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March 7, 2001
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  a bath. My little sister is three years younger than me. I am eleven but look older. We are playing with our mermaids. Mine has green hair that goes down to her fin. Sidney's has pink hair. Underwater the mermaids look like a shampoo commercial. I stick my head under and Sidney says, "You look like a car wash."We get out of the tub, wrap scrappy towels around our bodies in different ways. We pretend that we are fashion designers. Sidney ties the ends of two towels together. "It's a mink wrap, " she says. We sit on the bath mat facing each other. We rock back and forth because it's cold. I say, "Once upon a time there were two little girls." "What were their names?" she wants to know. "Larissa and Tinkerbell," I tell her. "And they have a flock of baby parakeets that follow them everywhere they go," says Sidney. "Larissa and Tinkerbell get a job at the M&M factory giving guided tours," I say. "And the baby parakeets fly into the chocolate pools and get covered in chocolate and then they get sold at the store," says Sidney. "Sure, I guess," I say. But what I really want to say is that Larissa and Tinkerbell give a tour to some old people.  They catch an old lady stuffing her giant pocketbook with M&Ms. They tell her to stop but the old lady pulls out a gun and shoots Larissa in the head."I like my story better," says Sidney and, I have to admit, so do I. We got to the mall with our mother. "I want a flock of baby parakeets," says Sidney on the car ride there. "We'll see," says my mother. When we get to the mall I'm supposed to meet my friend Carmen Penelope at the pizza place. Carmen Penelope is super cool but she doesn't like hanging out with little sisters. I ditch Sidney with Mom. We plan to meet back up at the entrance to JC Penney's in two hours. I go to Frank's Pizza Paradise, but I'm early and Carmen Penelope isn't there yet. I decide to use the bathroom to pass the time. I only have one dollar and I want to spend it later at the arcade and not on pizza. The bathroom is bright, and my head feels light. I could die right now, I think, and Sidney would be the only one who would really notice. I know this is a bad thing to think, and God would not like it if He happened to be listening to my thoughts. I have a trick that I fall back on whenever I start to feel this way: I recite in my head whatever I'm physically doing. I don't want to feel sorry for myself so I start the mind game. I am in a public bathroom stall. I am sitting on toilet paper arranged in a "V" to protect me from germs. I am pee-shy. The woman in the next stall smells like a mom. Her shoes are beat-up, burgundy high heels. I saw a TV commercial about this thing women use in the bathroom to absorb little cups of dark blue water. Carmen Penelope says it's for when women get older they make a mess in their pants. It starts when you're a teenager, she says, and goes on until you die. But I imagine you can learn how to control it. Like toilet training. But I don't want to have to train myself. Carmen Penelope says all women get it. Or at least most of them. It sounds like the lady's unwrapping a candy bar. I bet she has the peeing disorder. I have to know what she does with that thing from TV. I've seen some at home in the linen closet, but I don't know what you're supposed to do with them. I know it's rude but I can't help but want to stick my head under the divider and watch her. I know I can get away with it too. I stand up and push the toilet paper into the bowl. I can't pee. I pull up my pants and just as I'm zipping I fold my body in half to touch my toes. I look to the right. Nothing. I bend my knees and twist my head up, a clear shot of her left hand sticking a pad onto her underwear. A clearer shot of her spread-open thighs and brown hair encrusted with blood, a thick pink smile. Gross. It shocks me and I make some miniscule weird sound because she notices me and she screams, "You fucking kid, what the hell are you doing?" I run out. She doesn't bother chasing me. Carmen Penelope is waiting for me outside. She is fourteen and beautiful. Her skin is perfect, like Snow White. She has blond curly hair that she always wears in a banana clip. She's in the eighth grade, so she goes to school in a different building than me. I only  ever see her at the mall. She wants to lose her virginity. Bad. I am eleven but she hangs out with me because "you're so much more maturer than that." I'm embarrassed because I'm not sure what losing your virginity means. I don't know and I don't want to ask her. I figure, I'll find out anyway — eventually. She is filing her nails and leaning against a wall when I see her.She says, "Ready to rock?" and I nod. We walk from the pizza place to the arcade. The arcade is a long dark hallway filled with cigarette smoke and neon green lights that flash off the machines. Buzzes, bleeps and choppy machine gun sounds distract us from one another and we don't talk. We scope out the room for an open game. Even though no one's looking at us, I try to walk as cool as possible. We get to Ms. Pac-Man and wait for the kids in front of us to give up or move on. It's two boys and they are taller than us. One is wearing a black Slayer shirt with tour dates listed on the back. The taller one is wearing an Old Bridge Wings hockey jersey; he's number 47 — La Rock. "What's the probability of me getting laid here?" Carmen Penelope wants to know. I try to imagine every possible scenario. She could ask them if they wanted to play us in Ms. Pac-Man and then work her way into a meaningful conversation that might lead to a phone number exchange or meeting up some place tomorrow. Or we could just stand here giggling for a while until they notice us. But they might laugh at us because obviously they're way older. Way older than me, anyway. I say, "You have a sixty-five percent chance of getting their phone numbers. At least one anyway. That is all I can predict." She coughs. The Slayer shirt turns around. He says, "Oh. There's, like, chicks waiting for this game, dude." The hockey jersey tilts his head back. "Oh." We wait for a bigger reaction. We are disappointed. Carmen Penelope lights up a cigarette. "This is a faggot game anyway. Let's just die already," says the Slayer kid. The game ends soon after. Slayer lets out a little "whatever" under his breath and they both turn around. Slayer is covered in red, pussy acne — completely, from neck to scalp. La Rock is kind of cute, but not really. Carmen Penelope giggles, chokes out smoke and snorts. She turns bright red and then I start to giggle. I'm confused. I think she might just have embarrassed herself. Slayer guy crinkles his nose and lets out a walloping "Oink! Oink!" La Rock stands there, also confused and it looks like Carmen Penelope might cry. We turn around and start to walk out. They follow us. "Oink! Oink!" Slayer calls after us. Carmen Penelope is making big strides in her red Capezios, her head down with the cigarette stiffly sticking out of her right hand. Kids are looking up from their games to watch us leave and I hear a few scattered snickers. I turn around real quick and see La Rock say something to Slayer, pleading with him to stop. We walk out of the arcade, then through Bamburger's, out of the mall and into the parking lot where we'll be safe. We sit on the edge of the curb and look out at Route 18. Carmen Penelope snuffs out her cigarette and says, "Stupid, stupid me! Why'd I have to snort like that? Why'd I have to do that?" I say that I saw the guy in the hockey jersey defending her to the other guy. "Really? Do you think he likes me?" "I don't know," I say. "You wanna go back and find out?" "No. I think maybe we should walk around until we find them and then accidentally bump into them. Make it seem natural, you know?"
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Commentarium (9 Comments)
Well .. Kids will be kids, but man, why didn't any of this ever happen to *me* when I was 13?
Beautiful, touching, funny, fun! Great reading.
Mesmerizing. Great story telling. Who would name parakeets Fido and Rover?
this story was weird as shit...........they coulda left the thing about the birds out of it
This was a really cool and of course they couldn
hey i know what the girl felt in the mall im 13/m i feel it too even though i am male and how old is this girl now? cuz id be proud to have an orgy wit that carmen girl,
peace out
Higly amusing. Interesting take on the coming of age thing. I like.
The writing reflects perfectly that fragmented matter-of-fact process of thinking that kids have. It also reminds me, in like fragments, about my own sexual awakenings. I remember being 5 or 6 behind the bushes of this boy's house down the street as we took a tube of my mother's ice-blue eye shadow and painted the tips of our penises with it. A year or two later--before my first erection and perhaps with the instruction of a visiting friend--I discovered that if I held my little penis stretched out under pouring cold water from the bathtub faucet long enough, that I'd feel this tickly-swimmy feeling in my belly like riding a swing too high. When I was 10, my neighbor's granddaughter pulled up her shorts to reveal her secret to me as I reciprocated. In the back seat of my dad's car at night, as he drove me and this girl (former classmate of mine) home from the beach, I let my fingers slip beneath the towel that covered her lap and then pry their way under her swimsuit. They found in that darkness a soft, warm, wet paradise like I had never imagined. Earlier that year, after my parents divorce, I discovered dad's copy of "The Joy of Sex" as well as a motherload of issues of Playboy, Penthouse, and erotic stories. I had studied them with an eagerness like no other subject in school. This was one course I did not want to receive bad marks in.
late back for bible study,
nudes in frozen granite against a slate sky,
an orange pullover and grey scarf to match the brooding temperment...
some weekends a little longer than most.
can you recall?
how can i find you?
Now you say something