Pinball

Andrew sat next to me in homeroom, and I learned almost nothing all year. Every time the smooth blonde hairs of his forearm brushed up against mine, I lit up like a Christmas tree, tingling from the tips of my toes up to the top of my ponytail. One week, when Mrs. Carlisle came around to collect our spelling quizzes, Andrew looked over at my sheet and casually pointed out that I had forgotten to write my name at the top. My tongue went limp in my mouth. I stared back at him blankly, eventually managing to gargle out some nonsensical noises and look away in horror. On the long bus ride home, I came up with sassy retort after sassy retort: Well, maybe you wouldn't have known that if you haven't been looking at my quiz! The opportunity never arose to try them out in real life.

...

Stephen gave me my first kiss, though it was more about checking something off a list than Stephen. We were at camp, and the preteen girls and boys all huddled into a second floor common room on a rainy afternoon with a bottle to spin and havoc to wreak. His mouth tasted like the tropical fruit Starbust he had just finished chewing. I tried to picture the faces of the girls and boys circled around us whooping and giggling as he probed around my mouth with his tongue, looking for something.

...

Connor was a soccer player and disarmingly funny. I wanted him to be my first. After a night of strategic stalking and ample drinking, we stumbled back to my dorm room. Once I had managed to unlock the door, he pushed me in with one hand and flipped the lights off with the other, a little too confident. He pressed the full weight of his body against mine, smothering me with urgent kisses and hasty groping. When he pinned me on the bed and began tearing off my belt, my dress, I felt my eyes well up with tears. Reaching for the wall, a solid grip, I managed clumsily to push him off and send him home. He left apology messages on my voicemail that night and over the successive weeks to which I never responded. I took long walks and laid in fields with tall grasses hidden, staring up at the changing cloud formations.

...

Sean lived down the hall from me sophomore year. He was older and much more experienced, and I fell like all the rest, weak under the light of his gaze. The feeling wasn't mutual, and my heart broke a little bit each time he came home with a different girl. Late one Saturday night, as I passed Sean's room on my way to the bathroom, I could just make out the sounds of mattress creaking and heavy breathing on the other side of his closed door. I felt my feet slow to a halt; he's not alone. All my senses withdrew save for my hearing, which sharpened dramatically, registering the soft moans of a female voice.  I lingered there motionless, drinking in the intoxicating sounds of their love-making like a creepy ex-lover. Someone could come by, a small voice in my head called out from a distance. You’ll be caught here like a deer in the headlights. But my feet wouldn’t move. Awash in a combination of horror, envy, and curiosity, I voyeured into a world of intimacy I hadn’t yet experienced.

...

Adam taught me what love returned feels like. Our first night together, he lay with his head in my lap in the rooftop garden of a friend's apartment, venting to me about his estranged father, the pain of their relationship. I listened intently, stroking his hair and smiling as he moved on to his dreams to one day open a whiskey distillery, start his own brand. He sat up suddenly, looking at me tentatively. “I'll never forgive myself if I don’t kiss you right now," he ventured. I let him, and we tumbled willingly down the well. Back at his loft, we rolled around in his crisp, white sheets, laughing and kissing. He pinned me down with his long, tattooed arms, threatening to sleep right there on top of me. “I want to make sure you’re still here when I wake up,” he teased, smiling down at me with drooping, love-drunk eyes.

It ended badly, and months later, memories I had buried deep surfaced with alarming clarity, interrupting the most unsuspecting moments of my day. Walking to class or in a conversation with a friend, I’d suddenly black out to world, enveloped in the unmistakable cigarette and licorice scent of his breath on my neck, the warmth of his arm resting in my hip crease as we slept, morning light flooding through the skylight in his room. I’d sit down on a bench until the vertigo passed and reality loomed back into view.

...

Eric gave me the stability I craved. He was a good boyfriend, and did all the things good boyfriends "should" do: planned out our dates a week in advance, checked in with me at night, introduced me proudly to his friends and family. When we had sex, his face twisted up like a mechanic contemplating an intricate machine--searching for the right buttons to press, the right words to say. I'd squeeze my eyes shut, embarrassed by the effort. Four months later, I faced the insecurities that drove me into Eric's arms and left him for my quiet nights alone.

...

Will and I worked together in the same dead-end job. In willful ignorance of his long-term girlfriend, we escaped into each other at work for over a year, flirting and wasting time together just to brighten our uninspired days. One quiet evening alone at home, I settled in to watch what I thought would be an easy film: Drinking Buddies by Joe Swaneberg. For two hours, I watched my relationship with Will mirrored back to me in excruciating detail through the story of Luke and Kate, coworkers at a Chicago brewery who spent all day drinking and flirting, and returned home wasted each night to their significant others. I felt sick to my stomach watching Luke and Kate wrap themselves in layer after layer of denial, drinking constantly and copiously to dull any sense of guilt or responsibility their actions might prompt. I sat there stunned for nearly twenty minutes after the credits stopped rolling, then stood up abruptly, grabbed my keys, and stormed out of the house. I marched through the dark like a madwoman, searching for something, anything to get me away from Will. I came across a 'Help Wanted' sign in a local coffee shop and immediately went inside for an application. I sat alone at the bar in the nearby pub, filling it out and chatting up any man that dared hit on me. Three months later, I left our job, and his girlfriend became his fiance.

...

I’d like to think I’ve learned something from all these misadventures in love and sex and attraction--that I’m somehow stronger for having lived through them, but I'm not so sure. In many ways I am still the gangly, insecure girl I was in middle school, Russian-dolled deep down into the layers of my self. I’ve never fully processed or recovered from any of them, and the ghosts still haunt my dreams from time to time.

I've been forced to conclude that whatever lessons there are to be learned, they are the kind that must be relearned again and again and again. I know that no matter how many times I fall into the pit at the bottom of this pinball machine, it's only a matter of months before I'm going to be shot back in again, as unprepared as ever, barreling towards inevitable collision with some new character... hoping he doesn't join my collection of ghosts.

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