Regan Wolfrom - Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men

DESPITE HERbest intentions, Marguerite Frunklin had never been in love before. She’d been in lust, as had all the girls back home in Ohio when they’d first found out James Franco was studying for a PhD in English, but love was something magical and mysterious to her. It was something she’d been forced to cobble together in her mind with a soulful blend of romantic passages from Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray ; from what she’d seen so far, she was pretty sure true love involved at least a limited degree of emotional abuse and dumb and pretty girls taking orders from extraordinarily attractive jackasses.

Marguerite knew she was pretty enough, but she was never sure she could fake being that stupid.

“It’s not like you had any boyfriends back in Ohio,” her brother Bradley said as they stood along the Avenue in the old town of Sintra. They were waiting for one girl or another of his.

“You’re a jerk,” she said. “You used to be a lot less of one back in Ohio.”

He grinned. “I also had braces and a lazy eye. Luckily I didn’t have to bring those with me to Portugal. Things change, French Fry.”

“Let’s not play the nickname game. We all have a past, Bradizzle.”

He punched her on the shoulder; he’d probably meant it to be lighter.

Two of the local guys were walking toward them; Diogo and Netuno, both dressed in soccer shirts and giving her a look.

She still felt like she was back in high school, standing by the lockers and being evaluated.

“They like you,” Bradley said.

“Sure they do.”

“They do. I’ll tell ya, French Fry, if I was worried you’d ever close the deal with one of these guys, I’d have to start kicking a lot more asses.”

“Shut up.”

Marguerite silently prayed that the boys would find some distraction before they reached her. She felt nervous enough to vomit.

“Boa tarde,” Diogo said with a smile.

She knew he was talking to her, but she pretended it was all meant for Bradley. She slowly looked down at her feet.

“You are going?” Diogo asked.

“Yes, I have to go,” Marguerite said. “We need to get home.”

“He’s asking if you’re going to his party, dumbass,” Bradley said.

“Tell him no.”

“Tell him yourself.”

Diogo started to laugh. “You should go,” he said. “It will be fun.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?” Bradley asked.

“You know why not.”

“No… I can’t say I do.” He wasn’t going to help.

“I have to study.”

“It’s Friday night. No one has to study.”

“I do,” she said.

Bradley grinned. “No… I’m pretty sure you don’t have anything to study.”

“Then you can go,” Diogo said.

“I can’t,” she said.

“You work too hard.”

“I know. I… I need to go now.”

She waved awkwardly and turned to leave.

“She’s shy,” Bradley said. “You may have to give her a few glasses of ginja to get her to… uh… open up.”

Marguerite prayed to God that no one else caught the joke Bradley was going for. Since English was their second language…

“It’s a joke,” Bradley said. “You guys are supposed to laugh. I’m saying that you should get my sister drunk, Diogo.”

Diogo and Netuno looked confused but they laughed, Diogo a little too heartily.

Marguerite could feel her face blushing.

“She’s blushing, guys,” Bradley said. “You know what that means…”

Marguerite couldn’t take it; she couldn’t stay to defend herself. Bradley would have kept on her like he always did, until she was in tears and everyone else was pointing and laughing.

Marguerite ran home and picked a fight with her father instead. It was his fault they were there, anyway.

Maybe in Ohio , Marguerite thought as she lay on her bed. Maybe there she could have gotten somewhere with a boy, but now that her father had dragged them to Portugal she felt like she was drowning in a foreign language; she didn’t know more than a couple words of Portuguese.

And she didn’t know what the boys expected from her; did she need to be clever and funny, or was she supposed to simply smile and nod? The Portuguese girls didn’t say much to Bradley; they just let him talk on and on about whatever, smiling politely until he’d start sucking on their faces. Would a boy like Diogo want this American girl to sit back and listen to him drone on in a language she could barely understand? She had no way of figuring that out, not without embarrassing herself completely in the process.

Marguerite just wanted to fall in love; she didn’t want to have to worry about all the legwork.

Bradley didn’t have those problems; he’d arrived in Portugal like a fully formed man of action. This new Bradley was nothing like the awkward boy with too many teeth who’d always hung around Marguerite and her friends, hoping his amazing ability to buy alcohol would lead to a girlfriend.

In Portugal Bradley got exactly what he wanted. He made it look so easy.

He’d taken more than a few of them to the marbled bottom floor of the Initiation Well, which would also be a pretty good euphemism for whatever he did to those girls once they got down there.

“It’s to initiate the secret members of the Knights Templar,” Bradley had told her once. “At the bottom of the well, representing the ninth circle of Hades, they’d swear an oath. They’d pledge their lives, swearing that they’d rather suffer forever in hell than bring dishonor to the rite.”

“And that really works?” she’d asked. “You take them down there and give them a bunch of crap and they get all open for business?”

“It doesn’t matter what I say… it’s how I say it.”

She remembered rolling her eyes at him, pretending that she thought it was all so stupid, but secretly wishing that Diogo or Netuno or… well, she wasn’t sure about funny-eared Rafael… no, not Rafael… but wishing one of the boys would give her some bullcrap about ancient knights or solemn oaths. All it would take was one bronze-skinned Pork and Cheese boy to look past her boss-level of awkwardness… just one, and then Marguerite would finally know what all the fuss was about.

Until then, she’d lay in bed and wait. And play a little Xbox with some of her friends back home once they came online.

“It was a great party,” awkward Rafael told her the next afternoon as he followed along beside her on the way to the butcher; Sintra is a town where there’s always a bored guy or two hovering around the girls as they try and do whatever.

“You went?” Marguerite asked.

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“I walked by. It looked like fun.”

Marguerite knew that Rafael wouldn’t have been invited. She decided not to press any further, to spare his feelings and because she didn’t feel like talking.

“Do you like Portugal?” he asked.

“It’s nice.”

“Yes. Even our bedrooms smell like fish.”

That made her smile.

He smiled, too. “And every time you look down at your dinner plate, there’s a set of eyeballs staring back up at you.”

Marguerite laughed. It sounded like he was reciting a joke book.

“What do you think of the driving?” he asked, bouncing as he walked.

“Are you setting up a joke?”

He blushed and nodded.

She laughed again. “It’s something,” she said.