The End of Innocence

We lived by the ocean and my house was usually the gathering point for my group of friends. At the end of our garden, just before the water, was a huge field, perfect for playing softball and doing cartwheels. And so we did.

Long, light summer evenings were spent bathing and jumping off the wooden jetty until my mother would call me. I’d go to bed with wet braids and get the most incredible waves in my hair the next day. The foot end of my bed was always sandy and I perpetually had a bathing suit drying over the edge of the bathtub.

We would steal strawberries from the mean neighbors next door and I was mortified, the day she caught me – redhanded and berrymouthed.

The breeze carried notes of dune roses, salt water and rotting seaweed and the days were filled with My Little Ponies, sweetened tea with lots of milk and love letters, passed during class with boxes where you could check off: ”Yes”, ”No” or ”Maybe”.

It was the age of innocence.

By the time we hit the seventh grade, our school merged tracks with the school from the neighbor village. This meant two new classes and a whole new ballgame.

At the time, I didn’t understand what hit me, although I sensed the pressure from the impact.  I understood that these girls were popular. They wore cobalt blue mascara. They had perfect, round breasts with tiny, pink nipples right in the center. They had pierced ears. They demonstrably borrowed mini-tampons from each other and none of them played with My Little Pony.

And then there were the boys. Particularly C and K were popular. They wore insane amounts of aftershave and the exact right kind of Levi jeans.

There was no end to my awkwardness the day my friend D set us up on a double date with them.

They came to my house, the usual hangout. I made tea. They took coffee. Black.

With all of my body I sensed that something was off. I thought I caught the boys shoot each other a look over my soap collection, out on display. The pride of my collection was a lemon-shaped soap with a nice tangy-sweet scent. It lay there, the centerpiece amongst the others; a wonderfully spicy ‘Maja’ soap my grandmother had given me, various rose soaps, and a small collection of individually wrapped hotel soaps from my father’s business trips.

Only when D and C started kissing each other on my bed, did I realize the seriousness of the situation. “Kissing” doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was face-fucking. Slobbery, loud, ugly.

Vast amounts of blood gathered in my cheeks when I realized that whenever I moved, K followed. It was musical chairs of torture. I was in hell. But I finally got it. It was now painstakingly clear to me, that it wasn’t enough that I had replaced my posters of horses with posters of pop stars. The lip-gloss was not enough; the blow-dried bangs with ozone-layer-thinning amounts of cheap hairspray: it was not enough.

He had come with the clear intent to stick his tongue into my mouth and I had to deliver.  There were new rules in a game I did not understand.

As we spent years passing an hour, he finally understood that he was getting nowhere with me.

D closed the door as she left with them.

Alone in my room, I threw my soap collection in the garbage can.