“There’s no one answer,” Sam Robeson says. “We have to decide for ourselves. And adults can’t handle that. They won’t trust us to make decisions for our own bodies.”
“But do you blame them?” Grace says. “They must be terrified. Look what can happen—we can get pregnant, we can get diseases, we can make decisions that screw up our lives forever. We can get hurt in all kinds of ways guys can’t. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth. Parents’ instincts are to protect us, and that’s what they think they’re doing.”
“Maybe your parents,” someone says.
Erin raises her head for a moment and looks at Grace. She blinks, as if surprised to find herself suddenly here, in this room with all these people, not alone inside the small space of her body.
“Hey, I have a question,” says a voice in the back. All heads turn toward the pale girl with black and white hair: Serina Barlow, rehab girl. “Do any of you actually like sex?” The tone in her voice makes it clear that she thinks the answer should be no.
“Yes!” Sam says enthusiastically, immediately, without thinking.
A few nervous giggles. A few pink, blushing faces.
“Me too,” says another girl. “Is that, like, okay?”
“Me three,” says another. “But I feel like I’m supposed to hide it. Like I’m a slut if I like it too much.”
“But you’re also a prude if you don’t,” Margot says. “There’s no way to win.”
“I kind of like sex,” says another girl, confusion written across her face. “I don’t know. I mean—sorry if this is TMI—but I can get so horny sometimes when we’re making out, and I totally want to do it. But then it happens so fast, and I’m just like, ‘Is that it?’?”
“Yes, totally!” says another girl.
“Oh my God, yaaaaas,” says another.
“It’s so frustrating,” says the first girl.
“Well, do you say that?” says Sam.
“Say what?”
“Say ‘Is that it?’ To your guy?”
The girls laugh, then all suddenly stop when they realize she’s serious.
“How do you expect him to know you want more if you don’t tell him?” Sam says.
“But he’s, like, done,” the first girl says.
“So what? Make him wait his turn until you’re done. Or, he can come, then you tell him what you want, and he can do a little mouth and hand action for you, then he can go again. Everybody wins! It’s not like it takes these guys very long to recharge. They’re ready to go again in like three minutes.”
“Oh my God,” someone giggles.
“I like sex, and I’m not ashamed of it,” Sam says with a flip of her scarf. “No one should be.”
“You’re kind of my hero right now,” Trista says.
“I’m still kind of freaked out by this whole conversation,” says Krista.
“Wait,” Allison Norman says. “How do you do that? How do you tell him?”
“You just tell him what you want,” Sam says. “Or if you don’t feel like talking, then you show him.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Allison says. “But I don’t think I could do that. And even if I could, I don’t even know what I’d say.”
“So what do you do?” Sam asks Allison. “During sex?”
“I guess I just sort of lie there,” Allison says, then emits a small, sad laugh. “To be honest, I was pretty relieved when we decided to go on a sex strike.”
“Me too,” another girl says.
A few heads nod around the circle. Sam looks from face to face, her own face twisting into recognition of something new, something horrible she had not before considered—that sex could be about something very different than pleasure, that it could be a burden, a job, something to be endured.
“Sometimes I offer to give a blow job when I really don’t want to have sex with a guy,” another girl says. “So he won’t be mad at me.”
“No,” Sam whispers.
“You’re lucky, Sam,” Serina Barlow says. “I’m happy for you. Really, I mean it. And I think most girls probably have a chance of figuring this sex thing out, how to make it something good, like it is for you.” She pauses. “But some people are probably never going to be okay. You think Lucy Moynihan’s ever going to have a great sex life? Not likely.”
“You don’t know that,” Sam says.
Serina shakes her head. “What happens to you when you’re young, it, like, brands you for the rest of your life. Nothing as bad as that ever happened to me, not really. But I lost my virginity when I was barely thirteen. The guy was seventeen, and I was high. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It wasn’t rape, but it wasn’t good. And it feels like that programmed me, like that’s the way sex is always going to feel, no matter who it’s with. It’s like I’m cursed.”
“But it was rape,” Margot says. “If he was seventeen, it counts as statutory rape. And if you were so high you didn’t know what was going on, you couldn’t consent.”
“Whatever you want to call it,” Serina says, “it’s done. It happened. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“Maybe you can go to therapy or something?” Elise offers.
“Girl, I’ve been in therapy.” Serina laughs bitterly. “But I’m damaged goods. Part of me is broken and it’s never going to get put back together.”
“But what if—”
“It’s like my instincts have been rewired,” Serina says. “Even if I like a guy, if I genuinely like him and think he’s cute, as soon as he shows any interest in me, I fucking hate him. It’s like a physical thing, like disgust, like I’m physically sick with how angry I am, like I want to kill him. Just because he looked at me a certain way. Just because he might want me.”
“Rosina,” Melissa whispers. “I think something’s wrong with Erin.”
Rosina looks beside her and sees Erin’s eyes are wide and darting. Her rocking is more frantic. Her breaths are shallow and fast.
Where are Erin’s walls? Where are her defenses? Serina’s words are cutting into her, slicing her open, and she can feel everything.
“Erin,” Rosina whispers. “Are you okay?”
Erin shakes her head.
“And I think,” Serina continues, “maybe if my parents had talked to me about sex, maybe if someone had told me it was something I got to choose to do, something I was supposed to want, maybe it would have turned out different, you know? Because I didn’t even really know that ‘no’ was an option. I thought if a guy wanted me, that meant the decision had already been made.”
“Breathe,” Rosina whispers to Erin. “Count backward from one hundred.”
“I’m sorry, guys.” Serina sighs. “I didn’t mean to bring everyone down. I’ve been in rehab for the past three months where I was in group therapy for like ten hours a day and all anyone does is talk about their feelings. All. The. Fucking. Time.”
Rosina whispers, “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven . . .”
“How can we all be so screwed up already?” Margot says with a strained voice, emotion betraying her usual flawless confidence.
“I just know that if I ever have a daughter, I’m going to teach her that sex is supposed to make her feel good,” Serina says. “It should be obvious, right? But it’s so not.”