained-glass windows. Blazing and bright, the

church looks like God herself decided to drop in

201 and decorate the place, like she's letting me know that maybe, just maybe, she might forgive me for being the biggest, most horrible, gullible self-involved moron that ever lived.

I think it's kind of nice that she'd send the sun as a signal, nice that she'd consider forgiving me.

Also handy, because I don't plan on forgiving myself anytime soon.

My mother pats my hand. "We're so proud of you," she says. For a minute, I don't know what she's talking about. And then I remember. The acceptance letters. I've gotten two, one from Columbia and one from Cooper Union--my two top choices. Just like that, I know where I'm going to be for the next four years. Studying archi- tecture in New York City. All I have to do is choose one school or the other.

I should be happier.

Pastor Narcolepsy steps up to the pulpit. Something's different about him--he's all spry, even twitchy. At first I think that he's finally discovered the virtues of coffee. But it turns out that he's been doing some thinking. About sex. And, for the first time in forever, he's actually awake.

"I was watching a television program the other day, a program interrupted by a commercial for a video. The only point of this video, it seemed, was to show young women exposing themselves at parties and on vacation

202 in exotic places. The girls were all smiling and looked like they were having a wonderful time. And of course, the young men in the video seemed to be having even more fun than the girls were.

"It occurred to me that this is happening all too often in our culture today. Young women seem to subscribe to the `less is more' theory of fashion, which these videos take to the extreme, and young men seem to be in no hurry to denounce the trend. Not that the latter is sur- prising."

We laugh, not because the joke is so funny but because we're all in shock. Pastor N.? Awake? And talk- ing about topless girls on spring break in Cancun? What the heck is going on? My dad is sitting so still that he could be a cat. My mom sneaks glances at me.

"My point is that young women are being increas- ingly objectified in movies, TV, games, and music videos. We are so used to seeing these images that I don't think we really register them anymore. But in our culture, women are becoming less than people worthy of respect and more simply objects to be admired, or even used and abused. They are things. And things, as we all know, are disposable. What these girls don't understand, and what young men don't seem to understand, is that this is demeaning to both the user and the used."

Pastor Narcolepsy scans the audience as if he can tell who's been used and who's been doing some using just

203 by looking at us. I feel like he's looking right at me, and I slip down lower in the pew. I'm colder than I was before; the skin on my arms is rough and yellowish, like a plucked chicken's.

"Would it surprise you to hear that human sexuality is a holy thing, a gift given to us by God? In Genesis, we learn that Adam and Eve came together `naked and unashamed' because they experienced sex as a spiritual as well as a physical communion. A meeting of soul mates. In contrast to this deeply spiritual and a physical communion, this profoundly joyous experience, sex that is a product of mere lust can't even begin to reach the same heights. This is why Jesus condemned it. He thought that lust made sex less than it ought to be-- sacramental. Holy."

Great, my lust has condemned me. My lust has made me cheap. Bring me a scarlet letter and I'll wear it on my forehead. "S" for slut. "S" for stupid. "S" for sin, for smash, for splinter.

"Why do we often feel so lost and guilty when we've had lustful thoughts or had meaningless sexual encoun- ters?" says the pastor.

I don't know, maybe when you assume someone thought you were just a piece of ass and then you turned around and treated him like one?

"It's because we have desensitized ourselves, we have reduced sex to a cheap hormonal response. We have for-

204 gotten the holiness of this sacred act. Sex was not given to us to create intimacy; sex was given to us so that we can express intimacy, the intimacy that already exists with our spouses. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the marriage vow."

Interesting message. Teenagers, sex is AMAZING. And you can't have any.

Pastor Narcolepsy is on such a roll that he gets chummy with the congregation. "Listen, guys, sex is so important and so vital a gift that it is simply not an act to take cheaply or lightly."

I can feel my dad tense up next to me; I can feel how much he wants to grab me and start screaming, ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS? ARE YOU HEARING THIS? I wonder if he slipped the pastor a request and a few dollars, like you do when you want the DJ to play that special song. I suppose this is a do-as-I-say-and-not- as-I-do situation.

My mom reaches out and pats my leg. Pat, pat, pat. "P" for pat!

"I work with a youth ministry, and some of the kids I counsel can tell you stories that would make your hair curl! One boy, a thoughtful, delightful teenager, has recently renounced his sexual past and now tries to live life anew. `Pastor,' he tells me, `I'm a born-again virgin.' Of course no one can turn back the clock and regain one's virginity, but one can turn away from one's

205 mistakes and let God help us forge a new path."

Pastor's got lots more to say about sex and about Jesus and about God and about those crazy "young peo- ple" who don't understand how they're cheapening themselves and each other. He goes on and on and on. I start to tune out. I get it, I get it--he might as well be cracking me on the head with a frying pan--but I'm all confused anyway. Maybe--because I am the most repul- sive, disgusting, loathsome sinner, one of those crazy, lustful young people destined to appear in a "Girls Gone Wild" video--maybe God will suck back her bright and cheerful spring light and never ever ever forgive me, but all that talk about touching bodies and touching souls makes me think about Luke, about the one and only time we actually did it (the one time we had cheap and mean- ingless physical--and totally unspiritual--intercourse as the result of mere hormonal responses).

But that's the problem--it didn't feel that way. Not cheap. Not meaningless.

Which is probably why the whole thing got me into so much trouble.

206

E arly October, late on a Saturday night. I got

a message.

Instant Message with "salvs42" Last message received at: 11:32:07 PM salvs42: doin anything tomorrow? audball13: not much salvs42: having peple over wanna come? audball13: K what time salvs42: 2 audball13: sounds good

207 I sat at my computer for a long time. Luke had never IM'd me before. I'd never seen his house before. Was it just another party? Did it mean anything? Ash would say no. Ash would say that he was just trying to get some.

Ash was right. And she was wrong, too. Because Luke wasn't the only one.

Sunday, I told my mom I was going to Ash's, Ash that I was going to Joelle's, Joelle that I was studying, and walked the ten blocks to Luke's house. I was the only "people" to show up. Luke and a very small, very excited cotton ball met me at the door. The cotton ball danced all around my shoes, sniffing and yipping as Luke let me inside.

"Down, Daisy," Luke said.

"She's so cute," I said. "Hey, Daisy." I bent down to pet her and she spun around and around in a teeny doggy frenzy. She licked my hand as if it were a slab of liver.

I smiled up at Luke. "I would have figured you more as the German shepherd type."

"Nah," he said. "Daisy attracts all the chicks." Luke scooped up the dog. "Let's go to the den."

"Where is everyone else?"

"They'll show up later, maybe."

"Oh," I said, butterflies boinging off my stomach walls. For now, we had the house to ourselves.

208 We walked down a hallway, past the kitchen and into the family room. Pictures of Luke and his brothers crowded every wall and table. I wanted to inspect them all, but I was afraid I'd seem too nosy. I did pick up a picture of an older couple in identical pleated pants. Both were blond, but the man had a neatly trimmed beard. Still, they looked almost exactly alike.

"These are your parents?" I asked.

Luke peered over my shoulder. "Yep, that's the twins."

"They do look like twins," I said. "Except for the beard."

"We keep trying to get Mom to grow one," he said, "but she won't go for it."

"Where are they?"

"Visiting my aunt on Long Island. They won't be back till tonight." He put Daisy on the floor. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Sure," I said. "Whatever you have."

I sat down while he disappeared into the kitchen with Daisy on his heels. I inhaled, trying to identify the scent of the house. Everyone's house smells different, some in good ways and some in not-so-good ways--like burned cabbage or cat pee or whatever. Luke's house smelled like lemon furniture polish with a hint of boy. It smelled happy.

Luke came back with two Cokes and a couple of

209 straws. "If you want a glass, I can get you one."

"This is good," I said.

He sat down next to me. Daisy jumped on the coffee table and stared at me as if I were supposed to be sup- plying the entertainment. I peeked at Luke and thought about the entertainment, what I could do to supply it. I felt all shaky inside, my ligaments twanging, my temples pounding. Would it be strange if I put my Coke on the table and jumped him? Probably. I should sit here for at least five more minutes before I did anything like that, right? Maybe ten minutes. So what were we going to do for ten whole minutes? There was usually a party going on all around us, I usually had to wait for at least an hour to get his attention. This was too weird.

"I like that picture," I said, pointing at a large photo on the wall. It was a black-and-white portrait of Daisy, but the focus and perspective were odd--her face sharp and clear, but the rest of her small and fading out. Kind of cool and kind of funny at the same time.

"Thanks," he said. "I took that."

"You did?"

"Yup. I've got some more in an album in my room. Do you want to see them?"

It was a line, maybe, but what did I care? I was hav- ing an out-of-body experience again, or, more accu- rately, an in-the-body experience. Why else was I there? "Okay," I said.

210 I followed him out of the den, down the hallway, up the stairs, and into his room, Daisy running ahead of us, claws clicking. I was surprised that the room wasn't the usual blue--it was orange, with a wood floor and a rum- pled bed with red sheets, blankets, and pillows. It had your typical guy stuff: bookcases with loose stacks of books and pictures, a pile of sneakers, a desk with a computer, and some pages from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition tacked on the wall, along with your usual row of sports trophies of different sizes, some team photographs, and a signed baseball. Not neat, not messy, the room was sort of pleasantly disorganized, like a set designer had carefully arranged everything for maxi- mum effect before the play was about to start. The boy smell was stronger in here, too: musky, the way the crook of Luke's neck smelled when I pressed my nose there. My toes curled up in my shoes.

"Sorry about the mess," he said. He pulled some clothes off a chair threw them on the floor. Then he opened a drawer in his desk, fished out a photo album, and handed it to me. I sat down and paged through the album, expecting to see more doggy photos, but found mostly black-and-white portraits. Some of his family, some of other random people, a lot of them girls. (I won- dered if he kept some extra girls in the closet or in the basement for when he was bored.)

But the photos were good, some of them really good.

211 I stared at a hot girl I didn't know with this cutie-pie spray of freckles across her nose. I immediately hated her, but loved the picture. "These are great," I said.

He sat down on the bed, Daisy on his lap. "Thanks. My dad just bought me a new camera. Well, it's an old camera from the fifties. Called a Hasselblad. Maybe I can take one of you sometime?"

"Maybe," I said. It occurred to me that I had no idea what his plans for the future were--or if he even had any kinds of plans, if he wanted to stay in high school for- ever. "Are you going to study photography some- where?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Most of the schools I applied to have some sort of photography classes, just in case I want to take some. But I'm not sure what I want to do yet."

I didn't know what to say to that. A lot of people didn't seem to know what they wanted to do, but I couldn't understand it at all. How can you not have any plans? "Where'd you apply?"

"Mostly around here. Rutgers, Penn, a few other places."

"What's the top choice?"

He grinned. "Wherever I get in. And then whoever comes up with the most money, I guess. I'm hoping for some sports scholarships."

"Oh," I said.

212 "So where are you going to go? Princeton? Harvard? Yale?"

"All of them," I said. "I'm triple-majoring." I didn't say anything more in case I lost my nerve and began babbling uncontrollably about architecture and interior design and a thousand other massively unsexy things he probably couldn't care less about.

"Well," he said. "That's good." He lifted Daisy and then set her down on the floor. "You know, you're kind of far away over there."

I felt a little jolt. "I am, aren't I?"

"How about coming over here?" he said.

I put the album on the desk, stood up, and went over to the bed. All the other times that we'd found some cor- ner or some car to make out in, I never knew exactly what was going to happen, exactly what I might do. But standing in front of the bed, his bed, with his happy boy scent filling my nose, I knew. I had a condom in the pocket of my jeans, one from a package that I'd snuck out and bought myself even though I'd had to wear sun- glasses and the cashier guy gave me his best girls-don't- buy-condoms-don't-do-it-you're-too-young-and-where- the-hell's-your-mother frown. A small part of my brain, the good girl part, squeaked, Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? I told it to shut up and go take a nap.

I didn't wait for Luke to make a move, I didn't even wait to climb up onto the bed. I stood in front of him,

213 grabbed his face in my hands, and kissed him, slipping my tongue between his teeth, resisting the urge to swal- low his face right there. He growled and pulled me onto the mattress. As we kissed, I felt this ache building, an ache that started between my legs but radiated outward like it was traveling along my veins, tightening and expanding and tightening again. He yanked the covers over us and yanked at my clothes--sweater, T-shirt, bra, jeans. He slid his hand inside my underwear and I wasn't sure which one of us gasped. I felt his lips mov- ing against my ear. "Is it okay if I. . . ?"

"Yeah," I said against his throat. And then the under- wear was gone, too, tossed off the side of the bed. He stripped down so fast it was as if his clothes were made of Velcro. Rubbing against his bare skin was so yummy that I had to keep myself from humming.

I came up for air. "Are you sure your parents won't be home for a while?"

"They'll be gone for hours," he said.

"And what about your friends?"

"What friends?"

"The ones you invited over?"

"Oh, them. I think they've been delayed indefinitely."

"Good," I said. Now that I was here, now that we were doing it or about to, I wanted to see him, I wanted to see everything. I thought about asking him to stand up and pose, I thought about throwing the covers back

214 so that I could get a better look, but then I thought about how the sunlight might give him a better look, and I wasn't up for that. So I reached down and let my fingers see everything for me, imprint it all in my head. The half-moons of his hips. The muscles of his thighs. The crisp, springy hair, so different from the shiny waves on the top of his head. I brushed past his hard-on and cupped the delicate sac underneath as gently as I could, the way you would a baby bird, amazed that a person could have something this fragile on the outside of his body, unhidden, unprotected. It was like having a gall- bladder or a lung pasted on your skin. I rolled those small glands in my fingers until he moaned and put his hand on top of mine.

"Audrey . . ."

I interrupted him. "I brought something with me."

He got quiet. Then: "You did?"

"Yes."

"I have something, too. Where's yours?"

"In my pocket."

He turned and reached over the side of the bed, scratching around for my jeans. The curve of his back was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen. I had the strangest urge to bite him, which kind of freaked me out.

He turned to me with the blue square in his hand. "Is this your first time?"

"It's okay," I said.

215 "You might bleed."

I didn't ask how he knew this. "I'm fine," I said. He didn't seem that big. How much could I possibly bleed?

"I don't want to hurt you."

And people said girls talked a lot; he was ruining the mood with all the Mr. Sensitive blah-blah-blah. I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to think. I'd done enough of that to last through my next four lives. I'd been respon- sible. I'd gone and bought the condom. What else was there?

"You can stop with the chitchat now."

I got a small smile for that one. "Yes, ma'am."

With his teeth, he ripped open the package, and his hands disappeared under the blankets. Then he rolled on top of me, an elbow on either side of my face. He kissed me as he pressed against me, poking me with his spongy self, now rubber-coated. I thought about the spam I always got in my e-mail box--"BE A LOVE HAMMER ALL NIGHT LONG!" I wasn't sure if he and his love hammer would ever find their way inside, so I put my hand down to help him. I felt a surge and a sharp, sting- ing pain.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"Yeah," I told him, though I wasn't sure. I didn't know what I expected--well, okay, I expected some- thing a lot less weird, a lot better. Even though I'd heard a girl's first time pretty much sucks, who wants to

216 believe it? This felt too bizarre, stranger when he started moving. It was like an alien had jammed itself up into my body, an alien with rough skin that stretched and scratched me. If this was sex, I thought, it wasn't very good at all.

But I put my arms around him and hugged him, because I didn't know what else to do. He kept kissing me, bending my leg and curling one arm under my knee, and sliding his other arm around my shoulders. I didn't understand what he was doing, but I let him do it. Maybe he saw it in a movie and thought it would be fun, or maybe this was how everyone did it--what did I know? I tried to focus on the kissing part, though he was sort of spacing out on that end. His movements changed from pushing to a kind of rocking. As he rocked me, I felt the stretchiness and scratchiness fade away to a sort of friction. Oh, I thought. This isn't bad. Not great, not seeing stars and rainbows and fireworks, but okay.

And then I saw Luke's face. His eyes were screwed shut and his mouth hung open. I watched him, though I could hardly stand to see someone like that, all naked like that. It seemed rude to stare, but I couldn't help it. And the little muffled gasps were worse: listening to them was like hearing someone crying through a locked bathroom door. I hugged tighter because he seemed to need it.

He moaned again, and the rocking went back to

217 pushing. His face twisting as if I were strangling him, he shuddered before collapsing on top of me. I thought the shuddering would stop, but it didn't--he shivered like he was freezing. "Are you all right?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said, and kept shivering.

I thought it would be okay if I stroked his hair, so that's what I did. I massaged his neck and patted his back as he shook. I don't know how long I did that. It was a while. He was so heavy, so heavy he could fall through the bed, but I knew he wouldn't because I was holding him up.

What they don't show you in movies: the aftermath. People trying to remove their parts from other peo- ple's parts without losing their grip on a squashygushy condom; locating the box of tissues they believe is way under the bed without actually getting out of the bed; dressing underneath the blankets--one of you, anyway--then having to remove the clothes and put them on again because they were backwards or inside out; family pets jumping all over the comforter because they think you're playing a really cool game of doggy-catch-my-toes; people not quite looking each other in the eye because that could get too, you know, personal.