I pretended to be calm, but it was hard for me to breathe and continue to be my usual loud, smart-mouthed self, because this guy Jeff wouldn’t stop looking at me. He had so much confidence, or maybe it was just liquid courage. I knew for sure he was drunk because he kept swaying a little to the left and I could smell the faint stench of tequila on him. He finally broke our silence and asked me, “How old are you?” as I opened the front door to let us both in.
“None of your business, Jeff,” I barked back, not sure what prompted my bitchy response.
“If you want me to touch you, I’ll need to know your age, Sara, right? I need to figure out how long you’ll need to wait for that to happen.” He laughed as if he’d just told the world’s funniest joke. What a dick!
I obviously didn’t answer the fool and walked upstairs without another word. I think I was upset with myself for actually liking him and letting a drunken idiot see how much he affected me. After his vain remark, I decided I would never say another word to Jeff.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable and calm enough to let my body win the battle with my head and shut down. You see, when I was young, I liked to talk a big game and pretend that I’d “been there, done that.” Pretend that at fifteen I’d kissed countless boys and touched their dicks. Pretend that sex was no big deal. I had no choice but to be that kind of girl. Emily was my only best friend and the perfect, prudish one, so I got the role of the cute, sassy, and sexually experienced one. I’ve watched enough of my brother’s stashed-away porn movies to fake it. Thanks to Eddie, I knew exactly what boys wanted, what they talked about, and how a girl needed to act to attract their attention. I had no intention of testing my theories with a boy any time soon; I was just a delusional hypocrite testing my theories through others. I liked the opinion my friends had of me. I loved being able to dish out advice and shock everybody with what came out of my mouth. If you ask Emily who was the most sexually promiscuous, loose person she knew growing up, she’d tell you it was me, her best friend, Sara Klein.
So there I was, fifteen years old, trying to sleep in my room, minding my own business, struggling to forget my first club experience and the way some dumb guy named Jeff put his hand on me and how good it felt. Trying to ignore the fact that when he spoke into my ear, every hair on my body—including my pubic hairs—stood at attention. Pretending that his promise to let me grow up before he touched me didn’t affect every one of my molecules. At four thirty in the morning, someone opened my door and stumbled into my bedroom with a loud thump, scaring the living crap out of me. I remember my heart getting stuck in my throat as I tried to scream for help.
As soon as the shock dissipated and my voice re-emerged, I began to let out a scream before I felt a hand over my mouth to silence me. I remember thinking, it’s all over, this is how horror movies end.
“Shhhhh…sorry-y-y. Sara, don’t yell,” the owner of the hand mumbled.
I knew that voice. How could this be happening? How could the person that I just had a wet dream about be in my room in the middle of the goddamn night? Did I summon him to my room or was it part of my dream?
The first song that popped into my head was A-ha’s “Take On Me.” I recall thinking that if I lived to tell about this, I’d call Em first thing in the morning and tell her how Eddie’s hot friend from the club made a pass at me and asked me to make out with him by attacking me in my own room. I’d use that song for sure. That song would only make sense to Emily, because there wasn’t another fifteen year old on the planet that would know every song from the ‘80s like she and I did.
We had created our own language of lyrics. The words from the songs would do the