“Joshua K. Brookes lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two daughters, and a dachshund named Gertie. His work has been published in The Nation, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and Granta. Josh’s podcast about writing, Daily Themes, will be available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Podcasts in 2020.”
I couldn’t resist. Regular checkups on Josh are a lesson in one of the banalities of life: what men and boys can get away with. This is not to take away from Josh’s success, which is grounded in undeniable brilliance and talent. This isn’t to say I was a better writer than he was back then, or at least a young writer with more potential, thwarted only by dint of being female. I can’t claim that he doesn’t deserve the accolades now, the devoted wife and children, or even the dog. I’ll probably listen to his podcast and hate myself for tuning in, because he’s doing everything I wished I was doing.
It is a bitter irony that Josh’s writing is celebrated for his “believable” and “indomitable” women. “Brookes’ female characters ring true — complex, cultured, nuanced. His women chafe against the shackles of propriety and break loose from the strictures of convention in ways that echo the struggles of everyday iconoclasts.” I read that in USA Today, I think, of his next to last book. (Even if I cannot bring myself to read his books, I still read the reviews.) The reviewer didn’t know anything about him, not really. If she did, she’d have had to take breaks to cackle every third word. Oh, with Josh there were shackles of propriety and strictures of convention, but me breaking loose? Letting me go? Please.
Joshua K. Brookes has his own little rooms in my mind, all his. I know where they are, and I don’t like going near the keyholes, though I do regularly. And though he’s locked away, he’s managed to find the secret passageway in my haunted house to visit the rooms Julian inhabits. There’s something of Josh in Julian — those evenings when Julian would call for me to account for my sins I was reminded how very, very much Josh would have enjoyed taking part in such scenes with me. He might have been even more controlled, more aloof in condemning my errors than Julian was: Jules frequently raised his voice with me, and Josh never wished to give the appearance of losing control.
That is to say, Josh was not in control of himself, not really. He’s adept at resembling a man — a boy then — who is driven by his steely desire to best his last achievement, to push boundaries and win and win and win. But it’s all a bluff, a veneer on a man who is torn by misogyny and perversion. I know the truth. Even in today’s climate of cancel culture and #metoo, I have not spoken. I’m still a little afraid of Josh Brookes, and how he made me feel beautiful and glorious and wretched and filthy. Afraid of how he reached into my life and scrambled love and debasement in my soul.
Sean was right: Josh Brookes is not right for anyone.
***
It was a flash of ochre I noticed first tipping out of the seam where my locker door met its frame. When pulled, the postcard slipped partway in showed a young woman standing in wintry moonlight at the foot of her lavishly-draped bed. She was undressing, a heavily embroidered blue dress bunched at calf height as she began unlacing the waist of her corset. She was more ginger than me, but there was a resemblance I could not deny. It was a ghostly and claustrophobic image, speaking to me of a word on my mind the evening before as I thought of my upcoming evening with Josh: liminality. I felt balanced on the threshold of childhood, that this was my last evening as a true innocent. A dramatic child who’d read too much for her own good, I performed a little ritual. I wrote “Good-bye, Little Melissa” on a slip of pink paper and burnt it in the flame of the taper I’d stolen from the dinner table. I took the ashes and tipped them into the envelope that matched the paper (the set a 13th birthday present from my grandmother, given in hopes I’d write more thank you notes), sealed the flap with my tongue and kissed it three times before slipping it beneath my pillow.
And like me, this young woman seemed to straddle some line between states of being. I knew what this card depicted without turning it over, but I checked anyway. “John Everett Millais, The Eve of St Agnes (1863), oil on canvas, The Royal Collection, London.” In the blank space of the reverse was written in tight small caps, “I want you to tell me tonight the story of St. Agnes’ Eve. You would do it justice. — JKB.” Reading his hand slashed through me the same thrill I’d felt yesterday as I touched his chest. It reached deeper than before, down into my belly, and even further down in a throb that made me shift my legs in discomfort.
I flipped the card over again to look at the woman once more, to try to reach for the same drift of emotion she seemed to float in, the disconnect from the physical into a realm completely interior. I remembered from Josh’s recitation the day before that she was not alone as she disrobed — she was observed in this moment of reflection, as she readied herself for the rites necessary to dream of her husband-to-be. As I projected myself into the painting, I felt the pricking of observation myself, eyes upon me from some near place of concealment, and turned around sharply. The hallway was buzzy and the stream of morning pre-class traffic flowed steadily past, but no watcher was in sight. I shoved the postcard in between the pages of my Algebra III textbook with a plan to revisit the library in third period to research St. Agnes.
Though I looked for him, Josh was absent from his usual spot in the lunchroom with the rest of what Caitlin had dubbed the Lit Lads (the masthead and staff of the literary magazine was nearly all male, bar the art editor). Sean caught me craning my neck in their direction and shook his head. “Can’t believe you’re falling for his shit. He’s a pretentious dick, won’t stop bragging about how he’s going to get into Yale and kiss ‘bourgeois Burbank’ good-bye.”
“So?” I said between bites of the turkey sandwich I’d brought with me from home. “I plan on getting out of Burbank, too. I might even go to Brown like my dad, which is sort of near Yale. And an Ivy.”
Sean stabbed at his macaroni and cheese, which I knew to be the only predictably delicious thing served in the cafeteria. “You’re different. It’s not like it’s the only thing that defines you.” He let go of his fork; it sagged through the noodles and drooped noiselessly onto his plate. “But it’s not just that, Mel. He’s got something of a… I want to say reputation, but that’s not it. Guys talk. And I’ve heard he’s a control freak.”
“So?” Caitlin jumped in. “He’s in control of what he wants out of life. He wants to be a writer, so he worked his way up to the top of the lit mag. I’ve read his stuff, and he’s really good. He wants to go to Yale, so he’s talking himself into it, like he’s casting a spell or something.” She crammed two pieces of clementine in her mouth.
Sean shook his head and made a small noise of disgust. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, with girls. He wants them to be a certain way.”
Cait laughed. “What, smart and talented and gorgeous like Mel?” (I cringed.) “Wow, how terrible.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. What the fuck is wrong with you, Cait? I just want Mel to be careful with Josh. He’s like a Sven-whatever.”
“You mean, ‘Svengali’?” I asked. “And how many girlfriends are we talking about?” I wasn’t a completely callow fool — Josh’s manner spoke of some fluency in seduction — but a jealous ache bit at me.
“Yeah, ‘Svengali.’ And I guess there’s only one girlfriend I know about, some girl named Abby. The rest are just rumors.” Cait cocked an eyebrow at Sean. “Okay, I did some asking around yesterday. What, you think I’m going to let our Little Em out into the big world without doing some checks?”
I sighed, exasperated at even my closest friends treating me like a child (which of course I was, not that I believed it of myself anymore). “Sean, I don’t need you to –“
“I’ve heard things about him, that he’s bossy. That he tries to push girls’ boundaries — not just about sex, but mentally. Like, prove yourself to me. Prove you deserve me by doing this thing you wouldn’t normally do. And he picks smart girls, too. Like I said, just rumors, but several guys said the same thing.”
I popped the last bite of the sandwich in my mouth and reached across the table to pat Sean’s hand. “Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll be okay. And who knows, maybe tonight is just an editing session after all.”
After a silent glance at each other, Cait and Sean started snorting. Sean flashed me the OK hand signal; inspired, Cait repeatedly pumped her index finger through the “O” made by his thumb and forefinger.
“You suck, both of you.” I snatched up my backpack and the plastic tub I’d packed my sandwich in and started for the lunchroom doors.
“Maybe you will too tonight!” Caitlin called after me.
***
Rachel had taken charge of my after-school toilette. “Okay, I asked around about your loser boyfriend.” (Despite my protests, Rachel had taken to calling Josh my boyfriend, possibly because she couldn’t remember his name.) “Nobody knew about him. I mean, none of the Glams.” Rachel took a step back from me to look at her work on my face. “Hmmmm. Maybe some more mascara.”
The Glams were Rachel’s crew, five girls and one gay boy who were at the very top of the high school pecking order. Rachel was the very blondest, the very sluttiest and the very most vicious of this bunch. I was sad about her graduating, if only because the cover being the little sister of the Queen of High School provided would be withdrawn from me.
“So? Someone like Josh isn’t exactly hookup material for one of the Glams.” I was trying not to get stabbed in the eye by the mascara wand she was wielding on me.
“You’d be surprised. Look up, whore. Don’t make me get this shit in your eyeball.” Sheathing the wand back in the little pink tube, she scanned my face again and passed me a hand mirror from the gold-plated vanity set I’d had since I was 7. “What do you think? The look I was going for was ‘low glam.’ Losers like your boyfriend think they want a girl who doesn’t wear makeup, but don’t actually like when a girl doesn’t wear it.”
Rachel was right — I looked glowy and healthy, rather than slapped with a paintbrush. It was 2001, however, so there was some (now regrettable) frosted eyeshadow along with a light application of Nars Orgasm blush, a light streak of brown eyeliner and lashes courtesy of the tube of Great Lash she’d gifted me that day. My hair was half up and half down, and I looked (to myself, at least) like Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You with redder hair. I had watched Rachel carefully during the transformation so that I had at least a fighting chance of ever looking as good as this again should I attempt it on my own.
In the mirror’s reflection, I saw over my shoulder my sister’s face smug with satisfaction at her work. “I look like you, Rachel,” I said, and her smile appeared almost genuine for a moment.
“Yeah, you wish. Get your clothes on so I can finish with you.” As I slipped the camisole over my head and tugged on the skirt, Rachel sipped at her jasmine tea and stared quite pointedly at my chest. “Your tits are bigger. When did that happen? When did you start wearing a real bra?”
I slipped my arms through the cardigan’s sleeves, pulling the front panels across my chest protectively. The spell casting my sister as a kindly fairy godmother had been broken, and the snooping, taunting girl was back. “A while ago. Maybe at the end of last year.”
“Hm. Not bad.” Rachel turned to look out the window. “He’s here, by the way. Some car’s in the driveway. Get over here, let’s put some lipgloss on you.”
As she slicked the pink across my lips, she gave me a last minute reminder: kissing good, touching over clothes fine, no hands down or up any item of clothing, be interested to be interesting, don’t make any promises. “And remember you owe him nothing. Even if he takes you to fucking Mastro’s tonight, a steak dinner doesn’t equal a blow job. Trust me on that one.”
It was 6:15 by the reckoning of the antique ormolu clock on my bedside; I begged Rachel to let me have a minute alone, and she huffed out of the room, swearing under her breath about ungrateful sluts. Alone, I picked up the hand mirror once more and looked for Keats’ Madeline from St. Agnes in my features. I saw only myself, green-eyed and pink-cheeked, fresh and eager for what next. It would have to do.
Downstairs, a domestic scene: my father and Rachel, so alike with their blond hair and sly grins, sat side by side on the caramel brown leather sofa. Josh faced them on the matching loveseat, his posture entirely relaxed as he leaned forward in conversation, his elbows resting on his dark olive cords (I’d thought chinos, but corduroy seemed even more appropriate). As I passed into the living room, he rose from his seat and passed a hand over his head to smooth his hair. My father beamed at Josh’s reflexive courtesy; Rachel rolled her eyes and mouthed at me “LOSER BOYFRIEND” behind Josh’s back.
“The girl herself!” my dad crowed. “Josh was just telling us how he’s planning on going to Yale, and I made it clear that even though we are a Brown household, we won’t hold that against him.”
“Melissa.” Josh paced up to me — I almost thought he’d take my hand and kiss it for a moment — and placed his hand on my back. A bolt of desire darted up from his touch to my scalp and down my spine. He was far more handsome than I thought I deserved; his dark blue, almost violet eyes flashed something like craving behind his eyeglasses, and he had the full, plush lips of a girl. “You look… lovely. Thank you for being on time.” Turning me around slightly, moving his hand to my shoulder to guide me, he spoke to my father. “I know it sounds silly, sir, but I’m almost OCD about promptness in myself. My older brother — he graduated from Yale six years ago — says it’s a character flaw. I think it shows respect and politeness. Two things I think are the mark of a gentleman.”
I thought I saw my dad’s jaw wobble. “That’s very good to hear, Josh. As I mentioned before, we don’t do ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ in this house, but I appreciate the sentiment. Now go have your talk about the literary magazine, and be back by 10:00. Rachel and I will hold down the fort.”
My sister shook her head. “Go have fun or whatever it is children do. You do know she’s 15, right?”
Josh’s hand twitched where it held my shoulder. “Yes, I do. Sir — Phil, I mean — I just turned 17 last week. I will not betray the trust you’ve placed in me. I can tell just how precious she is to you and Rebecca.”
My sister’s eyes widened. “Rachel. My name is Rachel,” she gritted out. It must have been a singular experience in my sister’s 18 years to have failed to capture a boy’s attention sufficiently to learn her name. I sniggered.
“My apologies, ‘Rachel.’ I’ll remember.” He winked at me with a grin. “I’m taking Melissa to the Smoke House for dinner.” I was impressed; I had only ever been to the Smoke House once, for my father’s 40th. “Birthday money is burning a hole in my pocket, I guess.”
As my dad and Josh shook hands, I was struck by how smoothly Josh had maneuvered himself from near-stranger to me to being accepted by my father as my new boyfriend, particularly since Josh hadn’t even asked me out on a date. There was nothing for me to do except show up on time, look pretty and (I expected) speak to his interests in writing. On the latter point, I was prepared. I’d spent third period reading up on St. Agnes herself, skimmed the Keats poem, and read some of the commentary on it to get a sense of the ritual of St. Agnes’ Eve. If this was my audition for the staff, I intended to nail it to the wall.
If I’d doubted before that this was a date, Josh’s demeanor once I was buckled in his gently worn BMW 3 series made it clear our meeting wasn’t just about my writing. “Thank you for agreeing to go out with me, Melissa. I’ve wanted to ask you for months, but when I heard you weren’t 16 yet, I thought I should wait until you were a little older. I thought your father might not approve.”
“Mel. Everyone calls me Mel.” I looked over at his profile, a study in concentration as we headed southwest on Olive.
“I like Melissa better, if you have no problem with it.” I shook my head. “Have you read any Nabokov?” I shook it again. “You should read ‘Lolita.’ I’ll give you my copy next week when we go out again.” (Again?) “I’m thinking of it now — there’s a line, it’s the first lines, really — but in my mind I substitute your name for Lolita’s. Would you like to know it?”
“Yes,” I breathed. Josh looked almost like an adult to me, though his round cheeks spoke to his youth. When his hand had been on my back I was very conscious of how small I felt next to his 6 foot frame. He might have been even taller — I’ve never been very good at guessing height. His voice was like a drug to me, honeyed and low, much lower than any of my male friends. I wanted to be stuck in that sap, immobile, caught with him.
“Hm. I’ll let you read it for yourself and you can tell me what you think after.” I made a little noise of disappointment (“oh”) and Josh reached over to take my hand in his. “It’ll be more fun to discuss when you have context. Otherwise, it’s just me lecturing to you.”
Over dinner — when I’d dithered over a main course, he went ahead and chose the chicken piccata for me — Josh drew me out, inquiring about not only my writing for the magazine, but my thoughts on feminism, on religion, on the new president. It was the first time I could recall anyone asking my thoughts on topics more serious than metrical scansion in poetry or the subjunctive in French or linear equations. And where I didn’t have an opinion, Josh offered his own.
“Women and men are fundamentally different, but complementary,” he explained, cutting into the New York strip (medium rare) on his plate. “I mean, as a boy there are things I can’t do particularly well that as a girl you’re going to be better in accomplishing. Perhaps some of these are learned tendencies — nurture rather than nature — but many are, I believe, writ into our being as one sex or another. I can tell, for example, that you’re a tenderhearted girl. Sympathetic, warm. Girls are just more likely to have these attributes than boys because you’re hardwired to be a wife and a mother some day.”
I was fascinated by this reasoning, even if some part of my brain pinged that it was overly simplistic. “And you? What do you think you’re hardwired to do?”
“Besides go to Yale and write the Great American Novel?” Josh shot me a self-deprecating smile. “Be a provider. Protect my family. Protect my woman.” (Another streak of longing pulsed through my body, making my lap ache for some release I had no name for yet.) “The world is scary, Melissa. You need someone to protect you. As a girl. As a woman.”
We lapsed into companionably awkward silence punctuated by the occasional observation about school as we finished our meals. It was barely 8, and the two remaining hours I had to share with Josh seemed both far too long and too short at the same time. Back in the car, I’d had no opinion about what to do next, so we drove aimlessly east on Forest Lawn. Josh fiddled with the CD player on the stereo; we listened to a Pedro the Lion album I’d heard Rachel play a bunch of times as we held hands over the center console.
As we sat at a stop sign, waiting for another car to turn left in front of us, he spoke at last. “So, tell me about St. Agnes. What did you learn?”
If I’d been less surefooted at some points during our dinner, now I was ready. Homework? Fantastic. Homework I can do. I explained that Agnes had been a beautiful and wealthy young Roman girl whose piety and commitment to God compelled her to reject all suitors. When she would not marry, she was condemned to a life in a public whorehouse. Dragged naked through the streets to her new vocation, her would-be grooms attempted to rape her, but they were struck blind. She was to be burnt at the stake for her intransigence and commitment to God, but the fire would not consume her — she was instead stabbed in the throat, possibly beheaded. “Her voice was silenced at the hands of men who would have stolen her virginity,” I concluded.
“Quite,” Josh agreed. We were skirting the edge of Griffith Park by this point, heading into Los Angeles. The road had few streetlights; what light we had often came only from the car’s headlights. “What do you know of the St. Agnes’ Eve legend?”
“On the eve of the feast of St. Agnes, a young woman who wishes to know the identity of her future husband must fast all day and all night. She can kiss no one throughout the day, not even her parents, and she must wear a clean nightgown to bed. She must lie in bed on her back, perfectly still, her hands tucked beneath her head, and recite a poem. I’d recite it for you, but I didn’t have enough time to learn it all. And if she follows these rules, her sweetheart will appear at her bedside as she sleeps, and will awake her from her dream to reveal his identity.”
Josh said nothing; I heard only the incessant tik-tik-tik of the turn signal indicator as we waited to turn right on Los Feliz Boulevard. I uncrossed and recrossed my legs — I thought I’d done an excellent synopsis with the short amount of time I’d had to study.
He surprised me by pulling onto a darkened side street and parking the car. “Say what you remember of the poem. Tell me.” He would not look at me, but focused instead on his right hand gripping the wheel. “I want to hear you say it.”
I still can hear my voice ring out in his car:
“Now good St. Agnes, play thy part,
And send to me my own sweetheart,
And show to me such happy bliss,
This night to have of him a kiss.”
At first, I stared out of the windscreen at the parked cars in a line before us, the entire street cast in shadow. He’d turned off the stereo, and the only noise was the whoosh of traffic on Los Feliz behind us. This moment felt heavy with change, that I stood with both feet firmly on some threshold, but prepared to tip over at the slightest touch. The crunching tingle of anxiety I’ve become so familiar with radiated from my upper back, and wound its tangle around my torso to squeeze me tightly.
A weak light from an apartment complex across the road picked out the lines of Josh’s face, his jaw tight, his throat working as he swallowed repeatedly. To me, he looked desperately uncomfortable, and I worried I’d flubbed the whole thing before I found out what next.
“Was that not good? I can try again,” I offered, and reached for his right hand, which was now resting in his lap as his left had been throughout my impromptu recitation. Before I could take it, he took my own wrist in his grasp. While his touch was light, I felt restrained. I felt small.
“No, it was very good.” He let my hand drop, and reached up to touch my lips with his index finger. “You haven’t had a boyfriend before, have you?”
“No,” I confessed. “I guess I’ve been too focused on school to think much about it. And being Rachel’s little sister doesn’t help much.”
“Don’t compare yourself to her. You are your own self. We didn’t know it, but you were saving yourself for me. I’m glad you did.” Josh cupped my cheek and chin in his palm. “May I kiss you?”
I nodded, touched that he’d even asked before taking. And though it was a little awkward over the BMW’s center console, he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine. Rachel was right — this did feel nice as he crushed his lips on mine, as he pulled me closer to his chest, moving his hand down from my head to my back. And she was also right that when he gently parted my lips with his tongue, and probed my mouth hesitantly at first, then more insistently, it felt kind of gross. But the heat rising in my body, the unrestrained growl of more more more in my brain overcame these initial thoughts, and I grasped his body to my own. I wanted all of Joshua K. Brookes. I wanted to step inside him and dissolve into his matter, disappear into his touch. I felt electric, alive, powerful, greedy. Not the pure St. Agnes, not the chaste Madeline. My hand drifted to his thigh that I might steady myself, and he pulled it onto his crotch before pushing it away briskly.
Groaning, Josh pulled away from me. “Melissa, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get carried away.” He fixed my hair, pushing it behind my ears. “I don’t want to lose control of myself. I don’t want you to think I just want one thing from you.”
I wanted more. I wanted that one thing now that I had a hint of what next. “We could kiss some more,” I suggested. “I wasn’t sure if I’d like kissing so much, but I like it with you.”
“That was your first kiss?” Josh searched my face, his eyes concerned behind the dark frames of his glasses. He traced my lips again with a finger. “I was your first. I’ll always be your first.” He pressed a kiss on my forehead. “If you want more, we have to be more careful. We can’t lose control like that. You can’t reach for me like that.”
My lips were still swollen from his mouth, and lust still raced through my body enough to reach again, and further, and faster, but I feared overstepping. “Okay. Just kiss me again. I don’t want to stop.”
***
Over the remainder of the semester, Josh and I fell into a pattern: when he wasn’t studying for an SAT retake (he was trying to improve his 1580 to a perfect 1600), he’d take me out for dinner on Saturday nights — something less fancy than the Smoke House, like the Coral Cafe or Lancers — and he’d come over for supper with my family on Wednesday evenings, after the Literary Club meeting. I’d dress and make myself up, as he requested, though I now kept my hair fully down, as he preferred. While he’d forever be my “loser boyfriend” to Rachel, my parents were both completely charmed by Josh’s good manners and easy conversation. If I was a little quieter than usual in his presence, no one seemed to notice; it was hard to compete with a storyteller like Josh.
After dinner, we’d repair to the backseat of his BMW or my bedroom, depending on where we’d eaten. (As the good child, I was permitted the indulgence of keeping my door closed.) Usually, Josh and I would start our discussions speaking of what we’d been reading (I never mentioned the stack of historical romance novels hidden in a duffel bag under my bed). I’d read the Nabokov he’d passed to me, and obsessed about being Josh’s Lolita, the light of his life, the fire of his loins, his sin, his soul. (He told me it was true, and that he wrestled with his desire for me — he would not give in as Humbert had.) Every week a new book — Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” was the one I enjoyed the most for its swoonful despair — and every week we’d inch closer and closer to something more than just kissing. Once, sitting in his car, he accidentally brushed my breast with his hand and began kneading it, then moved his mouth to my neck, where he trailed kisses from my shoulder to my ear. I could scarcely remain upright as I moaned in pleasure, but Josh caught himself, pulled away and ended the evening abruptly. “You are not ready to know what that feels like,” he said gruffly as he drove me home.
Two afternoons a week, after classes finished, we’d meet with the rest of the Lit Lads (and occasionally Sara, the art editor) to get the magazine ready for publication in early May. I had no official role — I wasn’t going to be on the masthead just yet — so I took on whatever job was handed to me, no matter how lowly. I went on soda runs, logged submissions both prose and poetry, tidied formatting in Word documents, and mopped up spilled coffee and Doritos crumbs. If some of the Lit Lads referred to me as “Josh’s girl” instead of my own name, I took it as a point of pride. Josh was, of course, the very best of them all, and each of them was quite aware that if anyone made it as a writer out of their little clique, it would be him. To be his girl meant that he’d seen something in me that marked me as worthy of his attention.
But mostly I paid attention to how stories and poems were selected, what the editors and staff thought worked and did not. I didn’t always agree — I thought there was a bias in favor of male writers when it came to prose. After several meetings in which stories by girls were dismissed as being too trivial or emotional or lacking plot (“and it’s punctuated so poorly it’s practically accidental free verse,” Rick, the editor-in-chief said of one), I spoke up.
“Why is it that I’m pretty much the only girl who gets her fiction published, but we don’t have the same problem when it comes to poetry?” I was standing behind the circle of chairs Josh and the other staff occupied as they mulled over the last batch of submissions for the semester. “Am I really the only one in this school who’s any good at writing prose?”
Rick and a couple of the other Lit Lads stifled laughs; Josh, whose back was to me, made no sound though I could see his shoulders tense and release repeatedly under his cotton t-shirt. “Well, Melissa,” Rick said, “maybe you should start a girls’ auxiliary, like a training camp to pass on your knowledge.” More titters. “Look, once a girl writer has the chops like you, we’ll be happy to publish her. We just haven’t been as lucky this year. This wasn’t on purpose.”
But I was angry — I am my impulsive mother’s daughter as much as my laid-back father’s — and some switch had flipped in me that I felt unable or unwilling to turn off. “They’re not ‘girl writers,’ Rick. They’re writers that are girls. Do any of you think of yourselves as ‘boy writers’? When was the last time you made fun of a ‘boy writer’ for submitting yet another boring story about World War II? Why am I the only girl in this room right now?”
The boys looked at each other, to Rick, and then to Josh, whose face I could not see from where I stood. Though I quivered with righteous indignation — I was certain the Lit Lads knew I was right, but did not care — I apologized for my outburst, grabbed my backpack and ran out of the magazine’s office for the library. At almost 5 p.m., the worktables and computer stations were nearly empty, as were the stacks. I sullenly sank down on the floor in the Transportation section (Dewey Decimal classes 385-388) and viciously flipped through a book on the history of steam trains, barely registering the black and white photographs of early locomotives from the United Kingdom. I almost ripped a page out in my fury. “Girl writers,” I said to myself under my breath. “I’m a writer.”
“Melissa.” Josh’s voice echoed from what I guessed to be Economics (330), coming closer. “Melissa, we need to talk.” I didn’t want to look up from the text in my lap, though the tears pooling in my eyes were making the words increasingly blurry. “Melissa.” I looked instead at his shoes when they walked up next to where I sat, a pair of maroon Chuck Taylors, with the cleanest shoelaces I had ever seen on a teenage boy’s sneakers.
“I’m sorry. I just…” I continued to look at his shoes. I didn’t want to see whatever was written on his beautiful face — anger, compassion, disgust. I wanted to be perfectly alone in my misery, as I was accustomed. “I just felt sick of hearing about ‘girls’ work’ and ‘girls’ topics’ as if they were pointless and unworthy. I’ve read most of the submissions, you know. I can see what’s happening. I don’t know if I can be part of this if I’m not respected.”
Josh slid down next to me, his long legs filling the width of the aisle. “You are respected. You earned your role next year. No one thinks you didn’t.” He took the book from my hands and placed it out of reach. “But those other girls just aren’t as good as you. You should be pleased. You shine even brighter.”
“It’s not just that,” I said, still refusing to look at him, even though he threaded his arm between my back and the shelf and tugged me to his side. “Why is girls’ work dismissed as being silly? I hear it again and again in there. It’s not like I can ignore it. I’m not a ‘girl writer,’ and you know it. I’m a writer. I’m so done with it all.”
“Melissa, look at me. Look at me.” I would not, so he took my chin and forced my face to regard his. His nostrils flared slightly, and the set of his mouth — a mouth that had only brought me pleasure — was tight, the corners taut with emotion. “You are very talented, and you are very pretty. You are used to getting your own way. But you will never, ever, embarrass me again like you did in there. You disrespected Rick, you disrespected me and you disrespected yourself. When you raise your voice and run out of a room, your behavior does not reflect well on me. What do you think the rest of the staff must think of me?”
I shut my eyes on him. I did not like what I saw in his expression — disappointment, rage, and the lust I’d seen race over his face when he pulled away after kissing me in my bedroom. Although I believed I was right, at that time I also believed Josh was a more reliable narrator than myself in parsing reality. He’d already corrected my interpretation of events on more than one occasion. “I’m sorry,” I said, though I would not open my eyes.
“You and I have talked about what men and women are good at doing in the world, and I’m sorry, men are just better in this arena. There are notable exceptions. Be pleased you are one of them.”
“Yes, Josh. I won’t do it again.” Don’t leave me before I know what’s next.
“Look at me. Open your eyes. Tell me again.” I did as he requested; his face relaxed into the kindness that had so charmed my parents, and even most of my friends over the previous six weeks. He loosened his grip on my chin and pressed a kiss on my lips. “My sin, my soul. Me. Liss. A.”
***
My 16th birthday came and went, and though I remained a virgin — the right time had not arrived, apparently — Josh allowed himself more liberties with my body. I let him take each and every one he presented to me with little resistance: he explained how pushing my boundaries would help him understand me better, as long as I let him be in control. We’d moved swiftly from the gropes of my breasts over my clothing he’d “accidentally” allowed himself before, to him slowly and reverently unbuttoning my pink camp shirt and unhooking my bra to merely gaze at my chest. I’d beg him to let me touch him, to feel my skin on his, but the most he had let me do was rest my cheek on his bare chest as we lay on a beach towel beside my backyard pool. “It’s too dangerous,” he’d warn me. “You need to remain pure until the time is right.”
The evening after my sister’s graduation, in the privacy of his room (we’d begun taking advantage of the nights his father taught a course on mythology at a local community college), we’d gone much further than we had before. It was the closest I’d seen him get to losing control of his desires. He’d asked me not to let him, but I allowed him to kiss each breast again and again until he’d covered them both with kisses. He pressed his mouth to each nipple; I arched my back and pushed his head closer to my chest as I ached for moreandmoreandmore. Propped against the navy blue pillows on his bed, I faced the sliding mirrored doors of his closet, allowing me to see what I looked like as he touched me. I was more fascinated by looking at him and how frantically he was holding back on letting go of something than my own body in ecstasy.
“Melissa, I need you to stop me,” he begged, breathless, looking up at me between my breasts, his glasses discarded on the bedside table. “You have to remain pure and what I’m doing to you… it’s making you filthy.”
“This isn’t dirty,” I countered, crossing my arms over my chest. “What we’re doing isn’t dirty. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s dangerous. Think: what makes Porphyro’s appearance to Madeline so magical on St. Agnes’ Eve?” I shook my head — I knew, but I didn’t want to talk about Keats. I wanted to tear off Josh’s clothing.
“Silly girl, I know you know.” His smile was dangerous, not the one he favored my parents with. “Now, you need to try harder to keep me from taking from you what you know you should hold back. I don’t like it when you play the slut like you are right now. Try harder.” He reached for me, but not to resume where he’d left off. Instead, he took me by the shoulders and pressed me back onto the pillows, forcing my arms from where I’d been covering myself for modesty, holding them taut above my head with one hand. “How can you stay pure if you want me to treat you like a whore?”
Time stopped briefly — this moment is captured in one of little locked rooms in my mind. Josh presses me into the navy blue cotton bedclothes as my eyes widen in panic. I am so small and no one knows I am here. He looms above me; I can see the light mat of dark brown hair on his chest through his white and green ringer tee. The black anglepoise lamp on his rolltop desk focuses not on us, but on the framed poster of “The Raft of the Medusa” on the light green wall opposite. The pads of Josh’s fingers dig into my wrists and even though passion twists his face, it is still a lovely one. I’d still choose him every day, even though in this moment he terrifies me.
“No.” It was the only thing I could think to say as I scrambled to find the words to stop where I feared Josh was drifting. “I — I want to stay pure for you. For the right moment. I want it to be perfect and only you can make it perfect.”
His almost-violet eyes refocused; he gave his head a little shake. “I… I apologize. We can’t keep doing this.” Loosening his grip on my wrists, he sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You have this power over me, and it’s not right. It’s not right at all.”
“I can control myself,” I told him, sitting up as well to wrap myself around his back. (What a lie! I was at that moment pressing my bare chest into his back, reveling in the feel of my skin against the heat of his body.) “I don’t want you to feel you can’t stop yourself just because I’m your wayward nymph.”
He’d taken to calling me that, first as something of a joke: there was a truly wretched poem we’d rejected for publication that sported that title, pompous and turgid and bloated with lines like “O fie on thee! / My wayward nymph / Thou leadest me astray / Away from battles / I must fight / To tumble in the hay.” (I wish I was lying, though it had led to one of the biggest laughs we’d had together that spring.) After the lecture I’d received from him in the library, it seemed a fitting and funny description of me to him. But then he’d also said it to me as we made out in his car, in a moment that was not particularly funny, when I was (as he increasingly said) pushing him to take more of me than I was ready for. As a sobriquet, it stuck.
“I know it’s my fault,” I whispered into his ear over his shoulder. “Show me how to be good. Maybe when I’m no longer pure, I can at least be good.”
***
I can’t write more of this now. I’m trying and trying and I can’t get there, not yet. This is the cheapest and hardest therapy I’ve ever put myself through. Racing, racing through this won’t help me get me through the tape at the end of this course, the one I plotted for myself when I started writing in May.
I want to understand how Julian and Alex and I arrived at this point, how we messed each other up so badly, how we snared each other with love and compassion and companionship, and ruined each other with pity and sex and money and lies. And I know — I feel — that much of the blame on my side should be laid at the feet of Joshua K. Brookes. But I am not ready to finish this unburdening, to throw open the doors to the spaces in which he skulks still in my haunted house. Of all the little rooms there, his are the most confusing, the darkest, dripping with mortification and desire and degradation, stinking of the purity he fixated on.
And tomorrow night I leave for Bex and Jamie’s wedding, the catalyst for most of the drama of the summer, the origin of the 4 a.m. calls and Julian’s appearance at Bottega Louis and Fennella’s seduction and the ill-advised visit to Julian’s new home and more lies than I can count. Julian’s good (or good-enough) behavior has been purchased; Alex has made no promises when it comes to Julian. Who will be the tinder and who the spark, I do not know, but combustion is certain. When there’s that much tulle around, who knows who’ll be set ablaze.
meandering again 