Page 80 of Play Dirty

I squinted my eyes. Trying to figure out what that meant.

“But girls are who you’re supposed to like.”

“I like girls,” I said. I remember my throat tightening up. Making it hard to swallow. Like there were rocks in there or something.

“Of course you do,” she said. “Of course you do,” she repeated. Her mouth angling in to mine until our lips touched.

I kissed her back.

The bedroom—my bedroom—looks the same too. A raw log bed with a small child-sized mattress is pushed up against the wall. I liked it against the wall because the wall was comforting to me. I liked to press my back up against it. The patchwork quilt my mother bought from a local Indian reservation when I was small still acts as a bedspread. The pillow cases are navy blue…

When it was all over I just looked at her. At her hair. Spilling out onto the pillow. It’s golden, and long, and soft. I touched it a lot that night. Played with it as we played our dirty little game. As she touched me, and caressed me, and fondled me.

“Where did you come from?” I remember asking when it was over and the morning sunlight was spilling through the window.

And she said… and she said… “He keeps me.”

And I didn’t know what that meant back then.

But I do now.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I think some fathers do things like this. They hire a prostitute for their teenage son and turn it into a big deal. A tradition.

Sick fucks. Rich fucks. Fucks like my father.

But this is so much worse now that I think back on the experience. What she said… To fix me. To make sure I like girls, in other words.

I think I blocked it out because one, I just didn’t understand it. Oh, I knew I was there to have sex with her. That wasn’t the part I misunderstood. But I did like girls. I still do like girls. I just… liked Ixion too. And two, because my father… I fucking worshipped him.

Still do. I love him.

But he did that to me. Said those things to her.

Fix me.

I fall into the couch cushions, exhausted from the long drive. Wondering if my mother knew.

Loving men is confusing because you have your best bros. Like me and Ix. And I love him. I’d do anything for him. Any. Thing. But it’s not supposed to go any farther than that. You’re not supposed to crave his body, or his attention, or his touch.

And to be clear, Ixion and I were never like that. He’s not into the bi stuff like I am. Sure, we shared Augustine a few times, but that’s all it was. A share.

I’m not looking for a man, I’m looking for a man and a woman. I’m looking for what we had back in LA. And now that what happened here is reemerging, I have to ask myself—did my father make me this way? Was this formative experience what made me who I am today?

A man who is unable to find satisfaction outside a plural relationship?

Her game was clever for the time. I mean, no one even blinks at a blindfold these days, but back then? It was super kinky.

Put this over my eyes and take me out to the woods, Jordan. Tie me up and smack me with this twig. I will pretend to cry and you can rip my dress off. Touch me anywhere you want. Touch yourself, too.

Did my father tell her to do that? Or did she make it up? What kind of teenage girl knows how to do that shit?

A very badly abused one, Jordan.

She scared me. I remember thinking that. I remember taking her out to the woods, blindfolded so I had to hold her hand and tell her to step carefully, and tying her to the tree like she told me to.

But after that… after that I just froze.