Good Karma (18 page)

She liked his choice of words.
So I can
take better care of you.
How many women could say that the men
in their lives held such attitudes?

“Okay,” she said, feeling her nerves
ease.

He let go of her hand and sat back. “So let’s
just play
Truth or Truth
with our game. No dares tonight.”
He nodded toward the cards on the table. “Just pick up a card, and
ask me the question. I’ll answer then do the same. How’s that
sound?”

Karma took a deep breath and eyed the cards.
“Okay. But if I die from embarrassment, tell my family I loved
them.”

His deep, throaty laughter tickled her ears.
She loved his laugh.

“I promise,” he said, crossing his heart.
“Now, go on. Take a card and ask me a question.”

She picked up the top card. Just reading the
question to herself made her face burn.

“Okay,” she said, sighing, “Do you like your
hair pulled during sex?” She couldn’t even read it aloud with a
straight face, let alone make eye contact.

“Hmm, I guess that depends on the situation,
but yes, generally speaking, I like when a woman pulls my hair
during sex.”

Curious now, Karma looked up. “Really? Why?”
She figured it would hurt if someone pulled her hair, whether
during sex or otherwise.

He shrugged, and his left eyebrow shot up. “I
guess I like it because it shows me the woman is really enjoying
herself. That she’s completely lost to her passion.” He paused. “I
take it you’ve never had your hair pulled like that.” It wasn’t a
question.

Karma briskly shook her head and set the card
down like it was a hot potato. “No.”

“Didn’t think so.” Mark reached for the deck
and pulled off the next card. A crooked grin spread over his mouth
as he read the question. “Who was the first person you ever kissed?
Was it good or bad?”

Well, that wasn’t too bad. A question like
that wasn’t likely to send her into a queasy fit. She reluctantly
told him about kissing Tony in high school and how she froze up,
which made him laugh.

“Okay then, how about the second guy you
kissed?”

“Hey, that’s two questions.”

He crossed his hands in his lap. “Just
getting to you know you.”

“Fine, play by your rules.” She took a deep
breath and blew it out. “The second guy I kissed was named Brian,
and…” She cringed. “That kiss was kind of bad, too.”

“How so?”

Of course Mark would want specifics.

“He and I were both…um…virgins, and I kind of
froze up with him, too. Just like with Tony.”

“How did you and Brian meet?”

“At a movie theater where we both worked
during senior year. Brian attended a different school than I did,
but we got to be pretty good friends at work.”

“Did you end up having sex with Brian?”
Mark’s eyes never wavered from hers.

Flames shot through Karma’s face and down her
neck, and she dropped her gaze to her hands, which rested in her
lap. “Yes. Eventually.”

“Was it good?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Tell me about it.”

She knew what Mark was trying to do. He was
trying to get her to open up and become more comfortable talking
about this kind of thing—trying to enforce change. But right now,
this had to be the most awkward, difficult conversation she’d ever
had. Even worse than the time she got called to the principal’s
office in junior high for calling a classmate who was bullying her
a skanky bitch. Not her finest hour.

She lifted her gaze to his and found warmth
and safety staring back. Mark really did have her best intentions
at heart, and he clearly wanted their time together—as little as
they had—to mean something and make a difference.

She gathered the courage and moved forward.
“Brian and I were virgins. We met at work.” Each sentence felt
labored, but as she forced herself to continue, it grew easier. “He
was an usher, and I worked in the concession stand. After work, we
often hung out together, and now that I think about it, he probably
liked me more than I liked him.” Brian had been a nice boy, and, at
the time, she had felt like he was as good a guy as any to lose her
virginity to. Now she wished she hadn’t, but at the time, all she
wanted was to get her first time over with in hopes it would make
her feel more grown-up and help put her past behind her.

As she relayed the story, the memories of
that night six years ago rushed into her mind, and they felt just
as fresh, just as raw.

Brian’s mom had been out for the evening, and
he had stolen a condom from her bedside table before rushing back
into the living room where Karma waited for him, half naked, on the
floor.

He began to put on the condom, and then,
“Damn it!”

“What?” Karma frowned as Brian scampered
bare-assed out of the living room and down the hall toward his
mom’s room again. The only light came from the TV, which was fine
by her. The less light, the better.

“Condom broke,” he called back.

Karma sat up in the shadow-strewn room and
straightened her work shirt, which smelled like buttered popcorn,
then pulled her jeans over her lap, waiting for him to return. The
only way she could do this was if she could keep on some of her
clothes. No one had seen her naked before. Brian didn’t seem to
mind her shyness, though. Then again, he was an eighteen-year-old
virgin, too. He was probably just happy he was finally getting
laid.

She tucked her long, mousy brown hair behind
her ears and looked around. Some B-rate monster flick was on TV,
and the smell of two-hour-old pizza wafted from the open box on the
nearby coffee table. This wasn’t how Karma imagined she would lose
her virginity. On a hard living room floor, which was covered with
carpet that looked like dirt and felt like fuzzy tree bark, but at
least tomorrow she could wake up and know she had finally done
it.

She eyed the afghan tossed over the back of
the couch. A blanket was a good idea. This carpet didn’t exactly
look sanitary on her bare bottom. She pulled the afghan to the
floor and spread it out, sitting back down and covering up with her
jeans again just as Brian returned from his mom’s bedroom. He held
two more condoms in his hand.

“Just in case I break another one,” he said
breathlessly, dropping to the floor in front of her as he tore one
open.

Unlike her, Brian was naked, and his erection
strained toward her. It looked a little too big to fit.

She gulped and took a nervous breath as he
put the condom on.

“There,” he said with a smile and wiped his
hand on the blanket. “Did it right this time.” He laughed
nervously. “I tried to put the last one on backward.”

“Oh, okay.” Karma nibbled her lip. She hadn’t
known there was a right or wrong way to put on a condom, but now
that she thought about it, it made sense. “So…now what?”

Brian clumsily lurched forward and kissed
her, pushing her to the floor. She bonked her head.

“Sorry,” he said, wriggling around on top of
her.

“No, it’s okay. Just…” Her leg was pinned,
and she worked it out from under him. “There.” She bent her knees
on either side of his hips as he fumbled around, pushing against
her like an excited bull charging a matador.

“Am I in the right place?” Brian grunted and
shifted, and his erection bumped and pushed against her.

“I don’t know…ow!”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think that’s—ow!”

What were they doing wrong?

“Here, maybe if I…” Brian reached down,
grabbed his penis, and began shoving it against her private parts
as if it were one of those round blocks in a children’s game and he
was trying to jimmy the thing inside a square hole. “Can I move
these?” He let go of his erection and tugged on her jeans, which
still lay over her hips.

“Um…I don’t…” She didn’t want to lose her
security blanket, but it was dark…and he wasn’t looking at her down
there…and she was more concerned with keeping her top half covered
than her lower half, anyway…and maybe it would be easier for him to
get inside her if her jeans weren’t in the way. “Okay, sure.”

He yanked them out from between their bodies
and tossed them under the coffee table.

“That’s better,” he said, taking hold of his
penis again.

He pushed, he prodded, and then, with a sigh
of relief, he unceremoniously found where he had been trying to go
for five minutes.

“Ow!” Karma winced and dug her nails into
Brian’s shoulders as he gained entry.
Ow, ow, ow!
Damn! Was
it supposed to hurt this much? She’d read somewhere that a girl’s
first time could hurt, but she hadn’t expected this kind of pain.
In the movies, women usually looked like they were enjoying this,
but there was nothing enjoyable about what Brian was doing to her.
At all.

Brian bucked and looked like he was having a
seizure as he began hammering away, and it felt like it, too. Her
poor vagina. Would she even be able to walk tomorrow? God, what was
he doing?

“Oh, uh-huh. Good…yes…is it good for you?”
Brian was like an overly excited jackrabbit, and he spouted words
in a way that sounded foreign on his tongue, as if he’d heard them
in a movie—maybe the same ones she’d seen where the women actually
enjoyed
having sex—and thought he was
supposed
to say
them.

Karma held on to his spasming body and tried
to nod. “Yes.” It wouldn’t help to tell him the truth that this was
the worst kind of pain she had ever felt, except for that time when
she fell and cut her leg on a jagged rock poking out of the ground.
But even that had lasted only a few seconds. This pain had gone on
for almost a minute already, and it was getting worse.

Brian’s eyes were closed, so he couldn’t see
the distress on Karma’s face as he continued bruising her tender
flesh with his penis of death. “Yes, so good…I can’t
stop…Karma…oh…oh…uh-huh…there…” Brian huffed, puffed, and made like
a giant jumping bean as he pounded her fragile flesh even
harder.

OOOOWWWW!

Her back and hip bones ground against the
floor, and white-hot pain seared her insides. She wanted it to be
over. Just hurry up already and be done. This shit hurt.

In less than two minutes from start to
finish, Brian’s body began to jerk. His breathing intensified and
his animalistic grunts rose on a crescendo. Then he slammed his
hips into her and fell into epileptic shudders. A long, ragged
exhale poured from his open mouth. Then he collapsed on top of her.
Done.

Thank God.

Afterward, Karma had stared at the water spot
on the ceiling, numb, with flames licking the inside of her vagina
as Brian remained on top of her, gasping for air. But the pain had
been a small price to pay for achieving a rite of passage.

“I’d begun to think I would never have sex,”
she said, coming to the end of the story. “But there, on Brian’s
living room, with
Godzilla
roaring from the TV and cold
pizza on the coffee table, I finally did it. I lost my virginity.”
When she finished, she glanced at Mark, who had grown so quiet it
was almost as if he weren’t there.

“That was your first time?”

She nodded and looked down at her hands, but
not before she saw a flash of emotion pass through his eyes.

“Did the two of you have sex again after
that?”

“A few more times.”

“Did it get better?”

“No, not really. It didn’t hurt as much, but
it was always rapid-fire fast, like he didn’t want to get caught or
something.”

“And you never had an orgasm?” Mark watched
her closely, as if he were taking each of her answers and building
a file in his head.

“No.”

“And how many lovers have you had since
Brian?”

She knew Mark already understood there hadn’t
been many, and now was the moment of truth.

“I’d like to say none, but there was one
more, but I don’t really count him.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed briefly, and he tilted
his head slightly to one side. “Why not?”

“Because we only did it once.”

“Only once? Was that your choice or his?”

“His, but after I found out why, it was mine,
too.”

Concern etched the lines of Mark’s face as he
shifted on the couch. He appeared both worried and concerned, as if
he wanted to know what happened but wasn’t sure he should ask.

“Richard was an ass,” she said, making the
decision for him. “He only wanted one thing, and I was too gullible
at the time to know that. He seduced me, and I use that term
lightly, because all he wanted was sex.”

“How did you know him?”

“He was part of the crowd Daniel and I hung
out with in college for a while. He got to know me, and after a
couple of ‘dates’…” she made air quotes with her fingers, “we had
sex.”

Mark sat forward. “Did you want to?”

“At the time, I thought I did, because, like
I said, he seduced me. He told me how much he liked me, and how
alike we were, and how he knew from the moment we met that I was
special. Blah, blah, blah.”

Mark chuffed. “He didn’t seduce you. He lied
so he could use you.” He sounded disgusted, and didn’t that just
make him seem like her knight in shining armor.

“Yes, I figured that out the hard way.”
Silence stretched between them for several seconds. “A few weeks
later, I learned that was Richard’s MO. He moved in, targeted girls
who were shy and quiet, then did his thing.”

Mark pressed his lips together and his face
grew tight, but he didn’t voice whatever frustration she could tell
sat on the tip of his tongue. A moment later, he said, “I’m
sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“I made you think about it.”

She smiled. “I’m pretty tough. I can handle
it.”

He gestured toward the cards. “If you want to
stop playing, we can—”

“No, I want to continue.”

“You’re sure?”