Trying to Remember my First Boyfriend, but I only Remember my Best Friend

The Summer I was 16 and Liz was 15 we spent hours driving on gravel roads in my ‘94 volvo. Previous summers were spent on couches, lounging on one and other like large cats.

Once, out of boredom, we tried to wash our hair in the rain. But it didn’t work, we ran around Liz’s back yard, blinded with suds, screaming. In the Volvo, she felt good at my side— all elbows and blond hair whipping out of the window.

This was also the Summer I got a job McDonald’s. I mopped floors wearing eyeliner and gave everyone who ordered something a happy meal toy. Inevitably, kids from school came through and I looked away, handing the bags through the window. It was crossing some line, I knew, about social status or something that was supposed to be important. But then in moments, I no longer cared.

When Liz lost her virginity, I sat waiting outside smoking cigarettes on the trampoline. Afterward, in the bath, she rested her head on her knees while I sat next to her. I had lost mine over the winter. He didn’t talk to me afterwards either.

The McDonalds parking lot was one of the places kids would stop while “cruising”—  driving around a loop over and over. It was there, that we met Karl.

Later, Karl and I laid on top of each other in my bedroom and came up with ways I could get fired. “You should go to work with strap-on under your McDonalds uniform, so it looks like you have a giant hard on, then just act like it is no big deal,” he said.

I’d re-tell this to Liz in P.E. where we would always get out of playing basketball by asking Ms. Honig if we could use the weight-room, “we are trying to get toned” Liz would say, bringing her knuckles to her abs. There, we would lay on the floor, talking. “Doesn’t Ms. Honig look like a penis?”

Sometimes after dark, we would dumpster dive at the local CD store. Once, we found stacks of glittery stickers that said Gold-Digger or Diva and plastered them on the cars of boys we went to school with.

It was this summer or maybe the next when Karl called me from the convenience store he worked at.

“If I ring up customers for lottery tickets, instead of gas, they don’t know the difference… then I play the lottery tickets myself”

“How much have you made?”

“I just made $50! And I already had made $30…”

“Cool…I really want to go to Olive Garden.”

He took me out and afterward, we would hurriedly have sex pulled over in the car. At home I stood in my parents living room dialing Liz’s number over and over. Surely, she hadn’t gone out without me.

This part plays on my head in a loop. Happening, in different outfits over seasons. She becomes sand through my fingers. A story, like that ghost I once saw sitting at my sister’s vanity. A ghost looking at her own reflection— something I once swore had happened.

But then sometimes after dates with Karl, Liz would be at my house already, hanging out and waiting. Or if it got too late, already asleep in my bed.

She started sleeping in my McDonald’s uniform. It started as a joke, just trying it on. But then I would get into bed, next to her, and see that she was wearing the entire uniform. One morning when I asked her, blurry eyed, why? She yawned, her eyes steady and feline.

“I think it is comfortable.”

1 month ago  /  18 notes

4:20

I am mildly stoned and drinking wine and only now realized that it is 4.20. Is this being an adult? Not knowing ahead of time?

Am I losing my voice as a writer? Do I, as a writer, ask questions? Even?

Does asking questions make me a poor mans//burger king version of Carrie Bradshaw? (Not sure what I mean by burger king version… but feel like I mean it.)

Also, on my computer, the beneath the question mark key there is a grain of sand or a sesame seed. I have to pound it to even ask ??

On husband’s laptop, the M key is missing. It works, you can still type M if you presss harrrrrddd, but it fails often. And yet he would never be tempted to buy a new computer because of this. Why do I find that sexy?

(Totally use questions marks.)

1 month ago  /  6 notes

Porn, Ovulation, The Moon and Joanna Angel

Last week I went to a porn screening for a Joanna Angel film. I went, because as someone who does “sex journalism”, I wanted to meet Joanna and maybe interview her. Plus, it was in Williamsburg, where I live. The screening was held in a sex boutique that sells pewter vibrators, a $70 flogger made of rabbit fur (want) and dainty handmade jewelry (because this is Williamsburg.)

The porn screening was in a hot, crowded backroom. All the seats were taken so I dropped my things — a giant fur coat because I can’t figure out how to dress for the weather and my bag— on the floor. I was trying to set up a sort of sectioned off area but as I sat, legs sprawling in front me, I realized I was now at crotch level with my fellow porn-goers. My fellow porn-goers who were all men. Fine, whatever.

The lights dimmed. The porn was Frankenstein themed, it was about a MMF threesome between Joanna Angel, James Deen and Frankenstein. I like the idea of MMF’s, but usually only when I am ovulating. 

Being on a non-hormonal birth control (the paraguard IUD) I get my period every full moon. And I ovulate with the new moon. Before realizing this, I just went by those opalescent smears in my underwear, the jellyfish I remember being confused by during puberty. (Once, at a friend’s house in 6th grade we left our underwear outside the door with a note which read: Mom, what is this stuff in our underwear? She explained in meant either we were ovulating…or perhaps aroused.)

The night of the porn screening is the full moon. I am on my period. The new moon, a few weeks ago, was the night of the N+1 party at Brooklyn Brewery. The party had free beer, but you had to wait in a 15 minute line.

I got in line, for maybe the third time, and the man in front of me complimented my dress (it was vintage 70’s, very hippie.) His name was James and he was short with blonde thinning hair and round tortoiseshell glasses. James’ friend was tall and squinting-drunk. “Oooh, you are married” James said, wavering to my hand. I like this. I like flirting with men and sometimes feel like I should explain the wedding band…or hide it. But most men don’t ask.

James asks if my husband is cute. Quickly, drunkenly, it comes out that he and his tall friend have just come out to each other as bisexual. “My husband is bisexual too” I say. 

In next few moments we begin talking quickly, excitedly about MMF’s. “I guess I am attracted to the male energy of it… I  want to get tossed around like a rag-doll in between” I say. We’ve already gotten our beers, but we are still loitering, excited. I realize I need to orchestrate things. “Just give me your number, whatever.”

Later I am sitting with my husband a friend of ours when James and his friend come over. James suddenly seems very drunk, nearly slipping off the table. When an acquaintance comes over to talk to me, I disappear entirely. Later, I think I see James leave with his drunk, tall friend. 

“I am sorry if that was awkward” I say to my husband as we leave. “It was just the MMF thing. I thought, maybe?”

***

Watching a porn with a room full of people is uncomfortable. When it gets to be too much, during say an extended blowjob scene, and the other porn-goers squirm above me  I text my husband: “I am watching a porn in a room full of men, who presumably all have hard-ons. It might be hot if you were here???”

He texts back “A train from the Joanna Angel Fan club!!“

After the film there is a Q&A with Joanna, and I get an okay for an interview with Joanna Angel later, she and I might go to Central Park and walk around topless— which is legal in New York. I walk home, buzzing with this.

“You missed out” I say to my husband. “It could have been hot, seeing a porn together in public.” He is smoking rolled cigarettes from organic American Spirit tobacco and watching something on his laptop.

I get into the lofted bed behind him. “I think I want to do an MMF” I say, looming above. “Just masturbate to it” he calls back. I sigh, and of course, do.

1 month ago  /  7 notes