“So tell me,” she says, as her eyes do this twinkling thing, “do you like girls or what?”
A surprise: I laugh with her. Mirth rumbles my body like an earthquake. I’m rusty, but it feels good. And yes, I say, I do like girls. I don’t pursue them, though, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It’s gotten me in trouble before, but I also think I have ridiculously high standards because the whole dating, fooling around thing seems so complicated. And not in a good way. I hate obligations, and if you want to be with a girl, it’s like you’re expected to do certain things. And do them in a certain way. Sit with her at meals. Ask about her day. Not talk to people she doesn’t like. Someone should write a book about what a guy’s supposed to do because it’s confusing as hell. And from what I can tell, it’s not worth it. Unless … unless the girl is absolutely perfect.
Or unless you just can’t help yourself.
Case in point, the time Lex pushed me into dating at the start of our sophomore year. I only went along with it because he insisted and because he was always bragging like he was so experienced. Like he knew better than me. I mean, the way he tells it, he’s like a certified expert on dating and attraction, but I’ve never bought into it. There’s a waft of desperation in the way he goes after girls, in his compulsive need to plan things perfectly so they can’t back out. Still, the one he set me up with was decent enough. She was his girl’s best friend and a ballerina, and I did everything he told me to. Then one night after study hours he brought her to our room and left us alone, and it was like she was waiting for me to do stuff to her. I could tell by the way she got quiet and put her hand on the front of my pants and made all these breathy sounds so that her nonexistent chest moved up and down. Nothing about that was appealing, but after a few more get-togethers, she ended up kissing me. And I can’t lie, that was kind of exciting, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what she was thinking. Or why she wanted my tongue in her mouth. Or what she’d want me to do next. Lex told me to try going further, but he didn’t tell me how. And what was the point of it all? I just got so uncomfortable after kissing her that I ended up doing what I already did by myself anyway. And the ballerina wasn’t the one I thought of when I did that.
“Then who was?” Jordan asks.
“Who was what?”
“You know, who did you think about when you were fourteen and jacking off?”
I straighten up. “You’re blunt, aren’t you?”
“No. You’re coy. There’s a difference.”
“I see. And I was fifteen, by the way.”
She’s not listening. “But you’re not shy. You didn’t care that I saw you with your pants down the other day. And now you’re telling me about your sexual failures.”
“I never said I was shy.”
“But you’re not denying the failure part.”
Damn, she’s sharp. But really, “sexual failure” sounds more lurid than the truth. Like I need Cialis or a blueprint to the female body or something. But it wasn’t like that. The ballerina and I kissed one last time and she tried pulling my shirt up, getting me to do the same to her, and I didn’t want to. By that point I’d already noticed things about her that I didn’t like. Like the way she always wanted me to talk about “my feelings” and then got mad when I had the wrong ones. And she definitely wasn’t as pretty as I’d originally thought. Up close she had bad skin and dark roots, and I always got a good view of the hairs living inside her nostrils when we were kissing. Not exactly a turn-on. But the awkwardness carried over to our next date: a trip to Manchester with Lex and his girl to see some band they all liked and that I didn’t know. We rode down in a van with some other students, and I forgot my pressure-point wristbands and the motion sickness was awful. Not puking-all-over-the-place awful, but pretty close, and my head hurt so bad, I couldn’t talk. Not even when we got to the show, which was in the basement of some grungy coffee shop right off Main Street, and everyone there just spent the whole time name-dropping and showing off their band swag and indie persuasions. The ballerina assumed I didn’t like her, and well, she lost interest. Drifted off. Said some things to some people.
It’s for the best, really.
“I’m not denying anything,” I say.
Jordan nudges me. “You have your secrets, though. They must be dark ones if you’ll talk about this kind of stuff so casually.”
“I guess.”
“What did Lex mean when he said you were crazy?”
“Ask him.”
“I don’t want to.”
I stretch my shoulders. I have to say something. “For a while, when I got angry, I used to hurt myself, okay? Punch walls. Punch myself. I don’t know why. I did other things, too. It was beyond stupid.”
Her mouth falls open. “You did? Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t get angry.”
She mulls this over. “You’re still hiding something.”