I’d had a crush on Angel for years. He lived down the street from me, but he didn’t make fun of me or call me names like the other kids on my block.
“Moldy-haired faggot!” the pregnant girls shouted at me, referring to the short, lopsided haircut I’d Flowbee’d onto my head.
“Shutting up you bad brown mouth you!” he defended me in poor English, “I like white girl.” He had long sticky hair and a perpetually broken hand in a cast. When he asked me to hang out in the cemetery, I licked my wrist and eagerly agreed.
I called my friend Faffy as soon as I got home, “I think I have a boyfriend,” I told her.
“Finally!” she said in her husky voice.
“Does he have a friend?” Faffy was my slutty friend from the neighborhood, and I needed her help. She gave me a miniskirt, confidence and advice on what to expect: “When a guy comes, he makes all these gross faces and noises,” she said, twisting her face in disgust. “The first time, I was like,‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ You’re gonna want to laugh but don’t. One time I did and he hit me.” Uniquely religious, she called herself The Gothic Bride and wore black veils, homemade nets. She cast a spell or two every day to try to “get some ass,” as she put it.
We were on our way to our double date at the cemetery, a teen hang out that was also popular with homeless people. Angel showed up with a dirty forehead, half-undone camouflage overalls and, of course, a broken hand in a cast. Gary, Faffy’s date, wore denim palazzo pants. Since our dates had no money, we used our pocket change to buy enough King Cobra to inebriate us.
I knew that Angel had a reputation for getting around, but I wouldn’t find anyone better, and I was too horny to care. His wanton sexuality gave me hopes of finally getting a penis inside of me; I bought a box of circus-colored condoms that matched the elastic bands on my braces.
Our dates escorted us through a hole in the fence.We walked up the service road, past the cemetery and onto the graffiti-covered cliff. There was a romantic view of the New York skyline behind the turnpike, and a parade of hobos constantly bustled behind us. Faffy murmured a sex incantation, “I think my spell worked,” she whispered to me. “Pray to the East.” After we settled onto the rocks, Gary urinated a few feet away on a tombstone.
“I like the energy here,” Faffy said when he got back, “When I’m fucked up I can see people’s auras.”
Faffy turned to Gary, “Your aura’s mad hot,” she said, and they began to make out.
I tried to make conversation with Angel as he stared at the ground with a confused look on his face, probably because he didn’t understand anything I said. He occasionally handed me things, like a picture he drew of a skull or an earphone playing heavy metal music from his cassette player. I looked away as he peed off of the cliff.When he returned, he asked me to hold his knife as he ripped a page out of a pocket Bible and rolled marijuana into it. Clutching the blade, I hungrily watched his fingers roll and lick the joint with his sparsely mustached mouth. We smoked and I got a headache but was still horny. After Gary and Angel wrestled each other to ground—it ended when Gary shouted out, “I got a nail in my back! I don’t got no tetanus shots, motherfucker!”—I watched them, licked my wrist, then suggested we go back to my house.
Once there, we went to my bedroom and I maneuvered my way underneath Angel as he rubbed his dirty hair on my face.
I reached down to touch a small, drunk, semi-flaccid penis. It had a narrow tip, like a crayon, paired with disproportionately large testicles. Had I known better, I probably would have been disgusted, but all I could think was “So this is what a penis feels like. Waxy.” I feebly attempted to put a too-large condom on him—I didn’t have a good enough comprehension of erections to figure it out as he bungled around my vagina.
“Can you please just put the condom on and stick it in me?” I demanded as the front door open burst open.
“What the hell is going on here,” I heard my mother shout.“Whose vomit is this all over the floor?” I scrambled to put my clothes back. My mother shouted at Faffy to wake up, then barreled into my room and flicked the lights on.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed at me.
“Nothing. Just hanging out,” I stammered. “Hanging out with a dick near your face!” “Whatever, Mom. We weren’t doing anything.” I was quicker than she was and ran around her toward the door. “I’m leaving!” I rallied everyone to leave and we fled toward the PATH Station as my mother shrieked profanities after us.
“Can we go to your house and do it?” I asked Angel.
“I call you,” he said, boarding a train. My eyes welled with tears as the PATH rushed away, along with my best chance of losing my virginity. Angel never called me, but he never asked for my phone number either.A week or two later, I heard that Angel was going to have a baby with someone and then he went to jail. Gary went into the military. Faffy had a baby a year or two later before she was sent to an insane asylum.
As for me, one day I plan to move out of my parent’s basement and leave Jersey City, and of course, finally lose my virginity.
Melissa Surach is a columnist for Jersey City Independent, and her work has appeared in Anthology of the Awkward. She has an award from Jersey City for cultivating the comedic arts there.
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