Sex & Violence (16 page)

I heard Baker calling my name. I latched the belt back over the book, shoved it in my backpack and stepped out of the summer kitchen.

“Evan? What are you doing?”

“Just looking around,” I said.

“Tom just texted me. There’s a thunderstorm coming, so he’s on his way.”

She looked at me suspiciously, like I’d been jacking off or something in the summer kitchen. We started back toward the drop-off point, and to avoid any more questions, I asked her how long she’d known Kelly.

“Since seventh grade, why?”

“What’s this whole Everything-But thing?”

“Oh, poor Tom,” Baker laughed. “It’s pretty hilarious.”

“It’s not hilarious. It’s completely insane.”

“That too. Kelly’s building the sex thing up way too much.

She’s going to be so disappointed when it finally happens.”

I nodded. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand Kelly’s moral flexibility, of her bargaining shit down with Jesus. I thought it was somewhat decent of her to give Tom
something
to work with. But I also agreed with Baker. Like penis-vagina sex would really change anything about their relationship and their behavior. Such a simple thing, really, compared to all the unholy activities they did in an effort to maneuver around it.

“You have to tell me now,” she said. “Because I told you.

And I’ve never told anyone about that before. Not even Conley knows.”

“What are you talking about?”

“About Taber and me,” she said, like I was brain-damaged.

“You have to tell me your First-Time story.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m assuming you’ve had a first time?”

“Jesus! Give me a little credit!”

“How can I? You never talk about yourself at all.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because it’s interesting,” she said. “And it’s only fair. I told you mine.”

“I never asked to hear yours.”

“True. But it was nice to finally tell someone.”

“Technically, you told Jim before you told me.”

“I never told Jim shit,” she said, angry.

“Maybe you should. Since you’re non-monogramous and all.”

“Don’t be a dick,” she said. “Come on! Just tell me! You know I won’t say anything.”

“Fine,” I said. “But no interrupting. No questions or commentary, either.”

“Why can’t I ask questions?”

“Because it’ll drag the whole thing out longer.”

“Okay, fine. But how old were you the first time?”

“Fifteen,” I said, without thinking.

“Jesus! That’s super young.”

“That sounded like commentary,” I said.

She apologized all over the place, but the whole thing bugged me. Not just because there was no way I’d ever tell her the true First-Time story. There were plenty of other crap sex stories I could pass off as the First—there was no shortage of awkward situations I’d put myself in since Tacoma. But mostly because it depressed me, this guy I used to be. Dirtbag Evan Carter, who lived for that whole game. Profiling, checking every girl out. Who could meet a loadie chick at the drive-in and get her shirt off in less than twenty minutes.

But the guy I was now?
That
guy considered it a breakthrough that he’d actually yanked it for the first time a few nights ago. A breakthrough worthy of reporting to Dr.

Penny—if I ever told her anything that actually mattered. For a girl, Baker was strangely normal about sex; she had no idea how fucked up I was about this and a million other things.

“It was in San Diego,” I said, sighing. “My first job at a mall. I took tickets for the merry-go-round in the food court.

The Merry-Go-Round Master, people called it. So, I met this girl. Her name was Mandy. And she asked me …”

“What’d she look like?”

“Interrupting!”

“You have to give me something to imagine, Evan.”

“Why do you need to imagine this at all?” I yelled and she shut up. “Mandy was cute, I guess,” I allowed. “A little taller than me, though. She was older than me too. She asked me to front her a couple of bucks because she had to buy tampons and she wasn’t getting paid until the next day and she’d just got her period and none of her coworkers had anything …”

“Where did she work?”

“American Eagle. And shut up.”

“Sorry!”

“I didn’t have any cash, but I had a credit card my dad gave me for groceries,” I said. “Because my dad always made me buy groceries. Though we mostly ate takeout. Anyway, that’s off-topic … So we went into CVS and got the damn tampons. And then …”

“
You did it for your first time with someone who had her period?”
Baker screeched.

“No! Jesus!” I said. “I didn’t call her for like two weeks. It was gone by then. At least I think it was.”

“Pretty dickish not to call someone for two weeks, Evan.”

“That’s because I
was
kind of dickish, Baker.”

“Not so dickish that you wouldn’t buy tampons for a girl you’d just met.”

“It’s not like she asked me to
insert
the damn thing.”

“Well, you haven’t gotten to
that
part of the story yet.”

“Hilarious,” I said. “I’m so glad I told you that.”

“It
is
kind of weird that she asked a guy to help her with such a girly problem.”

“Mandy was a weird chick,” I said. “I suppose she didn’t think I was too threatening. Me being the Merry-Go-Round Master and everything.”

“I can’t believe that’s a real job! Was it …”

“Interrupting!”

She shut up then. We stood at Tom’s drop-off point, which made me hit the gas on this whole dumb story.

“When I called her, she said we should see a movie and I asked if she wanted to smoke out first. But Mandy said she had some magic mushrooms. So we ate the ’shrooms in her car and she talked me through it and, yes, I barfed them up in the parking lot. ’Shrooms taste disgusting, by the way. She gave me some gum to get the taste out; she said she loved chewing gum when she tripped. Then we went to the theater—this was at the same mall where we worked—and saw a kid’s movie, I think.

Maybe
Toy Story
? I can’t remember. So anyhow. I’ll skip describing the whole drug thing because it won’t make any sense and who really gives a shit, you know?”

“People’s drug stories are never as interesting as they think.”

She was technically interrupting, but since she agreed with me on the point, I let it ride. “Right, so you know the part about the men’s room and the black-and-white tile, so I’ll skip that too,” I said. “Mandy obviously couldn’t drive, so she called this guy to get us, which freaked me out, because I thought she liked me, but the guy just dropped us at Mandy’s house. She actually lived not too far from my house, which was bizarre, considering how randomly we met. I didn’t know this at the time, on account of my pinwheel eyes and everything. But I figured it out later.

“No one was at her house, except for her tiny little dog who was bugging the shit out of me. Biting my shoelaces. Mandy kept laughing, but it drove me nuts. I hate little tiny dogs, by the way. You could say it’s one of my rules. All dogs must be bigger than a goddamn lunch box, maybe. How’s that?”

Baker laughed and I couldn’t help but feel a little better about telling her this. Even though it wasn’t the true First Time one.

“To get away from the damn dog, we went down into the basement,” I continued. “The entire basement was her bedroom. Like, she had a bed and a desk and a television and everything. Even a washer and dryer.”

“Did you do it on the washer?” Baker asked, all excited.

“I wish it were that cool,” I admitted. “But no. We laid on her bed, doing our druggy thing. Listened to music. Talked in that stupid spacey way. I’d never done ’shrooms before, and Mandy was a good person to do them with, because she seemed to know what should happen. And I guess she thought sex should happen because she just rolled over on me, and since I was out of my mind, I let her. So. We did it and in the morning I walked home and slept for eighteen hours and my father thought I had the goddamn flu and I let him think that. There.

The End.”

Baker, surprisingly, didn’t talk for a minute.

“Feel more complete as a person for knowing that?” I asked, gulping a bunch of water.

“Didn’t you guys use birth control?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, a little surprised at the question. “I had condoms.”

“Well, how did you get the condom on? If you were so wasted?”

I thought back to that night at the cupcake shop. The Cupcake Lady unwrapping it, rolling it onto me. I had sat there like a complete moron while she did everything, like a baby getting his diaper changed.
God.
Where the fuck was Tom?

“Jesus, Baker. It’s a condom, not a graphing calculator. It’s not
that
difficult to figure out.”

She laughed. “And did you like it? The sex, I mean, not the condom.”

“Well, it
happened
, didn’t it? I must have liked something about it.”

“How do you know you actually
did it
, then?”

Now
I
laughed. “Baker, I don’t think a guy can be so high he doesn’t realize
that
is happening to him.”

But she said, “That kind of sucks, though. That you weren’t really
there
for the whole thing.”

Jesus, Baker was naïve. Didn’t she realize that if guys were really “there” during sex, they’d probably come before the girl’s pants came off? There was no “being in the moment” for me, not with sex. Not after the Cupcake Lady. Not if I didn’t want to feel like a complete idiot. (And even then, a lot of times afterwards, I
did
feel like a complete idiot. Hence, the ritual phone number deletion.) For me, sex was a matter of thinking about everything else unsexy in the entire world in order to keep it from ending too soon. Were all girls this clueless? It seemed so luxurious, being a girl. Just getting to lie there, completely unconcerned about how the whole thing depended on the behavior of your dick.

“At least I wasn’t as caught off guard the next time I did it,”

I said.

“You and Mandy did it again?”

“No. I never talked to her after that.”

“You mean you’ve done it with more than …”

“Hey!” I shouted. “You asked for the First Time story. Not the Every Time After That story. So, that’s all you get. Be sure to have your friends be specific about what level of absorbency they prefer when they ask me for tampons. Is that Tom’s boat?

Yes. Thank fucking god.”

“You know, Evan? You really are hilarious when you start to tell a story. You really need to talk more.”

I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. But I held out my hand to help her climb down the rocks.

Dear Collette,

One of the last things we talked about (to the extent that we
talked about anything) was condoms. Like, you said to buy some and I
said I had some already. But what you didn’t know is that I had some
there in my track bag right at the moment. I always had condoms. I
mean, even now I have them. Though they’re pretty dusty under my
bed at this point.

ANYWAY. I was sort of a freak about carrying condoms. Usually chicks make you jump through hoops before getting down, like
first kissing, then boobs, then down the pants, etc. But it took just one
instance where things went straight to fucking and that made me a
believer. Lucky the chick had condoms that time. But every time since,
I’ve had them in my wallet. I know that’s supposed to be bad for the
latex, but I think that’s only if you leave them in there for a hundred
years in the heat of the desert or whatever.

So, now you’ll imagine me like some soldier of fortune, with condoms like ammo wrapped around my chest. But I believe strongly in
condoms. They avert babies and disease. They make you seem responsible, not slutty. They make the girl relax too, because you’re taking
care of the risky part. Like you’re a professional. Roll it on, squeeze
the tip, turn back to her, ready, set go. Like I’d just done a little disappearing act on myself and became something confident and wonderful. You can’t see through my latex disguise! You will love this so let’s
get down! You don’t want to know how many times this worked in
my favor.

God I feel like a fucking asshole sometimes. All the time, really.

My father was bugging the fuck out of me.

It wasn’t just the hanging around with Brenda and the Tonnesons, acting like he was this charming, talkative person who lived for whiskey sours and endless hands of Spite and Malice on the deck. Which was phony enough. But then he’d be the same as he always was toward me. Silent. Nodding. Giving me like two sentences of information per day. His son—the person he actually lived with. It was like he finally figured out how to be normal with other humans but didn’t think I deserved the same treatment. As if the fact that he’d sent me to therapy, that I’d almost died, and everything with Collette—meant that I was some psycho foaming at the mouth that you had to treat with caution.

Not that I knew what I wanted him to do or say to me. All his rambling the first few weeks we’d been here hadn’t been any better. Made me worried he’d just start bawling again, thinking about my mom.

At least at Pearl Lake, there was always something going on. When I wasn’t at work, there was always someone hanging around the lake.

Mostly, I hung out with Tom. Tom was very easy to be around, like he’d taken his personality from a template marked

“Boy” and just followed it to the letter. Not that he was boring as a result. His hippie parents probably wondered why he didn’t like community theater and eating lentils, I’m sure. But Tom resisted all of his parents’ weirdness.

In addition to fishing and baseball, Tom also talked a lot about cars, since he worked at a car wash. He was going to some college in Iowa I’d never heard of—the same place as Kelly—

and he had no underlying angst aside from the fact that he was a virgin and his girlfriend wouldn’t give it up. But he didn’t complain about that much, either. He liked Kelly, you could tell, even when she squeaked cutesy crap all over him. Even when she dyed her hair from Charcoal Briquette to White Blond (which was a huge improvement).