jennadorn

[jennadorn]

It’s Always June

“It’s always June,” he told her as they clung to the bed of his rickety truck that faced the Baldwin Hills overlook. June could hardly hear herself think over the crickets’ relentless chirping. She’d been unconsciously holding her breath for the last minute since he’d said this, which would explain the growing tightness in her chest, the sudden lack of air that seemed to have just dissipated off the face of the earth like a mirage or a bad dream. He had suggested they come here to talk - it was the place he always retreated to to be introspective, or to just get lost in the view - which she quite honestly didn’t understand because already available to him was a perfectly good view of her face. And anyways the crickets along with all of the other generic nature sounds were so fucking noisy that there was nothing peaceful about this spot. It’s why she hated the outdoors so much - she could never just hear her own thoughts. At any rate - she concluded that when he said this…

He meant one of three things:

1) “It’s always June” - as in - it’s always summertime with her. Like the first month of summer, when the air feels a little lighter, the days draw on a little longer, and there’s a little more spring (summery spring, though. Not like spring the season) in your step. Every outdoor activity exudes this magical quality. And June - she was like that last hour of summer daylight blending into night sky. Like cerulean melting into violet. His favorite color was cerulean. But violet…? Was there someone else…who was impossibly summer-like named Violet? She imagined who Violet would be: the type of girl who seemed to always have that natural summer glow but never wore a pinch of makeup. Strawberry blonde hair that had a beachy summer wave right when she rose from bed in the morning. A voice with the perfect sexy raspiness that you once tried to obtain after hours of screaming in the shower and your neighbors called the cops because they thought someone was attacking you. And when one of the cops asked why you were screaming, to which you made something up, he complimented your voice. Who was this Violet and where would June be able to find her to kick the eternal summer out of her? Ok but enough about Violent, I mean Violet so…

1a) Pretending for a moment that there is no “Violet”, he must mean that he always felt it was summer with June, as if every day were a perfect 80 degrees with a slight breeze that never made you too hot or too cold. As if the days were full of endless adventure that couldn’t be impeded by any mishap, because the mishaps somehow always launched them into almost too coincidental but exciting trouble, bonding he and June even closer together. And summer meant always being barefoot. Vulnerable. Free.

2) “It’s always June” - as in - she, June, comes first, now and always. As in - whenever there’s a question of what his purpose is - of why life should go on (not to be dramatic but) - it’s always her. June. Everything he’s doing always goes back to her. She’s the reason. She’s the one he always chooses. He will always pick her.

3) “It’s always June” - as in - time stands still with her. As in - their love is like a time capsule that can be opened at any moment and it’ll bring them right back to this embodiment of bliss. As in - they’re stuck in time. As in - they’re the same people they were three years ago when they first met. And June kind of liked that because she never wanted to face the reality that changing might include growing apart from him. That either one of them might not love each other the way they once did. No longer understand each other the way they once had. And just maybe for the last three years they’d been fighting the inevitable changes that hung densely above them like fog. Like gloom…

4) “It’s always June” - as in…June Gloom. As in, he’s just not happy with her, these days. As in -

4a)“It’s always June” because -  it’s always *something* with June. And everything always ends up being her fault; everything that goes wrong is because of her. She’s always to blame because she never learns from the fights they have. From the times she hung up on him because she didn’t want to hear anything that might hurt her more. Because it was too painful to acknowledge that yet again, she fucked up. That she kept falling into the same habit of pushing more, more, more, and never understanding or wanting to acknowledge when someone has given all that they could. That they’ve emptied themselves for her only to reveal they just didn’t contain as much love that she contained in the first place. That not everyone can love as much as she can, and the hopeless romantic that she is wants to act like it’s always summer, even when it’s December. And the coolness becomes so palpable that she can feel it when she touches him. And you just can’t love the idea of someone because that’s not who they really are. When you want them to always be Summer, but like seasons, they change. The earth will always turn.

[jennadorn]

Old Navy Denim

I’m 24 years old and I’ve just slept with a woman for the first time — and though it was by no means the sex of my dreams, so much so that I nauseously declined the morning after sex, I think about it regularly with fondness and a desperate sense of nostalgia. Because in my mind, it officially confirmed my physical and romantic attraction to my own gender. Or anyone with a vagina for that matter.

If I had to guess when my first “gay” thought occurred — (as if all thoughts aren’t inherently gay to some degree) it was likely during my childhood friendship with my next door neighbor, Jolie. During the five years that I lived across the street from Jolie, we were glued at the hip. Every day after elementary school, we’d run through the neighborhood together on a sour candy-induced high, pushing one another down the Doral Avenue hill on skateboards, ding-dong ditching the old prunes on our street. We’d celebrate Pesach and Hanukkah together; we’d swim in her pool until the warm hours of each summer day cooled into bittersweet evenings; we’d pretend to be grownups with British accents and lollipop stem cigarettes — we’d play house together (which I realize now is a fucked up game centered around internalized domesticity and the American idealization of the nuclear family, but that’s beside the point). During our bourgeois family shenanigans, I’d insist that we were married (fuck you patriarchy). And as innocent as this sounds — there was a feeling brewing within me that I couldn’t articulate then — but that I can finally characterize as a pure, but tragic crush.

As we grew older, Jolie, with her striking green eyes, flushed olive skin, and golden locks, blossomed and classically found popularity every direction she turned. Boys ogled at her, girls fought over their ranking friendship with her. And I, in my baggy, torn denim from the boys’ department of Old Navy, absolutely crushing it (not) with an endearing unibrow, and overcome with social anxiety, slowly faded into her peripherals, eventually becoming the shy, weird girl dressed in boys’ clothing — Gameboy Color or Judy Blume book always in hand — who she avoided eye contact with at all times.

This continued until high school, when I grew into my body, traded in my swim trunks for shorts that hardly covered my coochie, my books and journals for friends whom I had nothing in common with other than raging hormones and body image issues, and invitations to parties.

I tried to differentiate my feelings for boys and for girls: I liked boys, whereas I just experienced a strange combination of admiration and deep envy for some of the girls I hung out around. I hopelessly wanted to be them, maybe, not be with them. It was the sole explanation that I could rationalize. 

And sometimes when I’d look longingly at women holding hands and kissing in public, I’d force myself not to look. But then I couldn’t look away. And sometimes I’d just change my dating app preferences to women because I was only curious. If I were gay, I would have already come out, right? It would have been obvious to me. I would have had a relationship with a woman… I would have already slept with one. If I told anyone that I liked women now, I’d just look like a fraud. And maybe I was. And what if my friends became weird around me when I told them? So I buried. I buried myself inside my own discomfort and denied this mystifying void expanding faster than my own universe.

It wasn’t until I found some semblance of queer community with new roommates post-college, who I could gush about crushes to, who I could open up about my experiences to…and lack thereof, that I could acknowledge my sexuality. I was not doubted by them like I’d feared. My roommates were the only ones who knew initially, and with enough validation, I found the courage to go on dates with women.

Enter: Cameron

A baby-faced butch writer I met on Hinge. She mirrored me in passions and personality, mostly — until she quickly revealed a superiority complex bigger than her own head. She evoked in me waves of embarrassment and shame that I hadn’t even known existed, only within hours of meeting. It had been my fourth date with a woman.

We quickly descended into heated conversations about film and politics, our families, our dreams. Like the gays we were, we unpacked our birth charts — both of us scorpios — which could only explain the ensuing events. Our chemistry was so palpable that I had to physically placate the butterflies in my stomach with my hand. We flirted, teased one another about potentially making out later that night, and before leaving the bar, exchanged coming out stories (which was initiated by her because mine was clearly still TBD). She shamed me for not telling my parents, for not having a “story”. She didn’t understand my fear as a bisexual/queer person that others would think I was experiencing “just a phase”. She made me feel like an imposter for not having already coming out to everyone. Lastly, she was incredulous that I was interested in men. She’d responded with such inflated disbelief that it rendered me paralyzed and defenseless. And she made sure that I was aware of these facts about myself every succeeding hour.

Several spellbinding drinks deep, we wandered back to my apartment. We pushed each others’ buttons so precisely that it felt like we’d known each other for years. It wasn’t until I later re-assessed her digs, that I realized every cutting word seemed to refract a cruel, blinding shard of truth. She wasn’t teasing, but criticizing me. I’d brushed it off in the moment, much like one does with rose-saturated glasses. And then the shock of a verbal attack is finally processed, let alone absorbed, when you’re wide awake in bed that night, tossing and turning over the painful remarks etched into your memory. And you can only think of what you’d have said, reliving the moment over and over again, grasping for the missed, gratifying opportunity at calling someone out on the shit they gift you, adorned in a glittery bow and rainbow-themed wrapping paper.

Sprawled along my couch, I made the first move after she insisted that the ball was in my court. I either made the move or the night was over. So after enough nerve-numbing alcohol, I took her in my hands and brushed her lips. And we kissed some more. And some more. And suddenly she’s on top of me. We entreated to my room as the blanket of steam around us thickened. Under my satiny covers, I told her that I was unsure if I wanted to have sex. I prefer not to on the first date, or until I feel comfortable with someone inside of me. She willfully dismissed my explanation. She said that she might understand if it was a man I was in bed with, but this wasn’t the same. And it was clear I was comfortable with her. And wasn’t I having a good time? Why shouldn’t we have sex? I froze in shock. To placate her, I said that I’d let her know when I wanted to stop.

So we had sex. I was simultaneously enthralled…swooning…exhilarated that I was literally pussy deep in the reality that I’d denied for so long, and also heartbroken that it ensued over a crushing pressure that I’d experienced endlessly from men, and never expected to confront from another woman.

We fell asleep baby cheek to baby cheek and she spooned me all night. It was all so newly wonderful that I was nearly ready to look over each problematic chapter of our evening together. So when she was offended upon my asking her to leave the next day, and when she gaslit me after our second date which she assumed was ending with sex, I reluctantly cut all the ties with which she’d suffocated me (in a non-horny way). They say you never forget your first love, but hell hath no fury on your first lesbian romance.

#prose #gay love #queer

[jennadorn]

Girls

You, D, R, and T cinnamon rolled together in a blanket as you took turns hitting a spliff packed with old weed you found loose in the corner of your desk drawer. D narrated your daydreams via the story of her mecca to Europe where she fucked a Scottish weatherman who just happened to be married, and who coincidentally loved his wife even more than he loved talking about the changes in wind patterns. He used poetic weather metaphors in bed like, “there’s a flash flood hailing from your pussy”, and “you’re so hot that my body temperature has just reached record highs”. D realized that all of his dirty talk alluded to climate change and she couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or if she was some natural disaster herself, but nevertheless she made it her mission thenceforth to dramatically alter the way she lived her life. So when she returned back to her apartment, to all of you, she ordered a lifetime supply of reusable straws on amazon and only ate fish that she personally knew was caught at the Santa Monica pier.

At this point, you were all so stoned that you began watching old episodes of Girls from end to beginning, and would scream at the TV when everyone’s character arcs regressed, when they would start out strong and revert back to their old ways. You figured this was as good a time as any to confess to everyone that whenever you’ve asked them to “keep it down because you were going to write”, you’d shut your door just to resentfully masturbate to girls who resembled your crush’s girlfriend. And after coming, you scribbled in a journal for exactly five minutes complaining about how hard writing is, only to fall asleep with pen in hand. So when waking up to the sunrise with ink all over your body, you could feel a false sense of pride. You were a real writer.

Feeling inspired by your vulnerability, your truth, R gracefully (for a high person) cartwheeled into her room and harmonized to your humiliated cackling. Because R could make a soulful tune even out of farts, she strummed her guitar and channeled your shame into a serene folk song about masturbation. T began feeling triggered by the music and furthermore, the subject matter, so she retreated to the kitchen to build a cheese plate doused in red wine. This way she could feast and drink all in one bite, and so when one of you would ask her if she’s chosen - in terms of a career and thus where she’d be spending a quintessential window of adulthood, and what kind of people she’d be forced to make small talk with on public transportation every single day, etc, she could stuff her mouth with a wine-infused brie slice and mutter something unintelligible to all, including herself. Leaving one of you to change the subject to which Girls character you hated most.

[jennadorn]

Millenial Jesus

When you’re at lunch with your best friend and her girlfriends and you talk about all of the dick you used to suck without expecting anything else out of it after. Now you won’t even think about putting one in your mouth unless it asks you to dinner after. The dick, not the man cowering behind it. Because, you all concur, the dick makes the decisions and the man just follows along like a dog chasing its own tail. And you all are foaming strawberry mimosas at the mouth, entertaining the idea of a man who actually knows what he wants. A man who thinks autonomously from his penis. You all are grossly drunk, numbing your perpetually haunting past heartbreaks with $20 avocado toast, channeling Cartesian Dualism as you conclude that a man has two fundamental parts: mind and penis. And maybe a man can exist independently, outside of his penis. That he can think and feel apart from it. You all debate what this man would be like. What he’d look like. Definitely like some kind of god, that’s clear. But you all decided you stopped believing in god after your serious high school boyfriends cheated on you with the pious sluts from that all-girls Catholic school across town. 

You each went around the table sharing the logline for your tragic breakup stories: 

•Johnny - The cokehead acapella star who couldn’t get hard for you anymore and used this an excuse when dumping you for Bobby Swardson, the football team’s hot waterboy.

•Chad - The classically charming slacker who forgot to ask you to prom, so you ghosted him until the night of, when he got piss drunk, showed up to your house naked, and threw rocks that shattered your bedroom window. Which then prompted your neighbors to call the police as you sobbed in bed to The Smiths, still wearing your itchy pink dress. 

•Jason - The 27 year old who’d been held back for almost a decade, who got a DUI before zero period and promised he’d propose right after getting out of jail. But to your dismay, on your second visit you find out that he and your older sister had been writing erotic love letters to each other using kinky prison talk. 

So, this perfect man probably isn’t like some god…

Maybe he’s like Jesus, though. Jesus would unconditionally love his serious high school girlfriend and stayed faithful to her throughout college, for sure. Even when you do too much coke and accidentally tell Jesus that you think you’ll outgrow him at some point because he’s just too fucking nice, too much of a goody-two-shoes. And you want someone a little more adventurous, someone a little dangerous. Someone who will fuck you with all the lights on in the back seat of your Civic, just once for Christ’s sake! But nevertheless, Jesus would know what he wants. He’d want to devote himself to you, marry you, have your babies (after getting married, obviously), share his undying love for you with the world via 24-hour instagram stories of you. That’s true devotion, you all agreed. It’d probably end up driving you away, leaving him with your ten children while you solo road trip across the country to re-discover yourself. But in the end, he’d take you back. Because he’d understand. He’d forgive you. Jesus was fucking hot, too, one of you points out. He’d probably wear only Tommy Bahama button downs with the first 4 buttons undone, revealing a landscape of untamed chest hair, framed by a chestnut colored mane. He’d always either be barefoot or wearing his signature Birkenstocks…

A few months into the relationship, you’d begin wishing he’d practice better hygiene, though. Sometimes his musk would become so intolerable it was as if he’d never even been in a modern shower before in his life. And you’d try to cook highly caloric, high cholesterol meals for him, frying everything from chicken to lettuce, because his protruding ribs made you feel insecure about your own body image. And when he’d tried to get you to go vegan you felt like he was confirming that you needed to lose those 5 pounds, or like he was better than you or something. So Jesus would be there for you as you recovered from an eating disorder he weirdly called “gluttony”, which just made you feel even more guilty. He’d validate your existence when you’d project all of your trauma onto him, and eventually, you’d realize, Jesus was just too fucking perfect and you couldn’t compete with that. So as the four of you unbuttoned the top button of your skinny jeans at the table, baptizing yourself in that last splash of mimosa, you decided that Jesus was a piece of fucking work. And you’d rather live a lonely existence for all of eternity then be with someone like him.

[jennadorn]

House

You began cutting at twenty years old, when your self-loathing thoughts turned a sour ten years old and declared war on your body.  

You were living in Santa Barbara when it happened for the first time. Your shift at The Brewhouse had just ended, bloody wing sauce caked across your arms and legs, a shower of Grey Goose tears that stung your flushed cheeks. You left hastily and hazily, as your boyfriend slash co-worker ignored your attempts at communication and drowned himself in shots of tequila at the empty bar. You parked oceanside and turned the engine and headlights off. You squeezed your eyes shut and imagined that you didn’t have a body anymore. When that didn’t work, you opened your center console and dug through crumpled receipts and empty lighters. You didn’t know what you were looking for, but when you came upon the dull pocket knife, you unwaveringly drew it to your wrist and prodded it. You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t know why you were doing it. You just were. And everything just was. 

 Two years later: You’re involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital on a Thursday morning after police barricaded you at your apartment, handcuffed you tightly - despite your bleeding wrist - and pushed you in the back of a police car. Upon exiting the vehicle, they shouted a series of expletives at you to stand back and away from the officers, as if you were dangerous - as if you were a monster. They wouldn’t look you in the eyes. They left you at a police station, cuffed to a bench for over two hours and would not answer any of your questions about what was going to happen to you or where you were going. Eventually, two cops accompanied you for another two hours in the waiting room of a hospital. One of them took it upon himself to therapize you, and he demanded to know why you would do this to yourself. “Was it a boy?” he demanded.

Upon evaluation, the ER doctor concluded that you were to be transferred to a psychiatric facility. Despite your refusals and last-ditch attempt at convincing her that you’d actually had a spiritual awakening while chained to your bed, and you were no longer suicidal. You realized you were actually very happy - maybe even the happiest you’d ever been! And in all honesty, you’d been so overcome with joie de vivre that you could’ve just died, which is why you tried to kill yourself earlier that morning. 

And you weren’t sure you were even trying to kill yourself. But you would’ve said or done anything to get out of this. But the more you feigned happiness - the more unstable you appeared to the doctors and the more removed you felt from reality. So in the middle of the night they gurneyed you to a psychiatric hospital, where you spent 72 hours of purgatory a la Kafka. And you only managed to escape this nightmarish place because you finally succeeded in convincing your appointed doctor that you were feeling good. That your body was safe from yourself.

#mental health #prose #humor #hospital

[jennadorn]

Hollywood

DON’T MAKE A SCENE! He screams while we bicker about his (in my words) alarming insensitivity to everyone else’s feelings and experience (specifically mine). 

We’re on our way to a show, both of us fast-walking down Hollywood Boulevard, competing paces with one another. For a few moments he’s walking ahead of me, and then I’m ahead of him - like we’re racing toward the finish line of this relationship. Contending for the moral high ground just up the block.  Neither one of us look back to see if the other remains close behind. We both seem to trust that we won’t simply stop in our tracks and run the opposite direction, exhausted from the constant rivalry. From trying to prove that we’re not really the person we’ve been for the last two years. That this isn’t like me. Like him. Or is it just that we bring out the truth in one another? 

I’m tired, I call to him as he stretches the space between us. He pretends not to hear me. He pretends I’m not even really there at all. 

I SAID I’M TIRED! 

In my peripherals I see tourists gawking at us as, if we’re a part of the entertainment. Disney characters that reek of cigarettes and Lysol stare at us. Freddy Krueger leans over to me and asks if I’m okay. “Doll”, Freddy calls me. I ignore him and squint my eyes to discern how far apart we are now. He’s barely visible through the fog curtain hanging between us - impossible to say if it’s Los Angeles smog, the late November mist, or a shitty fog machine. An older Filipino man and his family are recording me on an old Canon camcorder. I move closer to them. They step back. I twirl forward, and then they step back, like we’re doing some kind of dance. A salty wave of nausea and loneliness builds along my eyelids. I blink rapidly and inch closer to the camera so that the tears streaming down my swollen cheeks are palpable. The climax, the Oscar-winning scene everyone is waiting for. The family gapes at me in amazement and after some reluctance, applauds emphatically.

AND SCENE! I shout down the street to him. I’m tired of acting.

#prose #humor #dark humor #flash fiction

[jennadorn]

The 405

It was when you sped onto the 405 onramp that he revealed he no longer loved you. You slammed on your brakes and he screamed a sequence of rattling expletives about your “inability to slow down” and your “refusal to take the wheel and steer” and your “insistence on remaining a passenger in your own vehicle”. You despised the apt car metaphors so much that you opened the car door and tumbled out, away from the asshole who you foolishly believed actually cared for you. From the center divider you watched your car continue moving forward, with him still in it. The deafening honks drowned out your own thoughts and it felt good to have a clear head for once in your life. You squinted so that blood red brake lights ahead turned into meaningless blurs. You watched your car eventually crash and burst into flames. He crawled out and picked up another ride while you remained motionless. No one gave you a lift or even called for help despite your gesticulations. You were standing at the fucking center divider for god’s sake and everyone merely sped past you like you didn’t even exist. You began cackling maniacally, flooding with contempt for all of the narcissistic cunts who drive on the 405 and you vowed to never take this hellish freeway ever again.

#humor #los angeles #satire #relationships #breakups

[jennadorn]

Relationships are like Traveler’s Diarrhea

You got stoned together and watched Seinfeld until the sun glistened in between the succulents on your windowsill. You wrapped yourself around him, contorting your body into the shape of a question mark so that you could fill the empty space. Then you fell asleep directly into his armpit and dreamt of backpacking through East Asia together. The humidity there morphed your hair into a frizzy web of insecurities that expanded and shape-shifted each coming day together. So when he’d reassure you time and time again that your hair looked like one of those beautiful, intricately spun webs and not a literal tumbleweed (in the dream), you feigned composure and nonchalance in order to seem “chill” and not “preoccupied” with your appearance. You were the cool girlfriend who could “hang” in the jungles of Vietnam and not be concerned with the varying stenches that your body odor took on (in the dream). And though he promised you didn’t smell bad, upon sniffing your own underarms you became faint and dizzy. And when you picked up traveler’s diarrhea there in Thailand and he didn’t look at you any less passionately - even when you spent an entire afternoon in an outhouse during your elephant excursion (in the dream) - you awoke to his backside, deciding that this was the quintessence of love. The height of romance. And when he wakes, you’d tell him that this was the kind of relationship you wanted. One in which he’d love you for all of your flaws.

#satire #prose

[jennadorn]

It ain’t over till it’s over

You know when you’ve claimed that you’re gonna leave your significant other so many times on so many different occasions that you start believing yourself less and less until you can’t even take yourself seriously anymore? And after each of these instance during which you’ve “definitively” decided that you’re done with it all, you stay and before long you’re already back on the MO of making things work - you know, until it doesn’t. Kind of like when you’re bored and/or hungry so you constantly open and close the refrigerator over and over again, as if each time that you open that door to your coveted escape, something new will miraculously appear. As if the half-drunken bud lights, wonder bread, expired orange juice, and wilting lettuce brooding on the shelves are just magically going to turn into a fucking chocolate cake? 

What is it that really tells you this is finally gonna be the last time? What prompts that gut feeling that makes this time different from all the other times? Aside from when you tried to troll them online and you discover that they’ve blocked you on all social media platforms as well as your phone number. And your email address. No you didn’t know that was possible. But even when it’s over it never really feels like it is. 

And maybe it’s hard to believe after all of this back and forth.  But it’s not like you’re trying to convince yourself as you say this. It’s not like you’ve repeated every single word of this mantra to yourself until it feels like the truth. Until you have it memorized and ready to hypothetically mic drop on him if you guys ever hypothetically talked again. 

You know it’s over, okay? There’s no way things could work out when you’re blocked on all media platforms. 

[jennadorn]

A Poem

                                    i wanna be the one you drunk text

                   i wanna be the one you leave right after having sex

                                i wanna be the one you leave on read

        i wanna be the one who you confuse with your ex girlfriend

                     i wanna be the one who heightens your existential dread

                 i wanna be the one you hide when you run into your friends

                             i want you to convince me that romance is dead

[jennadorn]

Bedhead

It started after my best friend Katie Fisher just told me she’d lost her virginity to her 22 year old boyfriend in his parents' bed. That’s when I decided I would have sex once and for all. I mean, not because I wanted to. Every remotely attractive guy in the junior and senior class was like a four year old golden retriever - in maturity and intellect. But Katie’s boyfriend was pretty cool. His name was Ed. They met on a Friday night at Barnes ‘n’ Noble after the two of us smoked my brother’s weed with an fuji apple in the back parking lot. We were strolling through the erotica section, pretending we knew exactly what we’d been looking for when we ran into him. He was standing there in the aisle, reading Anais Nin, looking very invested in the story, when we stepped on Ed’s toes. They started flirting (Katie was pretty sophisticated and would read like Nietzsche and shit for fun) and apparently Ed was pretty experienced in bed (considering he was 22 and all) so I guess they had a lot to talk about. Apparently Katie would have like 20 orgasms every time they would have sex, which I didn’t even know was possible. She said she hadn’t either until Ed told her it was.

So anyways, I got to thinking about who I could lose my virginity to. Katie and I strategized, but we couldn’t find anyone who I wasn’t totally repulsed by. She said it didn’t matter as long as I just closed my eyes and pretended it was Harry Styles or something. She did that - and I asked her if that was considered cheating and she said no - Ed would do it too sometimes. I didn’t have her clarify whether or not Ed also thought about Harry Styles - I didn’t want to violate his sexual privacy or anything. We decided that there was no one really worth losing my virginity to. Katie suggested one of Ed’s friends, but I didn’t want to sleep with someone that experienced when I wouldn’t really know what I was doing.

Eventually I realized that I didn’t really care if I actually did it, but just as long as people thought I did. I was pretty sure most of the juniors were shit in bed anyway and wouldn’t even know the difference if I eventually boned one of them. And this one day after first period I met Katie in the girl’s bathroom because she was having some kind of hair crisis. I asked her why she even cared what she looked like because she had a boyfriend, and she said because presentation was everything. She couldn’t just go around looking like shit all the time now that she had a hot boyfriend, because people would just think she’d totally let go of herself. I wasn’t sure why we thought so much about how others perceived us, but Katie was more mature than me, so I just kind of took her on her word. She grew breasts before me (mine were bigger now but that’s beside the point), was the first in middle school to get her period, placed higher on exams, and shaved her legs before I ever did.

I did see why she freaking out about her hair, though. It was fucking horrendous. If an eagle had swooped over a mother bird’s nest and it fought tooth and nail to protect her babies, her hair was the aftermath of that. She cried out that it was just sex hair and didn’t have time to fix it before getting to school.

What?

You know, like when you have crazy hot sex and your hair gets all matted together in sweat and jizz?

I’ve never done it, Katie.

Oh, right. I forgot. Sometimes I feel like you have.

So that got me thinking. If I just tousled my hair in a huge wad of mousse and hairspray, tangled it all up, and showed up to school like that. No one with eyes and a mirror would intentionally style their hair that way.

When I left the house that morning my mom jumped and looked like she’d just seen a ghost.

I looked at her consolingly. My hair probably triggered my poor mom who hadn’t dated anyone in years.

Everyone at school looked over their shoulders as I walked down the halls. People stared and pointed as I made my way to our meeting spot. I felt sexy. Bold. I’d even let one of my bra straps slip off my shoulder just ever so slightly. I imagined I was strutting down a runway.

I hadn’t told Katie about my hair because I wanted to see her natural reaction. Hoping she’d slap me and be like

Bitch! Did you get laid!?

But my plan didn’t exactly go accordingly. Katie asked me if I’d fallen into the fucking Upside Down. I held back my tears.

No...I…

Were you running late this morning or?

No..I… you know…

Ahhhh!!!!! Tell me everything!

We walked arm in arm down to our second class. I kind of just made up the story as I went along  because I hadn’t intended on lying to her. But when she first saw me across the lawn, a  simultaneous thrill and wave of shame swept over me. Lying kind of came instinctively, like I didn’t even have to think about it.  It just gushed out of me like the first time I drank alcohol from Katie’s parents liquor cabinet and got sick all over her dad’s record collection. Which I didn’t feel bad about because that asshole was stuck in the past and seemed to take more pride in his dumb fucking music wheels than in his own daughter. Katie was proud of me, too. And I didn’t want to lose that sense of accomplishment I felt. Even though I knew that my virginity really didn’t measure my sense of worth, I for once felt like more than just Katie’s shadow.

The next day I walked into AP English and people started addressing me as bedhead. And now I have to wear my hair like this almost every day because I have a reputation to uphold.