Intergender social transactions among the teen species are complex and potentially misleading. Thus one would perhaps be well-advised to avoid all opposite-gender interactions until one is at least thirty-nine years old.
I sat with Jimmy in his bedroom, looking at the posters on his walls (old movie stars: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe). I registered the details slowly, savoring them. My head was still murky with the three beers, and I wanted to close my eyes to rest, but I also didn’t want to miss anything. The bedspread I sat on, the entire room in fact, smelled faintly of Jimmy. I inhaled slowly and quietly. I wanted to absorb every molecule of Jimmy-ness.
He had kept his hand on my arm as we’d walked inside from the party. He had talked to me. He had complained. I hate these people. I hate this town. These assholes. What a joke. In my swimmy brain, I’d thought, How strange that even Jimmy Denton, seemingly the coolest guy in school, is just as miserable as the rest of us. How strange.
He’d talked, and I’d nodded. Be quiet and throw in a few nods, and suddenly you become the most understanding person in the world. He told me, Wow, Janice. I don’t know why we haven’t talked before. You’re such an understanding person. I’d nodded again. I was an understanding person — I was the Jane Goodall of teenaged behavior. I felt like I really knew Jimmy, down to his core.
Jimmy touched my arm again. I feel like I can talk to you, he said. Or did I imagine it? I was sleepy. I, Janice Goodall, nodded once more. I felt the sinews of his forearm, his curly arm hair. He smelled of Right Guard mixed with Head & Shoulders mixed with the faintest male sweat, and it was the most wonderful concoction I’d ever smelled. Every moment felt slowed, and I had the definite but not-quite-fully-formed wish that he would press down on top of me, the full weight of his chest against mine.
“Let’s listen to some music,” he said, getting up from the bed. He turned off the overhead light, clicking on a small lamp. He selected something melancholy, and I approved.
“I love this album,” I said sleepily. “The Athens music scene has always been stronger than Chapel Hill’s. I hate to admit it, but it’s true.”
He turned to look at me.
“Did I mention that?” he asked.
I couldn’t remember. Had he? Or had I read it online? I couldn’t remember now. Fervently, I nodded. Our conversation and his blog were blurred in my mind.
He moved back beside me and touched the wisps of hair on my neck, half-reclining, and my head roared like an ocean. I wondered if I looked prettier in the half-light, and sleepily adjusted my pose to soften the jut of my bony hip. Draping one elbow casually against my breast, I half-consciously tried to create the illusion of cleavage.
ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:
The female of the tribe offers courtship displays to the male.
“What’s your story, Janice?” Jimmy asked, sounding meditative.
I shrugged. I felt like he wanted me to confide in him, but I wasn’t sure how to answer. I was accomplishing more when I spoke less, it seemed, and plus, he was gently tracing one finger up and down my arm. I want you to keep touching my arm. Please keep touching my arm, I thought, and then, I could help you pass calculus. Talk to me about how your dad is stressing you out — I want to be your confidante. Instead, what I actually whispered was this:
“I dunno.”
“There’s gotta be more than that,” he said. “We’ve got at least one thing in common. We both hate this place. This shitty town, full of shitty people, these assholes. Assholes who think they’re the shit.” He smirked a little at his own joke.
Listening to him, I wondered if we did have that in common. His tone was so angry, so hateful.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I mean, I criticize this place a lot. I look around and I see things that I don’t like. Things that annoy me.”
Jimmy nodded, urging me to continue. I felt my slow thoughts crystallizing briefly into something that made sense.
“But, well, don’t you think it’s possible to be annoyed by something and love it at the same time — in a way? Maybe that’s more accurate. Maybe I have more of a love-hate relationship with Melva. A fond annoyance, maybe?”
He looked hard at me. “That’s not what it sounded like, reading your notes on the people at school. I didn’t sense much love or fondness.”
“Oh,” I said. I tried to think for a minute before continuing. “I don’t think I meant it that way — I didn’t intend it that way, at least. Really I guess I’m sort of scared. Of a lot of things. It’s easier to stand back and try to figure everybody else out. I’m not even trying to be mean…. But maybe it does come across that way. Now my friend Paul hates me, and my best friend, Margo, hates me too, and …”
I stopped, feeling tears gathering in my eyes. I blinked, collecting myself, wondering what had made me suddenly confess all of this to Jimmy — things about myself that I hadn’t even previously put into words.
“Maybe it’s really more discomfort,” I continued rambling. “I mean, when I was reading your blog, sometimes it just seemed like you felt alone, and maybe that can sound like anger. So maybe you don’t hate every —”
His finger had stopped tracing my arm, so I stopped mid-sentence. He frowned at me.
“You read my blog,” he said.
I just looked at him as if I didn’t speak English.
“What blog?” I asked dumbly. The beer made me want to close my eyes. This effort of articulating all these nebulous thoughts, of keeping them straight, was too exhausting.
“I have a blog, but it’s set on private now. Or it’s supposed to be. You need a password.”
“Huh,” I said desperately. “Maybe I did happen to see your blog one time, maybe when I was searching for something else,” I added, hearing the terribleness of my own lie, the unbelievability, “but I can’t remember exactly.” I needed to change the subject. “Anyway — what’s your story?”
“My story is I can’t wait to get out. I hate it here.” He paused. “My parents sent me away once. I was going to kill myself.” He laughed a rough non-laugh. Cracking his knuckles, he turned away from me. “But you already know all that, right?”
I kept perfectly still, the way deer do when you drive by them at night. I definitely had not read anything like that on his blog, but there’d been a lot of entries I hadn’t gotten to…. I felt a little dizzy.
“Mmmm-hmm,” I muttered like a bad android, just to fill the silence.
He moved closer to me again and began gently tracing my arm again. I felt a shiver, the good kind of shiver, like I got sometimes when the hairdresser rubbed my head during the shampooing. With all of my Jedi mind, I willed his body closer to mine. Closer, closer. I realized that instead, I was inching my body closer to his. Maybe I hadn’t creeped him out after all….
“Your friend Margo is pretty, but I kinda like talking to you,” he said as he moved his finger, tracing a line across my stomach — over my T-shirt, but still. I held my breath.
“You want me to kiss you,” he said. Just like that. A fact. A mathematical truth. I closed my eyes to avoid looking at him. “I can tell you do. You haven’t been kissed before. A girl like you.”
The way he said it didn’t sound mean — more like an observation. Objective. Anthropologically speaking, I could be categorized as a Previously Unkissed Almost-Seventeen-Year-Old Anthropologist. I felt myself float up to the ceiling, where I hovered, watching myself silent on the bed, watching Jimmy and his tracing hand — watching the whole thing.
That was when he placed a hand behind my neck and kissed me. My first kiss, I thought. One of the ultimate rites of passage. And it was happening here, now, with Jimmy. His mouth was warm and soft. My body shivered again and a low noise (mine) tumbled out.
I murmured, “I don’t criticize everything. I don’t hate everything. I don’t hate you.” Fortunately, my words were so low and garbled that he didn’t seem to hear what I’d said.
Still holding my head, he said, “You know why I hate this town?”
I shook my head, every muscle in my body twitching in preparation for him to kiss me again. My whole torso seethed with warmth.
“I like … both. Guys and girls. It sounds stupid to say it…. My parents figured it out, and they want to send me away again. To this camp or something. Convert me back to normal.”
I opened my eyes. He stared at me as his words settled in a way that told me I would never speak of this, never breathe a word. My mind had turned to mush, and I felt as if I were sinking into quicksand. He’d just kissed me. His words were confusing, but I still felt myself wanting him to do things that sounded like phrases from a romance novel: to tumble against my body, to be the man of me. All my thoughts were misfiring.
“I don’t love anyone or anything here,” he whispered.
And then he was kissing me again. This time harder. My muscles tightened at first in happiness, but then his tongue was pressing into my mouth, gross and eel-like. Our teeth were clacking together. He pressed against me harder, and it was crushing. It hurt. I gasped, but the weight of him was too much, and his mouth was hard and mean.
He bit me.
I pulled away, a tiny bead of blood oozing on my lower lip — and that was when I began to cry. Jimmy laughed a hard, mean laugh. His eyes were narrow and hard.
“Don’t worry,” he said coldly. “I’m not going to date rape you or anything.” He laughed again, another hoarse, empty laugh. “Yeah, right.”
He sprang off the bed. My eyes were spilling hot, fat tears. He turned his back to me and changed the music. There was a knocking on the bedroom door.