Release(24)
Shut the door.
For a moment, she had been strong. For a moment, she had trembled from that strength. For a moment, anything was possible, a future, a way to make it better, to make it right, to step out of this rut, out of these weights that clung to her like bricks in her pockets. For almost an entire evening, there was possibility.
Then Tony came over. With a baggie. Four months later, he murdered her.
But there had been the moment when she shut that door.
There will always be that moment.
That same door that opens before her now.
The heavy woman behind it looks at her, eyes opening so wide as to seem almost painful. But then those eyes shut and the woman drops to her doorstep, in a faint.
“Mother?” says the Queen.
Adam and Angela had lost their virginities within a month of each other, though not by design. She’d lost hers, after much deliberation, with Kurt Miller, he of the peach fuzz moustache and pimply chin. She liked him but didn’t love him, which she thought was the perfect combination.
“That way I can actually have the experience with a decent guy and see what it might be like.”
“That’s very idealistic,” Adam had said.
“Well,” she replied, “I am young.”
He’d waited up half the night for her call, his phone on silent under the covers. There’d been no lying necessary to cover for her parents. Mrs Darlington knew where Angela was, though wouldn’t know what had happened until it was over with. Adam had spent a surprisingly large portion of the evening wondering what that must be like.
His phone lit up and he answered immediately. “How was it?”
“His penis wasn’t porn ready. At all.”
Adam laughed, as he knew he was intended to, and then he asked, also as he knew he was intended to, “How was it really?”
And he listened to her while she cried. “Do I need to kill him?” he said, his voice serious.
“No,” she said, quickly. “Not at all. It was just … so much work for really not very much. And it hurt. I mean, Jesus, Adam, why does no one tell you that? It hurts.”
“I’ve heard it hurts for guys, too.”
“It didn’t hurt Kurt.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Oh. Well, still. It hurt. And it was weird. And his dick looked like a mushroom. Not even a very big one.”
“I know. We have gym together.”
“Well, why didn’t you say?”
“It’s not as if they don’t change shape, Angela.”
“His didn’t. Not very much. Poor Kurt.”
“Poor Angela.”
“I don’t think I could have taken much more size, frankly. Not the first time. Thank God it was so fast.”
“Are you really okay? Are these jokes to cover sadness?”
“Yeah, they are.”
“Need me to sneak out?”
“You can’t sneak out. Your mom has the house alarmed.”
“This is true.”
“I was just… I mean, I didn’t exactly have my expectations high–”
“You did a little.”
“Yeah. Don’t you?”
“Yeah. Like the kiss in Brokeback Mountain.”
“It’s not gonna be like that.”
“I know. Are you seriously okay?”
She blew out her breath. “I’m a little sticky.”
“Was Kurt nice?”
“Really nice. I didn’t expect him to be. Lousy kisser, but I knew that going in. I can say this, though, Adam. The touches… The touches are something else. A body next to yours and all that skin, like miles of skin, you never think anyone else would have that much skin and… The way it smells, like a kiss but so much darker. It was awkward and it was kind of horrible and it hurt and I bled and it was short, but there were parts of it…”
“Yeah.”
“It’s gotta get better. Doesn’t it?”
“That’s what people say.”
He heard her cry a little bit more. “I’m really tired,” she said, “and my contacts have gone all dry.”
“Call me in the morning.”
“Before I call Kurt, that’s for sure.”
She never dated Kurt. He wasn’t a bad guy, he didn’t spread anything around. Angela forever referred to it as an “anthropological excursion”, one she remembered fondly but more for the scientific notes she’d gathered than for the experience itself.
Notes that he found unconvincing in their ongoing debate the next day about his own virginity loss. “There are levels if you’re a boy,” he’d argued. “Especially one who likes other boys.”
“There are levels for girls, too.”
“You can say that all you want, but the world thinks your virginity is one thing and one thing only.”
“Which is completely arbitrary and unfair.”
“Agreed, but when do you think you lost your virginity?”
“Last night… Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. So when do I lose mine? Is a handjob enough?”
“When did you get a handjob?”
“Ah, see, now that’s another question. What if I just give one?”