Now Colene’s interest in death, a sometime thing before, became dominant. The last man had smiled as he died. Death had been a relief. The way those people had been suffering, death would have been a relief for all of them. What right did she, an undistinguished girl, have to be healthy and happy?
But she told no one of her experiences, and indeed she wasn’t sure what significance they had. Was death the proper destiny of man? If not, what was? Until she knew the answer, she hid her feelings and acted normal.
She started dating. Her mother thought she was too young, at mid-thirteen, but her mother didn’t want to quarrel about it. A quarrel could lead to a discussion of her mother’s drinking habits. Secrets—Colene was learning how to borrow against their power, how to finesse them, to get her way. So she went to the movies with a boy she hardly cared for, and let him kiss her, while in her mind ran the scenes from the dirty novel of twining bare bodies. What would it be like, actually?
An older boy asked her out. He had a car, but he didn’t drive her to the movie. He said it would be more fun at the party his friends were having. There would be great entertainment. Colene didn’t care about the movie either, so she didn’t object.
There were three other boys there at an apartment, and no other girls. They were drinking. They gave her a drink, and she tried it, curious. This, too, was a new experience. Soon she was pleasantly dizzy. She had another drink, and another, reveling in the feeling.
Then she was in the bedroom with her date, and he had his trousers off. Suddenly the descriptions in the dirty novel registered, and she knew what he was after. She started to protest, but he pushed her down on the bed and got her dress up and her panties off and rammed into her with a whole lot less art than the novel had described. By the time she realized that it was rape, it was done, and he was getting off.
Rape? Even tipsy as she was, she realized that no one would believe her. So she played it cool, and pretended she had liked it. That way maybe she would get home safely.
But the other boys came in, and she had either to continue the pretense or make a scene, and if she made the scene she feared she would not only get raped, she would get beaten up and maybe killed. That wasn’t the way she wanted to die! So she smiled and said it was all right, and one by one they pressed her down and jammed in, and it was so slick and messy now that it didn’t hurt the way the first time had.
She did make it home safely, and her mother was so drunk she couldn’t smell the liquor on Colene or see her condition. Colene went to the bathroom and washed and washed, but she couldn’t get the awful feel of those men out of her. The novel had been wrong; it was no fun for the woman.
She never told, and neither did the boys. Not where it counted. They knew the trouble they would be in if news got to the authorities, considering her age. So the secret was kept, to a degree. But Colene stopped dating. Her reputation in certain circles was shot. Her mother, ignorant and relieved, did not question that decision.
Time showed that she was neither pregnant nor infected with VD. She had gotten away with it, such as it was. But she was saddled with a deep, abiding disgust. The worst of it was that she couldn’t really condemn the men; they were what they were, opportunists. It was herself she condemned, for being such a fool. She had indeed asked for it, by her naïveté. How could she have read all about it in the dirty novel, and not caught on that to such men a girl was nothing more than a walking vagina waiting to be unwrapped and plunged? Fool! Fool!
Why was life such a grubby mess? She hated every aspect of this, but still didn’t know what to do about it. There seemed to be no justice, only opportunity and coping. Opportunity for the men and coping for the women.
After that her double life had come upon her. She was bright and cheery in public, suicidal in private.
Did you share your feeling with anyone?
She had forgotten that Seqiro was tuning in. Well, not really; she had gone through it all for his benefit, buoyed somewhat in the fashion of her nude display before criminals at the time of the bleeding contest. In that she had in a devious manner made up for her disastrous date: instead of getting raped by four men and having to pretend to like it, she had tempted them and beaten them in sheer nerve, and they had had to pretend to like it. They weren’t the same men and it wasn’t the same situation either, but it also aligned: instead of baring her fascinating body (it had to be fascinating, or there was no point) she was baring her fascinating mind, and there was a dubious glory in it, a thrill of release, almost of expiation.
No, this was not parallel to the physical business, she realized as she reviewed it. It was parallel to mental business. She had shared her feeling with a friend, once before. And that had been another bad mistake.
It was this past summer, at camp. Naturally her folks got her out of the house when they could, not because they disliked her but because they were more concerned with their own problems than with hers. Camp wasn’t bad, actually. There was swimming and hiking and dancing and woodwork and nature. She liked all the events, yet her depression remained. It was as if she were a mere shell going through the motions. What was real was the blood on her wrist.
But her roommate Mitzi spied the scars. Things could be hidden from parents, teachers, friends, psychologists, and the man on the street, but roommates were deadly. Rather than try to bluff through, which was a bad risk, she was frank, telling how she secretly wanted to die but didn’t quite have the courage to do it. So she flirted with it, and the flowing blood relieved something in her, a little, and one day she would get up the nerve to go all the way and truly be dead.
Mitzi expressed sympathy and promised to keep her secret. She watched out for Colene after that, as if afraid she would keep her head under water too long or eat poison instead of dessert or throw herself off the precipice instead of admiring the view from it. It was fun for a while, having this constant attention. But soon it became annoying, and then oppressive. For one thing, the roommate was alert at night too, and the toilet wasn’t sufficiently private. Colene just couldn’t cut herself, and was getting restive.
She tried to distance herself a bit, to go on events without the roommate, so she could get the necessary privacy to do what she hated to do. Otherwise she was afraid she really would hurl herself over a cliff, having been unable to alleviate her need in a lesser and more controlled manner. The problem with the cliff was that she knew she would be unable to change her mind in midair, and that the job might not be complete; she might survive, broken and ashamed. But mainly it would be messy. Instead of lying pale and beautiful in her coffin, she would be bruised and battered, with her nose broken and teeth staved in. That was no way to die.
It came to arguments, not about anything in particular, but about what wasn’t said: Colene’s need to do her own thing, even if that was self-destructive. First they were private, then they spilled over into public. Finally, in the last week of camp, the roommate blew up: “I’m sorry I ever tried to stop you from killing yourself!” she cried.
There was an abrupt silence in the mess hall. Then, studiously, the other kids resumed eating and talking, not looking at Colene. Colene got up and dumped the rest of her meal in the trash and left. She went to her room and bared her arm, but couldn’t do it; she was too humiliated and angry to focus even on this.
That night the roommate came, but they did not speak to each other. Camp life went on as usual. But something had changed. Colene realized that people were speaking to her, about nothing in particular and everything in the ellipses—and they weren’t speaking to Mitzi.
A girl approached her, seemingly by coincidence. The girl was younger and seemed perky. But she showed Colene her arm, and it was scarred where the sleeve normally covered it. “I thought I was the only one,” she murmured, and moved on.