The Lie (5 page)

As they left, the Jordan whose vagina was not fresh and bacteria-free asked me when I would call them again. As a high school student, I used to take great pleasure in manufacturing elaborate lies about when I would call a whore and what we would do on our second meeting, and in purposely running into her at school or at a party after having failed to realize any of these promises so I could see the look on her face when I told her that the blame for me not calling her back was hers and hers alone because her pussy was too hairy, she was too whiny, her ass wasn’t tight enough, et cetera. I was beyond that, though. I got more pleasure out of issuing outrageous sexual demands I knew would never be met as circumstances for our next meeting—or, if they did agree to meet them, even better. So I told them both that I would never call them again unless they would allow me to insert hard-boiled eggs into their asses and video them sucking the eggs out in a sideways sixty-nine position. As a finale to my film, they would gather all of the eggs they sucked out of each other’s asses and have an egg-eating contest similar to the one in
Cool Hand Luke.
I thought about adding that I would have to shave my pubic hair with an electric razor while squatting over them as they ate the eggs. I decided against this addition, however, based on the fact that I didn’t think either of them was worthy of my involvement in any of this.

Both reacted as I had predicted. They said something about what a bastard I was and one, the actual Jordan, I think, started crying. She claimed she’d allowed the false Jordan to pour Listerine in her vagina because she really liked me and she thought I might really like her, too, but now she saw me for what I really was, a complete asshole. I put my hands behind my head as they left my bedroom and breathed in deeply. The scent of their asses and cunts was still strong in my sheets, but not as strong as the Listerine.

When I left my bedroom for the guest room, Kyle was still on the phone. I told him he would have to sleep in one of the downstairs guest rooms because I was taking the only upstairs one that my most recent stepmother hadn’t yet converted into a neglected art studio, a neglected yoga room, a neglected antique display room, et cetera. He nodded and then went back to whispering and cooing. As I lay in the guest room bed I thought back to my babysitter and the first time I had ever fucked. I tried to conjure some memory of emotion and, surprisingly, it did come.

I had felt something for this girl, who wasn’t that attractive, that smart, that interesting. And all that I felt for her was erased when, after fucking me and sucking my dick for the better part of a month, she informed me that her birthday was approaching and there was a very expensive necklace she wanted. After that conversation I asked to fuck her in the ass, which she allowed. The next day I told my father that she stole a bottle of gin and she was fired.

After the night
she gave me the most incredible blowjob I’d ever had, I didn’t actually see Heather for about four or five days, which killed me at the time. We talked on the phone a lot, but our class schedules never had us back at McElvaney at the same time and she was going to her mom’s house a lot because her sister was visiting.

It was a Friday and I was sitting in my room reading up on cellular processes while my roommate, Dave, was reading his fucking Bible and trying to explain to me that even though I was an atheist he was praying for me so I could get into heaven. In the first few weeks of being his roommate, I had already exhausted myself with pointless attempts to get Dave to understand that believing in a Christian god is just as insane as being a suicide bomber for Allah. So when he started up with his self-righteous crap, I usually just went downstairs to the lobby to study, which is exactly what I was about to do when Heather called and said, “Hey, I’m downstairs in my room. You want to come down and see me?” I said, “Yeah,” and probably pulled a hamstring running out the door.

I was so excited to see her, to hug her, to smell her, to just generally be in her presence again, that it never really even crossed my mind that there might be some awkwardness based on the fact that the last time we were in the same room we had each other’s genitals in our mouths. Once I got down there, it was definitely awkward.

She opened her door and said, “Hi.”

I said, “Hi.”

Then we stared at each other for a few seconds. I didn’t know if she wanted to just strip down and go at it or what. I didn’t really even know if I wanted that. I genuinely liked her. I didn’t want her to think I just wanted to fuck her, which we hadn’t even done.

I said, “So how’s your sister?”

She said, “She’s back in Boston now, but it was fun to hang out with her.”

“Cool. Cool.”

“Yeah.”

Then we stared at each other for another strange series of seconds until Heather said, “You want to go get something to eat or…I’m kind of hungry.”

“Yeah. Sounds great.” It actually did sound great to me. As gay as it might sound, and don’t get me wrong, I did want to fuck her, but at that moment I really wanted to just hang out with her. I wanted to talk to her and see her smile and just spend time with her.

We ended up going to Big Al’s and splitting a pizza. She saw some girl she knew there named Karin. When she introduced me to her she said, “This is my friend Kyle.”

I knew we weren’t dating or anything at that point, but it kind of felt shitty to be introduced as a friend, almost like she had no intention of us being anything more than that, even though technically we were already more than just friends.

After Karin left we talked about nothing in particular while we ate. I think she opened the conversation with, “So how’re those biology classes going?”

I said, “Not bad. I’m getting good grades and we really haven’t had to do anything too hard, yet. How’re your classes?”

“I’ve been skipping some because they’re so boring, but the ones I’m going to are kind of cool, I guess. I mean I’m not really all that into learning about child development and basic math and stuff, but I guess you need all of it to be a teacher, so…”

“Yeah.”

Then we both just ate for a minute or so. It was weird. I think we both wanted to talk about the last time we were together, or at least I did, but I didn’t want to bring it up and sound like an asshole who just wanted to fuck her.

She said, “So you’re friends with Brett Keller?” out of fucking nowhere. I should have seen that moment for what it was. She was essentially telling me that she was only fucking around with me because she was interested in Brett, but I was so stupid I couldn’t see it. Seriously, how did she know who Brett was or that I hung out with him, and on top of that, why did she even care? But, of course, this didn’t tip me off in the slightest that she was a superficial, money-grubbing demon who didn’t actually care at all about me.

I said, “Yeah, we’ve been friends for a while, since grade school.”

“That’s cool. Is he a cool guy?”

“Like I said, we’ve been friends for a long time and that probably wouldn’t be the case if he was an asshole.”

“Right.” She kind of laughed. Then she didn’t bring up Brett again for the rest of the night. She had gauged it just right. If she had said something else about him, I probably would have gotten a little suspicious—asked her why she was talking about him so much. But she didn’t. She introduced the fact that she was interested in Brett without me feeling threatened or even really thinking about why she did it. I was basically in way over my head with her, but I didn’t know it.

We finished our pizza and talked about other things of no real importance. She mentioned that her mom was getting a new car and her dad might be moving out of state because of a job offer. I think I might have told her a little about Carl, and maybe tried to explain to her how he completely fucked us over on our first chemistry lab exam with some shoddy titration techniques. Then I paid our tab and we went back to McElvaney.

As we got in the elevator and she pushed 2, I slowly raised my hand to push 3, hoping she’d stop me. She didn’t. When we got to the second floor, though, she said, “If you don’t have anything to study for, do you want to come hang out for a while?”

“Sure.”

When we got to her room, Annie was gone again. We sat on her bed for a few minutes, still just talking about nothing. I wasn’t sure if she was going to bust out the weed again, but I was ready to smoke it if I had to. I never knew if she had gotten us high that first night we were together because she thought it would loosen me up or if it was because she knew she had to be high to even entertain the idea of doing anything sexual with me. It was something that always kind of bothered me and I never got an answer to it.

I rationalized that she wouldn’t have invited me back to her room if she didn’t want me to make some kind of move on her, so I did. I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed me back. Then it was pretty similar to the last time we were together. We took off each other’s clothes and I was expecting another blowjob, but instead she said, “Go down on me.” I would have sucked a gallon of diarrhea out of her asshole if she had told me to. So I went down on her for about twenty minutes, then she said, “Fuck me.”

I had a condom in my pocket that I had grabbed before leaving my dorm room just in case, but before I could even get it out she said, “There are some condoms in the nightstand.” I figured there was no need for me to pull out my own then, and risk her thinking I had assumed we were going to fuck that night, so I went to the nightstand she was talking about and pulled open the drawer. There were probably two hundred condoms of all colors, sizes, and shapes. This is one of many signs I should have interpreted as an indication that Heather was a fucking slut. Yet, again, I didn’t. I grabbed the one on top, no size indicated and with spermicidal lubricant, and got back in bed with her.

Up to that point I had only ever had sex with one other girl. Kaitlin Harrold was my girlfriend from halfway through junior year to about halfway through senior year. She was pretty cute and on the debate team, which I found to be attractive also. We kind of eased into real sex after handjobs and blowjobs for the first few months we were a couple. I didn’t know it when we first started dating, but the first time we actually had sex she told me that her doctor had put her on the pill for the past year to regulate her periods or some crap. So the fact that I didn’t have a condom on me wasn’t a deterrent at all in terms of us being able to take each other’s virginity that night. I think I lasted about thirty seconds after I actually got my dick in. The more we had sex the better I got at it. Then she found out she got accepted at Harvard and would be moving out of Texas. So, rather than drag our relationship out over the last half of our senior year and then into our final summer together, she said something like, “Look, Kyle, I really like you. You’re probably even my first love, which means I’ll never forget you, but we have to be realistic about this. You’re staying in Dallas—I’m not. It’s pretty unlikely that we’d be able to keep this going through college, and even if we did, then what? We get married or something? That’s even more unlikely, so instead of making it any harder than it has to be at the end of the summer, I think we should just break up now.” And that was it. I think I did actually love her, if a senior in high school is really capable of love, but my whole point in all of this is that I had never had sex with a condom before.

I knew how to put one on, theoretically, but I had never done it. So I ripped open the package and before I even had the chance to see if I was capable, Heather took it and put it on for me, which felt pretty fucking good. And that was the last time my dick felt anything for the next half hour or so.

I got on top of her and she took my dick and kind of guided it into her. I couldn’t feel if I was in or not, but the look on her face and the vague warmth around my dick made me pretty sure I was in. So I just kind of went through the motions, sucking on her tits and grabbing her ass a little more than I might have otherwise, just to make sure I kept my hard-on.

I fucked her for a while. She came once, but I wasn’t even close because of the rubber. I hoped she thought it was because I was just really great in bed. To finish, I had to roll her over doggy style so I could actually look down and see my dick going into her. That was the only way I could get turned on enough to finish, because the condom pretty much rendered my dick numb. And the actual orgasm wasn’t that great, because I had to work way too hard to get it. All of that being said, as I pulled out and lay down next to her, both of us sweating like pigs, I was happier than I’d ever been in my life.

I hugged her and kissed her. She said, “Jesus, that was great,” and I’ll never know if she meant it, but I believed her. And again, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

We woke up a few hours later, around one
A.M
., as Annie was coming in. We heard her unlocking the door in time to pull the covers up over ourselves and I realized I was still wearing the condom, which wasn’t the most pleasant thing to realize. Annie walked in, looked over and saw me lying next to Heather, smiled, and said, “Hey, kids. You need a few minutes by yourselves?”

Before I could say anything, Heather said, “No, we’re good,” and got up out of bed completely naked, which elicited no reaction from Annie, and proceeded to pull on some underwear and a T-shirt. They were apparently okay with seeing each other naked. I, on the other hand, had no interest in having Annie see me naked, especially with a used condom on my dick, which had now become horribly shriveled due to the condom cutting off blood flow.

I stayed in the bed for a few minutes, trying to keep up in whatever the conversation was she and Heather were having. Finally Heather tossed me my boxers from off the ground, which I had to put on over the condom. Once my dick was covered from plain view I got out of bed, got the rest of my shit, and got dressed. I hugged Heather, kissed her, and told her I’d call her, then told Annie good-bye and got the fuck out.

I walked down the hall to the bathroom, went to a urinal, and ripped the condom off as fast as I possibly could. I took some toilet paper and kind of cleaned up the remnants of spermicidal lube and semen that were in my pubic hair. It was going to seriously suck if we had to use a condom every time, but it was worth it. That’s what I told myself as I walked back to my room.

That night I listened to Dave pray as I stared at my ceiling thinking about Heather, wondering if she was on the floor below me thinking about me, talking about me with Annie, wondering if I was thinking about her. It hadn’t taken very long and I didn’t completely know it at the time, but I was falling in love with her.