Forever for a Year(65)

tomorrow night.

Ugh. How could Trevor only think about hooking up all the time? I was sick of his stupid basement! He was boring. Maybe I was boring. Maybe we were boring.





52

Trevor tries out for basketball

So I started thinking about sex. Anything sex. Hooking up. Hand jobs. Blow jobs. Even the real big thing. All. The. Fucking. Time. Which could be embarrassing. And a pointless waste of time. Right? Every time I saw Carolina at school, I would get, you know, a hard-on. (Not every time, but way too often, okay?) I’d text her stuff like “thinking about your sexy stomach,” except she would text me back “I love you so much,” which was cool, but not what I was hoping for. I don’t know what I was hoping for. It’s not like you could have sex over text.

I wanted to see her more than just on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons, but she said her mom wouldn’t allow her out on school nights. That might have been true, but it felt like Carolina wanted it to be true. I was glad she was a good student, but did she really want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her if she could not see me for five days? I suppose we saw each other at school all those days. I mean, you know, no making out and hooking up.

Yeah. So. Guess what? I started looking at porn … more … and it excited me even though before it didn’t. Yeah. So. I masturbated. God, I felt dumb doing it. I made sure to turn the music loud even though I only did it when no one was home. (At first at least.) So dumb. I told myself after it was over that I would never do it again.

But then I did it the next day.

I didn’t do it the next day and I thought I might be cured of it.

But then I did it the next day and the next and the next.

I searched the internet for masturbation addiction, but I didn’t seem to be as bad as those cases. I just felt so stupid and I hated feeling stupid. I wanted to not do it at all or only do it once a week or maybe twice. I couldn’t talk to my parents about it. No way. Not to boys either. That’s strange, dude. I almost talked to Carolina about it, but how can you talk to a girl about masturbation? So I could only think about not wanting to do it, which made me think about it, which made me want to do it. I was going insane! Crap! All these internet sites said masturbation was very healthy and a way to better understand your own sexuality. But what was I understanding besides the fact that I liked to make myself have orgasms? The religious sites were very judgmental and looked like they were written by zombies from the Middle Ages, so those didn’t help at all.

And then …

My dad said something. He said, “You gonna try out for basketball?”

And I said, “No.”

And he said, “I think you need to stay busy during the winter.” And the way he said it? He knew. He knew what I was doing in my room all the time. He didn’t say any more than that. But I knew he knew. And I felt so goddamn stupid I wanted to die. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

“Yeah, okay, maybe,” I said, and walked away. I signed up for basketball tryouts the next day.

*

So I made the freshman team. Licker made it as well. My cousin Henry and Jake said they were going to wrestle, but then they decided to just lift weights for the winter. After cross-country and football ended, they had started talking to me again. Which was fine. I didn’t care enough to ignore them. Aaron and Tor were much better friends than they could have ever been, so I wasn’t mad anymore. I wasn’t really mad about anything anymore. How could I be? I had Carolina. Every day she got more beautiful. Every day I fell more in love with her. I know how stupid that sounds. I know. But it’s true. Yeah, I wish she thought about sex as much as me, but maybe I wouldn’t respect her as much if she did. Maybe girls have to be more controlled when it comes to physical stuff or else we would all go crazy.

It’s just … Carolina didn’t seem to like it as much anymore. I couldn’t make her orgasm no matter how hard I tried, and she had learned to make me orgasm in five minutes or less if she really wanted. Which wasn’t as fun as when we would make out for a long time and then, you know, finish.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, after we had hooked up in my basement, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Something’s wrong, Carolina.”

“Nothing’s wrong. Let’s watch TV.”

“I want to talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

“About what’s wrong with you.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Trevor.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” she said, but it didn’t feel like she meant it. And then I could feel myself breathing fast, and not able to concentrate. I turned on the TV so she could watch something besides me imploding. Crap. What had I done wrong? Crap. Everything was perfect and now she was acting differently. Do something. Say something. You’re going to lose her. But I didn’t know what to do or say so I just watched TV with her. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t even hold hands. Just sat there. Next to each other. Like we were strangers again. Except we were in our underwear and we were in love.

*

The next day, I found my mom taking a nap in her room. But her eyes were open. Just staring out the window like she was thinking deeply or she was half dead. Who knew with her? So I asked her if she could talk.