Wreck and Order Read Online Free Page B

because that’s how it felt. I was fifteen. I stared out the frosted-glass windows during Spanish class and math class and while taking a history test. There was nothing else to think about.
    One Friday afternoon some months later, Dan and I were lying on his bed after school. Warm air, weary from a long summer, stewed in his room. I was wearing a long, silky skirt that made me feel adulthood as a sensuous promise. He ran his fingers through my hair. I turned my lips to his. “I think we should break up,” he said. “I’m just not attracted to you anymore.” I rolled and jumped at the same time, landing near his doorway. It seemed then that those words had appeared suddenly in the air around our intertwined bodies, and Dan had snatched them up on a whim. But once I was alone again, trudging through the activities required to be a person, I understood that his words had been hovering over us all along.
    —
    This is the romantic advice I got from my father: “If you cut off a hen’s head and then dangle it in front of a rooster, the rooster will start doing the mating dance. All it takes is a bloody gizzard. Keep that in mind when the boys ask you on dates.”
    But boys never asked me on dates. They invited me into closets and bathrooms at parties in dark basements. They invited me to come over when their parents were out of town. I remembered the gizzard, and if I went—I usually went—it was not because I wanted to feel special or loved or chosen. I wanted to feel good, the way I had when I was in bed with Dan.
    A boy from my English class—nice enough, cute enough—invited me over to watch a movie. I said hello to his mother and younger sister, working on math homework together at the kitchen table, and followed the boy to the basement. He put on
Fight Club
and we watched the first fifteen minutes. He suggested we go into the adjoining guest room and lie down. I agreed right away; the movie was disturbing me. We kissed stiffly for a minute or two. He pulled off my shirt and inhaled my nipples. He pushed me to his waist. I never said no to their demands, stated or implied. I was there to lose control, to be surprised by another person, to share an interaction entirely unlike the dull, inane, faintly mean chatter of which most of my interactions consisted. I wanted to be roused. And the boy’s moans did arouse me, so much that I could hardly wait to pull off my jeans. Maybe I’d even have sex with him that night. But arousal did not lead to pleasure. It led to millions of sperm dying in my mouth. Two minutes of dutiful cuddling. Buckling of pants. Ejecting of movie (how it enraged me to see the care with which he returned the DVD to its container). That was fun. See you around.
    There were many encounters like this. They taught me a new kind of pain. In bed alone afterward, I would lie on my back with my arms clenched at my sides, heart crashing against my ribs, stupid hope pecking my skin. My body did not know to stop waiting.
    You could say I was a slut. You could say the boys were assholes. You could say we were hungry people who had been led to a buffet and informed that the only way we could eat was to lie on our backs under the table, blindfolded, openmouthed. When I complained to a friend with a lumpish, flat-chested body about unsatisfying hookups, she said, “But you’re so pretty! I always thought the only reason guys would treat me that way is because they found me disgusting.”
    A few years later, when I was living in Paris, I was bored and lonely and looking for something sexy to read on the Internet. I stumbled on a chat room of seemingly college-age boys describing the blow jobs they’d gotten. One of them described going to a girl’s room to “watch a movie.” The phrase was in quotes, followed by a smiley face emoticon. He got the best BJ of his life. This girl was mad skilled. She invited him to come over again the next night, but he’s like set on BJs for at least a week, dude. Smiley