love bites

“Oh my God!” Mom made a sound like a half a hiccup and began speaking in hushed tones. I floated up out of sleep, not knowing if it was night or day. My room was dark except for the glow of my alarm clock, which read 12:13. A cold fear traveled through my veins. I jumped out of the top bunk and ran out to Mom in the kitchen.

“Mom!” I tugged on her pajama sleeve as she was writing down an address on the back of a telephone bill. She waved me away.

“Mom? Is it Dad? Is he okay?”

“Shh, Noreen! I’m on the phone!”

Dad was out driving the cab. Any time our phone rang late at night while Dad was at work, I assumed it was the police calling to tell us that Dad had been chopped into pieces and thrown into the Hudson River by a demented customer in the back of his cab.

“Mom!” I pulled the phone cord taut and Mom swatted at my hand. Her hair was sticking up like a rooster’s from sleep.

“All right. See you there. Thanks for calling.”

Mom finally hung up the phone but continued to scribble notes.

“Mom!”

“What is it, Noreen?”

“Is Dad all right?”

“Of course he’s all right. What’s the matter with you?”

“I heard the phone.”

“It wasn’t your father. It’s your Uncle Ray. He died.”

“Oh,” I sighed with relief. “Who’s Uncle Ray?”

“He was my father’s brother.”

I barely remembered my grandfather. He had died when I was four. Some details still sat in my memory: the way I swung on his walker like a jungle gym, the tissue paper feel of his palm as he handed me a dollar bill from his bed, Mom collapsing at his funeral and being carried to one of the pews.

“Okay. I’m going back to bed,” I said, my body already heavy with sleep.

“Hold on a second. We need to go to the wake.”

“All right. Whatever.”

“Noreen,” Mom hesitated and I turned towards her. “It’s Friday.”

She waited as I let this information sink in.

“It can’t be! The dance is on Friday. I have to be there!”

I felt a tantrum fit for a two-year-old brewing in my chest. My hand slapped the kitchen table, sending a saltshaker on its side.

“Knock it off! There will be other dances.”

“Yeah, well other relatives will die. Can’t I go to one of their wakes?”

“Don’t get smart! Uncle Ray is the last relative on my father’s side. We have to pay our respects.”

“Maybe we should have paid our respects by visiting poor old Uncle Ray when he was still alive.”

Even though I hadn’t known that Uncle Ray existed, I didn’t like the man one bit.

“Get to bed!”

I stomped back to my room and into the top bunk, punching my mattress in frustration. I would wait until morning to break the news to Steve.

High school dances were not what I had hoped they’d be. There were no choreographed dance moves. Few, if any, slow songs played throughout the night. Where were the well-lit corners for intimate conversations?

The reality of dances was a stinking, wrinkled mess. House music pounded as my heart throbbed out of my chest. Pelvises grinded into me from all sides as random hands groped and tugged at my carefully chosen outfit. Body odor hung like onions in the air. The bathrooms were a haze of Aqua Net hairspray and cigarette smoke. A fog machine choked the air out of my lungs and the blur of strobe lights made me dizzy. We all crept out of the dances looking like drowned cats. Sleep refused to visit me afterward. My ears continued to pulse with the bass long after the music had stopped. Every cell in my body sashayed to the beat when all I wanted to do was close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

I hated high school dances.

This dance, however, was going to be different, special. I had already been to dances at Steve’s high school, but this was to be the first dance at my school. And, it was going to take place on our five-month anniversary. All of my classmates would get to watch as Steve gyrated against me and held my hand and kissed my neck, as he had been doing for a total of five months, without getting sick of me! They would see proof of the attentive boyfriend I was always bragging about. It was just one more step to prove to them, and myself, that I was a normal girl with a boyfriend who thought I was pretty enough to make out with. That was worth the sweat and the stench and the sleepless night.

“But it’s our anniversary!” Steve protested when I broke the news to him on our morning walk to the bus.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Sorry about your uncle.”

Steve hugged me close and kissed the top of my head. An electric warmth spread down from my scalp, washed over my face and settled in my chest. I wondered how a peck on the head could give me shivers that an open-mouthed kiss couldn’t even touch.

“I won’t go to the dance either. I’ll stay home and watch television. Or practice guitar. But I’ll never go to the dance without you,” Steve vowed.

My insides lit up like lightning bugs and I felt a tickle in my toes.

“No. Go to the dance. Have fun. I wouldn’t want you to miss it because of me.”

I wanted him to miss it. I wanted him to miss any fun or dancing or music that I wouldn’t be a part of. But I couldn’t actually say it. I didn’t want to be that girlfriend.

“Well, only if you’re sure. I mean, I won’t have any fun or anything, but if that’s what you want I’ll go.”

“Uh, sure, I mean yeah. If you want to go….”

“Okay, I’ll go.”

Steve pecked me on the cheek and practiced his air guitar for the rest of the walk to the bus. I hoped dumb old dead Uncle Ray was happy.

I woke up the morning after the dance to the muffled ringing of the phone under my pillow. I had fallen asleep with the phone in my bed, waiting for the late-night call from Steve that never came. Rolling off of the phone, I picked up the receiver.

“Steve?”

“Oh my God! I can’t believe this happened to you. Are you okay? I mean, someone died! And he still did this to you. Oh. My. God!”

“Melissa?” Her voice hammered in my ear. I heard the words but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“Let me be the first to tell you. She is an absolute dog. Woof! I don’t know what he saw in her. You’re way prettier than she is. Her nose looks like a ferret and her hair….”

“Wait. What are you talking about?” I jumped down from bed and began pacing the bedroom.

“Oh my God! You don’t know. He said he would call and tell you himself. I am so sorry. Forget everything I said. Forget I called. This conversation never happened, okay?”

The phone clicked in my ear and Melissa was gone. I hung up and called her right back, but the line was busy.

A bowling ball took up residence in my chest and squeezed all the air out of my lungs. I tried to tease out the words I had absorbed. Prettier than a ferret. Or a dog. Something about my hair. None of it made any sense. I had to go to whom I believed to be the source.

“Steve?” I whispered into the phone. I heard his heavy breathing on the other end as he stayed silent. I was afraid he was about to hang up on me, but I didn’t even know why.

“Steve? Please say something. What happened? Melissa called.”

“Yeah?” His voice had a rusty edge. “What’d she tell you?”

“I don’t know. Something about you and a ferret.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, that’s all. What else is there?”

I listened to Steve’s heavy breathing as I clutched the glass rose he had given me for Christmas.

“Steve?”

“Meet me at our swing in half an hour.” The line went dead but I still held the phone to my ear. I had been hung up on twice already, and I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet.

Exactly twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the caterpillar swing, the site of my first kiss with Steve. I was wearing the gold hoop earrings that Steve had said made my neck look longer, and I swept my hair up into a banana clip to accentuate what he said was my best feature. I fidgeted on the swing, feeling like a kid playing grown-up in the park.

After a few minutes, Steve strode through the park and made his way over to me. His headphones were glued to his ears and his head bopped quickly to the music. From the scowl on his face, I assumed he was listening to Metallica.

Steve chose to sit on the bird swing, his second favorite after the caterpillar swing, leaving the squirrel swing between us. He stared straight ahead, lighting a cigarette and dragging deeply on it. The headphones stayed on his head, but I heard him click the tape off in his pocket.

“I went with Bertha. At the dance last night,” he exhaled gray smoke through his nostrils, pursing his lips tightly.

Bertha? Who was Bertha? My mind raced through my classmates’ faces, and her image suddenly popped into my head. Melissa was right. She did look like a ferret. Her front teeth were chiseled sharp, and there was a vague smell of zoo animal about her locker. I tasted bile in the back of my throat, wondering if Steve thought Bertha was a step above me.

“How could you go with Bertha? You were going with me!”

“I am going with you. I just went with Bertha.”

“What?” I began to get one of those migraines that only Algebraic equations could produce.

“Look, I’m really sorry. But Def Leppard was playing, and you know what that does to me.”

Def Leppard had ruined my life.

“Bertha and I were dancing,” Steve continued, “And then she was rubbing up against me, and her hair smelled like your shampoo, and it just happened.”

Does my shampoo smell like cattle? I panicked, trying to sniff my hair without Steve noticing. I would wash my hair with bacon grease before I ever used that shampoo again.

“What exactly happened?” I asked. The things I was imagining had happened were torturing me: Steve slipping his tongue into that ferret’s mouth, her tongue licking his earlobes, their arms intertwined as they laughed about me. I thought I was going to be sick.

“We kissed. Just once.”

“With tongue?”

“With tongue.”

“For how long?”

“About a minute. Maybe a minute and a half, tops.”

“Where were her hands?”

“What?”

“Her hands. Where were they?”

“When?”

“When you had your tongue in her mouth.”

“I don’t know.”

“Were they around your neck? In her pockets? In your pockets?”

“Around my neck, I guess.”

“And where were your hands?”

“Why do you want to know all this?”

“You don’t get to ask the questions. Just answer them.”

“Sorry.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“Answer the question.”

“Sorry. I don’t remember the question.”

“Your hands. Where were they?”

“On her hips, I think.”

“Did you move them up and down, or did they just stay there?”

“No, I didn’t move my hands.”

“So you kissed her for a minute or a minute and a half?”

“Yes.”

“And in all that time, your hands didn’t move?”

“No.”

“Not once?”

“No.”

“Is she prettier than me?” I asked, ashamed of the question.

“No, of course not! She’s a dog.”

A high, sharp sound escaped my lips. I imagined it to be the sound a ferret would make if something large and heavy crushed its head.

“Why?” I asked, my voice cracking for the first time.

“I’m telling you. It was the music and the dancing and the shampoo. And I just missed you so much!”

“I saw you right before the dance!”

“I know, but you should have been there with me. I felt really hurt that you didn’t come.” Steve pouted. “This never would have happened if you had been there.”

“Someone died!”

“I know. I know. Look, I’m really sorry. And I really love you. Can you forgive me? Please? It’ll never happen again. I promise, baby.”

There was that word again. Only this time, it didn’t make me feel special - it made me feel little and stupid.

Steve crossed his heart and kissed his fingers, waiting for my reply. My mind tumbled. The winter formal was coming up, and I had already bought my dress – black satin with tiny pink polka dots. Who would I take if not Steve? I was finally like all of the other girls, with a boyfriend who took me on dates and brought me flowers. I wasn’t ready to give that all up and go back to being the girl that was too ugly for anyone to ever love. But deep down, I knew it was wrong to say yes to Steve.

“Are you sure it will never happen again?” I asked meekly. My voice sounded small and insignificant. The voice that came out was not my own. A boulder of shame sat on my shoulders and hunched my back.

“Absolutely!” Steve quickly kissed me on my lying lips. “Just promise you’ll never make me go to another dance without you.”

“Promise.”

Steve stood and wrapped his arms around me. I hugged him with limp arms, wishing for that same jelly belly feeling that I had gotten whenever he held me close, but it was gone.

“Break up with him!”

“No! It was the first time. Give him another chance.”

“Once a cheat, always a cheat.”

I didn’t even know who was speaking. After my meeting with Steve, I had called Melissa for support. She then called Tara on three-way, who called Jackie, who called Kris, who called her sister the slut, who called her cousin in California, who called her friend the feminist, who called her mother and some other people I didn’t know. There were at least ten people on the line, each with a strong opinion of how I should handle the situation.

“If you accept a man back into your life who has broken your spirit, he will always own you. You will set the women’s movement back 40 years.”

“He’s not a man – he’s a guy. And we’re not women yet – we’re in ninth grade!”

“My mom’s been cheated on by all three of her husbands, and she said the sex is always better after they cheat.”

“Maybe because they’re learning new tricks from the other women.”

“Oh my God, are you and Steve having sex?”

“What? No!”

“How far have you gone?”

“None of your business!”

“Second base? I bet at least second base.”

“She’s either gone all the way or she hasn’t done anything yet. Girls who say ‘none of your business’ always fall into one of those two categories.”

“Ladies. I think we’re getting off track here. Your friend here needs your guidance and your support.”

That must have been the mom. Her voice was warm like tea with honey. I wanted her to brush my hair and bake me cookies.

“I think you should cheat back.”

“Let him see what it feels like.”

“Cheating is the first sign of an abuser. If you let him get away with this, he’ll think he can get away with anything.”

“Has he hit you?”

“Did he blame you for cheating?”

The conversation continued without me as I ran to the kitchen and gulped a tall glass of water. My head was swimming with all of these voices that knew me and didn’t know me. The one question I wanted to ask them would not make its way to my lips: Would anyone ever love me again?

“Cheating is the sign of an evolved relationship. If you feel comfortable enough to cheat, that’s just a sign that you and your partner trust one another completely.”

“Oh, shut up Mandy! You’re just saying that cause you’re a slut.”

“That has nothing to do with it!”

“Okay, could everybody just be quiet for a minute?” I finally interrupted.

“Thanks for all your advice, but I think I just need to figure this out on my own.”

“You should know something,” Jackie said.

“What?”

“He cried. The whole way home.”

“It’s true,” Tara added. “He was really sorry.”

“He does love you, Nor.”

“Winter formal’s coming up.”

“Think of the fun we all have together.”

“Don’t break up the group.”

I hadn’t thought of that. If Steve and I broke up, one of us would have to take a different bus to school. Would my girlfriends stay loyal to me, or did they prefer the group outings to movies and dances and parties too much?

“I gotta go. Talk to you guys later.”

“Stay strong, sister.”

“It’ll work out, honey.”

“Later.”

“Good luck!”

“Bye.”

Later that night, Steve and I were a tangled mess of limbs on his bed. Teeth gnashed into teeth. Tongues poked and prodded. Hands wandered into forbidden territories and were put back into their proper places. I let Steve press against my fully-clothed body. He wanted me, not that ferret from last night. I tried to relax into his arms, wanting him to feel that I had forgiven him.
Steve pulled away from me, panting. His eyes shone as if he had a fever, and his lips were watermelon red.

Nuzzling into my neck, he whispered, “Hey. Know what I want you to do?”

My body went rigid and my heart quickened with the fear of all he could ask me to do that I wouldn’t want to do, or wouldn’t be able to identify

.“What?” I croaked. His body pressed down on me, his belt digging into my belly.

“Rub your tongue across my lips. Like lipstick.”

“Huh?” After five months of dating and ten minutes of making out, I wasn’t ready for anything kinky.

Steve pulled me in close to him. I felt his whispery breath on my chin. He smelled like Root Beer and salt and vinegar potato chips.

“You know. Like this.”

Steve’s eyes closed and his tongue poked out of his mouth. He ran the tip of his tongue around and around my lips. It felt slimy and wet, like an eyeball. I fought the urge to pull away from him and roll off the bed to safety.

Cars passed by outside. More stars were visible in the winter sky. The moon crept from one corner of his window to the other. And still, it went on and on.

“Oh, yeth,” Steve lisped with his tongue between his lips. My eyes widened and rolled up to the ceiling. The man in the moon was laughing at me. My shoulders touched my ears as shivers of disgust shot up and down my spine. I was going to scream in agony if he didn’t stop soon.
Finally, I sensed him slowing down and tried to compose myself before he opened his eyes and saw the disgust on my face. When he finally pulled away from me, Steve beamed with pride. He didn’t realize that what he had just done felt like letting a slug parade back and forth over my lips. He was so pleased with himself I wanted to puke.

“You like?”

He was my boyfriend. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, even though he had just cheated on me with a creature I considered to be akin to a rodent.

My mother had told me that a woman had to make some sacrifices in a relationship. I thought she meant letting Dad have a fish tank in the living room.

Shrugging my shoulders, my face reddened as I gave my best ambiguous smile. Steve could barely contain himself.

“My turn!” he bounced up and down like a kid waiting to get on the ferris wheel. Closing his eyes, he puckered his already chapped lips and leaned in close.

My tongue poked out of my mouth, a turtle’s head reluctantly leaving its shell. I jabbed Steve’s lips with the tip of my tongue several times.

“Oh baby….”

Steve moaned and groaned and twisted on the bed. I continued pecking at his lips, pretending I was licking a stamp. My eyes scrunched shut and every muscle in my body tensed against him. I licked and pecked and poked until my tongue cramped and my jaw locked. I had nothing left to give. My mouth was dry and I needed a glass of Seven-Up.

“That was amazing! The best I’ve ever had.”

Steve and I had been exploring each others’ mouths for five months, and this was the first lip-licking session I had been invited to. Had the ferret introduced him to this technique last night, or had he been keeping this fantasy a secret from me? How many girls had licked the lips of my boyfriend, and had they liked it? I suddenly saw myself on a conveyor belt with a dozen other girls, our tongues poked out, waiting to lick Steve’s lips to his content.

I did not want to be a lip licker.

It was over two weeks later. We had started fighting about stupid things.

“Did you tell Jackie I was an octopus?” he accused.

“What? No!”

“You said you would call at eight,” I pouted on another occasion.

“It’s 8:15,” he defended.

“Exactly!”

Phone conversations were short. He replaced “I love you” with “love ya.” I no longer replied with “I love you more”, until he eventually stopped saying it at all, and I didn’t miss hearing it. He stopped calling me “baby” and I refused to lick his lips or even open my mouth for his kisses. We walked quietly and quickly to the bus each morning and didn’t let our thighs touch once on the ride to school.

I went to watch him play street hockey on a Saturday afternoon and was met with an icy glare. I hung around for a while, not wanting him to feel like he had chased me away, and I pretended to be deeply engrossed in the game. I casually walked away, taking this as the final sign that we had broken up.

Back at home, I piled all of the love notes and pictures and movie stubs into a shoebox. I listened to the mix tape of power ballads Steve had made me for one last time. When the tape abruptly clicked to an end, I ejected it and tossed it into the shoebox with the rest. Wrapping the box with enough duct tape to deter me from rummaging through the past, I buried it in the back of my closet, beneath my roller skates and Barbie’s Dream House.

That night, I cried into my pillow. My tears weren’t because I missed Steve; I would miss the girl I had become. A girlfriend. Someone whom a boy thought was pretty. Someone whom other boys noticed simply because she had a boyfriend.

I dreaded going into school on Monday and admitting that I was once again invisible me.

“What an ass hole!”

“He didn’t deserve you.”

“His ears were too big for his bony head.”

I reveled in the attention I was getting from my friends. Soon, I was surrounded by a cocoon of girls in the cafeteria, some of whom I didn’t even know.

“What happened?” Susie from Algebra class asked Jackie.

“Nor dumped her boyfriend.”

“He cheated on her.”

“Scumbag!”

That wasn’t how it happened. I didn’t break up with Steve because he cheated on me. I didn’t break up with him at all. We just stopped being us without even saying it.

“Good for you!”

“Never take a guy back after he cheats.”

“Yep. He’ll just do it again and again.”

I wanted to tell them the truth. My friends knew it – knew that I had allowed him to hold my hand and kiss my neck after he had been polluted by the ferret. But they weren’t telling, so neither did I. Their slant on the story was definitely preferable to the reality.

“Yeah, Nor heard that and she said ‘later!’”

“My ex cheated on me with his cousin.”

“I caught my ex taking pictures of my mom in the bathroom.”

“Gross.”

“Eww.”

I sat there and swam in their stories. Some exes had bad breath. Others kissed wet and sloppy like grandfathers. One still asked his mother to rub his back to help him fall asleep.

“Who will you take to the formal, Nor?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Don’t worry. You’ll find someone.”

“I should introduce you to my brother.”

“I know lots of guys in public school.”

“Here, let me do your algebra homework. You shouldn’t have to worry about that today.”

“You should be eating chocolate. Does anyone have some chocolate?”

“I’m going to fix your hair. A French braid always makes you feel better about yourself.”

Susie did my algebra homework while Tess French-braided my hair and Gigi fed me hunks of Hershey’s chocolate. My new friends and my old friends huddled around me.

A new warmth took up residence in my chest. It wasn’t better than the one that Steve’s kisses and caresses had produced, it was just different. Surrounded by this circle of girls who all had exes, I realized that I was not a no one. I was an “ex-girlfriend”. I had an “ex-boyfriend”. For the rest of his life, Steve would have to refer to me as his “ex”. Somehow, I felt there was a real power in those two little letters. E. X. I was now a girl with a past. I had a history.

And, I liked it.

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