I was fifteen when I lost my virginity to a sketchy-hot Wall Street guy in downtown Jersey City — an experience fueled not by teenage love but instead by shame, fear, and a perilous thirst for male attention. You know! The usual.
It was so fucked up. He was probably in his late thirties, (older than Mom, which, in retrospect: ew) and even though I lied about it on Grindr, I’m sure he knew I was underage (which, also, in retrospect: ew). Second thoughts swirled through my mind for the duration of my Light Rail ride to his neighborhood, but I swallowed them all down like some kind of nasty medicine. In the end my nerves were outweighed by desperation and horniness. I mean, he answered the door wearing nothing but a pair of Under Armour gym shorts.
His sleek condo smelled of teakwood designer candles and weed. I hoped the latter meant he would be mellow and easy to talk to, but alas, not so much. He started aggressively kissing me — my first kiss! — before I even had a chance to ask him for his real name. Then he got his teeth involved, which caused my bottom lip to bleed. I tried to be chill, wiped the blood on my sleeve like I was Brad Pitt in Fight Club or something.
Honestly? I didn’t hate it. I was kissing a real, live man. It was a dream! Like I was starring in my own movie. Granted, Fight Club is a violent meditation on American angst and I would have ideally preferred more of a Hallmark-y situation. But what are you gonna do? He kept kissing me. I closed my eyes and pretended we knew (and maybe even cared about) each other.
Things escalated quickly from there. His energy was wolflike — strong and hungry and full of this weird sexual anger. I held my breath and stared at the burning candle on his cherrywood nightstand as his hands gripped me. The words wait and stop banged around the walls of my mouth but never made their way out. I figured he had already made his mind up, you know? And I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I was getting into by going there. I just hoped it might’ve played out more romantically. Like maybe he’d open the door and it would be an instant-soulmate situation. We’d cuddle and talk and he’d tell me he loved me and then we’d move on to the sex. Wow — okay — you know what? I take back what I said just now about not being stupid. I was a total dumbass.
So basically I just kept staring at his nightstand until it was over, at which point he wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead and rushed me out immediately. Something about work the next morning. (It was a Saturday.)
My lower lip was still numb as I made my way home that night, which was fitting because so was everything else about me. I checked Grindr to see if Old Man Wall Street had sent me any messages in the half hour since I left his place — maybe something that could make me feel better about what had just happened — but his profile had completely disappeared. I’d been blocked.
Mom was off from work the next day, so naturally I broke down and told her everything. Or — not exactly everything. I lied and said he was a kid from Saint Peter’s Prep, because I knew if I told her I had hooked up with an actual adult she’d either murder him or try to get him arrested.
But I told her the important stuff. Like how I felt this strange mix of disgust and worthlessness from his rejection, tinged with a kind of pathetic comfort from the fact that he had at least found me fuckable in the first place. She admonished me for not seeking her advice before I threw myself into such an emotionally combustible situation, but then she hugged me and told me it would be okay. We drove down to the Shore later that day (even though it was late winter) and ate fast food on the cold, empty beach.
“I was so relieved when I found out I was having a boy,” she told me, stretching out her yoga-pant-covered legs on the tattered blanket beneath us. “I figured it would mean you could never make the same mistakes I did. Not that you were a mistake — but, you know.” She paused for a moment and steadied her voice. “I guess I should have realized that just because you can’t get pregnant, doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt. I hate that I couldn’t protect you from getting hurt yesterday.”
“Yeah.” It occurred to me that I was only a few months away from the age she was when she had given birth to me. This seemed impossible. “Me, too.”
“You aren’t cut out for these hookup apps,” she said. “And that’s a good thing. You deserve a guy who will love you, Joey. This world is full of pricks who will use and abuse you if you let them. But you don’t have to let them, okay? Don’t let them.”
So naturally I proceeded to spend the next two years letting them.
I know! But I truly believed that each new guy who crossed my smartphone screen was just one hookup away from falling in love with me. You have to blow a lot of frogs before you find a prince, right? So that’s what I did — except replace frogs with noncommittal douchebags and closeted straight guys. But then I met Luke last summer. Finally! Someone who didn’t kick me out of bed at the end of our first time together. Instead, he kept his arm around me and let me play with his chest hair until we both fell asleep. I immediately claimed that space — his Rutgers dorm room, his squeaky old mattress, his Old Spice–y armpit — as my own. He said I love you three weeks later. The Hallmark prince I deserved.
And now look at me. I’m right back where I started — literally. Mom wanted to cheer me up after she got off work earlier, so we’ve returned to that same beach. It’s a little warmer than it was that day three years ago, but it’s still the offseason. The sand, ocean, and sky all have a sad emptiness about them.
“Did you hear from Luke today?” Mom asks between bites of dollar menu fries. “Did you text him?”
“Nope and nope.” I feel just as numb — in a different and worse way — as I did the last time we did this. “I was at Nonna’s earlier, so she distracted me for a while.”
“What’d she have to say about it?”
“Just the usual.” I force a half-chuckle. “It’s all your fault —”
“You know what?” Mom puts a hand up to cut me off. “I don’t know why I asked.”
“I have a random question.” I pop a fry in my mouth and wash it down with some watery Diet Coke. Mom hates the topic I’m about to bring up, which is why I normally wouldn’t. But a tiny plus side of being heartbroken is that I know she feels too bad for me to get truly annoyed by anything I could say right now. “What was Nonno like? I was thinking today about how I’ve only ever heard Nonna talk about him.”
“Oh.” Mom sighs and looks the other way as a light gust of wind blows her hair halfway across her face. “I don’t want to ruin whatever perception of your grandfather she’s given you. Especially since I know it’s a positive one.”
“So you’re saying he was an asshole?”
“To me? Kinda.”
“What did he do?”
“He just wasn’t always the nicest person.” Her tone has a very I’m-not-talking-about-this quality to it. “That’s all.”
“Nonna loved him,” I offer. “So there’s that.”
“If you wanna know the truth, I don’t think she was happy with him. Her entire life revolved around taking care of his entitled ass. Cooking for him, cleaning up after him, shopping for him. It was sad to watch. He did whatever he wanted and she didn’t say boo. If he had been caught cheating on her? Forget about it. She wouldn’t have even confronted him. It was like she didn’t have a voice.”
“Okay — wow.” The thought of Nonna not having a voice doesn’t compute for me. I’ve always viewed her as one of the most outspoken people in New Jersey. Which says a lot! Jersey is kinda known for its ridiculously outspoken people. “Are you saying that Nonno cheated?”
“I’m just saying he didn’t respect her. It wasn’t until after he died that she canonized his memory like he was some kind of saint.” She scoffs. “Anyway. I always swore I wouldn’t settle for that kind of relationship. I promised myself I’d have a voice. If a guy pissed me off, I’d let him know about it.”
“I’d say you’ve kept good on that promise.”
We share a laugh over this, probably both thinking about all the melodramatic fight scenes she’s engaged in over the years. But then I think about Richard and how Mom has been quietly waiting around for him to get a divorce before their real life together can start. Maybe she’s a little more like Nonna than she realizes.
I breathe in the crisp ocean air and dig my greasy fry fingers into the sand behind me. The sun is starting to set over the water in the distance — all pink and orange and blurry. It would be a perfect Instagram post, but I can’t go on there because then I’d have to scrub Luke from my grid to make the breakup official. Not that I have any followers outside of Mom and a few coworkers from Mozzicato’s. Oh God. Work. I took the week off for spring break, but I’m gonna have to go back eventually. All I ever did behind that stupid pastry counter was gush about Luke.
“I think the hardest part of this whole thing is knowing that it’s over-over,” I tell Mom. “With past fights, there’s always been that underlying knowledge that we’ll make up and it’ll be fine.”
“You don’t want it to be fine with a guy like him,” Mom answers. “You’re still young. You don’t need to make all of my mistakes, okay?”
“Would it be a mistake to —”
She throws a fry at me. “Don’t text him.”
“Who said anything about texting him?” I ask.
“That’s where you were headed,” she says. “I know you.”
I huff because she’s right. “I just don’t get how easy it was for him to snap at me like that. And then to not text me all day today. It’s like the entire past ten months were wiped out instantly, you know? Am I seriously that easy to stop loving?”
“Don’t talk like that!” She squeezes my shoulder. “This isn’t about you. It’s about him being too stupid to realize what he has.” She corrects herself. “Had.”
I’m back in that aching space between pissed off and sad. Fifty-fifty on whether I wanna sob or scream. I consider punching the sand, but then I think of that dumb expression Go pound sand — which is something Luke used to always say — and great! An involuntary tear has now fallen. I jerk my hand up to wipe it off, and — oh, awesome! Now I have sand in my eye.
“You all right?” Mom pouts her lips at me in pity. “Let it out.”
“No, it’s just… sand…” I dig my wrists into my eyeballs until I’ve released enough tears to wash it out. “I’m fine.”
“I promise this will get easier in time,” she continues. “You’ll come out of it smarter and stronger. And the next time you’re talking to a guy and you see those red flags, you won’t ignore them. You’ll get out quick and trust that you can do better.” She pauses. “The worst thing you can do is know a guy is bad for you but still jump in and try to make it work anyway.”
That last part hangs in the salty air for a few seconds too many.
I wish I was better at taking her advice.
I wish she was better at taking her advice.