But I do. I’ve even moved Baxter’s on-ramp away from the bed in preparation. He will not bite Eddie again. I might but Baxter won’t.
Except after dinner, Eddie stands and thanks me for a lovely evening, and says how much he’s really enjoying getting to know me. He will not accept drink or dessert. Turns out that Eddie does not imbibe alcohol. That’s okay with me I guess, all the better for his sexual performance. Finally, I come out with it.
“I’d like you to spend the night,” I say. “If you’re afraid the cat will be an issue, don’t worry. I’ve planned around him. He will not be crawling up on the bed and biting you during intercourse.” I feel like showing Eddie my breasts. I want to show them to someone so badly; even lifting up my shirt in front of a stranger who makes an awful face afterwards would be okay, would be better than this covered feeling that I have.
But Eddie itches his neck and says things are moving a little fast for him. He’d like to call it a night. You’re a coward, Eddie, I want to say, but instead I follow him to the door and wrap my arms around his back as he continues walking out until finally he’s moving so fast that I can’t keep up and have to let go.
I put on my pajamas and call a pizza delivery service and ask if they’ll please bring the pizza to me in my bed. Now that I know I probably won’t be having sex, I’m famished. I make up a story for the pizza man about being injured and bed-ridden, and the weary order-taker finally agrees to bring it inside and deliver it right to me.
When the pizza man comes, I flirt but he is not a bait-taker. I craftily lift up the sheets, acting shocked when my breasts ‘accidentally’ expose themselves. But he exits the room before I have a chance to find my wallet. I get the pizza free of charge.
There’s a pulling sound, quiet but slow, and I turn to see Baxter’s ramp moving back towards the bed. He is scooting it using his wide forehead. He stops once to vomit but then starts again. It is the most exercise I have ever seen him get. When he finally reaches the top of the bed, his mouth is a white sea of foam. He appears to be smiling; he lumbers to the outer crust of the pizza and we both eat until we are satisfied.
TEENAGER
I am sixteen years old and I cannot have Luke Gunter’s baby. I have seen my older cousin’s deflated football breasts. They have weird marks and lines that make them seem like optical illusions, like how pencils placed into glasses of water appear broken.
Vaginal elasticity is a secondary concern. I do not want to suffer the fate of many a cute sweater, suddenly stretched too large for proper wear. My vag must stay like the glove in the infamous OJ Simpson triaclass="underline" too small to fit unless the wearer really, really wants it to.
I have a lot on my mind even before Kristi removes her left shoe.
You’re missing half a toe?
Kristi is a risk-taker. She explains that one night she and her former boyfriend (his real name is something like Brian but he goes by Goober instead, or “The Goob”) each made a pact to cut off a piece. Kristi, of course, went first. Goober has a small machete collection thanks to the Citrus Park Flea Market, and after icing down her pinky toe she hooked it over a wooden stool. The real pain apparently came in the hours that followed. The actual moment of separation was only a pinch, like the guns they use to pierce your ears in the mall.
Goober chickened out, but that isn’t why she dumped him. “He started working at the gag-gift store next to Cookie Time. It was just too weird to hang out there. Every time I’d go in Goober and his co-workers were playing with a giant glow-in-the-dark body condom, all stoned and giggling. He seemed so seventh grade all of a sudden.”
We are painting our nails. Kristi’s bedspread is a cow skin rug that she’s very protective of; she keeps making little “tsk” noises at me when my foot gets too close to the edge of the towel.
“I beat you,” she says. With only 9 toenails Kristi has an unfair advantage. “It’s sort of why I never wear flip-flops. I mean I care what people think but I don’t.”
This is true. When Kristi was fourteen she got pregnant (pre-Goober) and paid Laura Fitch’s older brother Steve forty dollars to drive her to Orlando for an abortion. Rumor has it that Steve went to an arcade while it was being done and was problematically late in picking her back up.
I started hanging out with Kristi a few months later, when she got an iguana, but recently our friendship has taken an intimate and critical turn since I, too, am with-fetus. “Think of it as fat and you’re going to get lypo,” she says.
I’m not going to just stop in at the first clinic I pass; that’s what Kristi did and they vacuumed her. Maybe she was farther along. I don’t know the specifics. I want to go to The Blooming Rose.
Procedures at The Blooming Rose are naturally a bit more costly than those at clinics whose walls are cement blocks bearing STD posters. There’s one such poster at our school where each STD has an illustrated, anthropomorphized version of what that STD might look like, were it a grumpy cartoon character, drawn next to it.
The Rose has Georgia O’Keefe paintings.
Though if I put it on my credit card, my parents might get involved. As in possible hymen reconstruction surgery followed by an armored truck driving me to Barnard College post-graduation.
Too bad I didn’t get knocked up by Chet or another student with an American Express. I’m feeling the realized danger of sleeping with scholarship recipients like Luke, even though he’s totally hot and athletic, and he did get $500 for being a semi-finalist when I sent his photo into the YM secondary school Campus Crawl contest. But that money is gone. He bought me a purse.
When I get home, I decide the best thing to do is borrow Grandma’s credit card. She moved in with us after Grandpa died, five months before her tracheotomy. She was a model in her twenties, but she smoked like crazy and no part of her is beautiful anymore. I only smoke cigarettes occasionally at parties because I don’t want to end up sounding like an old robot.
“Gammy, can I see your wallet a second? In Driver’s Ed today they were talking about the different kinds of licenses, and how if you can’t drive, they just give you an ID card. I was thinking that must be what you have. You know how you can’t drive because of all the pills you take? How you hit that boy and they said no more wheels?” She sits up and tries unsuccessfully to straighten her wig. “It was funny when you called the arresting officer a pauper in court.”
She reaches for her microphone wand. It used to bother me a lot, especially since before the operation her voice was so soft and pretty. But now when she talks I just think of it as a sample in a rap song and it isn’t as weird. Kristi and I once told Gammy to say the word “homie” and she did. It was hilarious.
“M-y w-a-l-l-e-t? S-h-o-o-t. M-y p-u-r-s-e i-s a-r-o-u-n-d h-e-r-e s-o-m-e-w-h-e-r-e. D-a-m-n a-l-l t-h-e-s-e K-l-e-e-n-e-x w-a-d-s. Y-o-u-r m-a-i-d t-h-i-n-k-s s-h-e-s t-o-o g-o-o-d t-o p-i-c-k t-h-e-m u-p. T-e-l-l y-o-u-r f-a-t-h-e-r t-h-a-t.”
When I see her purse, I find the card and write down its numbers. She’s doing something to her lap dog that seems like a tumor-search, carefully rubbing little spots on his stomach.
“Thanks, Gammy. That’s interesting. Your hair looks good in that picture.”
“C-a-n y-o-u c-h-a-n-g-e m-y s-o-c-k-s? T-h-e-y a-r-e w-e-t a-g-a-i-n.”
She always thinks her socks are wet. I go over and pretend I’m feeling them without actually touching her feet.