Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?: A Catholic Girl's Memoir (10 page)

“Marie... I’m a lesbian.”

“What? You’re a... what?” I was incredulous. I didn’t say much for the rest of the party. I felt so dumb. I went back to class the next day and I never mentioned the dinner party again. I wasn’t invited back.

My art skills kept getting better and better. I started requesting catalogs for different art schools. My first choice was the Pasadena College of Fine Arts in Southern California. I knew my father could afford it and I really wanted to go. I started saving money, too. By the end of my senior year, I had saved $4,000.

Then, right after I took my SATs, my father said, “You need to go to State. I’m not paying for you to go down to Southern California and act like a whore down there. Plus, you should find something useful to do. All you do is dirty paper all day.”

Of all the shitty things he said to me during my childhood, this might be the phrase that changed the course of my life the most. Even now, when I hear parents discouraging their children from something they love in order to pursue something more “practical,” it makes my skin crawl. I want to punch their front teeth out.

Why wouldn’t you want your kids to succeed at something that they love? Why? Seriously? We are only on this planet for a nanosecond and if your son wants to be a professional snowboarder, then fucking let him. Maybe he’ll surprise you. Most parents want their kids to be as miserable as they are.

Yes, that’s it—become a fucking billing analyst. You won’t regret
that
on your deathbed or, better yet, wind up hitting the crack pipe at forty-eight because you woke up and realized that half of your life is over and you spent it inventorying urinal cakes and cardboard boxes.

Even so, I thought it would be okay. I accepted the fact that I would attend State and that I could study fine art there, instead. I ordered a catalog and starting poring over the requirements for the major.

Then everything changed.

One night, I was working on a drawing. It was perfect— one of the best I’d ever done. I’d spent two days on the penciling and now I was doing the inking, very meticulously, dot-by-dot, with a fine fountain pen.

Like usual, I waited until my father was asleep and then I crawled out of bed and turned on my little desk lamp and started working. It was past midnight when my father swung the door open.

“What are you DOING?!” He was enraged.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’ll go to sleep.” I quickly snapped off the desk lamp and jumped into bed, but he had already turned on the bedroom light and was walking toward me menacingly.

“What are you DOING?” he repeated.

I flinched and looked away, expecting him to punch me.

He didn’t hit me. Instead, he grabbed the drawing and crumpled it in his right hand while staring at me. He stared at me—not the crumpled paper. I stared at the paper and he threw it at my face.

I gasped. I could feel the tears coming. It was the first time he had destroyed a piece of my artwork.

I put my hands over my face and started crying.

“It would have been better if you’d hit me, Dad! Why didn’t you just hit me? Why did you have to destroy my art?” I cried.

I was wailing—I couldn’t stop. I cried and cried, lying there in the dark. My father could hear me and came storming back into my room.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck
up
, you little bitch!” He raised his fist and shook it, but he didn’t hit me.

I bit my lip to stop the crying. I sobbed quietly for a few more hours and finally drifted off to sleep. The next day was Saturday, so I waited until my father left the house and then I got out the ironing board and tried to iron the picture out. It wouldn’t flatten all the way, so I walked down to the local library and tried to photocopy it. The photocopies were fifteen cents each. I stole the coins from my father’s nightstand.

But the library copier was old and shitty. The image turned out grainy. I went home and tried to start over, tracing the picture by taping it to the window. But it just wasn’t the same. My father had stolen the magic out of the picture.

And out of me.

That week, I put all my drawings, my supplies, and my T-Square and triangle in the closet. I stopped drawing. I just sat in my room and read comics.

My father was actually surprised, but he didn’t say anything right away.

“Why do you do things to the
extreme
, Marie?” he asked me about a week later. He was referring to the fact that I had put all my art supplies away, some of which he had actually purchased for me.

I shrugged and didn’t say anything. He never mentioned the incident again and neither did I.

I ended up going to San Francisco State. I took one art class my first semester. Beginning Drawing, I think. I hated the teacher and I was bored. All we did was draw fruit bowls. I got a B. I never took another art class again.

I ended up studying medieval literature, which I enjoyed. My classes were fun and I liked all my professors. I’m friends with a few of them to this day. These days, I work as a technical writer, so at least I’m doing something creative. But I still feel like writing is forced—like a painter who takes up sculpture because he can no longer see well enough to paint.

Words were never meant to be my medium. I’m not being dramatic or feeling sorry for myself. My life is good now.

But something died inside me that day and I’ve never been able to get it back. Believe me, I’ve tried. My husband bought me a light table and some drawing tools last April as a surprise, but they’re still sitting in the closet, unopened. At least once a year, I go to the local art store and stare at the paint and canvasses. Sometimes I buy supplies, and sometimes I don’t.

I never end up using them.

Maybe one day, when I’m eighty, I’ll pick up a paintbrush and it will all come back.

They say it’s just like riding a bike.

1991,
SUMMER. AGE
17

When I was seventeen, I went to the Azores with my father and my brother for the last time. My mother had died a few months before and my father was trolling for a new wife. I went along for the ride. We were there for three months.

I certainly had fun! I succeeded in embarrassing my father and I fucked the hottest guy in the village.

I had been taking birth control pills for years and I decided to bring them with me on the trip. Of course, my parents never knew and I’d become quite good at hiding them. Thank goodness for Planned Parenthood; I got my first pap smear and my first supply of birth control pills at fifteen. I paid ten dollars for my first gynecological visit. I used a false name and refused to give them my telephone number.

I was afraid that somehow the foil packets would set off the metal detectors at the airport, so I punched all the pills out of their foil blister packs and transferred them to a Tylenol bottle. There was Tylenol in there, too, just in case. I put the birth control pills at the bottom, then a layer of cotton, then the Tylenol, and then another layer of cotton. I got through security, no problem. I took my pills every day because I was hell-bent on getting laid while I was on vacation.

When we arrived on the island, we went straight to our old cabin, which had exactly three pieces of furniture—a bench, a table, and a little gas stove. That’s it. No beds, no plates, no nothing. But it had a bathroom with a working toilet, which was a luxury. No hot water, but still it was a comfort to have a bathtub with running water and a flushing toilet. The only sink was in the bathroom.

The water from the faucet was slightly brackish, so it was unpleasant to drink. When I was thirsty, I went to the basement and got water from the old cement tank that collected rainwater. I scooped it out with a little metal bucket tied to a string. There was a mesh filter on the pipe to prevent lizards from falling into the tank.

We found mattresses in the basement. They were hillbilly style, meaning that the stuffing was actually dried corn husks rather than traditional mattress filling. There were two bedrooms. My father and brother slept in one, and I in the other. We laid the mattresses on the floor and slept under old quilts. The quilts were moldy and made my allergies flare up.

There was a nineteen-year-old boy in the village named Paulo that I instantly fell for. We met the last time I had visited the Azores, but I was too young on our last visit, so nothing happened.

He was six feet tall and had dark brown hair, green eyes, and a cleft chin. He had nice teeth, too—which was rare on the island. Usually people were missing one or two by the time they got to their twenties. Paulo was gorgeous.

We met up immediately in the town square and started flirting. Paulo was smitten, and so was I. The relationship escalated quickly.

Summer lovin’.

We spent the remainder of my trip trying to find private places to fuck. We fucked everywhere we could—in his old truck, at the dances—we would sneak out and go into the bushes. We even broke into a few houses and fucked there. I really liked him.

All I did was screw around, have fun, and get drunk for three whole months! What a vacation! Ninety days of bliss.

Father got wind of my whorish escapades because Paulo bragged to some of his buddies. Why can’t men keep their mouths shut? The rumors got around, and one of my cousins finally told my dad, who confronted me late one night.

“I know what you’re doing with Paulo!”

“So?” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”

He bit his tongue and raised his fist at me. I didn’t flinch. I stared him down.

“Well? Are you going to punch me? Do it. I’ll scream. I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m having fun.” I folded my arms in front of my chest. He was an old man, and he simply didn’t scare me anymore.

Father lowered his hand slowly. He put his nose really close to my face. Then he shook his fist at me. It was a weird show of strength, like apes in the jungle. I silently wondered if he would start hooting and scratching his armpit. I stared at his face. He looked angrier and angrier, but my stare never wavered. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t going to back down... not this time.

“You’re never coming back here again!” my father hissed, through clenched teeth. He spit in my face.

“Whatever,” I smiled.

Father left, slamming the door.

My brother Johnny walked in from the bedroom. “Why are you such a bitch, Marie?”

“Mind your own fucking business, you little shit.” I was still very jealous of Johnny because he was Father’s favorite and never got beaten.

Johnny found a little companion, too. He got his first kiss that summer. My father cheered him on. Father was so happy that my brother wasn’t gay—he wouldn’t have cared if his son lost his virginity in the middle of the town square.

At the end of the summer, Paulo and I cried together. I went back to the United States in September and started college a few weeks later.

We wrote back and forth for a few months, but you know how it goes. I was a teenager. I got two desperate letters from Paulo in the spring, the margins of the paper stained with tears. He asked why I stopped writing. I never wrote back.

In truth, I was angry that Paulo ran his mouth and told everyone that we fucked. But mostly I was just young and ready to move on to the next guy.

My cousin Sofia told me that Paulo married a girl with mild spina bifida a few years later, and they eventually had twin girls. She told me that Paulo drinks a lot now.

CHAPTER 4

1991,
AUTUMN. AGE: JUST TURNED
18

When I was a freshman in college, I met Brad. He was a geek turned frat boy and my first
serious
boyfriend. I can’t remember how we started talking—I think he actually stopped me in the hallway of the history department and asked for my number.

Flattered by the attention, I gave it to him. He was handsome, tall, with bad skin and long blond hair. Just like a rock star.

Brad was a physics major who had just discovered the joys of pussy, the likes of which he had never experienced in high school. As part of his fraternity initiation, Brad was introduced to drinking, partying, and whores. He was twenty-one.

Brad was dating a few different women when we met. One of the girls was “Goth Chick.”

For our first date, Brad invited me to dinner and he cooked for me, which I found charming. He lived at the frat house. All of his frat brothers came out to stare at me. I could tell they were surprised that Brad brought me home. He closed the door and we ate in his room in private on a little table made of milk crates.

While we were eating, Brad received a call from Goth Chick. I could hear her voice at the other end of the line. She was loud.

“Hey, Brad! How are you, baby? Can I come pick up my jacket? I left it in your room.”

Brad fidgeted. “Now’s not a good time... I have company.”

First, it was silent. Then I heard screaming on the other line. Brad sputtered something, looked at me, and then darted outside the bedroom to finish the conversation. Goth Chick came over ten minutes later and got her jacket, which was black leather and smelled like an ashtray. Gross.