Part 1 (2/2)

”Probably. After a while.”

”Do you ever look at Ray?”

”Sometimes,” I said. ”When I'm looking at Del sometimes I can't stop from looking over.”

”I look at Del.”

”I know,” I said, nodding. ”You can.”

She went into the tiny bathroom then, to change into her nightgown. It didn't matter that she and I had just been naked and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g our boyfriends in the same car -June and I always gave each other privacy for getting changed. I knew her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered with Ray's hickeys, and she knew my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs were covered with Del's. But for whatever reason, we did not come out and stare at each other.

When June came out of the bathroom, I already had our water pipe and pot out on the sofa bed.

”Do you ever think we should stop smoking so much?” she said.

”Come on. Young and dumb. We'll stop another night.”

”We always say that, too,” she said, and we laughed.

I didn't care. I wanted to smoke and think about Del. June sat up cross-legged on the bed while I filled the pipe with dope we'd cleaned the other night. Sometimes I thought of what it would be like to sneak Del into the apartment and sleep with him all night, but I did not want to take a chance on my father's wrath. Besides, it was all right to be sitting there with June. She was more than a friend, and more than even a best friend.

After I was high, I said, ”Sometimes Del gets really deep inside me.”

”Do you like it?”

”It hurts sometimes, but I still like it. It's like he's at the very end of me.”

”Do you think you love him?” June said.

”I know so,” I said. I held the smoke in and mouthed the words. ”I love the way he feels.”

”I don't know if I love Ray.”

After she said it, she touched the little place at her hairline where the pigment broke. There, just beside her part, her hair was not deep brown but was as blond as mine.

”What do you mean?” I said.

”I don't know what I mean.”

I kept waiting for her to say something else about Ray, but she didn't-she just went on fingering that little strip of pale skin and light hair. Though I didn't know what she was thinking, I thought she seemed sad, so I kept us smoking until we finished two bowls.

We peed one last time, and I flicked in a Cars tape that would play, over and over, all night. On a night when we had been smoking and drinking, I kept the tape player on because weed made me nervous and fractured my sleep. If I woke up, the sound and the green lights of the tape player would keep me company in the dark until I could sleep again. And I knew I would wake up, because even as I was lying there, trying to let sleep come, I found myself worrying.

In spite of how much I loved to party, I worried about how all the drugs I did were affecting my body. I was secretly sure they had changed me forever. I also worried about how Del and I would get a place of our own after graduation. All of Del's money went into his car, and every time I saved something, I'd blow it on weed and booze. Of course, my worries would have been solved if I ever stopped smoking and speeding and drinking, but it never occurred to me to stop, because it wasn't really my life that I wanted to change-I just wanted not to worry.

Though I wasn't sure if it was real or not, as I lay there I thought I could feel a little achy place inside my v.a.g.i.n.a, sore from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g. In half-sleep I felt June move on the bed and then felt her leg lightly pressing against mine. Sometimes when we accidentally touched, we moved immediately away from each other. Other times, we'd let our legs stay touching or let our backs rest against each other. That night June didn't move and neither did I.

I watched the green lights of the tape player for a while, then closed my eyes. The whole time I could hear June's breathing and feel the little bit of weight on my skin that was her resting against me. I kept finding those things in the darkness.

2.

HERE is what they never tell you about being a girl. The lucky few will crack the nut after a time or two, but the rest of us will screw for a long time before we get it right. A long time. I screwed for four years before I came. You tell that to any guy, he'll s.h.i.+t. They get it from the start, and go on getting it and getting it. It takes a girl longer to figure out how to get hers, because if she isn't one of the lucky few who spill it on a c.o.c.k, she's got to get it in a way that doesn't hurt the boy's feelings. Try that when you're f.u.c.king in the woods or a car, or when everyone tells you that you're only s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g because you want love. You don't even know you're supposed to come.

I first screwed a boy when I was thirteen, but I didn't come until three boyfriends later, with Del. He made me come when we were sixty-nining on a dirty bunk in a cabin we broke into, out in Mennonite Town. It was all the licking and sucking that did it. When those contractions started, I didn't know what they were. That's how ignorant I was about my own body. My mom never said a word about any of it, and the clinic in Ontelaunee where I got my birth control pills made you learn about your fallopian tubes and your ovaries, but as for the rest, as for pleasure, you were on your own. They didn't even teach you the names for your l.a.b.i.a and c.l.i.toris-nothing that wasn't connected with reproducing.

It was a shock to me that the inside of me could feel so good and loose, and I had to get Del's c.o.c.k out of my mouth so I could make the noise that came out of my body. I think I cried out from being scared as much as from the feeling.

”It's like that toy with the rings,” I told Del when I got my breath. I knew he didn't understand what I meant, and that almost made me cry. I was thinking of that toy where colored rings of different sizes rest on top of each other, all on a wooden dowel. Take away the peg and the rings begin to fall. But it is good to let them tumble, roll away, the red going one place, the blue somewhere else.

I tried again. ”It's like rain,” I said. ”It's like you make my body rain.”

He listened to me and he let me kiss his mouth over and over. His face was wet with me-chin, nose, cheeks-and I kissed away as much of it as I could. I liked the way it tasted, sweet and salty, not bitter at all.

”Vangie moisture,” he said. ”I read about girls coming before.”

”Where?”

”Skin magazine. No one ever came with me before, though.”

He moved down so he could lie with his head on my belly and play with me. He put a finger up inside me. ”You got all tight. Your p.u.s.s.y got all tight.”

”Oh yeah?”

When he moved away from me, I thought we were going to start s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, because he still hadn't come. But we didn't. Instead, he got the flashlight he'd used when we'd broken the lock on the cabin, and he s.h.i.+ned the thing between my legs. He pulled at me, holding the flashlight in one hand, moving my lips apart with the other. His fingers were gentle, but they kept tugging. I knew he was studying me, and I had to close my eyes from nervousness. My whole body felt hot even though the air in the cabin was cool.

”p.u.s.s.y looks complicated, but it's not,” Del said then. ”It's about as complicated as an eyelid.”

It took me a second to understand what he meant, but then I got a picture in my mind of the inner corner of the eyelid with its little bud, and the way the two little lips on my v.a.g.i.n.a came up to meet over my c.l.i.toris. I'd seen it how many times in the mirror I propped between my spread legs, there on my apartment floor.

Del put his flashlight away then. This time when he got between my legs, he pushed my knees up to my chest and licked me in one long lick, bottom to top.

”I'm going to know every inch of you,” he told me.

I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. But that's when I fell in love with Del. If it seems like a strange reason to fall in love with someone, you're wrong. Think how good it feels when the other person's mouth is on you there, how loved you feel. If the other person will not do that for you, what else won't they do?

3.

<script>