We Were Bad

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When she fucked me we imagined we were fucking other people, like Jane, for example, from our chemistry class, with the soft round calves and the horn-rimmed glasses, with the thin ankles and trembling hands. When I kissed her ear and talked about Jane’s slender wrists, her golden tan, her fingers-fat with yellow tips from smoking packs of Camel Blues-she shuddered. Then I bit her neck and told her about Eva Green and how her legs were so thick that they stretched the seams of denim shorts.

We were bad. She chain-smoked cigarettes. She shaved her hair and dyed mine red. She shoved six-packs of Porter from the drugstore shelves beneath my shirt. I ran. I spit thick chunks of brown and dipped my nose in gasoline. She laughed. We started fires in the garbage bins behind our school. When my mother cried and cursed us, when my father whipped me with his belt, she screamed. She shouted, “Harder,” till her shoulders burned beneath my nails and then she dug her teeth into my taut pink nipples while I licked warm blood from her open wounds. She wanted to know. She said things like, “When you suffer, I suffer,” then she lit the pipe between my lips and watched the opal glass turn green. I said things like, “No, softer,” when she shoved her fist below my skirt and then she pushed her thumbs into the space between my open thighs. Summers, she was darker than the starless nights at Becker Creek. We chucked flat rocks like children, skipping stones along the leafy shore. She stripped me down and watched me twirl barefoot on fallen branches while I saw something ignite inside the flicker of her almond eyes. We were sixteen, growing stronger every summer day, each hour spent sprinting down the dusty roads and egging stucco houses. Oh, we filled our empty lungs just like our fathers filled their empty flasks. We weren’t tired, no, enough was never enough.