Boyfriend (5 page)

Sex with Lisa came out of nowhere.  Not just because she was older than I was or because she was my camp counselor but because, in retrospect, I am convinced she was a lesbian.  She never talked about guys or took time to look feminine.  When she talked about the girls at her school, she always explained them in detail that wasn’t typical for a girl.  For example, she described another counselor as the girl with the “big juicy titties” and another as having a “fuckable ass.”   I was curious but I never asked questions. 

One winter, we were in her room smoking when she tossed the blunt out of her window and kissed me.  Caught off guard, I pulled away. 

“What was that about?”

“What? You scared?” she mocked.  Embarrassed, I shook my head.  I was fourteen at that point, and my sexual experience was limited.  A girl named Keisha who lived up our block had let me feel her breasts once in a supply closet at school.  We also did a little “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” action but no touching.  Just showing. 

“Then, what’s the problem?” she said, leaning in again, this time kissing me harder and pushing me back on her bed.  She started to rub up against my body with hers as she kissed me.  I remember feeling so excited, I felt like I would explode through my pants.  When she took off her shirt and bra, I nearly passed out.  Hidden underneath her baggy shirt and jeans, I hadn’t given much thought to what her body looked like.  Her breasts were much larger than I would have thought, definitely larger than any of the girls in my class.   Definitely larger than Keisha’s.  I grabbed her breasts with both of my hands hungrily, pushing her back on the bed and rubbing against her.  She watched me and laughed quietly.  I remember thinking that it did not get much better than that.  Little did I know.

“Nate? Have you ever fucked before?” she asked me after about five minutes of me rubbing against her. 

“No,” I said lying beside her, breathing heavy, my excitement clear through my pants.  I held my breath wondering what was next.

“Do you want to?”

I nodded quickly, afraid she would change her mind.

She took off her pants and stood in front of me.  I reached out and touched her.  Hairy. Nothing like Keisha.

“Take your pants off, dummy.”

I did. 

She lay back on the bed as I stood in front of her.

“Shit!” she said sitting back up and staring at my dick.

“What?”

“Nothing… you’re twelve right?”

“I’m fourteen,” I said, beaming.

“Still…You’re going to fuck a lot of hot chicks when you get to high school.”  

Smiling, I pushed her back on the bed and climbed on top of her.

“I’ll show you were to put it,” she said reaching down and guiding me inside of her.  I pushed in, closing my eyes as I entered.  She moaned a little.

Maybe she did like boys.

I closed my eyes tightly as I moved inside her.  It felt better than I could’ve ever imagined.  I couldn’t believe I was touching her like this.  I couldn’t believe she was letting me touch her like this.  Every part of me felt like it was going to erupt.

“Thank you,” I began as I moved in her. “Seriously, thank you so much.”  She looked at me and rolled her eyes.

“For real, thank you,” I repeated.

“Stop thanking me,” she said.  I nodded and continued. 

When we were done, I lay there for a moment staring at her, watching her gather her long hair back into her ponytail, which had come loose.  The freckles on her face traveled down her chest stopping just short of her breasts.  I watched her snap on her bra and pull on her panties.

“What’re you looking at?” she asked with insecurity I was not used to from her.

“You’re pretty.”

“Shut the fuck up and get dressed, Nate,” she said sucking her teeth and pulling on her jeans.  I pulled on my boxers and sat beside her to put on my socks.  “So what…” she started after a moment. “You like me now?” 

“Yeah,” I said without hesitation.  She laughed. “You want to be my girlfriend?”

She laughed harder.

“What?”

“Nate, I’m 17 and you‘re 14, what would I look like walking ‘round with you?” 

“You walk around with me now,” I said getting angry.

“Yeah, but you want me to hold your hand and shit?” She laughed again.

“Forget it.” I put on my pants and shirt.

“Yes, please,” she said rolling another blunt. 

She lit it and started it to place it to her lips.  I snatched it and took a hit. 

“What the fuck?” she asked standing up and reaching for it.  Even though I was younger than she was, I was taller.  I held it up out of her reach.

“Nate!” she yelled struggling to get it.  Finally, she gave up and put her arms down.  I handed it to her laughing.

“That’s exactly why you couldn’t be my man.  You play too much,” she snapped.  She sat back down, took a long hit and passed it back to me.  I sat back beside her and smiled.

“What now?” she asked stifling a smile.  I took another hit.

“You don’t have to be my girlfriend.”

“I know.”

“But can we do it one more time?”

She laughed, as this time, I took off her shirt.

Lisa and I spent the whole year before I went to high school having sex and getting high, everywhere from her bedroom to the rooftop of my apartment building.   She was like my candy store.  She let me try anything and everything.  She let it slip once that a friend of her mother had “taught” her.  I asked few questions but from what I gathered, he was older and what they did was secret.  In retrospect, it explained so much of what Lisa did and why she was the way she was.  At the time, I just felt incredibly lucky that she was doing the same for me. 

Lisa was like a security blanket.  Everything about her was an escape, and she always seemed to pop up just when I felt like there was nowhere else for me to go.  Whether it was a note in my mailbox telling me to meet her for a smoke or the sight of her casually waiting for me after school, I loved having somewhere else to be.  Her father was in jail, and her mother was rarely home, so I could spend hours at her house without anyone asking questions. 

My most intimate moments were spent lying in her bed with her, naked and smoking weed.  Sometimes our arms would touch, or she would rest her head on my shoulder, her hair lingering on my arms.  We would talk about things.  She would listen to me complain about my mom forgetting to buy groceries or my dad showing up at a parent-teacher conference drunk or not at all.  She would complain about the men coming in and out of her house and how different things would be if her father was out of prison.  At those times, she seemed softer, more feminine.  However, just as quickly as she opened up, she would shut back down, usually telling me to stop looking at her in a certain way or to put my clothes on before I got too comfortable. Most of my life during that time was a blur, but I remember Lisa very clearly.

I entered high school with a quiet confidence that most boys my age didn’t have.  Most of the things my peers had just begun to do or where curious about doing, I’d already done.  Although Lisa made it clear I wasn’t her boyfriend, I wasn’t interested in anyone else.  Lisa was no frills and did not play games.  She never expected me to be anything other than what I was, and I never had any expectations of her. 

Shortly after my first year of high school, Lisa disappeared.  My calls went unanswered, and she was never in our usual spots.  I ran into a friend of hers one day who told me she moved with her mother to Elmira, a small town in upstate New York.  Her father was incarcerated there and they wanted to be closer to the prison.  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting that she hadn’t said goodbye but deep down, I knew it couldn’t have been any different.  I’d learned relationships were always a temporary bit of delusion that merely tied one tragedy to the next.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Jayna went home for the weekend, so I have the place to myself.” 

It was a windy Friday in April, and it had been four months since Kerry and I had started dating.  The breeze felt cold and wet, like it would rain soon.  Kerry and I were standing on the stairs to her dorm, and I had just kissed her, prepared to say goodnight.

“What?” I said, pretending that I had not heard her.  It sounded like an invitation, but I wanted to prepare myself not to look disappointed if it wasn’t.  I was ready, but I wasn’t sure she was. 

“Jayna went home for the weekend so if you want to come up for awhile.” I smiled at her.  “You can.”

“Of course I do,” I said looking in her eyes.  She laughed, turned and opened the door leading me to her dorm room. 

The dorm Kerry shared with Jayna was small.  Two desks.  Two twin beds. A mini-refrigerator and small television on top of a tall dresser.

“That’s my side.” Kerry pointed to the bed with the purple linen and a collage of pictures of friends and family above her bed.   “That’s Jayna’s side.” Jayna’s side had the same purple linen and a large poster of a red rose with the word “Passion” scrawled across the bottom.

I began to study Kerry’s pictures.  There was one of her in a graduation gown with what I assumed were her parents, another of her being hugged on either side by what I guessed where her sisters and quite a few of her surrounded by a group of girls.  Our lives couldn’t have been more different.

“That’s my mom and dad,” she said pointing to her graduation picture with her parents.  Her mother and father stood on either side of her with their arms wrapped tight around her, big smiles spread wide across their faces.  The salt and pepper pair could have been “photoshopped” from a Macy’s Ad. 

“That’s Jayna,” Kerry said, pointing to a picture of her and Jayna with their arms around each other and smiling in swimsuits on a beach.  Kerry was wearing sunglasses with her braids pulled back in a ponytail.  She had on a blue bikini.  Jayna’s long curly blondish-brown hair was blowing around her caramel skin.  She was wearing a small black bikini and looking off to the side.  She was pretty, curvy, and the swimsuit was revealing.  I felt uncomfortable looking at it too long with Kerry watching.  I could feel her eyes studying my reaction as I turned to face her.

“She gets a lot of attention.”

“I’d love to see that blue bikini in person.” I wrapped my arms around her waist. 

“Oh please,” she said laughing.  I kissed her forehead and glanced back at the wall.

“Who’s that?” I pointed to a picture of her in what seemed like an intimate embrace with a tall, young guy.

“My high school boyfriend.” She looked slightly embarrassed and rolled her eyes. 

“Must have been pretty important for you to still have it up.” I felt foolish for putting Kerry on such a pedestal.  For all I knew, she was still dating this dude.

“I should’ve taken that down a long time ago.”  She reached for the picture and pulled it down, tossing it on her desk.  She walked over to me and put her arms around my waist.  “Seriously, Nate, we broke up before I came to college.  He thought we were too young to be so serious and at the time, I was really hurt, but I realized he was right.”

“Then why did you put his picture up?”  I asked surprised at my own harsh tone.  She pulled back equally as shocked.

“Because we were friends,” she began. “I guess, a part of me thought we’d get back together.”

“Wow,” I said running my hands over my head and backing away.

“Nate...”

“Kerry, you don’t have to explain anything.  You and I aren’t exclusive.”

“We aren’t?” It was her turn to look offended.  I looked away avoiding her eyes, knowing damn well I had not seen anyone since I met Kerry.  I picked up a small globe paperweight from Kerry’s desk and began tossing it in my hands. 

“Nate,” she said again, reaching for the globe and putting it back on the desk.  “I think…” she started. “I’m falling in love with you, Nate.”

Surprised, I turned to face her.  She looked up at me expectedly.  Not knowing what to say, I kissed her.  If I counted the number of times someone had said that to me in my life, it wouldn’t even fill up one hand. In fact, the only person I remember saying it was my Aunt Laura. I considered saying it back, but I didn’t know how the words would sound coming from my mouth.

“Kerry, you’re beautiful,” I said pulling away and looking into her eyes.

She tilted her chin towards me for another kiss, and I readily accepted pulling her closer to me and traveling my hands up and down her back, then up to her hair.  I pulled her ponytail loose running my fingers through her hair as I kissed her more deeply, trying to somehow communicate with my lips what I couldn’t manage to say.

“Wow,” she said pulling away.

“Want me to stop?”

“No,” she breathed. I tugged at the hem of her college sweatshirt I’d seen a million times and began to lift it over her head revealing her petite breasts in a satin black bra.  I leaned down and kissed her breasts over her bra, pulling her straps down over her shoulders before she could protest.  I pulled her close to me and kissed her again.  As we kissed, she snuck her hands up my shirt and onto my back.  Taking her lead, I took my shirt off and threw it on the floor beside us.  She ran her hands over my chest and began to kiss me again.  I sat back on the bed, and she climbed on top of me, kissing my neck and moving against me.  I could feel myself harden and her movements get a little more purposeful to feel me through our pants.  I cupped her ass in my hands placing her breasts in my mouth, fighting the urge to flip her beneath me and pull off her pants.  She pulled away and smiled.