Emma Rathbone: Losing It

When I got back we commenced a heavy-breathing make-out session wherein I felt like I was on a swaying rope bridge. Elliot smelled like cedar, or like the attic in someone’s mountain house. A little creaky. But there was another scent there, a kind of behind-the-ear, unwashed-hair him-ness.

“Do you have a bed?” I said.

His bedroom. I stood there, in my socks, while he went to use the bathroom. I wondered if I should take the socks off. There was a fish tank with swaying plants. His bed was really big and had a smooth gray comforter on it. I thought, I’m going to have sex in this modern room next to a fish tank, with or without socks on. There was a bookshelf with lots of fantasy and science fiction paperbacks, all very neatly arranged and alphabetized. I stared at his digital clock. Was I going to tell him I was a virgin? It’s not like I felt I couldn’t, or that I thought he would balk or make me feel weird about it in any way, but I knew that saying something like that could change the current — add a hiccup that might throw the whole thing off.

My instinct was not to say anything. I kept staring at the digital clock. He came back into the room but I didn’t want to turn around.

He put his hand on my back and we started kissing again and then we sank down onto the bed. I tried to make sure the pace was sustainable, that it would continue at a good clip. Riding a bike, swimming, keeping it all up, up, up with the right balance of moving parts.

Just do what he does, I thought. That’s a formula you can follow. He took off my shirt, and then I took off his shirt. He kind of gathered me into himself and I held on to him. He took off my shorts, and I started fumbling with his belt.

Then we were completely naked — two naked adults, with the air-conditioning hitting our private parts. He turned onto his side and propped himself on his elbow and looked me up and down, which I didn’t like very much. “A swimmer,” he said. “A swimmer’s body.”

“I’m a virgin,” I said all of a sudden. And I realized I told him because I felt about to hang glide off some precipice alone, and I really didn’t want to be alone. I wanted someone to be there with me — a friend. I wanted Elliot.

“Really?” he said. “Well, I’m a Unitarian.”

I grinned. It was a stupid joke.

He fished a condom out from somewhere and put it on and lifted himself on top of me and said, “Just let me know if anything doesn’t feel right.” But I knew it was going to hurt, and it did hurt. It hurt a lot. But then the pain subsided. I realized which way was up and got my bearings. I kissed his neck. He laughed a disbelieving laugh — his voice cracked and it felt special, to hear him that way, and I got a sense of his outer reaches, like the sun hitting the sea far away and you can see all this distant surface area.

I then thought of a movie I’d seen at a friend’s house when I was a kid, where two people in rugged jean jackets were having sex against a red Porsche in the desert. It just flashed through my mind.

Here’s something I appreciated: that Elliot wasn’t being so sensitive or mincingly polite that he wasn’t enjoying himself. He sighed really loudly when he first went inside me, and it was not at all horrible to watch the raw expressions cross his face.

It seemed to go on for a long time.

“Here,” he said, and he turned us over so I was on top of him. “Some girls like it better this way.”

“I can’t tell if I do,” I said.

“It’s a lot to take in, all of this,” he said, looking a little sweaty.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, and then we were back in the first position, with me on the bottom. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No, no,” I said, “go ahead.”

He came inside me.

He lay down to the side. I was lost, in between channels of white noise, but not in a bad way. The sheets were wrinkled and my pubic hair was wet and there was a drop of semen on my stomach.

“Look,” I said, pointing to it.

He propped himself up on his elbow. “Yup,” he said. “That’s America.”

I stared at him. There was so much I didn’t know about this person.

“Do you want me to touch you?” he said.

“What? No,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, resting back on his pillow, looking up. “You’ll learn. You’ll learn what you like.”

I looked around. I slowly drummed my fingers on my stomach. I picked up a paperback that was on his night table. “The Afternoon Planet,” I said.

“It’s a fantasy book,” he said, “part of a series I’m reading. It’s a little too… I’m not sure if I’m going to finish it. I’m all for empire and rebel shit, but sometimes these books get a little too heavily militaristic, with battles and battles and battles.”

I put the book back. By the little bit of sun I could see through the blinds, I could tell the light outside was getting all ripe and late-day.

I thought of other moments I’d gotten something I desperately wanted: when I qualified for the Junior Nationals when I was thirteen; the phone call about my full scholarship to Arizona State; even when I was a kid — this certain kind of gourmet chocolate egg I was allowed to eat only on Easter; in fourth grade, when Shelly Goodall finally realized, exactly when I wanted her to, that, because she’d ruined my Advent calendar, I was the one spreading rumors that she once French-kissed a prairie dog at Epcot Center.

Elliot was looking at me playfully. He was still him — I still liked him. I was still me. I should have known not to worry so much about any of it, about all of it. But I would never have been able to not worry.

“What should we do now?” I said.

“I’ve got some ice cream. Do you want to go up to the roof?”

“Yes, that’s what I want to do.”

So that’s what we did. We sat on the warm tar roof and ate soupy ice cream. We talked about what it was like for him to grow up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. And about my parents and Costa Rica and Texas. We talked about the office, and about Jeannette, and what was up with his ancient secretary, Caroline. “She’s just a nice old lady,” he said. The late-day sky billowed pink, and below in the street, restaurants started to get crowded and lights turned on and twinkled in the distance. I felt frayed, wise, and alive.

“You know what I’ve always been interested in?” I said.

“What?” He was sitting cross-legged. His shirt was on inside out.

“Medieval stuff. Like, the Black Plague and all of those kings and queens, the Wars of the Roses and things like that. Catapults and wheels. Braveheart. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I want to learn about all that. The Yorks and the Lancastrians. All of that stuff.” I readjusted my position, shifted so I was leaning back on my elbows. “I feel like I never really got an education. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Maybe you should study history,” he said. “Go back to school.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe. I guess that’s something a person would do.”

“You could do anything,” he said. “You’re young. You’re lucky.”

“I couldn’t be more lucky,” I said.

You think you’ll be different. You always think you’ll be different. But then normalcy quakes and breaks the ground beneath you and takes over. And then you’re just you, like you always were, on a hot day.

It was a week later. I was standing in the warm, sunny upstairs gallery of a bookstore in a town called Sperryville about twenty minutes from Durham. “Can someone tell me where to put this vase?” I said, looking around. Elliot came up the stairs holding a crate of wineglasses. He put it down. “Last one!” he said.