Meghan

Meghan:  He touches me, and I expect more.  I mean, where’s the thrill, the shiver down deep, the roller coaster ride, stomach in my mouth, rush through my crotch?

When my mother was drinking, she and I used to have these great talks.  I was ten when I asked her what was so great about sex, why did people do it?

She told me that it’s all about the orgasm, which feels like when you’re careening down the tall slope of a rollercoaster, that feeling in your gut that goes through your crotch.

Well, so here I am, and I’m not getting it.  I mean, if eventually I’m supposed to feel the rush of going down so fast you can’t breathe except to scream… shouldn’t I be feeling that tension of slowly rising up the coaster?  That, “it’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna feel good, feel better than anything” – like that?

Now his hand moves over my shirt, rubbing circles over my nipples. 

Okay, that’s not bad.

I’m starting to get it, starting to feel it, but then –

Not.

I shut down.

I get off the ride, metaphorically speaking.

I remember asking my mother what the big deal was about putting your privates together with a boy’s.  She said – besides the rollercoaster part – she said, you know the emptiness you feel inside sometimes?

I did and I didn’t.

She said, well, when a man puts his penis inside you, it makes you feel whole.

I want to feel whole even more than I want to feel the rollercoaster rush.

But all I feel is Mathias’s random groping.  Reaching lower, but I get nothing.

What is wrong with me?

Jayla

Jayla:  The story spread.

My story!

I found out after I got my lunch of a bagel with nothing on it and a bottle of water.  As I passed the jock table on my way to the theater table, this guy, this jerk-off, he got in front of me and mimed unzipping his you-know-what.  He mimed holding out something huge, when his is probably all shrunken and small, pinky-sized, not zuchinni –sized like he was pretending.

I only noticed because I was trying not to.

Then the cheerleaders, well not all of them, they’re not all evil, but a bunch of them, they started pretending to suck dick.

Swallowing back my tears, I hope they don’t see me gulp, but it’s too late.

“Swallow!  Swallow!”  they chant. 

Turning red, I don’t even have to swallow my own spit, my mouth is so dry.  I hurry past.  When I get to my table, not really my table, but the theater-geek table I’ve adopted… I find a place at the end, across from my friend Lauren.  She looks at me with sad eyes.

So, she knows too.

They all know, I swallow.  I suck dick, and I swallow.  That’s what they’re going to call me for the next four years, right?  Right?  Swallow.

Because it’s not like I’m smart and get all A’s, even in honors math and English, it’s not like I’m the youngest reporter for the school paper, and it’s not like I got this cute haircut that cost me a week of babysitting money, and at home I take care of ‘lissa and Mikey, and I bake fresh cheddar cheese bread which I slather with butter and toast in a pan – making the best Goddamned grilled cheese sandwiches in the whole fucking world.  It’s not like I wasn’t Miss Petite Westie, then L’il Miss Westie, and finally, last year, Miss Westie, riding in my own float in the Memorial Day parade and again this year, in the Labor Day parade.

It’s not like I’m all that, not to them.

To these kids I’m mostly meeting for the first time, I’m only my reputation as a girl who swallows.

Liz

     Liz:  I hate my mother.  I hate my mother, hate my mother, hate my mother, hate HATE MY MOTHER, hate her.
     Because of her, I want to die.  No joke, I really do.  I can't go back to class.  I can't.  I can't, ever.
     I'm done for.  It's all her fault.
  
     It started in 6th grade, when I got my first period.  I mean, what happened, happened today of course, but it wouldn't have happened if my mother hadn't been crazy.  It wouldn't have happened if she let me use tampons like the rest of the freakin world.
     She said, no joke, that she didn't want me to lose my virginity so young.  In 6th grade.  When she gave me my first pad, and I said Anna used tampons.  My mother said if Anna's mother wanted her to grow up and be a slut, that was fine, but she wasn't going to let me, she didn't want me to lose my virginity... (to a tampon, OMG!)
     I mean, I didn't think that at the time.  It sounded hinky, but I was like, okay Mommy, because what did I know?  Maybe a tampon was just the same as a penis.
     That's a lie -- I knew it was different, even in 6th grade, I knew it wasn't the same, but even so, I wore the pad, and so on and so forth, until now.  Until today.
     And it had to be a big, white, diaper of a pad -- not one of those ultra thin, deodorized, with wings pads.  Which is why I could never wear pants when I had my period.  I was sure the outline of my pad would show.  I didn't want anyone to know I had my period, of course, but also I was embarrassed to be wearing a pad when everyone else I knew used tampons.
    So that's why I was wearing a skirt today.  That's how come I can't ever go back to class.  Why I'm going to sneak away as soon as the nurse leaves me alone, gonna sneak away out of school out of here, OUT OF HERE, thanks Mom.
    I'll just say it.  You probably figured it out, but I'll just say it.  I was in Social Studies class, and Mr. Lynch asked me to collect the homework, and I was walking up and down the rows when I felt it between my legs.  My pad!  Slipped, out of my underwear.  I clamped my legs shut.  I started to cry.  I couldn't move.  I said I had to go to the nurse, but I couldn't move and everyone thought I'd gone crazy or something, but it was worse than that.
     I don't know why I didn't just stay put, not move until the bell rang and everyone left and let them think I was crazy.  Maybe I thought the pad hadn't slipped all the way.  Maybe I thought if I ran fast enough I could outrun reality, outrun shame.
     You know what happened.  The pad landed on the floor.  I acted like it wasn't mine, and no one said anything, just their mouths dropped open and it was silent.  Silent as death.  My death.
     I can never go back.
     I will never go home.
     I hate my mother.
     Now you know why.

Juliet

Juliet:  I will never take off these socks, I think to myself.

I will take them off, but I will never wash them, I’ll save them, the socks that are filling with dirt as I press my heels into the side of the hill, off the path that leads away from Griffith Park Observatory.

There are people just above us, looking out at the lights of L.A. in the distance I hope, and not down into the dark hillside to the dark shadows which are Raif and I.  This is not how I expected my first time to be.

My mouth is raw from kissing Raif, kissing that started outside the theater, as soon as we got into his car.  Kissing that almost got out of control in the parking lot outside Starbucks, then turned tender inside, where we sat in front of the fake fireplace and ignored our coffee.

I have to pee, I think.  My underwear, down around my ankles, is probably getting full of dirt.  This hurts.  I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  I’m sliding a little down the hill and rocks are scraping my butt.  We didn’t go to Raif’s apartment because he said he wanted to take me someplace special.  This is special.

Stop complaining, Juliet, this is special.  We’re under the stars.  We’re in love.  I love Raif and he loves me.  How long is this supposed to last?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking, Juliet.  You’re not supposed to be thinking at all!

This is so awesome!  I’m having sex!  Me, Juliet, Never Been Kissed Juliet. 

And Raif is not old, like Michael said.  He’s twenty-four. 

Raif grunts softly, then sighs, long and deep.  Rolling to the side, staying on the flannel shirt he laid down for us, he pulls me close.  He sucks on my neck, and I realize too late that he’s giving me a hickey, which I know I should be happy about because it means I’m his, and it’s not like he’s branding me like a cow, it’s not. 

Only now I have to tell my mother.

I worry too much.

“Your skin is so soft,” Raif whispers.

“My boot!” I say as I grab for it, rolling down the hill. 

Raif scrambles down a few feet after it.  His ass is pale in the moonlight.  Skinny, the knobs of his pelvis show when he turns over.  Like me, like me!

“I think I love you,” I say, my fingers holding tightly to my boots, nervous fingers because I never said that to a guy before.

Raif smiles and kisses me.  Crushing my Doc Martens between us, and we start to slide again.  My underwear is sticky and cold, and dirty and gross.  Raif didn’t say he loved me back, but that’s okay.  Of course he loves me, or we wouldn’t be here.

“I have to pee,” I say, giggling.  

Jenna

Jenna:  Jenna is from Spun, a novel I wrote about a girl with a crystal meth addiction.  Here, she’s been clean for several weeks, but her boyfriend Josh convinces her to get high again.

Jenna:  One sniff, and it’s back.

            Confidence, yes.  I mean, Yes!  Who did I think I was before, trying to be someone

            What?  Who?

            This is me.  The real me.

            All that tormenting of myself, wondering if I was worth anything, wondering if it was okay for Josh, or my mother, or drugs to complete me, and now here I am, and when Josh offers me the cd case again, I snort another line of meth without even thinking about it because all that crap about feeling my feelings was just crap, and now I feel it, I feel it all, it’s all good, and I’m all in my head:  Josh, Mom, Paige!  I love you guys!  Ruby!  And that great writer I love too, that Yann Martel who is totally awesome!

            Burning in my nose and brain, and I’m a little anxious and my thinking is going all over the place but so what!

            “Did you ever read Life of Pi?” I ask Josh, whose hands are on me, and it makes me uncomfortable (but I love him!  I do and it. is. all. good. smiles.) The author, Yann Martel said-- 

Don’t know why I’m talking to Josh about a book right now it’s crazy and has nothing to do with me really, and yet it does, because now everything means something.  I want to cry.

            “I love that you’re the smart one,” Josh says, kissing my neck.

            Hey!  I’m trying to talk here!

            Josh isn’t listening, but I say anyway, because I am so profound right now, and I am the smart one, why didn’t I see that before?  “Life and death, birth and love,”

            “Mm hmm,” Josh says. 

            Straighten up, Jenna.  I try to remember the whole quote from that author guy I love whose name I can’t even think of right now because I feel buzzy in my head, and it’s like every book I ever read is spinning around in there.  Suddenly, out of the whirl, I pull out, “Life and death, birth and love….They’re not problems, they’re life itself.”

            That’s it.  That’s me and my experience.  High on meth again, and it’s all in focus for an instant, and I’m not so sure anymore.

Josh doesn’t answer, but I don’t care, I’m just wishing I could get that initial buzz-burn back, that feeling of everything inside of me, but I can’t. 

            Whoa.  I am suddenly empty, I feel nothing.  When Josh tries to lift my shirt over my head, I say “No,” for the first time.

Maree

Maree is a newcomer Outsider Girl.  I don’t know where she came from or where her story will go, but I find her to be funny, with an interesting perspective on things, and I expect she’ll be back in later posts.

Maree:

My little sister, eight, believes God lives in McDonald’s, because she says, there he can get a hot meal anytime he wants.

My four year old brother just told me he only likes white guys, like Batman, and Spiderman, Wolverine and Superman, Steve and Joe from Blue’s Clues.  Phineus and Ferb.  I’m worried, because his new school will be ninety percent black and hispanic.  Hopefully, he’ll meet some new Superheroes there. 

My oldest sister, Marla, twenty-two, is a Christian missionary to missionaries. Wrap your head around this -- she helps missionaries get closer to Christ.  She had to raise a whole lot of money to get this job, but I didn’t say anything about how backwards that seemed, and didn’t dare get smart and ask how God’s dental plan is. 

Everyone thinks Marla’s so great, except me.   I think she’s crazy and kind of a bully besides, but then I had to grow up with her lording it over me -- no pun intended (get it?  “Lord”, hardeeharhar).

So then there’s me, in the middle.  Last night I gave my first blow job, in the bushes behind a party, and Christopher, that was the guy, called me an angel, but he hasn’t called today, or answered any of my texts. 

I guess you’d say I’m Godless.  But it’s not like I don’t care.  It’s not like I’m trying to break my parents’ hearts.  I’m looking for God, or something, anything out there that’s not me, but it’s hard, because when I’m mopping the floor, and wiping Markie's boogers, and scraping dried cheese off plastic plates... it seems like there is only me.  It seems like I can only be my own angel.