The Brutal Language of Love (11 page)

I nodded at both. I would turn twenty my first week at college. “I'm a virgin,” I reminded him.

He laughed and some of his drink sprayed out his nose. “Stop saying that!” he said.

We finished our drinks and took off all our clothes, leaving them in a heap in the middle of the living room. Jonathan looked me up and down and since I was drunk I said, “I can't help it if I'm beautiful.”

“Shit!” he said. “Wait until I compliment you first.”

“Why should I?” I said.

He tried to find an answer but couldn't, and this got us both laughing. When he stopped he commanded me: “Go find my room.”

I turned and headed for the stairs, and he followed me at a short distance, saying, “Look at that ass! That
ass
!”

“Where the hell is it?” I asked when I got to the second floor.

“Left,” he told me. “Now turn around and walk backwards.” I did and he said, “Look at those tits!”

I got dizzy then and fell into a wall, and Jonathan ran to catch me, easing me onto the carpet, which was where I wanted to be. A plaque proclaiming
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
fell on the floor beside me, and Jonathan snatched it up and said, “Don't look at that.”

“Where's your bedroom?” I asked him.

“Right here,” he said, tossing the plaque in a linen closet. I had fallen down in front of his doorway.

I nodded and started to get up, but he said, “No, no, you'll hurt yourself.” Instead he gripped both my ankles, swiveled me, and dragged me into his room on my back.

Now we were really laughing, and I worried slightly that this was no kind of first memory for me. We should stop kidding around, I thought, and take this thing more seriously. “Jonathan,” I said, hiking myself up on my elbows. He had his back to me and was fishing around for something in his dresser drawer. The walls were painted some dark color, and pennants hung above his bed. A pompom dangled from one of his bedposts, though it did not occur to me to attach it to a cheerleader. “Jonathan,” I said again.

He turned around and let loose an accordion of condoms, like a proud father with a wallet full of pictures. “I want to do it in every room!” he announced.

“Pick one room!” I demanded. “I'm a virgin.”

He covered his ears and sang, “La la la la la la la I can't hear you!”

“One room!” I told him, when he could hear again.

He ignored me and slipped a condom on. I made a move for his bed but he said, “Stay down, stay down,” lowering himself onto me.

“Ow,” I said, though nothing had happened yet. I was preparing myself.

“Are you ready?” he asked me, then he kissed me between my legs for a few minutes. “You're ready, you're ready,” he whispered when he came back up.

“Ow,” I said again.

“Could you stop saying that?” he asked, pushing himself into me, trying to find the right spot.

“Go easy,” I said.

“Stop laughing,” he told me.

“Did it pop yet? Did you pop it?”

“You can't say things like that,” he warned me. “You have to say something sexy, like my dick is big and hard.”

I told him his dick was big and hard and it made him laugh. “Okay, don't say that,” he said. He flopped onto the carpet beside me and gave up trying to make love for a minute.

“I told you,” I said.

“You're just tense,” he countered, getting his second wind. “Okay, stand up.” He got up first and held out a hand for me. “You need the water bed. That'll relax you.”

“Leopard print?” I said as we walked into his parents'
bedroom. I waited for him to tell me not to look at it, but he didn't. It would've been kind of impossible since nearly everything was leopard: the bedspread, the pillows, the rug.

“Lie down in the middle of the bed,” he told me, and I did, creating a small wake.

“This bed makes me feel fat,” I complained.

“Spread your legs a little,” he said, still standing in the doorway.

“No,” I told him.

“Squeeze your tits together.”

That I did.

“Wait here,” he said.

I heard him run down the stairs and come back up again. He was holding a bottle of gin in his hand, and we both drank from it straight.

He got on the bed with me and went down between my legs again. The water bed sloshed with the small movements we made together. It was nice, what Jonathan was doing, and we stopped laughing after a while. I thought he seemed very mature, and full of gifts.

When I was ready again, Jonathan put a new condom on and pushed himself into me, regardless of any resistance. “Oh!” I said.

“Keep going?” he asked me breathlessly. “Can I keep going?”

“Yes,” I said. This was the part that really hurt, the keeping-going, but I felt a certain pride in being able to endure it, in knowing that this would only make things easier for me in the future.

Afterward we went in the bathroom together to clean up. “What's that?” I asked Jonathan, pointing to a pastel shift hanging over one of the towel racks.

“That's my mother's nightie,” he said, grabbing it and wadding it up. “Don't look at my mother's nightie.” He opened the cupboard under the sink and tossed it inside.

“Why not?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “It's a big nightie.”

“So?”

He looked down at himself then and saw the blood on his condom. He touched it.

“See!” I told him, delighted at last to have proof.

“Jesus,” he said. He wasn't laughing now.

“You
were
my first!” I insisted.

“Oh man,” he said, and before our eyes, he lost what was left of his erection.

Jonathan was afraid I would leak blood on his
parents' sheets, so he made me sleep on a towel. In the morning, he wadded it up and threw it in the trash, even though it wasn't stained. We got dressed and he drove me back to my house. My mother's car was in the driveway and I asked Jonathan to come in and say hello, but he said he didn't think so. He said he had to go home and get ready for work.

“Me too,” I said.

“You work today?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Then I guess I'll see you there.”

“I guess so.”

We kissed and for a second I was sorry it wasn't last night and we weren't about to do the whole thing over again.

Inside, I was beside myself. My mother wouldn't ask me where I had been the night before—which I saw as a distinct power play on her part—and I was too shy to tell her, so I smoked three cigarettes instead. I got ready for work several hours too early, then called Mina and Evelyn to tell them it was mission accomplished, and that they wouldn't recognize me the next time they saw me.

“You're right,” Evelyn said when I came into work that afternoon. “You walk like you're trying to squeeze a cash register between your thighs.”

She and Mina laughed at me, and as much as I knew Evelyn was exaggerating, I was glad she didn't tease me by saying I didn't look different at all. They both wanted a blow-by-blow account of what had happened—which I gave them—and we laughed all day at the words
blow-by-blow, cash register,
and
Italian sausage.
In between customers, we picked out lingerie for me to take to college and set it aside in the back room. When Mina went on break, Evelyn told me privately that she was proud of me for going after what I wanted. “Look at you,” she said, and she poked me with a satin hanger, which was her way of being affectionate.

When Mina came back from break I asked her if she'd seen Jonathan at the pizza place, but she said no. I was antsy to talk to more people about my experience, so I wandered into the toy store next door, where Doug, who had dumped me earlier that summer, was working. “Hi,” I said, sauntering up to his checkout line. The place was pretty quiet. The only time people ever got serious about toys and lingerie was at Christmas.

Doug shoved his hands in the red smock he had to wear, which was probably supposed to get people in the holiday mood, no matter the time of year. It definitely worked on me, but that was only because Doug bore a striking resemblance to an overgrown elf. “Hello, Gilda,” he said warily.

“Oh, don't worry,” I said. “I'm not after you.”

“Do you need a toy?” he asked me, irritated.

“Oh no,” I said. “I just came to let you know you lost your chance.”

I ran back to Angelina's then and reported this conversation to Evelyn, who thought it was the best thing she'd ever heard—long overdue.

Next I went to the pizza place to see about Jonathan, but he still wasn't there. Renaldo told me he wasn't coming in today. “He's sick.”

“No he's not,” I said.

Renaldo shrugged.

“I know he's not sick,” I said.

Renaldo didn't ask me how I knew.

“I know because I saw him last night
and
this morning.”

“Oh yeah?” Renaldo said. He looked over at his son Bert, who was ladling red sauce onto a round of pizza dough, and they winked at each other. When Renaldo turned back to me, he said, “So how come you no smiling?”

I smiled for him.

“Thatsa good,” he said, but it didn't sound the way it used to.

Evelyn dropped me off after work and warned me not to call Jonathan. I told her I wouldn't but it was the first thing I did when I got in the house. “Are you sick?” I asked him, sitting at the little phone desk in one corner of the kitchen so my mother could hear. She was paying her bills at the kitchen table.

“Not really,” he said. His voice was cold.

“Well, should I come over?”

My mother closed her checkbook, capped her pen, then walked out of the room. When I heard the front door open I covered the receiver and called after her, “Wait, where are you going?”

“It's helmet night at the stadium,” she yelled back. “While supplies last!”

“Wait!” I commanded my mother again, and she did, with the door still open. I quickly asked Jonathan, “You want to go to a baseball game? My mom works for the Chiefs, so it's free.”

“No thanks,” he said.

“That's okay, Mom!” I yelled, covering the receiver again. “We'll pass!” The door shut and she was gone. “So should I come over?” I said, returning to Jonathan.

“It's up to you,” he told me.

“It's not that far,” I said. “I'll just walk.”

We made love again on his parents' water bed, and
this time it didn't hurt as much. I still didn't have an orgasm, but I figured that would come in time. Afterward Jonathan said I should probably go, and that he would drive me home since it was dark. We got dressed and went downstairs, where earlier I had kicked off my sneakers. Suddenly I was tired of pretending nothing was wrong, and I started to cry. “What happened?” I asked him. “Why don't you like me anymore?”

He shrugged. I was sitting on his mother's flowery couch and he was standing in front of me, jingling his car keys. I could tell he thought it was taking me forever to lace up my shoes. “Huh?” I said, prodding him.

“You handled this whole thing all wrong,” he said finally.

“Why?”

“Because we're not in love. You don't give it away if you're not in love.”

“I love you,” I said, trying to rectify things.

“Tie your shoes, will you?”

I bent over and started tying them.

He said, “You're desperate, that's your problem.”

“How do you know?” I asked him.

“I have eyes.”

This got me started on a new cycle of crying, blurring my vision so that I tied my shoelaces in knots. “I'm vulnerable,” I told him. “I'm making myself vulnerable to you because I love you.”

“Stop saying that,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, giving up on my sneakers. “I'll just think it.” I stood up and faced him. He told me to hold on for a second, then went into a small bathroom off the foyer and returned with a pink quilted tissue dispenser. “Here,” he said, holding the box out to me. “You're ruining your makeup.”

“It's already ruined,” I complained, taking a tissue anyway.

“No it's not,” he said. He took a tissue, too, and worked it carefully around my eyes, which only made me cry harder. I knew this was it, that the next time I saw him he would be colder than ever and there would be nothing I could do about it.