Shut your eyes and fantasize: you’re driving to work and you come to a stop sign, the same stop sign you stop at everyday. You pump the brakes softly, turn your head to the right, and a blonde evangelist with more curves than Josh Beckett and a smile as big as the great outdoors gazes at you with welcome mats dancing in her Smurf blue eyes. All of a sudden you’re on an interplanetary voyage where you don’t know which planet to peruse or where to park your heart. There are stars you never imagined and colors you never knew existed. Your universe becomes altered, thrown out of whack by a moment – by a friendly gesture from a doll dipped in the honey pot of hellified bliss. That night you dream about the flash of starlight, think fresh thoughts, and long to see the hot little number again. When you finally do, you find out that she’s only fifteen, and, Cava, the baby booby trap who could cure all your aches, becomes your chaos.
This happened to me.
The days of my youth fly away like the pale incessant scraps of cheap tissue paper decorations at a junior high dance. I turned twenty-one last month. I’m no longer the poet with perpetual power for passion – the starry-eyed optimist with enough energy to short-circuit Times Square. I’m jaded now, worn by the wounds of the world. Now I’m a director of a recreation center – a town worker with a dire duty of offering my community a plethora of fruitful physical activity. This doesn’t stop me from publishing the occasional poem in the occasional literary journal but my dream of becoming the next Robert Frost sort of melted away with my full-time job responsibilities. After chasing teenagers around the gym all day, I just don’t have the stamina to deal with words at night. I would have to shoot Red Bull intravenously and, at two bucks a can, I don’t think I could afford it. But, don’t get me wrong, I get great gratification from my job. I’m a peoples person and I get to deal with all types of colorful characters all day. Every morning we kick off the festivities with senior aerobics or what I secretly call “Sweaty Depends”. A room full of aging athletes with the determination of Lance Armstrong and the athletic prowess of snail urine. I have befriended many of the older generation and picked up a few tips on how to successfully order from the Home Shopping Network and how to properly apply a Bingo dobber. Next on the docket is Dog Training. Not my favorite time of day because people who are too into their animals annoy me and I don’t remember reading the section on picking up poodle piss in my job description. Plus, the instructor constantly repeats the same terrible joke: “What do you call a dog with no legs? It doesn’t matter he’s not going to come.” After the dogs, we have a CPR certification class. My second least favorite part of the day because I have to lug the mats from the gym into the side classroom and wheel the TV and DVD player down from the front office. Also, the guy who teaches the class is a major league pickle-sniffer and it seems like he has way too much fun blowing air into the male dummy’s mouth. Following CPR, I usually head out to The Sub Galley for lunch. Sometimes it’s two slices of cheese and a root beer. Sometimes it’s a large steak and cheese with pickles and onions and a root beer. The only thing constant is the root beer. It gives me the sugar boost I need for the second part of the day which we call “Open Rec.”. Everyday from three to six we open our upstairs game room and downstairs gym to the public. Anyone is welcome to come by and enjoy our array of cool arcade games or coordinate a pickup basketball game for free. Once in awhile we’ll get some Swedish nannies looking to keep the young brats they watch busy or some unemployed fathers looking to gain some pride by beating their six-year-old son in Ping-Pong. But mainly it is junior high schoolers. Crowds of them. This is how I got to know Cava.
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. We have private birthdays on the weekend. People pay good money for exclusive rights to the facility. I usually just read magazines and surf the internet, sometimes I get involved in the parties and coordinate a kickball game or a game of tag if I’m looking for a tip.
On this particular day, there was a small party – just a handful of nine-year-old boys. They were downstairs in the gym kicking tennis balls off the lights and giving each other wedgies like young boys tend to do. I was upstairs polishing my bumper-pool skills in the game room, grooving to the funky sounds of The Dave Matthews Band. In walks Cava with her ten-year-old sister Kyra – both exposing sprawling picket fence smiles in my direction. Their enthusiasm for fun was so apparent that I swear I could see a bright glow emitting from their bodies. I caved in. I couldn’t deny them.
We played foosball, munched on sugary treats from the snack machine, and sung along to the cheesy jukebox jams. We also talked a lot – especially Cava and me: dysfunctional families, school, sports, boys, skateboarding, movies, modeling. What began as a delicious distention of secret roots became a glowing tingle that reached a state of absolute euphoria not found in most conversation. I couldn’t believe how sensitive, mature, and intelligent she was for a mere kid. She didn’t look like a kid. Well, she looked young, but she had an hourglass figure that made you want to go to the beach and build a sand castle.
After we exchanged email addresses, she touched my hand and that ivory-smooth, sliding sensation of her skin grazed my arm, leaving me pulsing with pleasure. Then she had to leave and I had to clean up after the party and head home to my disheveled room in my stepfather’s house.
When I got home from work, I grabbed a Sam Adams from the refrigerator and turned my computer on. I logged into my hotmail account and, as usual, there were a bundle of spam messages that offered to grow my penis to the size of a horses’. With horrific visuals of my manhood mirroring that of Mr. Ed’s, I promptly deleted the misguided temptations and opened a message with the subject “Hey Loser”.
From: flipchick@aol.com
To: recreationdude@hotmail.com
Subject: Hey Loser
Hey!
I’m sure you know who this is or do you? Anyway, I’m just seeing if this is you.
Do you really think I’d look good on a Wheaties box?
Well cutie, since you think you’re all that (just kidding)…you know you’re all that. I’ll talk to you later.
Oh ya, I’m coming down on Monday to see you then.
Bye,
flip chick.
You have to be a specimen of infinite insanity, with a bubble of burning badness and a stinging flame permanently aglow in your sharp spine to even think about trying to build a relationship with a young hottie among the wholesome children. It’s obviously wrong and, more importantly, against the law. I definitely do treasure Cava’s sweet demeanor and divine physicality. Come on, blonde hair, blue eyes. The girl could turn Hitler into a helpless romantic. But I’m six years her senior. I’m adult enough to know that lusting for her is dirty and immoral. By the same token, there’s a fierce phantasm of perfection that makes it also perfect, just because the vision is out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo. Keeping those sentiments in mind, I decided it was innocent enough to write her back a brief email.
From: recreationdude@hotmail.com
To: flipchick@aol.com
Subject: Re: Hey Loser
Crazy Cava,
You are very resourceful – if you could just apply this skill to your homework you would be an A+ student.
Yes, you should replace Mary Lou Retten as the new face of gymnastics on a Wheaties Box. Do you even know who Mary Lou is?
Had a good time chatting with you today. You’re so sweet you make candy jealous. Get your homework done and get some rest.
See ya at The Rec.
-MM
Lying in my bed with the lights out, all that keeps running through my head is the mixture of tender dreamy childishness and eerie vulgarity, stemming from the snub-nosed cuteness of magazine covers, from the seeping sexuality of Britney Spears videos, from the blurry pinkness of adolescent maidens from the countryside who smell like crushed daisies and sweat. My eyes become heavy and my brain becomes full and then I drift into another world, full of peaches and licorice, that doesn’t belong to our sphere. I begin to dream and an immobilized fraction of Cava’s face dominates my sight like a cinematographic still. It holds enchantment as the vacuum of my soul manages to suck in every detail of her bright beauty and fiery existence: the clear glare of her teeth, piercingly even and eternally beaming. Lips ruby like a red licked Jolly Rancher. Her skin luminous like a field of grass, each blade a nerve ending so sensitive that the slightest graze etches a memory of the moment. Then she speaks and her voice, synchronized to the shadow of a pinhead, intoxicates me: “Moved by the force of love, fragments of the world seek out one another so that a world may be.”
The next day at work I couldn’t stop thinking of this minor angel who had invaded my boring life so on my lunch break I went to CVS and spent $20 on an array of teeny bop magazines: Seventeen, Teen People, YM. I bought them all and in the parking lot, I quickly flipped through each one and ripped up each appropriate page and stomped on them. A very ripe Miley Cyrus with huge lashes and a pulpy red underlip, endorsing some perfume. Hillary Duff at the Nickelodeon Awards. The Olson Twins partying at some swank new club in NYC. Symbolically, it momentarily felt good – crushing these young famous starlets – blaming them for being the catalyst of young women embracing the constant exposure of their midriffs and peek-a-boo cleavage.
When did the revealing tide turn for teenage girls? When I was a kid, girls buried their crazy curves in smothering Champion sweatshirts and baggy Girbaur jeans and had hair so hair-sprayed high that it rivaled Marge Simpson. Nowadays, it’s common practice to go to the mall and witness any young girl’s whale tail – the y-shape fabric formation visible on the lower back from a thong sticking out. The young boys of today do not realize how lucky they are. Growing up my two objects of desire were choirgirl Debbie Gibson and straight-laced Tiffany (they didn’t pose nude in Playboy until years later when they were washed up). Today horny young men can choose from a delicious menu of unnerving pubescent sirens to satisfy their masturbatory needs.
After work I caught up with my best friend Paul for a beer at a local watering hole. I needed to hear another perspective on young women from someone my age. Following a few shots of Jager and two homeruns from David Ortiz, I loosened up and planted the conversation bomb.
“Dude, how young of a girl would you date?”
“Um, probably twelve. No, um, I don’t know. I guess it would depend on the girl but I would probably go as young as eighteen.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, motioning to the bartender for another round of shots.
“The fact of the matter is, with age comes experience and thus maturity. Someone reaching the age of rated R movies has no business dating someone reaching the legal drinking age.”
“I think age is a level of maturity and many people are less or more mature than their age lets on – like if you grew up extremely fast due to a dysfunctional home life or are just juvenile due to being a junkie burnout.”
“Four years may not matter when it’s like 26 and 30, but it sure as hell matters between 17 and 21, simply because of the experience gap between 17 and 21 is so much greater than 26 and 30.”
“Don’t you think that guys that go after younger girls understand completely that they’ll have a certain amount of control over the girl, because the girl will be in a sense looking up to the guy for his so-called experience?”
“Younger girls are attracted to confidence and maturity because it’s hard to find in men their own age. The secret is to look at the dudes you’d expect her to be dating and do the exact opposite.”
Indigo sky swept clear of murky clouds, scrawny trees infinitely extended, their black branches gesticulating like a sleepwalker. It’s Monday afternoon and it’s pouring. As I sweep the game room floor, I keep an active eye on the front door. The foul weather had discouraged the usual frequent fliers and the place was dead. Before I could even think about closing early, I heard a rap on the front door. I looked over and there was Cava, soaking wet and, of course, wearing a white T-shirt. The round soft shape of her small breasts was accentuated rather than blurred by the floppiness of her thin shirt, and this openness irritated me. My first impression was: Did she know? Was she acutely aware of her own sexuality and using it to torture and tease me?
“Hey,” she said, shaking her head violently to the side like a dog.
“Beautiful out there, huh?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know it was going to rain,” she said, as she continued to wring herself out on the floor. “I would have brought my board instead of walking over here.”
“Let me get you a towel.”
“No, I’m OK,” she said. “It’s just my hair has got so painstakingly long that it curls around itself and anything else within a five-mile radius. Today I was sitting in history class studying the highlights and ends and I thought to myself ‘these little hair molecules have been stuck to my head for so long, through soccer games and Popsicles and airplanes and all those boring things I’ve subjected myself to during my life.”
Even drenched and uncomfortable she was so beautiful and endearing and her smile was like a magic gene that automatically lit her face with a comforting gaze of graciousness and importance.
We sat in one of the small booths and shared a bag of Gummi Bears.
“Did you know wars have been fought over blondes?” I asked, as I stared at her languorous locks. “Helen of Troy’s beauty supposedly precipitated the Trojan War.”
“I loved Brad Pitt in Troy?”
Movie stars are invariably the first big crush of a preteen girl, her first big sloppy emotional response to the world. The creation of heartthrobs is now a multinational emblem that represents a whole vital stage in the sexual and emotional development of the preteen – the kind of biological confusion and obsessive hysteria that causes little girls to wallpaper their rooms with gratuitous posters of older yet handsome studs and bubble-gum crooners.
That’s what is different between Cava and me. She belongs much more than I do to that beaming realm: lilies, meadows, and crackerjacks. She worries about heartache, failure, and what would go good with her Old Navy halter-top. I’m consumed by college loans, car payments and who’s starting for the Sox tonight.
“I like being a blonde,” said Cava, rubbing her fingers through her hair. “Yeah, there’s an anti-intellectual perception of blondeness but it’s not a color – it’s a state of mind.”
“Did you know that Cleopatra was a blonde?”
“Cleopatra? Didn’t she have black hair?”
“That was a wig. She was really a strawberry blonde.”
“See a smart blonde can’t be beat. We’re a study in contrasts. My mother told me that Farrah Fawcett had her blond locks cut every six weeks and made paintbrushes out of them?
“My big question is: When blondes have more fun, do they know it?”
She laughed and her lips were like large crimson polyps, and when she unleashed her special barking guffaw, I focused on her radiant snow-like teeth – the sly tokens that illuminated the summer of my content.
As our little relationship escalated, I tried to keep it as far away from people as possible. Cava, on the other hand, would do her utmost to draw as many potential witnesses into our orbit as she could. After her soccer game that morning she stopped by The Rec. and brought her best friend Jen and her mother Kathy.
I was in my office and she walked in dressed in her brightest Abercrombie sweater, with a pattern of little flowers, and her arms and legs were of a deep golden brown, with scratches like tiny dotted lines of coagulated diamonds, and the ribbed cuffs of her white socks were stained with mud.
“Hey, I want you to meet some people,” she said, with a face so animated you could have watched her on Saturday mornings.
“Did you win?”
“Yes, but who cares. Come on,” she said, dragging me by my arm over to the same booth that her and I had sat in the other day.
Her best friend and her mother were sitting there this time. As I walked over, I could feel their eyes sizing me up like an old woman investigating a cantaloupe at the supermarket.
“Hi,” said Jen, a bubbly-faced young vixen who was so skinny she probably had to wear skis in the shower so she wouldn’t fall down the drain.
Her mother was a vibrant-looking Cougar who was half Stifler’s mom, half Rachael Hunter. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “Cava talks about you all the time.”
I smiled and sat down and Cava sat next to me and we all talked about American Idol for an hour. Then they had to go but as they were walking out the mother dropped an invitation grenade on me.
“Hey, I’m taking the girls to the beach tomorrow. You should come by. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day.”
She dipped into her Prada purse, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to me. “Here’s my cell phone number. We usually set up shop near the bathhouse.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said, awkwardly and caught off guard.
Cava gave me a big hug and delicately whispered in my ear: “See you tomorrow.”
Across the sand of the beach, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, I located Cava and company halfway down by the seawall. I watched them from a distance and Cava in swimwear striking sexy poses aroused mixed feelings in me. I was amazed by the flawlessness of her body, but I was also strangely annoyed that it was so exposed and available to everyone.
When she impulsively ran from her beach towel toward the water, I scrutinized her every stroke as intently as a chained attack dog. How she avoided jagged rocks and sharp crab shells. How her short quadriceps propelled her so rapidly through the sand. The careful way she slowly accepted the water’s cold temperature against her sensitive ankles.
After having much joy in watching her splash and dip in the water, I decided to walk over and make my presence known. I slowly strolled down the ramp to the sand and Cava spotted me and came running over. She jumped in my arms and gave me an enormous bear hug, which was shockingly strong for a dainty girl.
I could feel the envious looks of a few frat guys secretly drinking beers in plastic cups on a towel nearby. It was as if we lived in a lighted house of glass and any sicko with eyes could peer through a carelessly tinted window and obtain a free glimpse of things that the most jaded voyager would have paid a small fortune to watch.
Her mother waved to me from her beach chair and then buried her face back into her paperback version of “The Lost Symbol”.
“Come in the water,” said Cava, dragging me by my hand down to the glistening ocean. She then told me to take my shirt off and, for some reason, the innocent request sounded kinky to me. The demand to undress, although it had no sensual intention, was fiercely arousing coming from the mouth of this fresh Sports Illustrated swimsuit model in training.
As I removed my shirt, I felt her eyes examining my body like a determined dermatologist evaluating the shape of uneven moles.
I quickly threw my stuff down on the sand and ran and dove in. In the water, I became transparent to her. She saw me against the sky, without land, through my flesh and censors, without the clutter of the outside world.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” I asked, as I picked up a big piece of ugly seaweed and tossed it at her.
“I don’t have one,” she said, catching the seaweed and tossing it back at me. She said she was bored with the novelty of cliques and immaturity, with the disdain that proliferated out of rivalry. “What about you?”
“What? Do I have a girlfriend?”
“No. Are you interested in being my boyfriend?”
I looked at her with stricken eyes, like an innocent victim, like a concerned teacher. She pushed her hair out of her face and swallowed hard.
“I’m kidding, doofus,” she said, “I know you already have a girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I quickly shot back. “Why did you think that?”
“You just seem like someone who would have one.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you’re cool and you give good advice.”
“Is that all it takes to be a good boyfriend?”
“Can I ask you a huge favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Will you buy me alcohol?”
As I drove back from the beach, I could consciously feel my dual nature. One part of me was soaring high up among the clouds and another was clinging to the earth. To put it simply: there were in my nature fatalism, idealism and romanticism. Not only was I battling my inappropriate urges for a minor, now I was also battling the decision whether to buy alcohol for a minor. I felt like a bird flying through a fireworks display.
I called Paul on my cell phone to come clean about our previous discussion and ask him for real advice. He answered on the third ring.
“Dude, remember when we were talking about younger girls and how young we would go the other night?”
“Yeah, I was kinda hammered, but I vaguely remember. Why?”
“Well, I sort of asked you that because I’ve been talking to this younger girl and I sort of feel like that old creepy guy at the mall.”
“Is she hot?”
“Yeah. She’s turn-your-head-and-stare hot but she’s also fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” he said, his shock and surprise practically smothering the signal of my phone. “Jesus Christ, dude, she’s an adolescent.”
“Our whole culture is an adolescent. When are we all going to grow out of it?”
“Maybe when you get out of jail.”
“I don’t know how,” I said, seriously, “but somehow we’re the same type. We have a lineage. There’s just a six year gap between us.”
“Use her as a source of inspiration during self-love sessions or find a willing partner at one of those vinny bag o’ donuts pick-up places you frequent and imagine it’s her you’re banging.”
“I don’t want to just screw her, I want to spend Christmas with her. She’s special. I want to introduce her to the finer things in life.”
“Well, don’t burn your fingers trying to grab the toast of the town.”
From: flipchick@aol.com
To: recreationdude@hotmail.com
Subject: tonight
Meet me at the cornfields at eight. Jen’s parents won’t let her come out because she is doing bad in her classes. It will just be me. Bring what we talked about.
-cava
Sitting in my car in the parking lot of the liquor store, I entered a plane of being where nothing mattered, except the infusion of anticipation brewed within my body. I was more torn than a Natalie Imbruglia song. As I sat and debated what to do in my head, I oddly was inspired to write. I grabbed the back of a used Taco Bell bag I found wedged between the seats and wrote the following:
There was a young blond of 14,
Whose features were quite peachy keen,
But for even a feel,
You’d go straight to jail,
Doesn’t it suck that she’s only a teen?
Even though I knew I should put the pedal to the metal and speed home to my bedroom, pleasure myself to the bonus features on the Paris Hilton DVD and go to bed, I got out of my car and went in and bought a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. It was like my body was the naughty child disobeying my parent mind.
When I pulled into the cornfields, it was as quiet as a rock and darker than a mustached villain’s thoughts. I shut the lights off in my car and parked in a discreet section off the beaten path. Kings of Leon were on the radio. I grabbed a Mike’s from the backseat and took a hearty slug to take the edge off and to kill some time before Cava showed up – if she showed up.
Before I could feel betrayed, I heard a bustling from the woods and out she came like a disciple from Field of Dreams. I whispered to myself: “If you buy it, you will come.” But in my head it was more like, “If you do it, you will be clinked.”
She quickly got in the car and it was obvious she had been crying, her tender complexion blurred and inflamed yet morbidly striking.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, putting my hand on her arm.
“My father said if I don’t get an A on my English test that I can’t go to the Rec. dance this Friday.”
All teenagers think about the future, it beckons to them, it holds out alluring arms. To her it was all-important and she was wholly surrendering herself. I tried to offer an instant remedy that would ease the stress of her small soul.
“What’s your English paper on?”
“British poetry,” she said, gently wiping the small hurt that pooled in her eyes.
“British poetry?”
She nodded her head.
“Well, you happen to be talking to the poetry master. I can tutor you.”
Her face immediately lit up like E.T’s finger – like a well-lit advertised spoonful of Raisin Bran and I thought to myself, “I’m the man”.
“You’ll help me?” she asked, propping herself up in her seat.
“Of course I will. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Absolutely,” she said, grabbing a random piece of paper off the floor and a pen off the dashboard.
“You want to do it now?”
“It’s due in two days.”
“All right,” I said, relieved that she had abandoned the desire of degenerating her brain with alcohol and opted for enhancing it with Thomas Hardy.
It was the night of the dance and I still had not heard from Cava. The suspense was killing me. As her tutor, I felt partly responsible for her outcome and I didn’t want to come up short for her.
The gym was packed full of frolicking youngsters and as I weaved my way around, I scanned the surroundings like The Terminator looking for Sarah Connor – fixating my eyes on anything blonde.
After multiple strolls around the sweat-infested room, I decided to retire to the top of the bleachers for a bird’s eye view. It was during a Nelly song that I spotted Cava in her tight black tank-top talking to this popular yet dopey-looking kid Bobby in the corner.
I’m not an unattractive guy. My body’s a little less chiseled than it was when I was in college – my ratio of beer intake to gym visits being unequal – but I still get strangers on the street telling me that I look like a short Ben Affleck. And my mother says I have the type of brown eyes that Van Morrison sang about. But still, Bobby is everything a high-school girl wants in a guy – thin, immature, wears his hat to the side, thinks he’s black, and sports name-brand jeans that are so baggy that he could smuggle the Liberty Bell into homeroom. He’s even on the football team and he once got suspending for getting in a fight so he has that rebel thing going that young girls migrate towards. It was plain to see that he was the obvious choice for Cava’s love but it also was plain to see that she was anything but obvious.
When our eyes finally met, she immediately ditched conversation with Bobby and hustled in my direction and jumped in my arms.
“I got the A,” she said, fired up with pernicious enthusiasm.
“Obviously,” I said, smiling like a proud parent.
“We need to celebrate.”
I could feel the warm gazes of curious young spectators as we stared each other in the face so I quickly put her down and tried to play it cool. “What did you have in mind?’
“Do you still have those drinks?”
I nodded, slowly.
“Well, I told my dad I was staying over Jen’s house so maybe we could meet up after the dance and go to the harbor.”
Lying on our backs in the gazebo, we sipped Mike’s as we looked up at the night’s sky. We were both storytellers and this was usually where good stories began – under the umbrella of multiple stars that could steal convictions and sometimes return them as hope.
“When I was a little girl, there was this particular piece of Sesame Street that I loved to death. They’d show a bunch of dots on the screen and slowly turn each of them blue, but suddenly one would turn red, and it would stand out from all the rest like a sore thumb. I used to have so much fun looking for patterns between the masses of blue dots and the solitary red one.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“I don’t think one person can control the world.”
“What about heaven?”
“I think it’s on earth.”
“What do you look for in a guy?”
“I like a challenge. Someone who keeps me guessing. Someone who says let’s go to the movies, but then takes me to a concert.”
“What do you find romantic?”
“Boys who give me chocolate make me think that they want me to get fat.”
“What about flowers?”
“Roses are nice but I like them sent to me not handed to me.”
We talked for hours, starry-eyed and reverently under this foretaste of heaven, drinking in experiences that could influence a life.
We flowed. No kinks. No awkward moments. This connection, this trembling intimacy was the beginning of the ineffable life that I had feared would blossom.
We were thoroughly different people and yet I was thinking that if I could get her to kiss me, we could have a physic sensual experience and be happy friends.
Finally, a long silence appeared and she reached over and touched her finger to my open lips with the utmost piety – nothing scandalous, but definitely tantalizing. Then, with an impatient fidget, she snapped over and pressed her mouth to mine so hard that I felt her big front teeth and shared in the peppermint taste of her saliva. She kissed me with a sort of trembling deference that I found frightening and then she crept into my arms, gently, relaxed, caressing me with her tender, mysterious, impure, indifferent, twilight eyes – for all the gods and gangsters in the galaxy to see.
I forgot everything but her and our simultaneous whisper.
The next morning I woke up and realized that our kiss was unhinged by shame or regret. I didn’t feel weird or perverse. In fact, I felt the opposite. I felt like I could move mountains and slay the biggest dragon.
My mind constantly kept justifying my miraculous memories of high thoughts and golden moods by telling me that age was just a number. It’s just a burden that the law has put on us. The government does not own our bodies. Teens are just as capable of being in love as adults.
Then the phone rang and it was her.
“Hey,” she said.
“How did you get my number?”
“Is that a knock on blondes?”
“No. I just didn’t think it was listed.”
“I’m a resourceful girl.”
“Yes – you are.”
“What do you think about what happened last night?”
“I, um, I think it was nice.”
“How do you feel?”
“With my fingers.”
“Are you ever serious?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, be serious with me.”
“Seriously, all I know is that I feel severely right when I’m with you.”
“Good. Me too. Listen, my father went down the Cape with his girlfriend for the night. Why don’t you come over and go swimming with me?”
When I got to her house, she was wearing a lacy black bikini and black socks – socks so baggy they looked like clown shoes. She was wandering around her kitchen, dancing with the phone, watching the sun sketch a design on the storm window. Beneath her feet, the polished floorboard was as slick as the sidewalk, and she simulated advanced skating moves in her droopy footwear. Then she pulled open the freezer and grabbed a pint of Mint Chocolate Chip. She dug a finger into the ice cream and stuck it in her mouth.
“You want some?” she asked, licking her finger.
“No thanks.”
“What about some of me?”
She took a step toward me and even if her liquid eyes had faded right then to myopic fish and her lips cracked and swelled, I still would have gone wild at the mere sight of her masterpiece figure, at the dizzying sound of her raucous distinct voice.
Everything unfolded in slow motion – like the sexy section of a beer commercial.
“You know I didn’t really ask you to come over to swim.”
I could hear the raging roar of raving planets, blazing, nestled, embracing each other for heated passion.
The summer was more than half over, and it was time for us to finally take off our clothes and the fortresses around our eyes, to touch our first fingers, no holds barred, no point of return.
She untied her bikini top and revealed a set of flawless breasts that sang with the moisture of the morning – perky, pretty, and curvy. Nipples, pink as panthers, surrounded by glistening billows of silk-smooth skin.
I was in the superfluous days of the earth’s endless summers and presently one of the planet’s luckiest species.
I moved my inky eyes down her thirsty thighs like a smudge and she removed her bottoms and got on top of me.
My only grudge against nature was the fact that I didn’t have a condom on me. I would have disappointed the boy scouts with my ill preparation but even an eagle scout could not have anticipated such unexpected fortune.
After soaking in a generous eyeful of her young hungered flesh, I mutely decided that having sex with this underage heavenly creature would be worth the inevitable bad consequences.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked, giving her one last chance to abandon ship.
“Yes,” she said. “Be gentle though.”
And then she slowly undid my pants and carefully stuck me inside her.
Instantly, our naughty parts felt like royalty in each other’s company. It was a perfect fit and after a solid minute of painful and pleasurable moans, she found a groove and concentrated on the pleasure.
Beads of moisture on tender curves, a humid, torrid, sensual presence lingered against our bodies like slippery hands caressing slick, warm skin.
It was like sex in a rainforest. I think I saw God.
“What’s the difference between a brick and a blonde? When you lay a brick it doesn’t follow you around for a week.”
The next day the first thing that I did when I was woke up after I wiped the huge smile off of my face was get on my computer and Google statutory rape.
A plethora of searches came back and I read them all. I was completely clueless in regards to Massachusetts’s laws. Here is what I found out:
The average age of the defendant was 20-24, and the average age of the victim was 14-15. Approximately 42 percent of the defendants were over the age of 20, while approximately 63 percent of the victims were 15 or younger. Approximately 57 percent of the victims became pregnant as a result of the statutory rape, and approximately 16 percent reported receiving public assistance as a result of the crime.
“Young girls having babies is completely contrary to the sociological mandate, regardless of any alleged biological imperatives,” wrote a top female district attorney. “There are plenty of older females to have sex with without disrupting the social order.”
When I was a kid I used to believe that if two people cared about each other and treated each other well then everything would work out in the end. I thought you fell in love from a corner of a room, at the back of a bar, on a crowded dance-floor where you’re grooving to some sappy pop song that plasters a face to your heart like a poster of Justin Timberlake. But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that love is less about getting what you want and more about figuring out how to maneuver all the complex dramas that play out between two people – as everything they’ve ever learned crosses with everything you’ve ever learned and the gaps become self-evident. Now I know that it’s impossible to predict how beliefs and experiences are going to coexist. It’s an arbitrary construction of evolution, which our society seeks to glorify by making it seem like it’s impractical for two people to stay together forever – especially if there is a significance age difference.
Later that night, while my step-father was at his veterans meeting, Cava snuck over to my place and we cuddled in my bed. She told her father she was going to the library to research her history project.
“Do you love me?” she asked. “I mean, do you love love me? I know you want to have sex with me, but would we be having sex or making love?”
“Wow,” I said, “For such a young woman you have a jaded opinion on guys.”
“Guys, men, boys, whatever you want to call yourself, you’re all worms.”
“Yeah, but I’m a glow-worm.”
She laughed and I moved my face to hers, sealing the ring. I told her that I loved her, prematurely, helplessly, something she probably already knew, something she probably will snort dismissal at later in life but it was the only thing that I thought might help a little against all that the future had in store for us.
“How much?” she asked.
“I love you more than the gallons of lemon juice that has been squeezed over the millions of girls’ heads in an effort to make their hair look as luminous as yours,” I said, rubbing my hand against her face.
We’ll probably never have the chance to be so open and intimate together like this again. But the moment is here – and it’s ours. I don’t know whether it’s love or understanding, but it doesn’t matter.
In a few months from now when this is all over, the memory of this moment won’t be the one to come back to me – there will be others, subtle and more sexual. Yet this is probably the moment that I will like best, the one in which I accepted the fact that life was as it now seemed: exciting and awe-inspiring.
After our soul-tingling night together, a few days went by before I heard from Cava again. I was a little confused and paranoid but I just chalked it up to her juggling her school work, extracurricular activities, and family affairs. Finally, after leaving her a handful of voice messages on her cell and writing her a few emails, she showed up the next day at the Rec. with an expression on her face that looked like someone had killed her baby hamster. She was a ghostly shell of her former self. The angelic glow that usually accompanied her was overshadowed by a sense of doom and disappointment.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, as I grabbed her hand and escorted her out to a quiet spot in the courtyard. “Did your grandmother die?”
“Worse,” she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m pregnant.”
My heart instantly dropped and I could feel it ricochet off of my pelvis and situate itself in my right patella. My eyesight blurred and I became increasingly aware of the presence of my nose.
“Are you sure?”
“I took a test.”
“Are you sure you did it right?”
“I took five different tests.”
“Does anyone know?”
“Are you kidding me? My life would be over if they did.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I don’t want to have a baby. My father would disown me. Plus, I’m in high school. Everyone would think I’m a slut.”
She started to cry a lot harder. I hugged her and held her head against my chest.
“You’re not a slut. You’re amazing. We can fix this without anybody knowing but it’s not going to be easy mentally or physically.”
“I don’t care,” she said, sniffling. “As long as nobody knows and I don’t get hurt.”
“All right, I’ll set up an appointment at Planned Parenthood for tomorrow. That will give you all of tonight to think about everything and make sure you are making the right decision.”
“I don’t need to think about anything. I know what I want to do.”
I grabbed her hand, kissed it, and started to cry like an old man at a funeral: quietly, without sobbing, tears falling softly on her shoulder. In her washed-out auburn eyes, I saw our tragic romance reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the biggest bores had come, like a pointless exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood.
THE END
![playboy_party[1]](http://pissingonthepulseoftheplanet.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/playboy_party1.jpg?w=450&h=304 "playboy_party[1]")
