We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,23
this bug-eyed look that I knew could not be sexy. I flashed through every book I’d ever read that included a sex scene and landed upon the words, “Look him in the eye.” So I tried that. Weird. It’s too much to maintain eye contact with a guy when you’re sixteen years old and mortified.
He was very gentle and so determined, like he was solving a math problem. But he still hadn’t laid eyes on my vagina. I was still wearing Danielle’s skirt and I started to panic, because I realized that when I gave it back to her it was going to smell like sex. She would know. Because at first you don’t want anyone to know, but then you want the whole fucking world to know.
I waited for all the things I had read about to happen, while trying to mask the pain, horror, and humiliation.
It started to not hurt anymore. Maybe even feel good. And then, with a strange sound, it was over. Where was the magic? Where was the cuddling? The fireworks and the I-love-yous? Something. Anything?
He got up to flush the condom, and I saw his bare butt for the first time, watching that bow-legged walk across the room. He was a dude strutting around in a white Hanes tee and tube socks. I let out a contented sigh. He was just so sure of himself that it was infectious. I had just lost my virginity.
When he came back to the bed, we locked eyes, and all my newfound self-assuredness disappeared. I felt ridiculous. I felt exposed. He hadn’t seen my black pussy, but did it feel different to him? Did he like it? Did he hate it? Is that why he came so fast?
He leaned on my side of the mattress.
“We’re gonna have to wash these sheets.”
“Huh?”
“You bled all over the sheets.”
There was no sweetness. It was simply a statement of fact, like a detective at a crime scene. I got up, and I saw what he saw. It was a crime scene, there on those light gray sheets. The books never described it that way. The books never said there would be this much blood.
Inside, I wanted to die. In fact, I decided I was dying. A little of humiliation, and a little physically. I crossed some weird boundary, turned around, and found that the door had vanished behind me. I was stuck in a weird space of middle earth.
I had unleashed my black pussy on the world, and look what happened. Here’s this perfect man, and I’ve ruined the sheets of his parents’ bed. I wanted to crawl into a ball and call my best girlfriend and write it in my diary—all at once. And now I had to wait for a whole laundry cycle?
Yes, I did. We sat there in his living room, barely talking. And as we waited for the dryer to ding, I felt myself slip-sliding right back into the friend zone. I was already mourning all the flirtation, the touching, the little signals of interest.
He drove me across town, back to my house. When we finally pulled up, he jerked his head toward the car door like I didn’t understand how it worked. I sat. I waited.
“Y’all right?” he said.
The car was still running.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He nodded. I wanted him to kiss me the way Molly Ringwald got kissed. In my head I was screaming, “I want you to be Jake Ryan! Kiss me like that!”
He didn’t.
I let myself out of the car and closed the door softly.
As I walked to my house, I pretended not to watch him drive away.
BILLY GOT BACK WITH ALICE SHORTLY AFTER WE HAD SEX.
When Billy showed interest in me, I felt myself vibrating with sexual energy. I wasn’t Gregory Hines in the eunuchs’ chamber anymore. What’s more, people could see it. Everyone around me knew that I was a viable option. My confidence swelled—and promptly deflated when he moved on to someone else. For a few weeks, I remembered looking around, scanning the halls and classrooms for signs of other interested suitors. “Anybody else? Anybody? No?”
No. I was back to eunuch status. But now I’d had a taste. I knew what was on the other side.
I wanted a do-over. Later that school year, I got it. It was in February. Billy and I had sex on the ground outside an industrial park. I drank a Mickey’s big mouth. This time, I thought, it was for real.