X is for X-Rated

By Justine Cadwell

Let’s talk about sex ba-by/let’s talk about ther-a-py. Pretty sure that’s how the song goes.

***

“Waaaaaahh,” my 18-month-old daughter wails from my bedroom. I bolt out of the bathroom to rescue her.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

She approaches me with tears in her eyes, cradling a trembling pink toy she must have turned on by accident.

Oh—I see you’ve found my vibrator.

***

The first time I sexually experimented, I was 5 years old. My friend Natalie and I debated over who would play “the boyfriend” and decided to take turns. I pulled down my underwear to let her kiss my mons pubis and labia majora (it was all a “vagina” back then). She laughed in between kisses, highlighting the fact we were confused children with the vague notion genitals were “private” and therefore, forbidden and exciting. But also, haha—vagina!

Two years later, I set up an elaborate plan to kiss my friend Beth, creating a scene where we ran around a “building” (a large appliance box) and our lips just happened to run into each other. Somewhere in this plan, I convinced her to remove her shirt as well.

Shortly after this, I felt the need to come clean. Sexual feelings were embarrassing and certainly not appropriate for kids. During a bath, I confessed pieces of these events to my mom as shame spread through my body. The response I received was loud and clear: don’t do that again.

Inside a sleeping bag, I pseudo-masturbated around the age of 7. There may have been some play commentary that my older sister overheard on the other side of the room.

“What are you doing?” Louisa demanded, a tone of disgust in her inquiry.

The message I received was loud and clear: don’t do that again.

Catholicism taught me the sterilized notion of sex looking like a married couple having sex in the dark to create more of God’s children.

Casual sex was:

                                                           DIRTY

                 DANGEROUS

                   AN ABOMINATION

Lesson learned: sexual desire is wrong.

While watching the movie “Ghost”, my parents instructed me to hide behind the recliner during the pottery scene. When Forrest and Jenny make love in “Forrest Gump,” my Catholic maternal grandmother squirmed, prompting my sister and me to fast-forward. These movies were rated PG-13.

Most of the sexual media I absorbed as a child were the unedited bits of whatever was showing on cable television. As a result, I witnessed overemphasized elements of coercion and male pleasure. At the beginning of “Romancing the Stone” a woman is held at gunpoint while a dirty cowboy demands she take off her clothes. In “Abducted,” a deranged mountain man kidnaps and sexually assaults a female jogger. These movies were rated PG.

When I was twelve, I locked my bedroom door and muted my 19-inch television to watch late-night soft-core porn on Cinemax. I tried to trick myself into thinking I wanted to teach myself what was expected of me, sexually. I wasn’t depraved, this was research! Apparently, pubic hair was undesirable because these ladies didn’t have any.

X-rated movies hid behind a curtain at the video rental store. Years after tricking Beth into kissing me, I suggested we rent the horror classic “I Spit on Your Grave” because the description promised a rape and revenge tale. Not fucked up at all, huh? I was so desperate to view sex in a socially acceptable manner. I had to rely on Hollywood’s exploitation of women, cloaked in an innocent desire to watch a scary movie. America loves its murder porn.

I remember talking to my mom about sex exactly twice as a teenager. As I rummaged around the refrigerator for a snack, she caught me off guard.

“I saw on Oprah that kids in junior high are giving oral sex in school bathrooms. Do you know anything about this?”

“Uhh—”

I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet.

The next conversation happened in the car around the age of 15. My mom told me whenever I decided to start having sex, to be sure and get on the pill first:

“No daughter of mine is getting pregnant in high school.”

Good talk, mom.

My academic sexual education was not much better. In my sixth-grade health class, I received an assignment to write a letter to my future spouse, promising to “save myself” for him. During my tenth-grade health class, boys were instructed to stand on one side of the room while girls stood on the other side. We scribbled down STDs on sheets of paper and then walked toward each other in pairs.

“I just gave you syphilis,” I sheepishly announce to my classmate.

“And I am giving you herpes,” they reply.

From the novelty store Spencers, my male friend stole a white vibrator for me that looked like a medical device. I didn’t ask him to, but he had a crush on me, and maybe this was his way of wooing me? Perhaps I could self-educate. I attempted to masturbate, turning the vibrator on, and pushing it in and out of my vagina, mechanically. What is supposed to be so great about this? I didn’t understand the difference between a vulva and a vagina or where the clitoris was or how it worked or what to do— so I gave up on masturbation and eventually tossed the vibrator in an apartment dumpster.

***

All American women grow up facing the virgin/whore dichotomy: you should be pleasing to look at and accommodate men’s desires, but if you explore your own sexual inclinations, you’re a “hussy.” You can read all about it in “The Purity Myth” by badass Jessica Valenti if you want to be “woke.”

Thanks to Catholic indoctrination and America’s deranged views toward sex, I approach watching porn with a look-over-your-shoulder, because your parents might catch you vibe, even as a married thirtysomething year old.

Most porn is created with men in mind, and the industry is problematic. But women like porn, too, and there’s even some created by and for women. The “Fifty Shades of Grey” series is popular for a reason (despite the horrendous writing). I’m a feminist who doesn’t want to support raunchy old men, but I’m also a human being with the ability to watch people have sex in the comfort of my own home. What’s a girl to do?

***

From a naughty NSFW subreddit, I click on various videos, equally enthralled and horrified.

People get off on this? I wonder aloud, clicking on “Stepdad Fucks Stepdaughter on Kitchen Table.”

Suddenly, my sinful quest is interrupted by an official-looking message: my computer has been compromised, and I need to call the number on the screen to fix it. Obviously, a Microsoft message, created by Windows staff! Well shit, this didn’t look good.

I should call my husband Derek to verify this sketchy pop-up. He works at Microsoft and knows computers in a way I never will. He also knows I occasionally look at porn, so it wouldn’t be a total shock. But I’m embarrassed by the content I clicked on and prefer to erase the laptop memory when I’m done, so I’ll just solve this issue on my own.

I dial the number and await my fate. When a man answers the phone, there is excessive background noise which strikes me as odd, but he sounds official enough. He has a strong Indian accent, and I try to push any stereotypical assessments out of my mind. Microsoft has offices all around the globe, after all.

I tell him my plight, reading off the message on my computer screen.

“It looks like you were looking at some adult content.”

I want to die right now. “Yeah…”

“It’s only natural. I can direct you to some websites that are safer to visit in the future.”

“No, this has ruined porn for me. I’m never looking at it ever again!”

He butters me up, making my shame less palpable. Then, he gets down to business.

The man directs me to a help site where he pretends (I later learn) to log into a staff Microsoft account (he’s good) and proceeds to take control of my computer.

Occasional red flags pop up during our conversation, making me question the validity of this whole operation, but then he says or does something convincing, restoring my confidence.

Apparently, I need to buy a firewall program to solve the problem. The cost is somewhere around $100 or $200. Two hundred dollars and this all goes away? Worth it.

Then I do the unthinkable. I give this man my credit card info. To my credit (heh), I use a card with a low credit limit that isn’t tied to my bank account. So, I’m a dummy, but a cautious one at least.

The man keeps prompting me to purchase additional bells and whistles.

“I can’t afford that. I just want the issue resolved as soon as possible.”

After several minutes, he gives up and tells me to await a phone call from their billing department for confirmation.

I call Derek to confess and explain the situation to see if I had been duped. You bet I had.

“They have control of my computer, and they’re processing payment now—”

“Shut off your computer.”

“Shut it down?”

“Shut it off right now.”

“Ahhh, okay!”

I plead my case, “They were so convincing!”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of those. They’ve gotten really good.”

Derek tells me to call my credit card company to try and get the charges reversed. During a three-way call with Capital One and the scammer “company,” I accuse them of such. They assure me they are a legit operation and would be happy to reimburse me.

After some investigation, Derek determined they were trying to sell themselves as a credible organization, so he wasn’t too concerned they would try to steal information off my computer, but of course, we updated our security, changed passwords, etc. to be safe.

Wisdom garnered: You’ll pay for giving in to your sexual curiosities, ya heathen!

***

Is it any wonder I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was in my twenties?  When my friend Kaitlin discovered this, she was horrified.

“We’re going to buy you a vibrator and I’m going to wait outside your bedroom door until you finish!”

That’s not how it went down but I appreciated her concern. In college, I finally received a proper sexual education via a health course that explained how important the clitoris was and a trip to Sex World where I purchased a pink vibrator.

“Have you had an orgasm yet?” my friend Annika asked.

“I think so?”

“You’d know.”

A few days later, the difference between almost and achieving climax became crystal clear.                

Unfortunately, the ability to have an orgasm with a partner was an entirely different story. A long one, so here’s a quick summary: After years of struggling to have an orgasm in Derek’s presence, he encouraged me to seek out the help of a sex therapist. She recommended an informative book called “Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life” by Emily Nagoski. The contents of this book + more sex therapy + the decision to open our marriage + dirty thirties hormones = things have improved. But there was a lot of unlearning to do, no thanks to the sex-negative culture I was raised in.

***

I laugh as I reclaim my vibrator from my scared toddler. Whoops! I guess I forgot to put that away.

I aim to raise my daughter in a sex-positive household. Not too long ago, I heard her singing a song from the bathtub that made me proud:

This is the way I wash my vulva/wash my vulva/wash my vulva/This is the way

I wash my vulva /so early in the mor-ning.

A vulva and a vagina are not the same thing? Who knew?

Justine Cadwell is the author of “The ABCs of My Neuroses: Tales from an Anxious Life,” coming soon from Library Tales Publishing. She blogged at TheHungryGuineaPig.wordpress.com and ParentalAdvisorySite.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared in The Collapsar, Adelaide, Fine Lines, and Braided Way magazines. When she’s not writing, she’s working as a clinical dietitian at a long-term care facility, playing music as “Channeling Merlyn” on her YouTube channel, or volunteering at the food pantry or hospice with her best friend. Justine lives in Minnesota with her husband, daughter, and feline friend. To see more of her work, follow her on Twitter @JustineCadwell

I Said

By L.V. Senuta

It is good to be alive they said

But not if there is none to dread

A life worth living is one with flaws

They said it would be more than cause

Don’t be bossy they said to me

Nice girls are those who listen freely

Don’t fight for worthless battles

A small complaint is all that tattles

You have to know what makes you pretty

Or else you’ll finish gray and knitting

Without a husband and a fine son

You’ll die a widow, looked down on and done

How dare you speak up about what you think

Your voice is not at all worth the ink

Listen to the officials first

Then maybe you’ll be excused from your worst

Where is your makeup, you forgot to smile

That tank top is too short, but show what is while

You have good looks so show them off

Why are you difficult, just take it off!

You’re pretty smart for a girl, they say

Even for the monthly you’re acting okay

Am I supposed to be a weak little thing

Born and raised by nature’s own thing?

I am a woman, strong and brave

I have feelings I’m not afraid to save

Yes I’m a woman, with multiple thoughts

I’m not here to waddle with two coffee pots

Since when will they get that I am better

Born and raised on the same earth for one letter

“I” is my way, and I will make change

Some that those who “once said” can’t trade

With three hearts to love I present them all

One to love myself, for I always stand tall

The rest for others and the world I’ve lead

And I am more than a woman, I said

L.V. Senuta has been writing fiction and poetry since the age of twelve. She says “I am constantly working on new projects. I write short stories, long stories, numerous verses strung up into fabulous poetry, and my favorite genres of writing include sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and realistic fiction. I hope that my creations can be an escape, a sanctuary, and an adventure all through my own words. I’m excited to bring my works into this magazine, and I hope you find it all as mellifluous as I do.”

Self-Portrait of the Poet, Looking at a Photo of Herself

By Sara Letourneau

Photo taken at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, September 2021

Look at my eyes

and how they sparkle like tumbled aventurine

behind my glasses. Everyone says my eyes

are the first thing they notice about me.

So did my boyfriend when we finally sat down

to talk about love. He still swears my irises

are the color of polished nickel.

I disagree, but I won’t deny that,

when in just the right light

and at just the right angle, they glow—

soft and steady, like the headlamps

we’ll both wear at the Lava Tunnel cave tour

in a few days. But right here, right now,

I’m at the airport, waiting with him

for our check-in desk to open,

glasses on and sweetly tilted

as I look at his camera,

dark brown hair half-up,

half falling out of the matching elastic;

one hand tugging down my magenta COVID mask

so I can smile for the photo (and for him),

the other curled around the small of my back

to reveal a peek of the opal promise ring

he gave me five months ago.

No pimples or chin hairs are visible,

the freckles on my cheeks too small to see

from this short distance,

but it’s clear from the heart-blush on my cheeks

and the vastness of my grin that I’m thinking

only about the upcoming trip

and not my perceived imperfections.

Behind me, the waiting area at Terminal E

is dim, the announcement screens and white numbers

at each closed desk blurred, almost impossible

to read, as the girl in the mint green shirt—

the girl who is me—

reflects all of the room’s light

like the snow I’ll see atop Snaefellsjökull in one week.

Or perhaps I’m not reflecting light

but emitting my own,

a beacon of my world and his,

using lenses made of intuition that flash a message—

Look at me, I am beautiful—

that I’m only now beginning to believe.

---

In the Bath

Here,

in the hotel bathtub,

I am resting

in water scented with

coconut shampoo

and arctic thyme bath salts,

rinsing myself

in solitude,

a river of reveling.

My boyfriend has already

washed my hair

and my body,

but that is not

why I feel

cleaner

and newborn.

Here,

in this bathtub,

I marvel at myself

for the first time as an adult.

Smooth, uncalloused feet

with toenails painted

the purple of orchids.

The thighs I’ve called

thick and flabby,

now weightless.

My stomach,

softly sloping,

a meadow of skin

inclining toward

the hills of my breasts.

Slender arms,

with hands that hold love

and fingers that give back.

Now they wave

from side to side

so that gentle tides

are slapping against porcelain,

splashing my face,

rippling, whispering.

Here,

in the bathtub,

I let my body rise

to the surface,

let my old fetal self

unfurl my limbs and neck

so my new eyes

and freshened mind

can see me as I glisten,

as I glow.

Here,

a dam I never knew

I had built

bursts inside,

and thoughts of

blemishes,

scars,

spidering veins

are swept out to sea

as I caress

this precious vessel

that carries me.

Sara Letourneau is a poet, freelance book editor, writing coach, and writing workshop instructor who lives in suburban Massachusetts. Her poetry has received first place in the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water Contest and appeared in Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment and The Hard Work of Hope, Constellations, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, The Avocet, The Aurorean, Golden Walkman Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, and Muddy River Poetry Review, among others. When she’s not working or writing, she enjoys drinking tea, doing yoga, reading, cooking and baking, and going on adventures (including traveling) with her boyfriend. Her manuscript for her first full-length collection of poems is currently on submission. You can learn more about Sara at https://heartofthestoryeditorial.com/.

Sunday

By Karian Markos

as a kid I wished for conformity

my name sounds like another word—

what vultures call their breakfast

like Marion with a K

blaming my parents for their ignorance of English homophones is unfair

their thoughtful creativity conceived of this mishmash

for fear a Spanish rooster would awkwardly crow my real name

on the first day of kindergarten—

kikiriki and Kyriaki sound awfully similar

and so abrasive to small, third-generation German Irish ears

and quite the tongue twister for a teacher

the solution—

Karian kicks six kittens quick

Karian kicks six kittens quick

Karian kicks six kittens quick

rolls off the tongue

my Greek name means Sunday so I could have been a Sunny—

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

just as easy and no animals were harmed

as a kid I wished for conformity

for sleepovers and dances with boys

for ham and cheese instead of taramosalata

for time outs instead of flying shoes

for the freedom my ancestors coveted

the weight of my family tree was placed square on my shoulders

its reputation was secured in a vault between my legs

pride bedded shame and my tangle of dual loyalties was born

two flags two homes two names

Karian Markos is a Greek American poet, fiction writer and nonprofit attorney living with her husband and three children in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Much of her poetry and short fiction explores issues relating to identity and mental health. She is currently working on her first novel, a dark fantasy fiction inspired by medieval Greece. She donates much of her professional time to charitable organizations that work with children. Her work has been published in Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Bombfire.

Jodi Tolman

From the column

Just a Moment

Essay

Teach Your Children Well

He was furious. Seething. I wouldn’t let my four-year-old son have a play date that morning and at bedtime, he still wanted to kill me. Our delicious nightly ritual included my lying with him when we’d talk, cuddle and just generally adore one another. But this night, Adoration Rd. was a one-way street and the traffic was not flowing in my direction.

“I love you, Jack,” I said, testing the roiling waters. “I don’t love you,” came the darts from the highest, reediest voice you’d ever heard. “Really???,” said I. “What about all those kisses you gave me?” He said, “I was kidding.” “Seriously???” I said. “I could’ve sworn you meant those!” “Nope.” And with that he turned his bony little back to me.

In my best motherly mode I explained that I knew he was so angry at me, he couldn’t feel the love. That at that moment, his anger was much bigger than his love and was in the way. I went on to calmly add that I know how he feels and that even when I’m so mad at him and can’t feel the love, I know it’s still there. It’s just out of reach for the moment.

He insisted. “No. I just don’t love you.” This from the kid who some weeks before, at bedtime, was so visibly upset that I had to ask if everything was alright. Tearfully, he tried to find the unutterable words that he could barely imagine speaking but knew he must. He said “I have something horrible to tell you.” I asked “What is it, sweetheart?” “It’s going to hurt your feelings!” “That’s OK, Jack. I’m a very strong person and I can take it. You can tell me anything.” All in a gush of weeping and relief my tortured little boy confessed. “I love Daddy more than you!” “I know you do, sweet boy. But I know you love me, too. And that’s just fine with me.” With his burden lifted and in a torrent of emotion and empathy he said, “I love Daddy 1000 but I love you 999!”

As he continued to lie with his back to me, still fuming, I said “You can’t tell right now, but you will love me again soon, Jack. It may take a while, but your big anger will get smaller and that tiny love will get bigger and bigger. You’ll see.”

I could feel his scrawny little body start to let go ever so slightly. I heard his breathing slow just a bit. Slumber had tiptoed into the room and was stealing closer. I whispered “Don’t worry, sweetest heart. You’ll love me again soon.” And just as he drifted off, he said in a barely audible, sleepy voice, “I’ll love you on Sunday.”

“That’s great, Jack. I can wait.”

Casino Night

By Alison Ferris

I am walking down the back stairs of Troy High School to the cafeteria for lunch. I’m a freshman and it’s 1977. At the bottom of the stairs, I turn right, and I find myself shoved under the staircase, up against an institutional mint-green tile wall.

“I’m going to kick the shit out of you. John is my boyfriend.”

The girl’s name is Paula, and she is, according to John, his ex-girlfriend. John is a sophomore boy who regularly stops by my locker to talk to me. “He likes you, Alison,” my best friend Mara taunts.

“He’s not my boyfriend.” I reply to Paula, exposing a mouth full of braces and small, blue rubber bands. I feel panic enveloping my body. I don’t know how to fight.

“Who do you think you are, rich girl,” she says, glaring, her face now in mine. Unbeknownst to me, my other best friend, Lisa, is running down the stairs, skipping some as she goes. Paula is yanked and pushed against the wall next to me, her head hitting the ceramic tile with an alarming crack. “Leave my friend alone.” Lisa says through gritted teeth, her hands pressing Paula’s shoulders against the wall. “Do you hear me? Leave her the fuck alone.” Paula nods. Lisa grabs my arm and leads me to the cafeteria. She has a reputation for getting into fights with anyone who provokes her rage. But Lisa is a sweet, generous friend to me and Mara. The three of us are inseparable.

“Jesus, Lisa. Thank you.” I’m sitting at a table across from her, still dazed by the incident.

“That girl’s a slut. I know her. She won’t bother you again.”

Lisa is right. Paula hasn’t given me as much as a sideways glance since the incident under the staircase. And John doesn’t stop by my locker anymore, either.

Troy, New York, is on the east side of the Hudson River, 150 miles north of New York City. It is one of the three cities—including Albany and Schenectady, on the west side of the river—that constitute the Capital District. For years, Troy was disparaged, and for good reason. The patriarchs of Troy bought into the 1960s idea of “urban renewal” and demolished blocks and blocks of buildings containing small businesses and nineteenth-century brownstones that housed predominantly black and low-income families. The plan was to build a mall with plenty of adjacent parking, to attract business and shoppers to downtown Troy. Through lack of foresight, if not abject racism, they tore the buildings down before they raised the money to build the mall. My family moved to Troy in 1968 when I was five years old, and ever since we’ve lived here, it looks as if a bomb was dropped on the city. The area that was destroyed is surrounded by a series of tall chain-link fences, the debris from the destruction visible like an open, oozing wound. The violence of it is startling.

Downtown or south Troy is low-income or working-class; the further up the hills, the more prosperous. My family lives about ten minutes up the hill from downtown, off Route 2: middle to upper-middle class. One of the wealthiest neighborhoods, Brunswick Hills, is a bit farther east of ours and is a series of even higher hills. Paula doesn’t recognize me from her side of town, so she assumes I’m rich. And honestly, if I hadn’t already known, I’d have guessed she was from South Troy. In my neighborhood we don’t fight. We orchestrate ostracism and, as a last resort, make public accusations of obscene behavior.

Mara, my best friend since kindergarten, is a rich girl. She lives in the neighborhood across a field, to the east of mine, and we constantly shuttle back and forth to each other’s houses. Mara’s father owns a successful business downtown, her mother is a member of the Junior League, and their family belongs to the country club. In the winter, they go skiing every weekend. Downhill, not cross-country like my family. Oh, they also have a sailboat that they keep down on the Long Island Sound.

My dad is a professor and teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and my mom works part-time as an educator at the local Presbyterian church. My parents are considered radical weirdos in our small, suburban neighborhood because they voted for Jimmy Carter. Plus, we’re Protestants. Most of the people I know are Catholic. My mom was one of the first mothers in our neighborhood to get a part-time job back when my sister and I were in elementary school. She didn’t have to take the job for financial reasons, but she wanted one because she is a feminist, and she wants more out of life than being just a wife and mother. It’s true that she also likes having her own money to spend so she doesn’t have to argue with my dad about it. Getting a job meant that she also needs her own car, and her first car was a used, white VW bug. We celebrated by decorating it with five flower-power stickers, swirly psychedelic daisies, three on the hood and two above the back bumper. Laura, my younger sister, and I were proud of her for having a job and being a feminist. I’m personally having some doubts about her job now, not because I’m against feminism or don’t think women should have jobs. It’s just that she’s obsessed with her job. It’s all she thinks and talks about. But anyway, I’m not sure what all this means about my family, I just know it means we’re not rich because our life is nothing like Mara’s.

Mara is, easily, the most hilarious and fun person I know. We are outrageously silly together. She is also an irrepressible flirt. Whenever I have a crush on a boy, I hope Mara doesn’t flirt with him because boys always end up liking her more. She has a brother, Frankie, who is four years older. Frankie tells her what French kissing and blowjobs are, and she loves to explain it all to me. She also learns about make-up and what’s in fashion because she goes with her mother to a hair salon almost every week. When we were in seventh grade, Mara came with me to the army/navy store downtown, to help me pick out my first pair of jeans: straight-leg, stone-washed Lee jeans. Freshman year, she showed me how to put liquid blue eyeliner on the inside rim of my lower eyelids. We always share our clear, fruit-flavored lip glosses.

It is Mara who informs me about the sexual revolution. There are articles about it in her Mom’s Cosmopolitan Magazine that is on a magazine rack in the upstairs bathroom. The main thing I learn, from reading Cosmo and then talking to Mara about it, is that the sexual revolution made it okay to have sex, even if you weren’t married. I think it might have started in San Francisco with the hippies during the Summer of Love in 1967 but I’m not sure. The sexual revolution also happened because of the pill. Feminists say that any woman should be able to get birth control pills, not just women who are married. And now because of feminists, the sexual revolution, and the pill, women like to have sex. I guess they didn’t like it as much before because they always had to worry about getting pregnant.

It's hard to make sense of the difference between feminism and the sexual revolution and what kind of woman belongs to which movement. For instance, some people say that feminists are lesbians and hate men. That doesn’t make sense because my mom is a feminist. Even though she fights with my dad a lot, I don’t think she hates him. People also say that feminists aren’t attractive and even try not to be attractive, but my mom almost always looks nice. Her hair is long and straight, and she puts it in a ponytail or twists it up, securing it with a suede, butterfly-shaped barrette. She cuts her hair herself. On special occasions and Sunday mornings when we go to church, she wears clip-on earrings. She wears jumpers or skirts that she sews herself. She hardly ever wears jeans, even when she works in the garden, or we go hiking. She’s not fancy but she tries to look okay.

Mara’s mom is very fashionable, but I think that’s because she believes in the sexual revolution. She gets her hair frosted and has it professionally cut. She wears black, beige, or grey turtlenecks in fine knits, tucked into her low-cut, bell-bottomed jeans. She has brown motorcycle boots, and a couple of leather jackets. She has pierced ears and wears large silver hoops and her turquoise-laden silver cuffs remind me of Wonder Woman’s bullet deflecting bracelets. She also tries new recipes for her family’s dinners from Better Homes and Gardens.

My mom uses Betty Crocker’s Cookbook and Campbell soup can recipes. She describes our family as being “non-materialistic.” I ask my parents why our family doesn’t belong to the Country Club. Dad says, “I don’t play golf.” Mom explains, “We just don’t share the same values as Mara’s family, honey.” I get it, but sometimes I wish my mom was as cool as Mara’s mom and our food didn’t always taste like Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup.

Mara and I met Lisa in our open-concept art class in eighth grade. When we were getting to know her in class, and Mara and I were being silly, Lisa would look up from her art project and slowly begin to smirk. She has a great sense of humor. But only a few people, like me and Mara, know this. Like us, Lisa lives on a hill outside of downtown Troy, but on the south side, in a small suburban neighborhood that was built next to a low-income housing development. Lisa is tall and has red hair. She walks with a swagger and isn’t quick to smile. Sometimes her expression is hard, her dark eyes almost blank. One day, I notice she has bruises on her neck, near her collar bone, and ask her how she got them. “My stepdad.” she says.

“What do you mean, your stepdad?” I ask.

“He got mad at me and grabbed me. I punched him in the stomach, and he let me go. I’m used to it.”

During the late spring of eighth grade, on Friday nights after dinner, I’d get my dad to drive Mara and me across town to Lisa’s house. Lisa’s mom, Sharon, thinks Mara and I are a good influence on Lisa who, until she met us, I guess, was a loner. Sharon loves the fact that my dad is an RPI professor and that Mara’s parents belong to the Troy Country Club. She thinks that by hanging out with us, Lisa has come up in the world. It seems to give her hope for her daughter’s future which makes me sad, but I don’t know why.

On one of those Friday evenings at Lisa’s, we decide to drink beer. Lisa heard about a store downtown that would sell alcohol to anyone; no ID required. We can walk there from her house. We meet an older kid and it turns out he is going to that store, too, so he offers to buy us the beer.

“What kind of beer do you want?” he asks.

“Genny cream ale,” says Lisa like a pro.

“And a pack of Marlboros!” Mara calls out. She was regularly stealing and smoking her parents’ cigarettes. We walk back up the hill and find a place to sit in a clearing on the edge of the development, overlooking downtown Troy. It is the first time I drink a beer and smoke a cigarette.

“I feel like I’m going to puke.” I say after taking a drag of the cigarette.

“You’ll get used to it.” Mara reassures me. Lisa is quiet, staring below at the neighborhoods of brownstones with flat rooftops interspersed with church steeples. Iron foundries and the old, semi-abandoned textile factories where shirts and detachable collars were made in the nineteenth century, line the banks of the mighty, muddy, polluted Hudson River. Interstate 787 runs parallel to the river, to the west, and hums with cars and trucks. The sky turns yellow and pink over a distant range of gently sloping mountains and then a couple of stars appear.

“I like the view from here,” observes Lisa.                        

“This is the best.” I sigh.

“I’ve got to pee,” Mara announces. We pick up our bottles and put them in a brown paper bag. Lisa pulls a pack of Bubblicious out of her jean jacket pocket and gives us some. “So your dad doesn’t smell the beer on your breath,” she explains. Dad’s 1970 two-door Ford Torino is waiting in Lisa’s driveway when we get back to her neighborhood.

“Those are some big wads of gum,” Dad observes as we get in the car.      

“It’s new. It’s called Bubblicious.”

“You sound like cows chewing on their cud.” he replies. As we back out of the driveway, I turn the car radio on to WTRY. When I see the station advertised on billboards, the letters read to me as WhyTRY. Aptly named, our radio station, for our blighted, economically depressed, post-industrial city in bleak, upstate New York.

When we start high school, the incident involving Paula almost beating me up is just the beginning. As the fall progresses, I notice that Lisa, who is always a little uneasy and on edge, is full-on agitated. Something isn’t right but she’s not saying what’s wrong. She is smoking joints instead of cigarettes, which she shares with Mara and me in the parking lot. And then, Mara tells us about her father. Her brother saw their father at a bar downtown, drinking and talking with prostitutes. Not only that, but he snorted coke with them. She wonders if her father sleeps with them, too. This information, like the bruises that keep appearing on different parts of Lisa’s body, is so foreign, so outlandish to me, I don’t know how to make sense of it. These are my two best friends, and I don’t know how to talk to them about what’s happening. The two of them are closer now, bonding over the increased complications in their lives which they know I can’t comprehend. I feel left out. I watch as they graduate from smoking pot to popping speed, quaaludes, whatever they can get their hands on. I’m scared for them, tell them that, and they just laugh and turn away. Everything feels out of control and my friends’ newfound interest in amphetamines isn’t helping me feel better. I make the decision not to join them on their journey towards oblivion. I even quit smoking pot with them. But I can’t just stop being friends with them. That would be cruel. The only way to get out of this situation, I think, is to leave Troy High.

I tell my parents I want to visit the private, all-girls high school in town. My mother, who isn’t paying attention to me or Laura, caught up in her career and own endeavors to discover herself, says she doesn’t want me to go to this private school because I’d be removed from the “real world.” But Mom has no fucking idea about my “real world.” Dad grimaces because it costs money. Typical. What about not having boys around, Laura asks. It’s true. I think about boys a lot. But going to an all-girls school simply means boys will not hog all the attention in class. I know where to find them if I want to at the end of the day. A new school, surrounded by an imposing, black, iron fence topped with sharp spikes seems more promising in terms of keeping me and my life together. Somehow, I convince my parents I must go.

********

September 8, 1978, is the day I go to the new school, a boarding school for girls officially categorized as a preparatory high school. When the school was started in 1821, it was called the Troy Female Seminary. Dad sometimes asks me at breakfast, “Do you need me to pick you up this afternoon at the Troy Female Seminary?” I always laugh and reply in a fancy voice “Yes, I do. Will you be arriving from the Polytechnic Institute?” The Troy Female Seminary was originally in downtown Troy. When the new campus was built in 1910, it was renamed the Emma Willard School, after the school’s founder. It’s at the top of one of Troy’s hills, the one called Mt. Ida. Most of the girls live in dorms at the school and are called “borders.” Those of us from the Capital District area who don’t live there, are called “day students.” Day students come from diverse family and class backgrounds but few match, in status and wealth, the families of boarding students. Perhaps that’s why day students have a separate entrance on the opposite side of the campus. The day student “lounge” is next to that entrance, in a basement of one of the classroom buildings, furnished with musty, secondhand couches, and a rickety old wooden coffee table that we put our feet on because we can, surrounded by three or four round, scratched, rigid plastic, yellow chairs. Our meager, rusty lockers are nearby. It’s a dark, forgotten place. There are about thirty of us, and no one complains about being relegated to the basement. I relish living amongst the daytime cave dwellers; it is a world onto itself, and we’re mostly left alone.

When we emerge from the underground tunnels, the school is as majestic as can be imagined; it is a castle on a hill. Its architectural style, I learn, is Gothic Revival. The buildings have gargoyles. There is a bell tower, a quadrangle, a chapel, and a separate new gym in addition to the dormitories and classroom buildings. Emma Willard has rituals, traditions, a distinct history, and the unspoken expectation that all the young women who go here, even the day students, are going to someday change the world for the better. In the meantime, thankfully, there is a smoking area. The smoking area is one place where day students and boarders mingle in an unstructured environment. I go there often with my friend Margo. Margo wears L.L. Bean Faire Isle sweaters and penny loafers. I bet she thinks about my clothes the same way I think about hers – that they’re kind of odd – even though my untucked, striped, oxford-cloth shirt, jean jacket, and dark, burgundy cowboy boots are normal. She has a sassy, chin-length bob while mine is almost down to my waist and parted in the middle. Margo has the best laugh I ever heard–it’s deep, full, guttural, and authentic–and, as we smoke Merits and drink Diet Cokes, I do my best to invent the most outrageous, irreverent cracks I can come up with about the people and our school, just to hear her roar. Hot Blooded by Foreigner plays in the background, and I ask her: “What’s with that mean math teacher, Mrs. Mayer? She looks like That Girl with her flippy hair and bangs. Doesn’t she know it’s the seventies? And why is she so mean?” “Does anyone talk about how creepy Mr. Bernhard is? He kinda looks like a pervy Herman Munster.” “Also, why does everyone wear the same clothes here with whales and anchors and alligators on them. Does it mean, like, if you’re wearing a whale belt, you’re part of some kind of whale cult?” I once asked, on a more serious note, why, if everyone at this school wants us to be strong women and successful leaders, there’s no talk about feminism. All I got in response were blank faces and shrugs.

  There are two dining halls where day students can join the borders and faculty for lunch. I learn, during these lunchtime conversations, how different my life is from most of these girls. An articulate and self-assured girl I admire for her fierce intelligence reads a letter in the lunch line. I watch her face, eagerly drinking in news from home, switch in an instant, to despair followed by tears. She says out loud, “This isn’t from my dad, he had his secretary write this.” She left, I guess, to go to her room to suffer the betrayal on her own. It gave me a new appreciation for my dad who, even though he spends every evening working at his desk, always makes time for me if I ask for it. Another time, on our way to lunch, we see the police arrive. Word spreads that one of the girls left campus without permission, was picked up by men in a van, and raped. She left school and never returned.

One of the first dances I go to is also attended by Prince Abdullah II of Jordan. The boys are bused from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. It is winter and the dance is in one of the dining halls, minus the tables and chairs. Walnut paneling and molding line the old buildings with dim, yellow lights in old-fashioned, brass fixtures. The softly glowing, dark interiors are spooky to me, as a stranger to the place at night. The boys wear jackets and ties and have expressions and affects unfamiliar and unreadable to me. I can’t guess what they whisper about to each other like I can with the boys I grew up with. I recognize one boy, Danny, who transferred from Troy High to Deerfield. Wearing the same kind of jacket and tie as the others, he’s now mysterious–but I didn’t really know him before, so we don’t talk. My memories of this night are like scenes in a film, the camera panning back and forth and through the dance floor, recording the awkward forms of dancing adolescent bodies, their laughing faces askew in slow-motion, evoking an overall strange, distilled atmosphere of dislocation.

I am walking back from the outdoor smoking area, having taken a break from the dance, when I meet Tim. Standing on the walkway shivering, we talk for a bit and then, out of the blue, he invites me to an event at their school the following month. I don’t understand the nature of the occasion, but I say yes because I think his eyes are kind and it will be an adventure. I end up going, on a bus the school provides, with a bunch of boarders, girls I don’t really know, because none of my day student friends want to come along. When we arrive, I wonder, as we wait in line to get the tickets needed to participate–the event is called Casino Night–if Tim remembers he invited me. A sit-down dinner takes place first, and with Tim nowhere in sight, I slip into the first empty chair I can find. The boys at the table proceed to explain to us girls how the night is about to unfold and the rules of the casino games. Then the conversation moves to discussing who-knows-who. Everyone seems to have people they know in common except me. When it’s my turn to chime in, I explain I am supposed to meet Tim but so far, I haven’t found him. At first the boys say, “Who?” and I try to describe him, the little I know about him. One of them responds, “Oh! I think I know who you’re talking about. It’s that kid who’s into fencing.” “Fencing?” What are they talking about? “You know, the sport you see at the Olympics that looks like sword fighting.” Someone volunteers to find Tim for me. He returns with one of Tim’s friends. “Oh, you’re Alison! Tim didn’t want to come tonight, but he said if you were here, I should bring you over to his dorm.”

It's rude to invite someone to an event and then decide not to go yourself. But I accompanied Tim’s friend to the dorm anyway. At least I’m polite enough to follow through on my part of the plan. In truth, I’m relieved not to go to Casino Night. The way the boys were explaining the rules at dinner was confusing.

Because I am a girl, I am not allowed in the dorm, so I wait outside while Tim is alerted to my presence. Tim shows me around the campus, and we walk through minimally lit, empty buildings because everyone else is at Casino Night. I’m fine with this. These school buildings are just as wonderfully mysterious as the ones at my school, but in an old-fashioned, New England style rather than Gothic Revival.

“Do you want to see the art rooms?”

“Yes!”

It is in the art room where he starts kissing me. Then he leads me downstairs to the photography darkroom where, in the red light, with pungent vinegary, sulfur-smelling chemicals filling the humid air, he grabs my hand and pulls me to the cold, cement floor. I kick off my cowboy boots. He lays by my side and starts exploring my body, first sliding his cold, dry hand up and under my cheap, flimsy, polyester bra, squeezing my nipples a few times. Then he finds the elastic at the top of my thick, black cotton tights, and moves his hand under them and my skimpy bikini underwear, searching between my legs for the folds of my labia. He puts a finger inside of me, feeling my wetness. It feels good, his finger in my vagina, and we kiss some more. I can hear water running; it’s gently trickling over the edges of a plastic tray in a sink. Suddenly, the speed of our encounter goes into high gear, and he pulls my underwear and tights down and off my skinny, pale, freshly shaven legs. On his knees between my legs, he faces me as he fumbles for a second with the zipper on his pants. He turns to his side to pull them off. He resumes his position on his knees, holding his penis with one hand, and lightly falls on me, guiding its tip in the slippery warmth of my labia until he finds the opening of my vagina and enters me. I gasp because it hurts for a second and because it startles me, this new, full, physical sensation inside my body where I haven’t yet even placed a tampon. After a few movements with his hips and a quiet animal-like moan, he is done. I sit up quickly because it suddenly registers what has just happened. I am surprised we just had sex, but I didn’t fight it, I let it happen. It was natural, I console myself, thinking about what I learned when reading The Joy of Sex one night while babysitting. I’m glad I wore my long skirt because it provides a kind of cover as I pull up my tights and underwear. I feel the crotch of my underwear become damp and then increasingly wet. Leaning up against the cinderblock wall as I am trying to put myself back together, he asks:

“Did you come?”

“No.”

“Hmm. You were supposed to.”

He sounds disappointed, like I am a toy he just purchased but discovers, after he’s opened the package, that it doesn’t function as advertised.                                                                                                                                         

“I’m sorry, it was my first time.”                              

“Oh,” he said.

Had I been on my home turf, I’d have gone straight home, but I have nowhere to go.                                          

“Would you like to come back to my dorm? We can hang out in the parlor.”                       

As we walk from the art building to his dorm, I feel a growing warm wetness between my legs. I am more alarmed by the potential stain on my skirt than I am by the fact I just lost my virginity. I’m not worried about getting pregnant. Mara says you can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex.

“May I please use the ladies’ room?”

“There’s no ladies’ room here but I can watch the door of the boy’s room for you.”

I hurry into a stall, past the unfamiliar, slightly startling sight of a urinal. I pull down my tights and underwear and see blood and semen. I use toilet paper to try to pat the crotch of both undergarments dry. It doesn’t seem to make much difference. When I return to the parlor, I bunch up my long skirt and sit on it, like it’s a cushion, so the moisture doesn’t cause a stain. I don’t care if Tim thinks it’s strange. I glance shyly over at him. He doesn’t look at me. He looks down at his feet, at the ceiling, at the old radiator because it pings and gurgles as the water runs through it. He probably doesn’t like me anymore because we had sex. I remember reading an article in Seventeen about this: a girl has sex with a boy who says he’s been in love with her forever but then, after they have sex, he ignores her. I realize I don’t understand why I didn’t try to stop this from happening. I sit, too, without talking. I really hope that if my skirt is stained, no one sees it.

A man walks into the building and with a loud, stern voice says, as he enters the parlor, "You need to leave, young lady." His tone startles me. He sounds like the caricature of an authoritarian. I gather up my coat, contorting my body in such a way so as not to reveal the back of my skirt. “Bye, Tim.” I murmur and without waiting for him to respond, I slip out the door. I find the bus driver and he let me wait on the bus until Casino Night is over. “Where were you?” one of the boarders asks as they get on the bus. I shrug and look out the window, staring at my reflection in the glass for the two-hour trip back to school. The dampness between my legs grows cold if I don’t keep my thighs pressed together but keeping the moist cotton pressed against my skin makes it raw and irritated. I didn’t plan to lose my virginity to Tim that night. In fact, I never thought much about when, where or with whom I’d lose it and I end up feeling the same way I did when Lisa told me about her stepfather and Mara told me about her father. I can’t find words for my feelings. “Lonely” is one that comes to mind, but doesn’t seem quite right. Maybe, “empty.” I see the Torino in the parking lot as the bus rolls in. I pull the heavy door shut with a thud.

“How was the dance?” Dad asks.                                                                                            

“It wasn’t a dance.”                                                                                                                     

“Oh. What was it you went to?”                                                                                            

“Casino Night.”

“Did you win anything?”                                                                                                            

“No.”

That spring, there is a dance and the boys from Deerfield come back. Prince Abdullah II didn’t show up and neither did I. I had to babysit. Tim attends. He calls my house–someone looked up my phone number for him–and Laura answers. She calls me right away to tell me she just gave a boy the number where I was babysitting. In a panic, I take the phone off the hook. I don’t want to talk to him. At school on Monday, a few girls come up to me to tell me Tim was looking for me. I say nothing in response. I feel a dull throb of shame when I think about what happened. I gave up trying to make sense of it. I just want him and the memory of it all to go away.

The following fall I received a postcard in my mailbox at school. It was from Tim writing from a college in New Orleans, or maybe it was Vermont. Printed in small, neat letters are the words “I’m sorry” with his return address below his name. I feel bad I didn’t talk to him when he called in the spring. I didn’t tell anyone I lost my virginity that night. I mean, it was going to happen at some point anyway. But I still don’t want anything to do with him, so I send a postcard to the address on the card telling him it’s ok, and not to worry about it. I figure it’s the nice thing to do. I hope, too, it will make him feel like he doesn’t need to write to me anymore.

The rules of the game were obscure to me that night, and because my body said yes, I followed along, not understanding that I had the power to say no. It’s easy to blame Tim for taking advantage of me, and I do blame him, though I also meant it when I said I forgave him. He took responsibility and said he was sorry. Most of the time, boys never say they’re sorry. As for me, I began to take control of my make-out sessions with boys. I know, not in theory but for real, what they want, what the end game is, what “home base” means, what fucking is. This knowledge gives me an embodied power that I almost never lose or let go of again.

I’ve gotten more used to being at Emma Willard. I’ve joined the art club and I’m working on the yearbook. I like what I get to learn: classes in American social history, art history, literature classes that focus on different themes and, of course, all the different studio art classes. I know I’m lucky that I’m not taking those boring classes at Troy High. But honestly, I feel like a tourist at Emma Willard, a visitor who’s tolerated for the time being. Sometimes I want to fit in more than I do, and other times, I don’t care. Mom and Dad give me the light blue Fair Isle sweater I requested for my birthday. It’s not from L.L. Bean, but that’s okay. I’m wearing my sweater to school today under my jean jacket. Dad is letting me borrow his 35-millimeter camera because I am taking a photography class. The camera hangs around my neck like an extra heavy necklace.

An exchange was arranged between our school and Deerfield, so a dozen boys are now living here and attending classes while about a dozen girls from Emma Willard attend theirs. A few of the boys are regulars in the smoking area, and one of them is kind of cute. When I get there, Pink Floyd’s The Wall is playing on someone’s boom box. Margo is waiting for me. She’s laughing as I sit down next to her.

“What?”

“Nice sweater.” she says. She takes a drag on her cigarette, points to my cowboy boots, and says, “Next I bet you’re going to stop wearing those.” Holding on to the camera, I cross my leg over my knee to examine one of my beloved, well-worn boots. When I look up, I see the cute boy staring at me. I look right back at him. He turns away.

“I’m never going to wear fucking penny loafers, if that’s what you mean.” She laughs her amazing laugh and I smile and light my cigarette.

Alison Ferris is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She is an adjunct professor at the Maine College of Art and Design and lives in Midcoast Maine.

I Could’ve Been Her

By Jillian Hess

She could’ve been me.

Lindsay is NOT an anomaly.

I’ve felt that feeling.

The flip of the switch.

The millisecond where baseline overwhelm turns to uncontrollable rage.

That state of sheer irrationality.

Those screams. Those sobs.

Being wholly consumed.

Beyond my own control.

Terrified of myself.

Possessed.

Lindsay is NOT an anomaly.

I am common. I am typical. I am privileged. My family is beautiful. Our future is bright.

Hers was too.

Lindsay is NOT an anomaly.

I look at her and I see me and I cry.

For all of us.

Moms, you are not alone.

We all need help.

We all need each other.

To be seen and heard.

To be honest and open and unashamed.

Because Lindsay is NOT an anomaly

Jillian is a human, a mother of 4, a wife of 1 and keeps herself so busy that people are willing to overlook her imperfections. She can be found in Western Massachusetts singing in churches, tending to the dying and their loved ones as a hospice nurse and pleading with her offspring to just get in the car. She also loves to get her feelings out, and relate to others in emotional ways. Her writing is sporadic, real, and usually heavily punctuated. She has struggled with bouts of postpartum depression and PMDD for 8 years and thinks you should know.