Tonight Luke and I are watching television and doing a position called “reverse jackhammer.” We saw it in a magazine.
“I can really feel the blood rushing to my head!” I say. In the mirror I watch Luke’s testicles bounce to and fro like a rubber cat toy. I want to reach out and bat at them playfully, except then I’d land on my skull.
When Luke’s finished he always sucks in a mass of air like he just got the world’s biggest paper cut. It sounds painful. The moment he relaxes, I push off his body and land back on all fours.
“That was excellent,” he says. “Since we got together, I don’t think I’ve been on the Internet.”
I nod, bringing his head to my chest like he’s a giant infant. He tells me all about the upcoming football game this Friday and his tactics as quarterback, who he thinks is ready and who isn’t. I completely drown out the actual meaning of his words and just listen to the sound, the depth of it, like his voice is one of those CDs of whale calls they sell in the nature store.
Later I change into a sundress and go with Luke to get vitamin supplements. He’s way too concerned about his body to drink or do drugs, but he doesn’t seem to care that I do. I’m a little paranoid about this. In my worst nightmares, Luke is disqualified from a critical game because he got a contact high from my vaginal secretions and failed a pee-test.
“You have got to tell him. You really have to.”
Kristi and I are watching a home video of her performing fellatio on Chet. She has this idea to make instructional tapes and sell them to the younger girls at school. We’re trying to write notes for the voice-over narration.
“Does he do something to his pubes or are they just like that?” I can’t decide whether or not Chet is attractive in the throws of pleasure. His upper lip peels back from the gum line in an equine fashion. It’s all very Mister Ed.
“Dunno. Maybe henna. What is so hard about telling him?”
“But I’m taking care of it.” Every thirty seconds or so in the video, Kristi looks back at the camera like she’s worried things aren’t being recorded properly.
“Hey, was this on a tripod? Who taped this?”
“Levi. Look, you just should tell him. Why go through all this alone? Plus it’s way weird if he finds out afterwards. Awkward.”
“Levi? Your brother Levi?”
“What. I gave him ten bucks.”
“Oh, gross.”
I watch Chet’s hands grip her head with a numb type of violence, like she’s electrocuting him but he can’t let go. Kristi has taped nearly every sexual deed from the past year and a half. Anything involving communal acts with myself or another girl has the base title of “Sister Act” followed by a roman numeral.
Kristi sighs. “Luke’s body is so athletic. I wish Chet looked like that.”
This comment makes my stomach feel bad, like I’ve eaten too much. “Luke’s my boyfriend,” I want to say.
Instead I excuse myself and go throw up. I guess it’s morning sickness.
When I meet with the on-site counselor at “The Blooming Rose,” I’m given a clipboard and a pencil with an acronym on its side: Abstinence Is Definitely Safe.
“AIDS,” I say out loud. Everyone in the waiting room looks up overtop their magazines at me.
I’m led to a tiny office where another woman enters and takes my questionnaire. She doesn’t tell me her name but it’s definitely something unisex. She is sow-ish and baggy. Her eyes shoot me a look that says, “I’d love to be your friend if I didn’t feel so sorry for you and you weren’t so irresponsible.”
“I’m here to tell you about all your choices,” she smiles.
I nod but really I’m picturing the post-delivery butt of my cousin. She had just one kid and now her whole backside looks like a Salvador Dali painting.
“Have you thought about having the baby and putting it up for adoption?”
I begin to take on a false, considerate persona but stop before I even begin. I’m going to have to break her heart sometime, and it might as well be sooner.
“Isn’t that like buying the cow and not even getting the milk?”
She starts writing furiously behind a manila folder. When she finally stops, she gives me a look of unfettered hate.
“Are you saying the baby is the cow? Or the baby is the milk.”
I lean forward a little in my chair. I want whatever is inside of me to hear my words and be crystal clear about the fact that it will not be staying long. I plan on throwing it a large goodbye party attended only by myself and lots of champagne.
“I don’t want this thing. There’s really no point in talking about it.”
She takes off her glasses and I realize that her eyes are two different colors. I can’t decide if it’s natural or if a contact fell out. If she were cooler it would make me think of David Bowie, but instead it just splits her personality further into Good Cop/Bad Cop. I focus on the eye I decide represents her more sympathetic half.
“Young lady, I’m going to tell you something and you can believe it or disbelieve it. But later on down the road, and it may be months or even years, you might really have a problem with the decision you made.”
“Okay?”
Obviously, there is a certain level of warmth or tragedy that she’s used to getting from these meetings, and she doesn’t feel like ours is complete enough to let me leave.
“I know that at your age, it’s hard to understand the concept of something being permanent. But later on you may feel…an emptiness.”
“Having a baby is just as permanent as not having a baby.”
“But it’s different,” she says. “You can’t see that?”
And then I start crying in order to please the sow. To get it over and be done with it. “I just need to do this,” I say. I keep repeating it until she comes over and hugs me, until her sandbag breasts are covered in my tears.
Kristi sent a balloon arrangement to my room in the clinic. One says, “You’re a Star!” and is actually shaped like a star. Another, “Congratulations.” My parents think we’re having a sleep over.
The doctors here are all male and seem to regard me as a liability, like at any moment I’m going to come on to them in a provocative underage way. They always leave a door open and call a female nurse before touching me.
I can actually feel The Mistake drizzling out. It’s time, I decide, to call Luke.
“Are you drunk, Babe?” he asks. “You sound kind of messed up.”
Even though I want to tell him, I panic. I cannot believe how hard I am chickening out. “I’m fine,” I say. “Just a little sleepy.” He begins telling me about football practice, and I put the phone down onto the pillow and listen. A documentary about America’s heartland is showing fields of sweeping wheat and grain on TV. When Luke says goodbye I make a very thoughtful noise on accident, the sound a homeless cat might make should a prospective adoptee decide against him.
“My guy wouldn’t come with me either. Said he wanted go to this car show.”
I look over at my roommate. She has brought along a series of framed photographs and placed them on her nightstand; several include her with babies.
“This is my oldest,” she says, smiling.
I try to change the subject. “Do they have that movie Training Day?” I ask. I’m tired of watching wheat.
The next morning when I check out, I have a weird surge of nostalgia for Luke. I almost can’t wait to see him. In the cab I call him and say that I need to stop by, then I imagine him holding me and the way his low whale-calls will resonate with the uneasiness in the bottom of my stomach. They will cancel each other out. They’ll dissolve everything sad.
“Sure thing Babe. Wanna watch the Packers? In the den?”