Gawky (26 page)

“Floyd!!”

Floyd stopped walking, saw me waving and yelling, and then walked away at a faster pace than he'd been walking before.

What the—
? Floyd wasn't even one of the cool kids, like Chad Decker. He played the trumpet, for God's sake! And he's blowing me
off? Even in friggin' Puerto Rico, I was too weird to say hi to? Even in a
rainforest
?

My spirits dropped. I was hiking in a tropical island alongside a handsome Hispanic man, but I was still a gangly girl from Jersey nobody wanted to talk to.

Rodreigo put his arm around me and jokingly said, “Close friend?” I laughed it off and we kept walking. I wasn't going to let a band nerd ruin my adventure.

That night, Rodreigo took me to this beautiful old castle in Old San Juan. This was pretty much the coolest way to spend a spring break ever. Not only was I in a castle, but also I was now a tropical island beauty. Rodreigo walked proudly with me, and I felt like one of those girls who just expected to be prom queen. I was on top of the world.

Then, without warning, Rodreigo ever so slowly touched my freckled face with his tan hand, leaned close to me, and kissed me. This wasn't a sloppy middle school kiss or an awkward seven-minutes-in-heaven kiss. This was a slow, romantic kiss like I'd never experienced before. I was kissing a man—a man who had seen the world and been with a bunch of girls already (but hopefully used condoms because I couldn't chance it with AIDS again). This was no lame hookup with some dimwitted Jersey thug; I was passionately kissing an exotic man who appreciated theatre and wore denim shorts unapologetically. I'd finally made it.

It didn't stop there. The kissing continued until we were on the ground outside in front of the castle. Things were moving quickly, clothing was shed. I tried not to think about the possibility of a foreign insect crawling up one of my orifices and laying eggs inside me. Things were going to a whole new level here; Rodreigo was the first guy ever not to struggle with the clasps on my bra. When his shirt came off, my velour pants came off too. It became clearer we were heading toward something intense. I did not want to become a statistic, so I stopped everything and said, “If you're gonna do something, you better have something!”
Realizing he didn't have a condom, Rodreigo ceased all heavy petting and we were on our way back to the car.

I knew the evening was probably heading toward sex. I had just come to visit an old friend, but I didn't want to pass on this major opportunity. At home I would have been skittish and nervous, but being so far away and completely separate from all the high school bullshit (Floyd Barstow aside) made me feel relaxed and like a whole new person. If I didn't act on this now, I would probably end up losing my virginity in my twin bed to some desperate dirty rocker weirdo virgin back home, while my parents were at a jazz concert in the city. Who knows? If Corey hadn't tried to kill me, maybe he would have eventually won me over and I would have had awkward first sex with him. I'm sure he would have been game. But instead I was in Puerto Rico with a foreign, older man. I was rolling with the new me.

Then a second thought occurred.
I hope I don't die in the freakin' NASCAR race I'm about to enter in Rodreigo's car. I' d really like to lose my virginity to an older Latino boy on a tropical island. I' d really love to have just this one night. Universe, if I can get safely through this one night, I promise to fight less with my mother and to quit my kicking-holes-through-walls-with-my-lesbian-shoes fetish cold turkey. I promise.

As we swooshed through three red lights and passed in a no-passing lane at eighty-five miles per hour, I wondered if all Puerto Ricans were on their way home to get condoms mid-hookup. When we finally got back to his house, I noticed for the first time how lavish it was. The house was entirely white without a speck of dust anywhere. They had a beautiful outdoor porch for doing fancy things like drinking cocktails with a tan group of dignified friends. I had never seen anything so tropical and extravagant in New Jersey, and I wondered how every single flower around the house could be blooming in full color at the same time. Back in Jersey my mom was always ranting about her uncooperative “paperwhites” or “pointsettias.”

I let Rodreigo take the lead on the bedroom stuff. I was too neurotic and inexperienced to make any moves and was trying to let myself go for once. I didn't want this night to end with a frantic call to a Tampax operator or be the cause of me skipping future blood donations. He asked me if I had done this before. I said, “Yes, once . . .” I didn't intend to lie to him, it was just one of those things that slipped out of my mouth and it would have been really dorky to take it back. I decided to let Rodreigo think I was cooler than I was—John's penis in Pennsylvania came really close, and that was probably the same thing, right?

WRONG. Wow. Super wrong. Wow. As things started for real, it was way too late to stop and say, “Actually, Rodreigo, I haven't done this before. My mistake.” So I just kept going with the charade that I was an experienced woman, which was a nice distraction from the hugeness of losing my virginity under these fantastical circumstances.

“We're such good friends, we do
everything
together!” joked Rodreigo when we were through. I laughed, which was a nice relief after living in a Spanish soap opera for the last few days. I had seen people smoke cigarettes and take swigs from bedside whiskeys in this postcoital moment on film, but this wasn't like that at all. I just lay there thinking how it was odd that a few years ago we were friends at camp and for this visit we decided to suddenly be lovers. I looked forward to showing photos of Saint Thomas ocean views to classmates and slipping a photo of Rodreigo in there.

“Who's that?” the classmate would ask.

“That?” I'd giggle. “Oh, that is Rodreigo . . . my lover.”

Did my life really just get this awesome?

I was in a great headspace. I knew I didn't want him to be my boyfriend; that would be way too complicated. But I also didn't want to leave it as just this night.

Rodreigo seemed to be reading my mind. “Let's promise to see each other again, at least one more time.”

“Pinky swear?” I asked.

Rodreigo stuck out his pinky and said, “Yes, pinky swear.”

We fell asleep and the next day he drove me to the airport. He held onto the wheel with one hand and my hand with the other the whole time. He could barely watch the road for wanting to look at me, and suddenly I no longer cared about traffic safety. He passed three cars in a no-passing lane and I didn't even fear for my life. This time I just knew somehow I'd be safe. At the airport we made out for a long time. I felt a crowd gather, gawking at the young lovers, but maybe that was in my head. What wasn't in my head was that I missed my plane. It's hard to miss a plane when you are standing in the terminal as it takes off behind you. This was just about the most careless thing I'd ever done, but I didn't care.
Whatever,
I thought, kissing Rodreigo again.
My parents can have an hour more of alone time. That's what they want anyway.

Finally we separated. Lucky for me Rodreigo stuck around for a bit and was able to speak to the gate attendant in Spanish and get me on the next plane. The gate attendant had surely just watched me miss the plane due to our very public make-out session but tried to remain professional. Whatever. I wasn't embarrassed; it's not like I would be seeing that gate attendant ever again, so who cared?

I stared out the window on my plane ride home wondering if my parents would be able to sense something different about me. Sure, I had lost my v-card, but something else happened on this trip. I understood how big the world was, beyond my small town, beyond high school, beyond Chad Decker's taunts. All I had to do was get through the next year and a half and then real life would be waiting for me. I could start over and meet people I really connected with and pursue whatever it was I really wanted to do. There was a whole other world out there and I would be living in it soon. My dumb high school issues seemed so small now that I knew they didn't really matter.

When my plane landed back in Saint Thomas, two frantic parents greeted me. My dad angrily clutched his newspaper that I had now delayed him from reading on the beach. My mom's midnight-blue eye-liner looked smeared, her hair undone, and her lips dry. There was no time for her to apply gloss because she had been so terrified something had happened to me, causing me to miss my plane. I'm sure she worried that I had sprained an ankle from not walking carefully enough. Perhaps she envisioned me laid up in a remote Puerto Rican hospital with my ankle elevated unsuccessfully trying to fill out medical forms in Spanish, which I didn't speak a word of despite her repeated suggestions that I enroll in a Spanish class after dropping French.

“
Maaaargot! Thank Ga-odd
!” My mom was in hysterics. She let out all the pent-up fear in one grand old cry. My dad was comforting her, shaking his head at me as he hugged my mom to soothe her.

“I'm fine guys, I just missed my plane.”

I missed my flight for a great reason, because I didn't want to leave a place and a person who made me feel content. They looked so concerned, but really there was no cause for it. I wasn't hurt or kidnapped or lost or scared. Their daughter was just off on a Caribbean island losing her virginity.
Calm down, guys
!

I was happy for the first time since I started high school. They missed me.

CHAPTER 16:

F
or the rest of my junior year, happiness and a new kind of calm settled in. I now was content to ride out the rest of high school, knowing that when I left for college, there would be men like Rodreigo out there in the world—men who treated tall women like goddesses and were unafraid to wear pastels. I had the confidence to make a fresh start senior year. I had permanent teeth implanted, so no more falsies, too.

I even got a new job. I quit the drugstore and was now working the counter at a bakery. Despite having to sometimes be there at 5:30
AM
, I loved my new job. I found it less depressing to sell Boston cream donuts to local residents than to watch Squirrel scratch off nonwinning lottery tickets every day and say to me, “Next time, right?” And who doesn't like being surrounded by baked goods? Aside from the embarrassing rule set that I was the only employee not allowed to write on cakes due to my left-handedness smearing away each letter of Happy Birthday the second after I wrote it, I enjoyed the job.

Usually I worked with a chain-smoking senior citizen who stood outside smoking the majority of her shift. I enjoyed the alone time. Although I missed interacting on a daily basis with my #1 customer, Squirrel, I enjoyed the free brownies I got at my new job. Anything deemed “unfresh” or broken was up for the taking. I lived for the good stuff to break like éclairs, rainbow cookies, and chocolate-chip cookies. My mom liked it too. Now I could bring her unlimited day-old apricot linzer tarts and apple turnovers for her high tea time.

At school, college application deadlines were coming up soon, and I joined every activity possible in an attempt to boost my chances of getting into good schools. I'd never done any sports, due to my inability to run down a field without falling, so my mom encouraged me to join a church volleyball league where everyone who signed up made the team. Never mind that my father is Jewish and my only stint at church was the day I witnessed my mom cry on cue as she sped like a fleeing convict to take me to a Unitarian service that seemed more like a bunch of people in handmade shawls just chillin' out.

The season didn't start off as well as I would have liked. No one on the team listened to my suggestion of bright orange uniforms with purple lettering. Instead, we went with heather gray, a color that made my vegetarian skin look even more gaunt. I hoped people mistook my complexion for illness, which might provide a less mortifying reason why I warmed the bench at every game. Crowds of onlookers would stare, wondering why the tallest member of the volleyball team, now holding tight at five foot nine and a half, wasn't being utilized. At least if I were sick I would be slightly less pathetic than just sucky at all things physical.

My parents attended zero games for support, quite aware that I was just going through the motions so I could check off an additional box on my college applications that didn't involve a brooding artsy activity like creative writing or modern dance. The team didn't
suffer for it. We became intramural champs, no thanks to me, and my mother was thrilled that I could now add “volleyball star” to my college applications. “Maybe you'll even play for the college team,” she purred, knowing full well that having an athletic father, mother, and brother did not trickle down to me and there was no way this would ever happen. I took her little fantasy as a compliment on my potential and went on my way to get back to my normal life of defacing plain T-shirts into works of modern art.