first time


He would come for her she knew.  He was a sweet boy, innocent in a naughty kind of way.  But she liked them like that, unspoiled, eager to know a girl in a carnal way for the first time.

Why can’t they wait to meet someone special?

They were born bastards, all of them. Better to use them and hurt them before they hurt you.

Still he was tender.

**

I’m afraid of me. I’m so bitter I’m afraid of what I’ll grow up to be, of how twisted and inhuman I’ll become. I have more than a handful of sins to my name, but nothing twists the knife like the hate I have for my mother.

She’s been working on a screenplay for about a year now, and she was watching TV and they had a commercial for a show debuting next season, which is basically the same plot as her screenplay. This is not the first time this has happened. In fact, this happens to her almost every time. I don’t know why the hell it happens. And a normal person would feel sorry for her. But I guess I’m so goddamned tired of her sadness that I don’t feel anything but hate towards her now. She complains about being overweight, and then opens up a new bag of Doritos. She complains that people are stealing her ideas for screenplays, but won’t listen when I remind her that everything is derivative. She can’t manage to see the beauty in anything she does. I feel like I’ve given up on her. But she’s given up on herself.

My mother remarried when I was fifteen.  It wasn’t until I was sixteen that her new husband started coming on to me.  At first it was the way he looked at me.  Always staring at me.  He never looked me in the eyes.  Always his eyes drifted down to my breasts and they would linger there longer than is decent for a father…even a step-father to be looking at his daughter, even a step-daughter…maybe his daughter’s friends but certainly not his own daughter.

What my mother could see in such a scrawny black bastard I’m not sure.  She seemed to have a thing for black men.  My mother really was a real slut.  My father found out that she was bopping a black guy and he left straight away.  As it turned out later, he was also seeing another woman, so my mom just made it easier for him to leave.  Because she got caught first, my father had the grounds he needed for a divorce.

Shortly after my father left, he moved in and my life began to change.

The first time he physically touched me, I was in my nightshirt standing at the kitchen counter pouring a bowl of cornflakes.  He came into the kitchen.  He was wearing his bathrobe open.  Underneath he had on boxer shorts.  I didn’t think much of it, but then on second glance, I saw his thing was hanging out of the little slit in the front.  He must have known especially when he saw my face go red.  He came up behind me and pressed against me under the pretence of getting a bowl from the cabinet.  I could feel his thing against my back.  I scooted underneath him and took my bowl of cornflakes to my bedroom.  I kept the incident to myself.

It got worse after that.  We started this goddamn bowling league and every time on the way home he would park somewhere dark and start saying things to me like how pretty I was and how he couldn’t help wanting to be near me because I was so pretty.  He would feel me up. I would beg him to stop and try to scrunch myself up into a tight ball.  He would paw me and kiss my neck until I started to cry.  Then he would say he was sorry and begged me not to say anything to anyone and that he wouldn’t ever do it again.  But every week he did.

He started coming into my room late at night.  The first few time he just stood and stared at me.  I pretended I was asleep, but I could see him standing there in his boxer shorts.

Then one night he climbed into my bed underneath my covers.  His kissed my neck and cheek and pressed himself against me…feeling me…rubbing me, touching parts of me that wasn’t proper.  I wanted him to stop; I begged him to stop.  In the end I would just lay there like a cold dead fish unmoving, no moaning, not even a protest.

**

“Jen told me you’d be here,” he said.  She caught his reflection in the mirror.

What a sweet boy.  I like him.  He’s a black kid.  I must be like my mom because I like these black boys, their dark skin.  There’s something primal…something exotic about it all…

She turned to face him.  He tried to look her in the eyes, but her lame eye looked eerie.

He had to avert his gaze.  She was too hard to stare at.  Instead, he let his eyes rest on her breasts.

Look me in the eyes you bastard.  They can’t even look me in the eyes.

If only my breasts had eyes, things might be different.

I doubt it though.  They’re all bastards, no matter how innocent they look.

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