I knew he was thinking dinner at O’Reilly’s as an actual date, but I hadn’t been into dinner lately. I’d been into cigarettes, whiskey in the bathtub, and Dr Pepper–flavored ChapStick.
When he picked me up wearing an ironed button-down and khakis, I felt defeated. He looked too eager, and I felt a constant nagging inside me that I was disappointing him—almost the same way I felt about Sandra. I wore a pair of ripped corduroys and one of Sandra’s lover’s old Patriots sweatshirts with thumb holes, and zero makeup, except for the Dr Pepper ChapStick.
“Okay,” I said, trying to get into the mood, “put on your best pirate face.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked. “I can still take you to dinner. Lobster, even, if you want.”
Lobster would definitely make me puke, especially if it was followed by sex, especially if the sex was followed by cuddling.
“I’m sure,” I said. I got into his car, saw his lacrosse helmet in the back seat, and pulled it over my head.
We drove to the pier, and when we got out of his Datsun, we were greeted by November’s hateful winds. I stared out at the ocean. Tonight, it was black, reflecting only the pale moon and the small lights of boats.
“You know I’m allowed to borrow the boat whenever,” said Brad, “but it’s choppy out right now.”
“I love choppy,” I said, adjusting the helmet.
I started down the dock, and reached for the rope, struggling to untie it.
Brad stopped me and undid the knots in two seconds. I was jealous of him for making it look so easy.
I climbed on board, and he followed. The night was felty and close to our faces. The smell of salt was overpowering, and the waves crashed angrily against the shore. I stood at the wheel of the boat, ready to steer us to some imagined island. It would be named Infinity Island, and it would be inhabited by barefoot women with purple skin and many bracelets, who ate things like ostrich eggs and drank the blood of cats.
But when Brad tried to start the engine, it puttered and stopped.
We found ourselves in the cabin, freezing, and I had the startling realization that this was where Brad had lost his virginity to Heather.
I think Brad realized the same thing.
“What was it like, when you and Heather did it here?”
Brad looked embarrassed.
“Why would you ask me that?” he said. “It was a long time ago, and now I’m here with you.”
I remembered Heather telling me about it, how she used advice from Cosmo. It was an article called “11 Reasons to Swallow,” and she’d explained it to me at work, why boys found it rude when you didn’t swallow after you gave them a blow job, like it was a rejection. She also said another article suggested covering their bodies in whipped cream, but she’d tried it and said it got sticky and, overall, was terrible advice. I wanted to know if Brad liked being with Heather and if she liked being with him. Also, I wondered if I was bad at sex, if Heather was better than me.
“I just wondered,” I said, shrugging. “Did she seem happy?”
“Let’s just be here together,” he said, “and not talk about anyone else.”
He closed the door behind us, dulling the crash of the waves. As we shivered, as our teeth clattered together, sounding like broken windup toys, he leaned into me. He slid his hand under my shirt, his icy skin touching my back. I thought again of the whipped cream and wondered if Cosmo was full of shit. But then again, it did teach me to get myself off with the showerhead.
He wanted to kiss me. He reached for the helmet, trying to pull it over my head, but I shoved his arm away.
“This stays on,” I said.
“What is it with you and my helmet?” he asked, picking me up by the waist and setting me down, like a glass of wine or a school art project or a porcelain doll, on the small bed. The helmet bumped against the frame, and I blinked at his face, dizzy.
“I just like the way it feels,” I said.
It hid me inside myself, where no one could get. It also made me feel powerful, like I could fly planes or beat up a Viking. Girls never got to wear helmets. We had to wear heels. We had to wear thongs.
My question was answered. We would do it regularly, and it would become normal. We would do it on beds, but also in cars and on boats. We would do it in the sand, on the forest floor, and again and again on his Eddie Bauer sheets. Brad had condoms in his wallet, and I knew in that moment that the unwrapping of one, the hospital smell of the latex, would become part of my life now.
Again as he entered me, again as it hurt, I went away.
The boat rocked back and forth in the current, and I imagined myself with Susan, pretending our childhood beds were pirate ships.
Let’s go find some gold.
I always knew there was no gold in Hopuonk—at least, not buried in the ground. I closed my eyes behind the helmet, and Brad’s heavy breathing reminded me why I’d wanted to search for gold so much as a kid.
If you had gold, you could buy a ship, or a plane. You could escape.
I should have just eaten the lobster.
The Party
Just like every year, we ate Thanksgiving dinner at Susan’s house. Her parents thought it was sad that there were only two of us in our family. Unlike us, they had a dining room, with a big antique table they only used on special occasions, and china to match. Susan’s mother sat with an ashtray in front of her, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, ignoring her plate. Susan’s father’s plate was piled high with turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, gravy seeping around the edges. I thought of the marks on Susan’s back and wanted to shove his plate into his face and smash his nose in.
Susan and I both had small portions—me, because turkey grossed me out, the stringiness of it, the bones showing, and her because she was always trying to lose weight.
“Tell us how things are going with Brad,” Mrs. Blackford probed, taking a long drag of her cigarette. Her tone was somewhat accusatory, like I didn’t deserve him as a boyfriend.
“They’re doing well,” Sandra answered for me, taking a small bite of green bean casserole. Sandra wasn’t a big eater. She picked at things, then set them down. “He had flowers delivered to the house out of the blue,” she added proudly.
Susan sighed theatrically.
“You’re so lucky,” she said to me, which put me in a bad mood.
I looked around the room—at the photographs on the far wall of Susan with her parents over the years in the Sears photo room, at her school photographs collecting dust in their wooden frames. Even in the early nineties, when the backgrounds you could choose from were awful—neon stripes or fake trees—Susan never went through an awkward stage. She always looked perfect. I shuddered, because none of the pictures showed the welts on her back where her father hit her with his belt, nor did they show her mother sitting at the kitchen table, smoking two cigarettes at once. Then I looked at everyone’s plates, and it grossed me out how full they were. There were only five of us.