2011. Thirteen-year-old me

There was a girl visiting John. They were shut up together in his bedroom. I sneaked into the room next door and sat there quiet as a mouse, one ear to the wall, listening. They were talking about something, giggling, listening to music, paging through textbooks. Both of them were getting ready to apply to university. John wanted to study law, and she had some other plan. Her name was Taylor. She had curly hair and a painfully piercing laugh, like an insane bird shouting.

I would happily wring that bird's throat.

John was taller than Daddy now. He was eighteen, but looked twenty-five, and I barely came up to his athletic shoulders. His voice was low and powerful, there was stubble on his cheeks, and his arms were so strong he could snap his hurl in half like a match stick, if it ever made him angry.

Mum told me that I was almost all grown up, too, that I was growing and changing. My hair was super long, and Melissa often braided it for me. Weird, tender little round spots had puffed out from my chest. I thought it must be cancer, but Mum told me it was my breasts growing. And a couple months ago I got my first period. It was a good thing they'd already told me what that was all about, or I'd have woken everyone up that morning shouting that I was dying.

Anyway, basically, I wasn't a child anymore. But my childlike adoration of John, and my puppylike devotion to him, hadn't changed a bit. I did not want him ever to go on dates or even look at girls. I wanted him to belong to me alone, spend time just with me, love only me...

The sounds in his room quieted, and that quiet made everything inside me tighten into a thick lump. With my ear still stuck to the wall, I finally made out the words:

"What if somebody comes in?"

"I locked the door... They're all out playing golf... There's nobody here."

A whisper. A rustle. A movement.

"Do you like that?" Taylor murmured.

"I am so crazy about you... You're so beautiful... Taylor!... You're the most amazing..."

Now the sounds of some serious kissing made it to my ear, and the cautious creaking of bedsprings. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. I knew more or less what was going on in there. My parents had bought me a book that explained... everything. Of course, it was written in very simple language, for kids, and it didn't go into detail. But what I'd read was quite enough: "First, a man and a woman find a place to be alone together. They get undressed, caress each other, and say nice things. At some point, the man gets an erection, and the woman's vagina gets wet. The man inserts his penis into the woman's vagina, leading to pleasant sensations for each of them."

This all sounded very serious, yes, but I could not imagine feeling a "pleasant sensation" from somebody inserting something into me. I mean, having catheters and needles and suppositories and gastroscopes inserted into you was something you could put up with. A cotton swab in the ear? Fine. They put thermometers in your mouth at the doctor's and tubes to suck away your saliva at the dentist's. There was nothing too pleasant in any of that. And if it wasn't a tool, but a part of somebody else's body... what the heck? Who would like that? Plenty of people, I suppose, given that they write books about it?

But the whole idea made me sick.

I went downstairs to the living room, stomping my feet as loud as I could. I turned on the TV with the volume as loud as it would go and started dancing to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

That would do it. No man would be able to insert his penis into a woman's vagina with this crazy noise thundering around the house! This was exactly what I needed!

"Rah, rah-ah-ah-ah! Roma, roma-ma! Gaga, ooh-la-la! Want your bad romance!"

John appeared, walking down the stairs in nothing but his shorts, hair askew, lips suspiciously pink, and scowling. Taylor came down after him, her cheeks red as ketchup and her t-shirt inside out.

While she tied her white Adidases, John frowned at me.

"I want your ugly! I want your disease! I want your everything as long as it's free!" Now I was galloping around the room as I sang.

John walked outside with Taylor, slamming the door.

"I want your love, and I want your revenge! You and me could write a bad romance!"

He came back in. And oh, boy, he didn't look happy.

"I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick! Want you in my rear window, baby you're sick!"

"What are you doing, Dolores?!" John grabbed the remote I was using as a mic for my dramatic performance and turned off the TV.

"Je veux ton amour! Et je veux ta revanche! Je veux ton amour! I don't wanna be friends!" I went on singing, even without the music.

Then John grabbed my wrist and squeezed, hard.

"Lori!"

I stopped cold, my bangs falling crookedly over my eyes.

"What are you doing?!" he roared. John was furious, an inch away from losing his temper for good.

"I know what you were doing up there with her."

"Oh yeah? What?"

"Inserting your penis into her vagina!" I spat out.

For two full seconds, John was completely dumbstruck. Then he moaned, rolled his eyes, and ran his fingers over his head.

"And that's disgusting!" I yelled at him. "Do you remember the time you peed on the hedgehog out behind the shed? This is even worse than peeing on a hedgehog."

"Dolores." John sighed and dropped into a chair. He crossed one leg over the other, just like our father. Give him a necktie and glasses and it would be a perfect match. "I feel bad about the hedgehog. How many times do I have to say that? Can we please forget about it? And for the rest of it. You can't call something disgusting when you don't have the slightest—"

"I'm grossed out just listening to you!"

"Do you even know anything about sex?"

"I know enough! I read Talking to Kids About IT and Young Person's Encyclopedia and Your Daughter is Growing Up, and I also found this book our parents have. For grownups. With, like, acrobats doing dirty things."

"Forget everything in those books," John told me. "Sex isn't acrobatics. It's not anatomy or physiology. And it doesn't matter who sticks what where. That doesn't matter! The most important things... you can't see those, not in illustration, not in the movies."

"You mean there's movies about it, too?" My eyes were bugging out in alarm.

"Sure, but that's not the point. The most important thing about sex is what happens in your head. Your thoughts get all scrambled. You can't think about anything except the other person. About what you want to do to them... in a good way, I mean. And with their consent, naturally. You feel like there's no such thing as time or space. Inside you there's a hurricane, and you feel like any second now, it'll blow your head off... And for that to happen, all you need is a kiss. Or just a touch of the hand. That's it. That's sex. What you've read in those books... that's all bullshit."

I stood frozen in the middle of the room, hypnotized by John's voice and by how carefully he was explaining all this. And I was so enchanted by what he said that all my anger, shame, and disgust had simply disappeared. What if he were the only one telling me the truth?

But I'll never get to experience what he's talking about, it occurred to me. Something was dawning on me now that I had never thought about before. Everything John had told me, everything in the books, all the forbidden and mysterious and secret things that happened between people when they were alone together—none of that would ever happen to me.

Not ever.

I wouldn't have relationships.

I wouldn't have love.

I was untouchable.

I sat down in a different chair, wrapped my arms around my knees, and put my head down.

"And all that's going to skip right over me. Right?"

John said nothing. There was nothing he could say. We both knew the answer.

"So why did they buy me all those books?"

"You need to be educated about it. You need to know and understand. Nobody in our family's going to fly to outer space, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read about astronauts," John said philosophically.

"What do you think about Venus, then, Mr. Astronaut?" I asked, snorting.

"It's hot," he grinned.

His cheeks were still sightly flushed, and his eyes gleamed. John was so handsome when this little fever called Taylor had him in its grip.

"Make sure you don't get burned, John. Scorch marks hurt."

I jumped up and fled to my own room, where I curled up under a blanket and sobbed silently.

I was finally realizing what a nasty joke God had played on me. Sight, hearing and a sense of smell were treasures, truly, but I would trade any one of them for the miracle of touch. I'd give up the sweet smell of flowers and the fresh ocean breeze to live among other people. Even if I couldn't see them, I could kiss them. I'd exchange every noise I heard for the warm sensation of someone else's skin under my fingers.