The Devil You Know (8 page)

One night at the pool hall, an enthusiastic drunk chick hugged Blonde off balance and she felt the wig slipping off her head in slo-mo, those perfect honeyed waves sliding down her back and at last to the floor, like a dressing gown in an old movie, or a defrocked superhero's discarded cape. Drunk herself, Blonde retrieved it like a fumbled football and ran outside. She hid behind a monster truck in the parking lot and plopped the disheveled mess back on her hairless head.

He found her and held her while she cried and helped her adjust her bangs. She wiped her nose on his shoulder, looked up at him and laughed through her tears when she saw the look of pity and kindness on his face. Let's go dancing, she said. She walked back through the bar to collect her jacket like nothing could touch her. Later, outside the nightclub, he told her she was the bravest girl he'd ever met. Since she'd now played every card she had, since he'd now seen her more naked than naked, she stood on her toes and kissed him. At last, she thought, as they necked on the sidewalk, his erection pressing against her stomach, I'm the one in charge.

Weeks later, she stood in the doorway of his bedroom, watching him sleep, and contemplated the contagion of his illness. His inability to love hadn't interfered during those first nights and days in bed fueled by sex and jazz cassettes on endless loops and smoking. But before the end of the first month, the booze-and-pills cocktails fueled more all-day naps than marathon fucks. He called in sick to the store for days running, pleading flu, and she just stopped showing up. He called her fat. She hated the face he made when he came. She forgot just what it was that had made her want to change him so badly. She never wanted to listen to a Leonard Cohen album again. The bedclothes stank. Whatever sickness he had, she was not the cure. Blonde pilfered a few handfuls of his best meds (just to keep him from suicide, she told herself), lifted her shimmering hair from the nightstand, and called a taxi for the long, expensive ride home.

Grimsby
Girls

I
WANT TO TELL YOU SOME STORIES ABOUT SOME GIRLS I KNOW.
I collect them; the way some people collect stamps or dolls. It always
starts with a question, and then it's up to them. You'd be surprised at how
easy it is.

I

Well, I'm not really sure if this counts, but it's the thing I remember most.

It was '75 or '76, and I had gone downtown by myself. I was supposed to meet my friend at this record store and then we were going to go hang around together, but I didn't really know where it was. I don't think I had ever been downtown by myself before. I only knew King Street, really, and Main. The rest of Hamilton was pretty much a mystery.

So I'm walking around, not really in a hurry; just looking around. Some guy said “nice tits” to me and I remember that I was a little bit scared, but I also kind of liked it. It made me feel proud, y'know? Up the street, I saw some guys I knew from school, some friends of my brother's mostly, so I went up to them and asked if they knew where this record store was. They weren't any help, but they were going to some party, so I ended up just tagging along with them. They didn't really know where they were going any more than I did, because they couldn't figure out which house this party was supposed to be at. None of the places on the block had people out front or music or anything, and we ended up knocking on the door of some old lady's house on the corner next to the Mac's Milk. She yelled at us and threatened to call the police, even though we hadn't done anything. I got scared and ran down the alley behind the store. Ken, who I'd known the longest, since he and my brother played hockey together, came back there and told me we had to hide. He tried the door of somebody's Vega and it was open, so we climbed in the back seat and scrunched down. I guess the other guys took off down the road.

Ken moved in closer and made a face and at first I thought he was going to say something, but then I realized that he wanted to fool around. I always liked Ken because he was nice to me when I was just a little kid, and because he had hair like Leif Garrett. I let him touch my boobs and we kind of rubbed up against each other for a while. Then he took it out and put my hand on it. I stroked it and then I spit in my hand and jerked him off. I remember thinking, oh god, if my brother finds out about this I'm dead.When I was done, I asked him, “So are we going out now?” even though I didn't really like him that way. Ken looked at me and started crying. I guess I was okay for a hand job but the thought of going out with me made him cry. I told him I was going to tell my brother that he made me do it but that just made him cry harder. I told him to forget it and that he owed me one. Do you know what he did? He gave me the seven dollars and change he had in his pocket. So I guess that was my fate right from the get-go, because I took it and got out of the car and bought a Tab at the store and a copy of
Creem
magazine and took the bus home and never looked him in the eye again.

But my actual virginity? Well, that I can't tell you. It was at this biker party, but I was pretty into the booze by then and I passed out. It may have even been two or three guys in one night, because I hurt like hell the next day. But I guess it hurts anyway, right?

Of course, not all of them are girls anymore, but they were once. When
they tell me, it's like they become girls again. You can see it in their faces,
in their eyes. Some of them light right up, and I can imagine them in their
girl bodies. Some of them don't light up at all.

II

It was on the beach, but not the way you might envision, because it was at Lake Ontario in November. There was even a bit of snow on the ground. We kept everything on that we possibly could: mittens, coats, boots, everything. I imagine there must have been steam coming off us, because you could certainly see your breath that night. We just couldn't wait any longer, and there was nowhere else for us to go. His parents were Christian, and they wouldn't let us be in his room together with the door closed. My parents didn't even know I had a boyfriend, not after the last one. And I think that's all I'll say about that.

That was his first time, although I was already on the Pill, and once again, that's that. As far as I'm concerned, that night on the beach with the cold and the moon and the frost on the rocks was my first time and it's the time that really counts. I believe that if something goes haywire, a woman gets to erase that and start over. Just once.

Some of these girls might seem too much alike. That can happen. Small
towns, and small-town girls, can all start to seem the same after a while.
The thing is, I wish every one of their stories could breathe into your ear
like an Olivia Newton-John song on the car stereo on a warm summer
afternoon. The kind of day where the air is the same temperature as your
skin, and being naked feels like swimming. But that's not how it's going
to go.

III

It was in my garage, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Okay, it's still pretty bad, but there was a couch in there—it was like my own little rec room more than a garage. My parents let me hang out there, because the basement was where they had their bar set up, and the foosball table, plus the spare bedroom, and they needed that space for when they had their card buddies over—not a bunch of stoned teenagers. Which, fair enough, right? It was great when they had friends over on weekends, because they'd hole up down there and get loaded, and never bother us in the garage at all. We could do whatever we liked.

So yeah, it was with a friend of mine, who I'd had a crush on forever, and we were just partying and sitting around one night, talking like we always did, and drawing giant mushrooms and flowers and wizards and stuff on the drywall with magic markers, and then we kissed and ended up on the couch. He was a great kisser, really sexy. Most high school guys didn't kiss like that. He turned me on. We ended up going out for a few weeks, but it turned out to be a bad idea and sex ruined everything. Once we'd been boyfriend and girlfriend, we could never go back to the way things were before. We broke up and could barely look at each other or think of anything to say. I really missed him, because he was a great friend. Sometimes I'd look at his drawings on the drywall—he was a good artist too—and have a little cry about the fun we'd had and how I'd blown our friendship.

These are the girls the big-city radio station makes slut jokes about. Girls
grow up in this small town on a lake, and stay and have girls of their own.
Sprinklers go titch-titch-titch on green lawns as girls crawl out of their
bedroom windows. Ride in cars, up and down Main Street, sneak beers
into the park, get finger-fucked behind the school. Every year, only the
cars and the outfits are different. Generations of girls mocked on morning
radio. Generations of boys in high-school halls daring each another
to sniff their fingers.

IV

What? No, no way. I didn't know you were going to ask me that. Honestly, it's none of your goddamn business.

What about the boys? What do they feel, want, need? Are they disappointed?
Relieved? Might they be the same as the girls? Why don't I ask
them? I'm going to tell you something: I don't care. They've been fucking
things for a long time, inanimate objects of every shape, size, and description.
A girl is just the holy grail of objects for boys to fuck.

V

I didn't think you could get pregnant the first time, which gives you a clue to how long ago it was. My mother never explained anything about sex to me—the message was just that you didn't do it. For years, I didn't even understand what was supposed to happen—I thought that the man peed inside you. The girls at school sometimes talked about it, but they didn't know any more than I did.

The event itself was…well, it was the way it was. He was pushy and I was scared, and I guess nowadays a girl would go to the police about something like that, but I didn't know any better. We were just going on a date, I thought, and things had gotten out of hand. My biggest worry at the time was that he would tell people and my reputation would be ruined. I didn't know what was in store for me.

A few months later, my parents sent me away to a home for unwed mothers and I had my little girl. They pretty much knocked you out when you had a baby back in those days, so I don't remember much. I guess they might have had battles on their hands if they had let girls see those little babies.

Do I miss her? Well, it's hard to miss someone you've never known. But I do think about it. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if she came and found me now, but things were such a secret in those days…I don't suppose she got any more information than I did. We just didn't talk about it. When I got back, that was the end of it. I knew people were whispering, but I didn't care. I just wanted to finish school and move away and get a job somewhere where no one knew me. So that's what I did.

Perhaps there's something more timely to communicate here—information
about teen pregnancy rates, worldwide attitudes on rape, statistics
on female genital mutilation. Would that make these stories more important
than just looking through a keyhole, like we're doing now?

VI

If you tell anybody about this, you're fucking dead, I swear. Got it? It's happening tonight, after the formal. Dude, I'm serious. Why not? Brandon's older brother put a hotel room on his Visa for us and everything.

Yeah, I think it'll be super-romantic—I mean, we've got the limo until two, and I'm gonna look so hot. Mom thinks I'm staying over at Ashley's, so I even get to sleep in the next day. But mostly I just want to get it over with. It's like when you're waiting for your period to come and it feels like every single girl in your class has it except you and you just want to get it out of the way so you can say that you've had it. Because once that's over with, then you can relax and act normal and shit. I hate that dividing line between who has and who hasn't—I want to get over to the other side. I know it might hurt and it might not even be that great, I don't know. I'm getting totally wasted so I won't feel the pain as much, I hope.

What is it these girls are trying to tell you? Do they want to tell you that
sex is painful, sex is boring, sex is nothing like the movies and the
romance novels promised? Do they want to tell you that it can be magical
sometimes? Do they want to tell you that even when it's not magical, that
everything will still be okay?

VII

I haven't lost it yet, if that's the way you want to look at it—as “losing” something. It's not really by choice; I'd like to be in that kind of relationship with someone, I just never figured out how to go about it. And I didn't want to go around embarrassing myself. Life is hard enough without actively seeking humiliation. I just waited for a nice guy to ask me out, and that never happened. That person just never materialized. I've gone out with girlfriends in the past to a few bars and nightclubs, places like that, and there might have been a couple of opportunities there, but I didn't want to go home with some strange man I met at a bar after last call. How would someone react to that kind of news upon rounding second base: a twenty-seven-year-old woman who's never had sex? Sure, men can say that virgins are “hot,” but I think the reality is considerably more awkward than anyone's letting on.

I suppose the worst part is that the longer I'm around, the less likely it seems that the situation will change. It also occurs to me less and less. I've managed this long without it and most of the time I don't understand what the big deal is. I think sometimes about living with another person, having someone to come home to, another warm body in the bed and a kind soul to give me a hug if I've had a bad day, but I don't think about “doing it” that often. If my friends are to be believed, most men are terrible at it anyway. They've all had their hearts broken so often, and for what? I don't know; certainly there's something that keeps them going back for more. But I'm not the one to ask about that.