Ripping off the Bandaid

I chatted with my neighbor, John, from my stoop as he scraped ice off of the apron of his driveway. He told me to be careful, drive safe, something I've recently picked up saying to friends myself, as that's what I think adults do; at least pretend to care about an acquaintance’s well-being. Something like awareness of others. I sat down on the metal strip in front of my door, the only haven for my ass free of snow, and directed my attention toward my iPhone.

"What's up, Jack?” I looked up to notice Steve, our little, loud fugazi neighbor across the street, greeting John from the end of his driveway. I guess he didn't see me sitting behind my bushes. I'd never known John to go by Jack.

After the usual formalities, ("how are ya?" yadda, yadda,) Steve delivered the foremost phrase I’ve ever heard him utter: "What's the use of bitchin', right?"

I’m pretty sure John/Jack and Steve don’t get along. 

I was finishing up my last stoge before I showered, but realized when my dad’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, that he wasn’t home after all, and I went back to my room to finish smoking my bowl in bed without replacing the blanket under the door crack that allowed the odor to dissipate into the hallway.

This was my escape on a Sunday afternoon, before going to a family dinner, where I had to man-up. Put your makeup on, smile, fake it. Pretend you want to be there. Pretend you love your family. Which you do, you truly do, just not very much at the moment. I tell myself this in the second person, listing my commands to buck-up and get over myself. 

How do I escape? I can’t this time, but there are ways that are lovely, and there are ways that are dark, almost "dirty” ways, and I don’t think I need to explain either to you, sir. Thank you, good day now.

See, when I feel good it's like a song that I never want to end, and it's chilling, because I start to be sad half-way through, because I know it's only going to end, and I'm sad when it's over, only deepening my task of getting out of the conduit, whose current drags me farther from my goals. This is my dark period, but I need these days, so that every new lovely thing that comes along will seem so much brighter. 

I'm torn between the persona I've created to fight my actual self; the dark, callous, snippy, uppity bitch at war with the sad, empathetic, lonely, over-emotional soul. I want to be honest with people, I want them to know I care, but it seems the more of my true, unprotected self I bare, that I allow people to see, the less people want to see of me.

So I put down the bowl, and get in the shower. I put on my makeup, (thank god—my eyeshadow ended up a conversation piece at dinner,) and I got myself a coffee, and I made it to the table, and it wasn’t the afternoon that dreams were made of, but I didn’t want to die every second I was there. It was okay, and I’m okay, and maybe when this song ends, I’ll put on another great tune, hell, a whole playlist of them. I look forward to it. And I’ll return to hiding behind my dark hair and fierce mocking humor, because hey, Jack, what’s the use of bitchin’, right? But really, all in all, take care, please drive safe, I mean it.

Just a Tuesday

“Oh no, you didn’t get… like… raped, did you?”

I sat in the passenger seat and paused at his question; “no, no, not that… I just didn’t really want to do it, like...” and sighed, like I always did when I had to tell anyone this detail of my situation. 

“I know it’s hard to believe, but I’d only ever had sex once before that, so…”

“No way,” Mason responded typical of anyone I shared this news with, which I’d expected after what we’d done the night before, “but that’s okay,” as if I needed his validation. 

It was only about two months or so after it had happened, and I tried to keep my mind off of it—I used to credit the incident with ruining my life. Now I see, though, what it had really done; it allowed me to avoid the bullshit before it happened ever again. It began my ease in detaching sex from emotion. It allowed me to become like a boy. Mostly, though, it forced my fear of love.

I met Matt at Dana Carvey’s stand-up at my Alma Mater’s performing arts center. My boss at the school’s foundation gave me a ticket and told me she gave one to another of her 140 employees, a blonde boy named Matt, a “gerber baby” as some black girls called him, and I should meet him before the show; “here’s his number, you should have fun, he’s cuuuuuuute.”

We hit it off—he went to the same high school as my mother, so he was from the same area of Pennsylvania as I was. We even drove the same car, color and all. He was funny, and damn, my boss didn’t use the right adjective; he was hot. 

Matt was a year older, which I was into, until I realized that turning down his invitation to the bar after the show, (which I’m disappointed to report, I didn’t pay a lick of attention to nor appreciate, distracted by the hand draped over the arm rest to my right,) because I was only going on 20.

But a few days later, when he called to hang out, I jumped at it. He came by after the bar with a friend and hung out for a little. Another day, we decided to play racquet ball at the gym with his roommate, and went back to his apartment for a few beers after I was fed up embarrassing myself.

Matt’s roommate dropped me off on their way to the dining hall and I spent the rest of the evening doing a lot of nothing with my roommate, until Matt texted me. His texts I hardly recall, having tried to block his existence from my mind these past few years, but I have a feeling it went a little like this…

Matt: hey

Me: Heyyyy wassup?

Matt: u awake

Me: Obviously, what are you doing?

Matt: wunna hng out

Me: What do you wanna do?

Matt: comin over

Matt: mabe cassie

Me: Huh?

So this seems a little weird, but this was how he always talked—I never could really tell if he was serious about anything, or really, what the hell he was talking about most of the time. When he showed up, though, I was kind of surprised as he was usually flaky, and I was the reacher. He could do better than me, even then when my bod was at its best. Yet, I was thrilled, none the less, and we went upstairs, and that’s when things, you know, happened.

But my situation, you see, was kind of strange for a 19-year-old in college. I’d only had sex once, on senior week, black-out wasted. I’d probably only given about 3 hand jobs, and maybe made-out with 10 people ever. Inexperienced was a rather gracious term. Sex was very important to me, and I was actually very upset at the way I had lost my virginity, (which I feel I should mention was completely my own incitement of seduction.) At any rate, when Matt tried to infiltrate my sacred region, after not nearly enough foreplay for me to feel confident, I said, “No.”

He backed off, but we kept at our messing around, until again, his attempts at penetration were greeted with a, “seriously dude, I’m not that kind of girl, no.”

So shrinking back to the making-out and touching and taking off shirts and socks and blah blah blah, he lasted only a few more minutes before trying one last time to get it in, and my “no,” turned into a, “noooookay, fine, fine,” and we fucked. And it was amazing. And he was beautiful. And I was sure as I laid, his arm behind my head, that that was the best decision I could have ever made, and I stroked his blonde head and traced the lines in his chest, smiling, the warmest and happiest I’d ever been, ever would BE, on a Tuesday night in bed. 

The next morning, he woke up, walked 10-feet away to where his clothes landed, disoriented, got dressed and raised his hand in a weak wave, “bye, Cassie,” before he shirked off. Not even a kiss goodbye—I was about as confused as he looked, but still, I’ve mentioned this boy was a weird one, and I couldn’t read him. Especially when he didn’t text me for three days, until Friday rolled around and my best friends were having an "ugly sweater" party.

He said that we should talk, and I said, come to the party, and he showed up with his roommates until they ran out of beer, and I drove them back to Richard Street to pick it up. They piled out of the car as Matt in the front seat said, “I need to talk to you…”

“Yes?”

He looked me in the eyes, looked away, and turned back to say, “did we… did we have sex the other night?”

“Are you serious?"

He didn’t remember it happening, and I remembered it a lot less shitty then it actually was. It sucked— he couldn’t stay hard, I realized I had tasted alcohol. He was so drunk he didn’t even know it happened. We hardly talked, there was no connection. It was a waste; my first sober sex with a guy I actually liked, and I couldn’t even take anything from it. 

I told Mason all of this as my excuse to not have sex with him, because he was forceful and was known to push women into bathrooms, something I found out first-hand the next year at school.

“I WILL have sex with you,” he said, my back against the door, his hand creeping up my thigh, and when I said, “no, you won’t,” he kissed me so hard I thought my lips were bleeding. This, the same kid who asked me if I was raped. I avoided him at all costs after that, as I did Matt, and found that even though I’d detached emotion from sex, I still wanted to decide who I wanted to fuck when I wanted. I still wanted to like the person I was going to let inside me. I wanted someone to respect me as much as I respected myself.

I used to let this thing define me, and it sent me into a semester long depression that drove me to drop a class, eat back all the weight I’d lost, and scrounge together every last penny for pot just to cope. But now I know, this event, this has nothing to do with what I am; this was just an incident that let me see who I really am.