DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (77 page)

Just remember everyone, God never gives you any burdens that he knows you can’t handle.

My burden’s name was “Jared” (idiot) and my God did I carry him everywhere with me. To classes. As I watched TV. When I was alone, in bed, at night. Well, you can see the problem.

He was everywhere in real life too, and everyone in the family begrudgingly accepted his weird new role in my aunt’s life. He seemed part sex-coach, part cheerleader, part gay friend. Thankfully there aren’t too many gays in my town, but I have seen a few, and I like to think I know what I’m looking for – Jared was irritating, and never really settled on a side, I felt. He was clean shaven, boyish, but still predatory. He was a bit of chameleon, changing subtly depending on who he spoke to. He chatted easily with my aunt about yoga and scatter cushions for her living room, and stood outside our house and vaped and wore name brand loungewear and a gold chain. He had the manners of a thug, yet somehow people responded to him as though he was a dapper gentleman. It was confusing. Not only was he spending so much time at our house, he was refusing to fit into any easy categories. Like I said, what an ass.

Anyway, let me cut to the chase here. He kissed me. It was one afternoon and I had no classes. I was killing time at my aunt’s, waiting for her so we could go out and shop for towels later. He barged in, found me in the kitchen and for some stupid reason, everything went quiet and he leaned in and kissed me. I froze. I wanted to tell him to do it again, but I was so angry with myself for thinking this that I blurted, “So, how much do I owe you now?”

And he looked a little hurt. I ran out the kitchen and sat down at my laptop, where house rules dictated I couldn’t be bothered.

“By the way, you should clear your browser history” he said, closing the fridge and grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. My skin nearly crawled off my face. He sidled up close to me, so close that his taut belly was right next to my face, so close I could smell a distant shower and …something else on his skin.

“You’re not my type, you know,” I said, praying to God his crotch didn’t move a single inch closer to my downturned eyes.

“Your type? Apparently, I am though,” he laughed, tapped the screen twice with his finger and then walked out with his stupid banana.

That night, I masturbated so furiously I think I nearly passed out.

The road to hell is paved with …well, I don’t know really. I don’t know how I ended up here, alone with Jared, as alone as Adam and Eve were in the garden. You know, my horizons were expanding. His argument that I was just as uptight as all the other women in my family had struck a nerve.

He was wrong: I was a reasonable person; I didn’t have any sexual hang ups, no way. Through a vague series of decisions which I had trouble justifying to myself later on, I got him to agree to drive me out to the Carlisle forest parking lot, which even I knew was a place people went to …do things.

My quiet rebellion took the form of a marijuana cigarette, and after some thought I decided this was not me falling into temptation, but rather me
inoculating
myself from it; doing research, you know, so I was prepared if I ever was tempted for real and so on. We parked and he rolled down the window to rest his elbow. Did he ever wear anything else but sportswear and caps? He pulled a wonky white cigarette from his pocket and gently tapped its dry end on the dashboard, his fat fingers seeming too crude for the task.

“Now, since you’re only a baby, you should just have a little, ok?” he said.

I snorted. Imagine him, this ruffian, telling me to moderate myself. He pressed his lips together, held it there between them and lit it delicately, focused intently for a second on breathing it to life. Then he turned to me and offered it. I took it gingerly, placed it to my lips, puffed a little then spat out a jagged ribbon of smoke. That’s it? That’s all? I gave it back to him.

He was giggling.

“Yeah, yeah, good job. But try again now, and this time, really
suck
.”

I shot him an unimpressed look.

“Sorry, I know, you already suck. Just inhale, ok? Like this.” He leaned forward in his seat, the leather creaking under him, and I could smell the smoke on his breath as he hovered his palm over my chest.

“Breath in deep, into your lungs, so that your chest touches my hand, ok?”

He was like a brother. Like a pervy, douche idiot of a brother. And I wanted to kiss him again. How dare he.

I did as he said, and a hot puff of smoke penetrated my lungs, and my chest rose up to gently meet his waiting hand. A wild buzz filled my head; I was so dizzy I felt as though I had been slapped.

“Good …good, ok
hold
it in now” he said quickly, pressing down hard on my chest and looking at me with laughing eyes. I held on as much as I could, but the burning eventually got the better of me, and I let go.

“
Wow,
” I coughed and sputtered, giddy.

“What a lightweight” he said smiling. His hand stayed exactly where it was.

“You didn’t say it would hurt,” I whined, “it really burns.”

The leather creaked again as he moved his hand up to my throat and stroked it there for a moment, then dragged it down again to rest on my breasts.

With my buzzing head, I looked down at his hands, then at him.

“Your hands are so soft” I said, which was totally not what I wanted to say then. I wanted to tell him to take his filthy hands off of me, and just what did he think he was doing and did I say he could? But all that came out was, “I didn’t imagine they’d be so soft.”

The moment was so awkward I fumbled and let the cigarette drop. It fell into the seat crevice, not before burning a quick pink hole on my thigh, and we both went scrambling after it.

“Ha! Only users lose drugs,” he said and fished it out, although to do so meant he had to stretch the full length of his body over mine and grope around the other side of my seat. He triumphantly held up the now extinguished cigarette, but instead of going over to his side of the car again, he stayed there, on my lap, smiling. For some reason, this seemed incredibly funny to me. I burst out laughing and he laughed with me.

He was laying on my lap, smiling up at me, striking joke poses like some 50s belle in a magazine shoot. He put his hands under his chin, pouting, pretended to fluff his hair.

“Cut it out!” I laughed. I looked at his face, suddenly seeing for the first time how open it was, how hopeful and simple and playful. It made me feel weird.

“You sell your body for sex,” I said, and instantly regretted it. It was like I was unable to say all the things I
should
be saying, and could only blather like an idiot.

He didn’t respond. He lit the thing again, took a long drag and blew the stream of smoke out the window, watching it go. He took another hit then stubbed it out on the ashtray. His face changed.

“Mel, I don’t sell sex, you know.”

“Then what do you sell?” There was no more judgment in my voice. I really was curious. I really wanted to know everything. I hated playing the clueless religious girl all the time; was it so bad that I just wanted to
know
? Did he kiss them? Did they pay for his time? Per act? Per each …body part?

“I provide a service.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… Look at me, what do you see?”

“An idiot.” I giggled.

“Exactly, you see a totally handsome and charming young buck. I’m a
machine,
Mel. I can fuck holes into walls, I can ruin a marriage just by looking at a woman’s ass right. I’m young. I’m hot.”

I was giggling uncontrollably now at the thought of him with his you-know-what stuck in a bit of drywall.

“But I give women what they really want, and for that service I get compensation. In this case, money.”

I had never heard him speak with so much passion. “So what do they really want then…?” I asked quietly, the hot fuzzy feeling in my head was starting to creep down to the rest of my body.

“Let me show you” he said, and sat up quickly.

The air in the car seemed heavier all of a sudden. My eyes felt like they were swimming in my skull. The thought of this made me start giggling again. He reached out and placed two hands on my shoulders, shooting his gaze straight at mine, like a laser.

It shut me right up and I stared back, hypnotized.

He began cooing at me softly, with a buttery, unspeakably sexy look on his face. “Mel, oh my god Mel, have I said how
beautiful
you are? You’re like a sexy witch, I feel like you’ve cast a spell on me… your eyes …”

Here he slowly, slowly extended gentle fingertips and touched the edge of my cheek, as though he was surprised I was made of flesh and blood and not mist. His eyes were riveted right on mine, and as overwhelming as they were, I couldn’t look away. There was nothing at that moment but the stillness in the car and his rapt attention on me, so raw it was more like worship, so intense it felt like a spotlight, but one that was not only illuminating me, but
devouring
me, seeing down into concealed depths. Blood rushed to my face and I stammered, trying to say something.

“Is this …is this real?” I said.

He smiled one long, slow, languid smile and then snapped his eyes away from mine, throwing himself back into his seat. “Nah. That was just an
illustration
. That’s what I’m talking about. That feeling, that thing you felt right there? That’s what women want. And how much would you pay for that?”

I tried to think, but my head was a little scrambled.

“Yeah, well, they pay a lot,” he said.

We sat in silence.

“I’ll probably have to pay someone to have sex with me one day you know. Or just die a virgin,” I said, surprised at how easily I had spoken this confession, and how it hurt me the moment I said it out loud. All at once I felt like I wanted to cry.

He looked at me quizzically. “Hey, hey Mel, don’t say stuff like that. God, your family is really fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

My tongue felt loose and it suddenly seemed like, well, why
not
tell him all this stuff? He was the last person on earth who was allowed to judge me. Listening to people was basically part of his job, anyway.

“Do you ever, you know, with …younger women?” The voice I spoke with was not my own, and seemed to come from far away, somewhere outside my body. This, I guess, was what they called being “high”. It was nice I guess. He looked at me again, the quizzical look intensifying.

“Well, you’re not really my type, you know,” he laughed.

It was like a stab. The moment was so strange, and I was there, desperately trying to grasp what I was saying and he was saying, that this little quip seemed to me like a sword sunk straight into my heart. Without thinking about it, two fat tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Hey! Don’t cry! Oh man, just chill. It’s OK. OK?’

He looked genuinely concerned. He reached over the folded ends of his hoodie sleeve and smeared away the tears. “Look, no offense, but you’re …how do I put this? You’re young. You’re kind of inexperienced. And you’ve got …
issues
. About sex.”

I sobbed loudly, “I do
not
have issues,” I said, realizing that the snot bubble on my nose at that point was seriously undermining my credibility. It felt like one of the arguments I would have with an older brother about whether I was or was not too much of a ‘fraidy cat to ride the same rollercoaster all the big kids did.

“Oh yeah? You look at some pretty messed up shit online.”

“That’s private, you creep.”

“Whatever.”

I was still smarting from the suggestion that he had anything other an all-consuming obsession with deflowering me. For the first time, I found myself with the ridiculous thought that Aunt Carol had something that I didn’t.

The world went on outside us, busy, far removed and uninterested in our little car-sized drama.

“…if I paid you?” I heard myself saying in a stranger’s voice. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was scary. I wanted him. And I wanted him to grab me and throw me around and call me a slut and fuck me till it hurt.
Oh God where did that come from?

“Mel, you’re high, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t be so patronizing to me.” It was a word I had just learned, and was proud I had remembered it.

“I’m not! But you’re out of your depth. This was a mistake.”

“No it wasn’t.”

‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m a baby and I couldn’t possibly understand anything. Whatever. You’re only a few years older than me, you know. What makes you such an expert?”

“I never said I was -”

“You don’t do anything mystical, you just sell your body. For sex. Whatever else you say about it, at the end of the day that’s all it is.
You’re
the one in denial.”

He went quiet. In my small, teenaged way, I felt this as a victory, and pressed on.

‘Show it to me. I want to see it. Show me what my idiot aunt thinks is worth throwing her life away for.” I looked down at the dark wet streaks my tears had left on his cotton sleeve.

“
Show
it to you? My…? You’re crazy,” he said.

“I’ll give you $100 dollars if you show me your …dick.” I had never said that word out loud, not least to a man.

He stared at me, jaw working silently. Perhaps I was indeed just saying stuff because I was high.

“Ok,
fine
. What’s the big deal? You think I care? This is so fucking immature…” he said, loosening the drawstring on his pants. The next few moments unfolded quickly, but would remain burnt into my mind for many, many years to come.

He wasn’t wearing any underwear, to my surprise. He yanked down the elastic of his grey track pants and there it was, the first real life penis I had ever seen, a beautiful thing, kind of scary looking. All I could do was stare. With a little flutter of recognition, I realized he was slightly …hard. It was a smooth cock, smooth as the rest of him, dead-straight and milky white, the head of it a bruised pink color ending in a flared rim under which two, just two, fine blue veins disappeared. I was mesmerized. Dicks, it turns out, are rather complicated up close, and not just some devil-tubes designed to poke you and your virtue to hell. It was its own little organism. And it looked so
smooth
. My mind flashed to how pillowy soft his hands had felt on my chest only a moment ago – or was it hours ago? I couldn’t tell.

“Satisfied? Do they teach you at bible camp what to do with one of these?” he scoffed.

Actually I was mightily satisfied, but said nothing. I hated seeing him so defensive all of a sudden. I wanted him to be playful again, and lighthearted. I wanted him to look at me like he did a moment ago. I guess I
would
pay for that feeling again after all. I was too tightly wound. I
was
too uptight. Maybe he had a point and wasn’t a total meathead.

“Well that’s a very nice penis,” I said, hoping for the first time that I hadn’t hurt his feelings. I felt the beginning of a headache forming. He nodded and tucked himself back into the waist band, and I must admit, I was sorry when he put it away again, and I stared for a few moments at his crotch, almost missing the sight of it there.