The Nix(80)

I love you with all my love

more than the stars above



“Did you get my poem?” he’ll ask, and she’ll say “Yes, thank you,” and smile and look at the ground and cross her feet and hope he doesn’t ask if she liked it. Because she never likes it. How could she like it when in her free time she’s reading Walt Whitman and Robert Frost and Allen Ginsberg? How ugly Henry seems compared to Allen Ginsberg! How simple and stupid, how quaint and provincial. She knows Henry wants to impress her and woo her, but the more of these poems she reads, the more she feels tranquilized, like her mind is sinking slowly into sand.

When you are away

I have the worst day

Because I can’t hold you

I feel real sad too



She can’t bring herself to criticize him. She’ll only nod and say, “I got the poem. Thank you,” and Henry will make that face—that grinning self-satisfied face, that triumphant face, that big stupid muffin face—which makes her so angry she wants to tell him cruel things: That it would be a better poem if he wrote it in meter.

Or if he owned a dictionary.

Or if he knew more multisyllabic words.

(And how awful of her to even think that!) No, he is a nice enough boy, a good enough boy. Good-hearted, bighearted. He is kind. Gentle. Everyone says she should marry him.

“Faye,” he says as they sit on the merry-go-round, “I think we’ve come a long way, you know, in our relationship.” And she nods but does not know exactly what he means. He has certainly given her lots of flowers and poems and dinners and chocolates, but he’s never told her a secret. She feels she knows nothing about him, nothing more than what everyone else knows: Henry, whose family owns the farm by the nitrogen plant, who wants to be a veterinarian, the football team’s mediocre tight end, the baseball team’s backup third baseman, the basketball team’s third-string forward, who on weekends fishes on the Mississippi and plays with his dogs, who sits quiet in class and needs her tutoring for algebra—Faye knows his résumé but not his secrets. He never tells her anything important. He never explains why, for example, when he kisses her he doesn’t act like a boy should, doesn’t try the things boys are supposed to try. She’s heard the stories—famous in high school—of boys who will do anything if you let them. Who will go all the way if you let them. And anywhere! In the backseats of cars or on the baseball field at night, in dirt or grass or mud or whatever cheap and lucky spot they find themselves when they find a girl who doesn’t say no. And the girls who let them, who invite it, who aren’t going steady, their reputations are massacred with that one whispered syllable: slut. The fastest word in the language. It moves through school like a plague. One has to be careful.

So she’s been waiting for Henry to try it—paw at her belt, stick his hands somewhere private—so she can protest and defend her chastity and he can try again next time, try harder and better, and she can protest more until finally, after enough protesting, after enough of saying no, she will have demonstrated that she is virtuous and chaste and good, not easy, not a slut. And then finally she can say yes. She is waiting for this, the whole ritual, but instead Henry only kisses her, smashes his face against hers and stops. It goes like this every time. They sit together at night on the riverbank or in the park and listen to the sound of motorcycles on the highway, the squeaks of the swing set, and Faye picks at the rust on the merry-go-round and waits. And nothing has ever happened, not until tonight, this night after the prom, when Henry is so full of ceremony it seems he’s memorized his lines.

“Faye, I think we’ve come a long way. And you’re very important to me and special. And it would make me feel honored and happy and really happy…” He stutters, stops, he is nervous, and she nods and touches his arm lightly with her fingertips.

“I mean,” he says, “it would make me feel honored and happy and really lucky if you, you know, to school, from now on,” and he pauses, gathers his courage, “if you can, please, wear my jacket. And my ring.”

And he exhales greatly, spent from the effort, relieved. He can’t even look at her now. He stares at his feet and twists his shoelaces tightly around his fingers.

She finds him adorable in this moment, in his embarrassment and fear, in how much power she has over him. She says yes. Of course she says yes. And when they stand up to leave, they kiss. And the kiss feels different this time, feels like it is a greater and more powerful thing, a kiss with meaning. They both must know they’ve crossed a boundary: the class ring is a harbinger, everyone knows that. An engagement ring almost always follows, and these symbols make their coupling official and sanctioned and certified and good. Whatever a girl might do in the backseat of a car, she is protected if she wears the boy’s decorations. These things insulate her. They guard her. She is immune from insult. A girl is not a slut if she has a ring.

And Henry must sense it too, that they now have permission to do as they want, because he pulls Faye closer, kisses her harder, presses his body tightly to hers. She feels something then, some blunt and rigid thing pressing into her belly. It’s him, of course, Henry. He is pushing up through his thin gray slacks. He is shaking a little and kissing her and he is hard as stone. It surprises her, how solid a boy can be. Like a broom handle! It’s all she can think about. She is aware she is still kissing him but she is doing it automatically—all her attention is on these few square inches, that obscene pressure. She thinks she can feel his pulse through it and she starts sweating, grabbing him tighter to tell him it is all okay. He runs his hands over her back and makes little squeaking sounds; he is jittery, jumpy; he is waiting for her. It is her turn to do something. His was an opening gambit, pressing himself so obviously into her. It is a negotiation. Now it is her move.