Crazy Enough by Storm Large

absolutely everything about Candy and all the misadventures she and her giant droopy boobs got into.
    She was a big dumb blonde from nowhere, stepping off a bus on Hollywood and Vine. Her fake Marilyn Monroe-isms were not lost on me. “Hollywood! I can’t believe it! Here I am in Hollywood!” heaving her chest with every H. In no time, a talent scout sees her and gets her on the casting couch. He hypnotizes her to get her over her stage fright. “By the way, what’s your favorite flavor ice cream?”
    â€œVa-NILLA!” Heave-heave-heave.
    Later, as the talent scout crams his joint into her mouth, telling her it’s a vanilla ice cream cone, my mom whispers into my ear, “ That’s not making love.”
    I nodded slightly, making a mental note that, yes, yes, it was. I was all tingly and hot and couldn’t wait to scoot my butt under a bathtub faucet.
    I kept my tingles and prickles well to myself throughout the stretch of film we watched. My aunt finally clicked it off and put the VHS tape back behind the encyclopedias on the bookshelf. Both women feigned disgust and I quietly agreed, mumbling something like, “Yeah, she was so stupid.” I couldn’t wait to try it all out on somebody.
    Valuable lesson number one: I learned that when the guy is done, everybody’s done. Lesson number two: When he’s shot his stuff in or all over you and is kneeling or standing over you panting, you need to stare at him or just his dick, with a mixture of fear and total amazement. Lesson three: No matter what is happening to you sexually, you must respond in all excited affirmatives, Yes! and Yeah! or Oh, yeah!!! were all you needed to say to stoke the action further, and keep things positive.
    My only concern was the whole penetration thing. Besides my fingers, nothing had actually been in me, and that was worrisome.
    What if it hurt? What if I said ouch or, worse, cried? I had heard that you bleed when you lose your virginity and that was way too embarrassing to even remain in the realm of possibility.
    I’d have to break myself in.
    I found a plastic, tapered cylinder in an old junk drawer in our guest room in Southborough. It was cream-colored and hollow with a screw-off bottom. When I opened it, I saw a place for two C batteries. “Personal Massager” was embossed around the bottom along with “Johnson and Johnson.”
    I never put batteries in it, but I washed it really well and took it to bed with me every night for a long time. Every day I would wash, dry, and return it to the junk drawer. Just in case. After a few weeks, I was confident that I was ready for my first time.
    Sex was already important to me. It was my thing. And I believed once I got past the physical initiation, once I was cocked and loaded, as I liked to call it, the old me would dissolve, leaving a pink and fresh new me. A me that might not go crazy, but wherever I went, I would definitely not go alone.

    He was twenty, I think. I met him in a cloud of college kids outside of a concert. He got a six-pack and we walked into the huge park called the Boston Common. He seemed cute enough, not too big, dark, spiked hair, his collar pointed upwards on his jacket. I noticed he had acne under his jaw and down his neck a bit, but he had beer, and thatmade him perfect. I told him my name was Nina and I was nineteen years old and would he like to go hijack a swan boat?
    Nineteen was my go-to lying age until I was nineteen, then I told everyone I was twenty-two. This night, however, I was a few months into thirteen.
    We couldn’t find the swan boats in the dark, so we ended up in a nice dewy patch of grass near some Hare Krishna twirl-off. They chanted and sang and hopped around in their saffron sheets about twenty yards from us. I could smell the incense as we sipped beer and talked about music we liked. I told him how it was so cool to meet him, but, “Gosh, it is such a shame I have to leave