I'm Glad My Mom Died(45)

It’s true. I won’t have sex with him. Even though my family stopped going to church, there are still a few rules of the religion that for whatever reason I can’t bring myself to break. One of them being no sex before marriage.

We’ve been seeing each other for the past three months. We keep things secretive at work, which really causes the tension to build up. Then after work most nights we get together for a few hours, at his place if his girlfriend’s not around, at his friend’s place if she is. We’ve made out and rubbed on each other, but we’ve never had sex and I’ve never even touched his penis.

“I’m sorry, I’m just not ready,” I tell him with a finality that makes me proud.

“Well can you give me a blow job at least?” Joe lifts his head off the bed like a hopeful, needy puppy.

“Um. I don’t want to do that.”

Joe throws his head back onto the pillow and the tears are replaced with a sharp anger. “This is ridiculous. My needs aren’t being met.”

“We can make out,” I offer.

“I don’t want to make out. I’m thirty-two years old.”

I feel stupid for suggesting the idea, and embarrassed for not being sexually advanced enough to meet Joe’s needs. Even though I’m eighteen, I feel like a child.

“You’re too young for me. This is never gonna work.” Joe starts to get up off the bed.

“Okay okay, I’ll do it,” I say, immediately disappointed in myself.

Joe lies back down and sprawls out lazily like he’s already over the idea but might as well go forward with it since we’re both here. He unzips his pants and pulls out his penis. I look at it for a long time.

“What am I supposed to do? I’ve never done this before.”

“Yeah, it’s not a turn-on when you say shit like that.”

I’ve seen a certain shortness to Joe at times, but this feels different. I could justify his behavior as him being drunker than normal—since I’ve never had alcohol myself (other than that splash of The Creator’s spiked coffee), this is hard for me to gauge, so I usually just guess how much he’s had by how crooked he’s walking or how slurred his words are. I could also justify his behavior as him being overwhelmed with grief from his breakup, but honestly, I don’t even need to justify it as anything, because I’m so desperate to be with him. He’s so much older than me and cooler than me, and I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, so I know we must have something special.

I dive forward. And then I start doing it. Licking it and sucking it and hoping that’s what I’m supposed to be doing and hoping I’m doing it in a way that’s pleasurable to him. But I have no idea. I’ve been an actor for a dozen years. I’m nothing without direction.

“I’m about to finish,” Joe says with a gasp. It sounds like it’s a good thing. I don’t know what’s about to happen. “Speed it up a little.”

“Thank you,” I say. Direction!

And then suddenly, something that tastes like warm liquid plastic shoots into my mouth. I spit it out onto the bedspread.

“Something came out! OhmyGod, something just came out!”

“Yeah. It’s cum.” Joe looks at me with dull annoyance.

“What’s cum?”

Joe turns on his side, facing away from me, and clutches a pillow tight to his chest. He takes a long breath.

“What have I done?” he asks.





45.


“ALOHA.” THE PRETTY FOUR SEASONS Resort Maui employee greets us as she drapes a floral lei around my neck and a nut lei around Joe’s. Joe’s eyes linger on the employee for .2 seconds too long. I hate the bitch. I make a mental note to work on jealousy someday, whenever I get around to it.

We check into the hotel, reiterating multiple times that the reservation is under my name and not Joe’s. Whether it’s the age difference between Joe and me, or just sexism, nobody seems to believe that a trip to the Four Seasons might be my doing and not his.

Granted, it’s not exactly my doing. It’s Nickelodeon’s doing. This was each cast member’s fifth season wrap gift—four nights and five days at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea for the cast member and one guest.

Of course Joe’s my guest. We’ve been together for a year at this point, and our relationship has settled into a nice groove. Sure, 50 percent of the time things are chaotic and tumultuous—Joe’s drunk and I’m hysterical; Joe’s upset that I’m too possessive and I’m upset that Joe’s gotten back into debt three weeks after I paid it off for him—but the other 50 percent of the time, things are great.

We watch reruns of Survivor. We have stupid-but-fun inside jokes. We laugh a lot. We still haven’t had sex, but I’ve gotten better at giving blow jobs.

This relationship looks and feels to me like a huge step up from my parents’ relationship—they had the screaming, tumultuous, fighting part, but none of the fun. The only problem is that Mom still doesn’t know about our relationship.

Mom had to move out of my apartment a few months back to be closer to her oncologist in Orange County now that her appointments are near daily. Now that we’re not physically in the same space together, Mom calls me ten or so times a day to keep up-to-date on my life—how big of a role my character has in any given episode of the show, if I’ve been auditioning for anything else lately, pitches for why I should get back into country music (I quit my recording contract after Mom’s cancer took a turn for the worse). I’m worried about how I’m gonna get through a four-night and five-day stay at the Four Seasons without Mom knowing who I’m with.