Page 34 of Puck
Colbie eyed me thoughtfully, and I waited for her to ask the questions I could see percolating behind her eyes. “So was it the best sex you’ve ever had?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“No?”
I shook my head again. “If I said yes, I’d be romanticizing it. It wasn’t the best ever. It’s up there, but not the best.”
“So who was the best?”
I laughed. “You don’t mind asking the hard shit, do you?”
She laughed with me. “Hell no. That’s how you get to the good stuff. And if someone isn’t willing to answer the hard questions, they’re not worth my time.”
I tilted my head. “How do you figure?”
“Life is too short for bullshit, Puck. I OD’d, I told you that. I realized then that, as cliché as it sounds, life is what you make of it. After that, I became aggressive about going after what I wanted, and ever since, I refuse to waste time on people who aren’t worth my attention. If you can’t be real with me, if you can’t be upfront with me, if you can’t handle me asking the hard shit, then what’s the point?”
I acceded the point with a gruntedhuhsound. “Fair enough. Well, then, I guess the answer would be . . . this chick named Maya. I met her on vacation and we spent a week together in a tiki hut, in bed. I think I had more sex in that week than any other entire month. She was . . . fucking wild, man. Totally batshit crazy, like legit, she was a goddamn lunatic, but she was a fuckin’ wildcat in the sack.” I squeezed Colbie’s thigh. “Your turn.”
“Okay, I guess it’s only fair. So, something revealing and personal of a sexual nature.” She twisted a strand of my beard around her finger and tugged on it; I debated telling her that the way she tugged on my beard was a crazy-ass turn on, but decided to leave that tidbit for later. “Okay, I’ve got it. So it’s no secret that smack junkies will do just about anything for a hit, right? I’m sure you’re familiar with the stereotype, right? Well, I made a rule for myself that I’d never use sex as a tool, no matter how desperate I got. And I never did. Even when I was in the depths of withdrawal desperation, I refused to trade sex for a hit. I was terrified of getting trapped in prostitution, because that was something I saw all too frequently. There was a group of us, homeless people, junkies, alkies—the dregs, the losers, the . . . the castoffs and the lost, you know? We lived in this little community under an overpass. It was hell, but it was better than an alley, or somewhere alone. I wouldn’t call any of those people friends, really, but we looked out for each other, to a degree. A lot of the women, they’d get desperate, and they’d turn a trick to get money for the next hit, and then they’d need another hit, and the only way they could get money for another hit was turning another trick. It turned into a trap, and I guess I always held out hope, deep down, that I’d figure some way out. Part of me didn’t want to believe that was really my life, or something like that. But I just . . . I refused. I’d been a virgin when my uncle raped me, and I think that helped make it easy to never let that become a way out. The only experience I had was rape, and it felt like even if I willingly let some guy fuck me in exchange for money or drugs, it’d still feel like rape, still be that same thing Uncle Craig had done.”
“Makes sense.”
“I did a lot of other gnarly shit to get drug money, though. Lots of stealing, scams, and begging. It was an ugly time.”
“That’s personal and revealing,” I said, “but not sexual . . . about sex, but not sexual.”
“What I consider my first time, my first voluntary time, was after I got clean. He was a lot like me, recovering addict, homeless, trying to pick himself up and restart his life. Older than me by a few years, really sweet guy. Perfect kind of guy for my first time after everything I’d been through. It was hard to find privacy in a shelter, but we managed it, and it was . . . nice, but underwhelming.”
“After what’d you experienced, I’d imagine it’d be hard to . . . want that, I guess.”
She nodded. “You’d be right. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want what Craig had done to define me anymore, or to hold me back. And Paul . . . he made it easy for me to get past my hang-ups. I thought maybe he and I would have something, you know? Like we could lean on each other as we worked on staying clean and figuring out how to start life over.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
She nodded. “But then he vanished. I threw myself into focusing on the SATs and scholarships and college applications. And then, a few days before I left for Harvard, I ran into him. He was using again. I could see it, feel it, smell it. He was strung out and desperate for another hit. I don’t think he even recognized me. And that was sort of the final mental turning point for me, seeing Paul like that. High, crazy, desperate, dirty, so fucked up he didn’t even recognize me. I realized then that I’d never, ever, fuckingevergo back to that.”
“And you haven’t.”
She shook her head. “I barely even drink. The idea of losing myself to anything scares me. Even being drunk feels like something I could get hooked on and then somehow I’d be back out on the street. I know it’s silly or stupid, but even if I let myself drink regularly, I have this fear that I’ll become an alcoholic. Having known plenty of those, I know how ugly it can be, how completely you can lose yourself to it, and I just . . . I refuse.”
I withdrew my hand from her leg and put it around her shoulders, drew her closer against me. “Not silly, babe. Not at all. My old man was an alcoholic, and that shit will rule you and it will ruin you, if you let it. I’ve lived a hard life, I don’t mind admitting. But I’m very much aware of the fact that Pops was a drunk, and I won’t let myself go there either. I’m careful about it. I take regular hiatuses from drinking, just to prove to myself, I guess, that I’m in control, that I don’t need booze to have a good time.”
“I’m glad you understand.” Colbie rested her head on my shoulder, and even though this conversation hadn’t gone how I’d meant it to, I felt like this was better, somehow.
I wanted the trade of revealing sexual stories to be hot, to fan the sparks between us into something more. I meant it to make things between us sizzle even more, give me an edge. That backfired, it became some kind of intensely personal, emotionally packed moment of revelation. I just told her shit I’d never told anyone, shit I’d never admitted even to myself.
“So, who was your best?” I asked, in the interest of trying to regain the sparks.
“Alex Caldwell. The TA of my first Russian class. His mom was Russian, like had moved to the States while she was pregnant with Alex. She ended up marrying some American dude when Alex was two, which was how he had an American last name, but he’d grown up speaking Russian and English, since his stepdad learned Russian so he could talk to Alex’s mom better.”
I smirked at her. “Okay. And . . .?”
Colbie rolled her eyes at me. “There’s nothing lascivious about the story. We dated for six months, and he was great in bed. Alex was the one who showed me what sex could really be, I guess you could say. He was my TA, but we made a rule that we’d never talk about the class, and he’d grade my papers like anyone else’s, and I’d never get any kind of special treatment. And then the class ended, and that stopped being something we had to worry about.”
“Why’d you break up with him?”
“Oh, he graduated, got a job in Los Angeles, and that was that. I was sad about it for a few months, but I’d never really been in love with him, and I knew he hadn’t been in love with me either. We had good sex together; we got along, had fun, but when he landed the job there was no question of how it was going to go. It wasn’t, like,painful, you know? It wasn’t some big drama, do I stay for Colbie, or do I move for the really great job I just got? Nah, it was just one of those things that happens in life, and we both knew it.”