Towelhead (23 page)

I followed him into the kitchen, with its clean counters and dirty breakfast dishes in the sink. Daddy always said we could never, ever leave dishes in the sink or the roaches would come, but I didn't see any bugs at Thomas's.

“What do you want?” he asked, opening the fridge and leaning slightly into it.

I pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. “What are you going to have?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I'm not really hungry.” Then he knelt down and opened the crisper. “How about an apple?”

“Sure.”

He got two of them and bit into his without washing it. I did the same, even though Daddy had always warned me about pesticides on fruits and vegetables.

“I'm getting really turned on,” Thomas said after a few bites.

“You are?”

He got up from his chair and came and stood in front of me. He took my hand and put it on his pants. “See?”

I nodded, feeling his erection.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Can't I finish my apple?”

“Sure,” he said, and he went back to his seat.

Thomas finished his apple first and ate the core and the seeds, too. It was like Daddy with his chicken bones. “Why do you eat the core?” I asked.

“It's just roughage.”

“You want mine?” I said, offering it to him. Daddy liked me to pass him my chicken bones when I was done so he could crunch on the cartilage.

“No thanks,” Thomas said, but he did take my core and toss it in the trash under the sink. Then he came back and said, “Let's go to my room.”

We walked up the stairs. I went first, and Thomas squeezed my butt while I climbed. On the way to his room, he stopped at a hall closet, opened it, and took out a towel. “We'll probably need this,” he told me. “There's going to be blood.”

When we got to his room, he said, “I'm taking my clothes off,” and in a few seconds he was naked. He had nice broad shoulders, from swimming I guessed, and his stomach had a couple of ripples in it. His penis stuck straight up, nearly hugging his stomach. He unfolded the towel and laid it out on the bed. Then he lay down on top of it. “Now you take your clothes off,” he said.

It took me longer than it had taken Thomas. I had never played strip poker before, but I undressed as if that was what we were doing now. Where you only took off your bra and underwear at the very, very end.

“You shaved,” Thomas said when I was finally naked.

I nodded.

“That looks good,” he said. “C'mere.”

I walked over to the side of the bed where he lay. He reached out and put a hand on the little bit of hair I had left. “Lie down,” he said, scooting over to make room for me.

I lay down on the towel on my back. I was worried about how there wasn't going to be any blood at all, and what Thomas would think about it.

He rolled onto his side, then reached out and ran a hand over my stomach. “Your skin is soft,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He moved his hand up to my breasts and pinched one of my nipples. “Ow,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “That doesn't feel good?”

“No.”

He looked confused. “It's supposed to feel good.”

“It doesn't,” I told him.

He touched my nipple in a softer way and said, “How's that?”

“Better.”

I wasn't sure what to do with my legs—whether I should open them or keep them closed. Soon, though, Thomas was moving in front of me, opening them himself. I thought we were going to do it then, but instead, he bent my legs at the knees then pushed them apart as wide as they would go. After he did that, he just stared. He stared and stared and stared. He wouldn't stop. Even though he wasn't touching me, it was exciting. It was like the girls in
Playboy
, having their picture taken by men photographers who wouldn't hurt them.

Soon, he put his head between my legs. He started to lick me there, or kiss me—I couldn't tell. It felt good, though. Warm. He did it for a long time before he finally pulled his head up and said, “I think you're ready.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Where's the rubber?”

“In my pocket.”

He reached for my jeans, which I had hung over his desk chair, and took the foil packet out. I watched him tear it open and roll the condom on. It looked a little tight. “These are for guys with little dicks,” Thomas said.

I wondered about Mr. Vuoso then, if he had a little dick. “Does it hurt?” I asked Thomas.

“It's okay,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”

I had closed my legs while he put the condom on, and now he opened them again. He lay down between them, this time with his face up by mine. I could smell myself around his mouth. The smell that was on my hands every time I had an orgasm alone.

“Listen,” Thomas said, “I promise to be careful. I won't hurt you.”

“I know,” I said.

“Just tell me if you want me to stop and I will.”

“But then you'll think I'm still a racist.”

“What?” he said.

“You said if I had sex with you I would impress you and you wouldn't think I was a racist anymore.”

This seemed to bother him. “Forget about that, would you?”

“All right,” I said.

He reached for his penis then and started to put it inside me. “Just try to relax,” he said.

“Okay.”

He pushed a little harder now. “It'll only hurt for a few seconds.”

I nodded. It was true. It did hurt. Not from anything tearing, like with Mr. Vuoso, but from the feeling that there wasn't enough room. But Thomas kept pushing anyway. “Oh my God,” he whispered.

“What?” I whispered back.

“Nothing,” he said. “It just feels so good.”

“Oh.”

“I'm sorry if it hurts,” he said.

“It's okay.”

“The first time is always painful for girls.”

“Yes,” I said.

He had an orgasm pretty quickly after that. I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to do to have one myself, so I just lay there. When he was finished, he rolled off of me and onto his side of the bed. We lay there for a long time, not talking. Finally he looked over at me and said, “Is there a lot of blood?”

I rolled to one side of the towel so he could see. There was no blood.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe some girls don't have it.”

He was quiet for a minute, then said, “It
was
painful, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You just didn't look like it was bothering you that much.”

“It was.”

“I mean, it's not like I have a small dick or anything.”

“No,” I said, “you don't.”

“Huh.”

“Maybe you were just really careful,” I said.

“I guess.”

“Anyway,” I said, “I'm glad it wasn't that bad.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said, “that's good.”

“So you don't think I'm a racist now?” I asked him.

“Stop saying that,” he said. “I already told you to forget about that.”

“Sorry.”

“It definitely should've hurt more,” he said.

I didn't say anything.

“Why didn't it?” he asked. He rolled onto his side and looked at me. “Who'd you do it with before me?”

“No one.”

“You never did it with anyone?”

“No.”

“But what about the blood?”

“I don't know, Thomas.” I got up off the bed and started to get dressed.

“I'm not going to be mad if you had sex with someone else,” he said. “I'm just curious.”

“I didn't,” I said, pulling on my underwear.

“Was it back in Syracuse?”

“It was nowhere.”

“Nothing popped,” he said. “It's supposed to pop.”

“Can you please call me a taxi?”

He sighed and went in the bathroom, the rubber hanging loosely off the end of his penis. When he came back, it was gone. After putting his clothes on, he walked out of the bedroom and thumped down the stairs. I followed him shortly afterward. He was standing at the kitchen counter, opening a jar of peanut butter. “The cab'll be here in fifteen minutes,” he told me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Do you feel like a woman?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I feel like a man,” he said, spooning peanut butter into his mouth.

When the cab beeped, Thomas walked me outside and opened the car door. He gave the driver ten dollars and told him my address. After he shut the door, the driver kept looking back at me through his rearview mirror. He did this all the way home. He had dark brown eyes and hair the same color. I thought he was probably Mexican.

At first I tried to stare back at him, but then I started to feel bad and looked away. It seemed like he was mad at me even though he didn't know me. When we got to my house and I opened the door to get out, he said something in Spanish. I didn't know what it meant, except for one word:
negro.

 

That night while Daddy and I ate dinner on our TV tables, I thought about how I was a woman and he didn't know it. He just sat there watching the war. He thought I didn't have any privacy, but I did. I had a lot of privacy. The more privacy I had, the stupider he seemed to me.

After dinner, the phone rang. It was Grandma calling from Lebanon. Since the war started, she'd been calling a lot. Daddy hated it. I could hear him yelling at her in Arabic. Occasionally, mixed in with some of the Arabic, I would hear the word
Scud
. This was because Grandma thought Saddam was going to bomb her. She called every time there was an attack on Israel. After hanging up with her, Daddy would say how stupid she was. He said he told her fifty times that Saddam had no reason to bomb Beirut, and that no Scud would ever accidentally hit her. But she wouldn't listen. She would start crying and say he didn't love her.

The next day in school, Denise wanted to know if it had hurt. “Not too much,” I said. She had come over to my locker before homeroom.

“Really?” she said. “It wasn't that bad?”

“No.”

“What about blood?” she said. “Was there a lot?”

I shook my head.

“Wow,” she said. “You're lucky.”

“I guess so.” It made me kind of mad that suddenly she wanted to know all about it, when just the day before she had said she was sorry she knew anything.

“Did you use protection?” she asked.

I nodded.

“What kind?”

“A rubber.”

“Did it break?”

“No.”

“The man is supposed to hold on to it when he pulls out so it doesn't fall off and spill inside you. Did he do that?”

“I don't remember,” I said. “I think so.”

“You could get pregnant if he didn't do it.”

“I think he did,” I said, mostly because I wanted her to be quiet.

After a moment, she said, “So that's it? He doesn't think you're a racist anymore?”

“No.”

“Well, I guess that's what you wanted.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

At lunch, the first thing Thomas said when I sat down was, “Are you sore?”

“Not really,” I told him.

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed.

“You were very careful,” I reminded him.

“I wasn't that careful.”

“The cabdriver kept giving me dirty looks on the way home,” I said. “I think he was a racist.”

“Asshole,” Thomas said, then we started talking about how we could find a way to report him.

When I got home that day, I called my mother. Somehow, being a woman made me miss her. “Hi,” I said when she picked up the phone. I wondered if she could tell I was different from the sound of my voice. All day long, I had imagined myself to be calmer and more patient with people.

“Hello,” she said. “How are you?”

“Good,” I said.

“How did the interview go?”

“It was okay.”

“Good,” she said again. She paused, then said, “Aren't you going to ask me how I am?”

“How are you?”