belongs in a super-violent adults-only video game.
But I surprised him with what I wanted. He didn’t know the poem. The truth is, the only line from any of her poems he knew was the one on the pattern about hope. So, I kind of threw him for a loop.
“I have some beautiful ballet slippers that could fit with those words,” he said, and Andrea thought the image was perfect. But I told him I wasn’t a
So You Think You Can Dance
kind of girl. I never took ballet. I don’t even know what ballet slippers feel like. So he got out this fat notebook filled with patterns and wanted me to flip through it, but after a moment I realized the guy was on to something with his birds. He really was. I didn’t want wings, but I wanted a feather: a quill. A quill pen. That was, I think, how my mind worked.
The tattoo hurt a little, but not very much. And it took Andrea’s mind off her mom for a while.
So, that was the day I got my tattoo. All the guy wanted for payment was for me to wear beaters and halter tops when the weather was right to show it off, and then tell people where I got it. But, of course, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I got it for free.
So, you’re the first.
Sometimes when I reread what I’ve written, I find myself creeped out by what’s between the lines. What I haven’t written.
For instance, that memory of Andrea and me chilling on Church Street, all carefree and la-di-da the night after we’d eachdone a trucker in the cabs of their eighteen-wheelers is six weeks after the night I lost my virginity. You don’t need to know the details. It began with fake cool and ended with real hysteria. Me—not him. But here’s the
Reader’s Digest
condensed version. I owe you that.
He was a friend of Poacher’s who was also a vet and was paying Poacher to do me. I thought I could handle it. I was living on Poacher’s food and Poacher’s Oxies and sleeping under Poacher’s roof. I was smoking Poacher’s weed. And the other girls did it, right? So, why not? I agreed. I was, I guess, trying to earn my keep. To be as down with the routine as everyone else. But it all went wrong, and I was a mess. That little part of me that was still sixteen kicked in, and I had one of those out-of-body experiences: There I was looking down at me from overhead and I was beneath a guy three times my age and I was bleeding on this crappy mattress and it hurt and it was ugly and it was gross. He was gross. And I was so small. Physically. I was just so little compared to this dude. And suddenly I was out of control and beating him on his back (which at first he had thought meant—mistakenly—that I was seriously into it and seriously into him), and I was begging him to stop, to stop, to please just stop. Finally Poacher and Andrea heard me and realized the situation was tanking fast, and yanked him off of me.
And there I was, scrawny and naked, and I curled up in a ball and hid my face in my arms. This was nothing like what the first time was supposed to be. This was nothing like what a hundred rom-coms had led me to believe it would be. This was nothing like what my life was supposed to be. And the Oxies weren’t helping. I felt like the lowest, most vile, most pathetic thing on the planet. And, trust me, it’s no small trick to feel both vile and pathetic.
But, looking back, you know what’s the saddest thing? How easy it is to get used to that feeling when you’re hungry and scared and alone.
Chapter 4
I had a few serious screaming fights with my mom over the years. When I was fighting with my dad or with both my parents, the battles were a little more subtle—like I’d just sit there at the dining room table, seething. Then, of course, I’d ratchet up the stakes big-time and get up and slam a door or something. Once, I broke these two crystal wineglasses that had their wedding date on them: I just went outside and hurled them, one after the other, against this phony stone wall that was in our backyard. (The
But I surprised him with what I wanted. He didn’t know the poem. The truth is, the only line from any of her poems he knew was the one on the pattern about hope. So, I kind of threw him for a loop.
“I have some beautiful ballet slippers that could fit with those words,” he said, and Andrea thought the image was perfect. But I told him I wasn’t a
So You Think You Can Dance
kind of girl. I never took ballet. I don’t even know what ballet slippers feel like. So he got out this fat notebook filled with patterns and wanted me to flip through it, but after a moment I realized the guy was on to something with his birds. He really was. I didn’t want wings, but I wanted a feather: a quill. A quill pen. That was, I think, how my mind worked.
The tattoo hurt a little, but not very much. And it took Andrea’s mind off her mom for a while.
So, that was the day I got my tattoo. All the guy wanted for payment was for me to wear beaters and halter tops when the weather was right to show it off, and then tell people where I got it. But, of course, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I got it for free.
So, you’re the first.
Sometimes when I reread what I’ve written, I find myself creeped out by what’s between the lines. What I haven’t written.
For instance, that memory of Andrea and me chilling on Church Street, all carefree and la-di-da the night after we’d eachdone a trucker in the cabs of their eighteen-wheelers is six weeks after the night I lost my virginity. You don’t need to know the details. It began with fake cool and ended with real hysteria. Me—not him. But here’s the
Reader’s Digest
condensed version. I owe you that.
He was a friend of Poacher’s who was also a vet and was paying Poacher to do me. I thought I could handle it. I was living on Poacher’s food and Poacher’s Oxies and sleeping under Poacher’s roof. I was smoking Poacher’s weed. And the other girls did it, right? So, why not? I agreed. I was, I guess, trying to earn my keep. To be as down with the routine as everyone else. But it all went wrong, and I was a mess. That little part of me that was still sixteen kicked in, and I had one of those out-of-body experiences: There I was looking down at me from overhead and I was beneath a guy three times my age and I was bleeding on this crappy mattress and it hurt and it was ugly and it was gross. He was gross. And I was so small. Physically. I was just so little compared to this dude. And suddenly I was out of control and beating him on his back (which at first he had thought meant—mistakenly—that I was seriously into it and seriously into him), and I was begging him to stop, to stop, to please just stop. Finally Poacher and Andrea heard me and realized the situation was tanking fast, and yanked him off of me.
And there I was, scrawny and naked, and I curled up in a ball and hid my face in my arms. This was nothing like what the first time was supposed to be. This was nothing like what a hundred rom-coms had led me to believe it would be. This was nothing like what my life was supposed to be. And the Oxies weren’t helping. I felt like the lowest, most vile, most pathetic thing on the planet. And, trust me, it’s no small trick to feel both vile and pathetic.
But, looking back, you know what’s the saddest thing? How easy it is to get used to that feeling when you’re hungry and scared and alone.
Chapter 4
I had a few serious screaming fights with my mom over the years. When I was fighting with my dad or with both my parents, the battles were a little more subtle—like I’d just sit there at the dining room table, seething. Then, of course, I’d ratchet up the stakes big-time and get up and slam a door or something. Once, I broke these two crystal wineglasses that had their wedding date on them: I just went outside and hurled them, one after the other, against this phony stone wall that was in our backyard. (The
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