Young Girl

In the 7-Eleven parking lot, our lips connect roughly, miscalculated like we can’t decide where to start. It’s easy to romanticize, but in reality, I’m not actually attracted to the face that’s shoved up against mine. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like; I thought there would be some sense of electricity, but it’s plain and awkward. Our friends went in to buy beers, and Stephanie exchanged a suggestive look with me when I remained in the car. It felt like I was in a movie and one of my big scenes was coming up. It’s now and I’m disillusioned, as always.

His kisses are sloppy and raced, like he’s eating a hamburger after a day of fasting. I have an urge to open my eyes, but I know that would be weird. I feel less like I’m actively kissing someone and more like I’m someone who is being kissed—I’m passive and barely alive. I’m buried and powerless.

In the weeks following, we make out a few more times. I’m sixteen and I assume that this is what I’m supposed to do. In the parking lot of Trinity Church, in the backseat of his gold 2004 Toyota Corolla, we kiss in the same messy way, and in-between breaths he vents about his ex-girlfriend. I’m pathetic, he whines, I live in my grandma’s house and go to community college for art. He’s a completely broke 24-year-old who will never evolve into an adult or get over his ex. His art is objectively repulsive. He’s not even attractive in the slightest; his face is hairy like a werewolf’s and his eyes bulge out of his face like he’s constantly stoned. Sometimes when we’re kissing, his tooth bites into my lip so hard as to leave a lip hickey. I didn’t know those existed until one forms on my bottom lip, plump like a blueberry. It makes it difficult to talk and eat food for a couple of days. I’m embarrassed for not mustering up the guts to tell him when we were making out that he was hurting me. I was afraid of making him feel self-conscious.
    
Milton convinces me not to lose my virginity to Ryan. I’d never felt or seen Ryan’s dick, but Milton claims it’s abnormally massive, that in high school he was known for his nine inches, his nickname being rocket-cock or something along those lines. I’d met Milton and Ryan the same night at a high school party. Ryan’s brother Johnny is a friend of Milton’s, and is a high school dropout who still attends high school parties. The other two tag along, using him as an excuse. Milton is 19, but he’s not any less of a creep than Ryan. Milton likes to hang around younger girls, girls in the early stages of high school, girls making brave choices about their sexuality, girls who are curious about drugs and alcohol and sex. Milton doesn’t have a job, but anyone could crash in his room whenever they want to, as long as they pay him back in some way. Milton always wants things, if not in the moment then eventually. Milton feels he’s entitled to them. If you need a ride somewhere, even if it’s only 10 minutes away, you have to send him naked photos. 

Milton likes virgins. He likes virgins so much that he’ll beg and whine and persist, hoping they’ll break. He tells me at 2 A.M. on a Thursday night during spring break: It’s the perfect time. It’s a pretty arbitrary time, I thought. 
    
You’re not good at kissing, he tells me once. Let me teach you.

I think I know how to kiss, I say.
    
Maybe with white dudes.
    
I shrug. He lies on top of me, the weight of his large body oppressing mine. He proceeds to instruct me on how to kiss. It’s important to let the guy take the lead, he says. When we kiss from then on, I understand that it’s my responsibility to submit, to not move my lips as much, but to let his lips maul mine like letting a dog slobber on your face. I feel that detached sensation again, sort of floating above myself, watching it happen from the ceiling. Like watching myself in a dream I can’t control.
    
I continue seeing him for quite some time, like he has some hold over me. It feels like a pleasant escape to sit in the passenger seat of his car with the windows rolled down, feeling free as the wind blows in my hair and my dreary music vaguely reverberates through space. It’s always around two or three in the morning when the roads are completely deserted, like no one else exists. It seems that adolescence is encapsulated in this feeling. Most of the times I forget Milton is even there, and I feel like I’m the only person left on the planet, and I’m content with that.
    
I don’t lose my virginity to him, but he’s the first guy I give head to. I heard a lot of people saying to be careful when you lose your virginity, because your body is always attached to that person afterwards, no matter the circumstance, just because of chemicals. There’s definitely no scientific backing to that, but I wonder if I’ll be attached to Milton because of the head. 

The answer arrives fast, and it’s no, not at all. I find it extremely easy to block him out of my life when he rapes my friend, and then a few weeks later another friend. The only hard part is keeping quiet about it, not spreading the word that he takes advantage of inebriated young girls. It’s not my story to tell, but it’s a story that could save other girls. All I could share with others to prevent them from engaging with him are weird anecdotes of discomfort, not rape, but vague assault: He doesn’t know how to finger girls. He just plunges his finger inside of you and tells you to wait until it feels nice. It doesn’t feel nice, ever. It hurts and he won’t stop no matter how many times you ask. 

But a lot of guys like to finger girls that way—clinically, as if he’s a gynecologist feeling for cysts. Girls are reduced to holes that guys want to curiously poke their fingers into, which is foreplay before they awkwardly try to stick their dick in, too. And even though that’s all you are to them—a hole, a void, a warm abyss—they will never forget you or leave you alone. They will message you years later. They will miss you. They will obsess over you. They will never stop begging you.

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