Anorex-a-Gogo

Gerard is pacing my room. Every couple of seconds he stops and stares at me, contemplating me from some angle or another. It makes me more self-conscious than I've ever felt. And I feel over-stimulated just watching him pace the room, then back, then stop and study me, then pace back towards my closet. And repeat the process all over again.

"Turn to the left," he murmurs, moving around in turn to my right.

I'm sitting in the middle of my bed, and it's bare because my sheets smelled like alcohol and sweat, so they're in the washing machine. Gerard is making me pose for him, a living still-life. He said that he's rescued me from enough shit lately that I owe him. I protested briefly, but damn, I suppose he's right. So here I am, turning to the left.

"More," he says, pushing my shoulders impatiently to my left. He mutters something about the light not being quite right. "Jesus, Frankie, do you have ADHD or something? Stop moving the fuck around."

I nearly laugh at how he pulls frustratedly on his hair, but I decide he might bite me or something if I do, so I don't. "I can't help it," I mumble, "You make me anxious when you pace around and look at me like that. And besides, what about you, you're like an OCD perfectionist.

He cracks a grin. "Im an artist," he says dramatically, mocking himself, then goes back to examining me.

I chew on my lip ring and follow his hunched figure around the room with my eyes. Right now his own are burning green with frustration and deep concentration. My mind drifts. Owen is home and sulking in his room because I didn't end up getting in deep trouble for blowing up on Stokes and then ditching school (I do, however, have to apologize to him tomorrow or else I'm grounded). Mom is "casually", and I use that word very loosely, walking up and down the hallway every few minutes, probably listening to make sure that Gerard and I are behaving ourselves. Like we're fucking five, but with a hell of a lot more sexual tension and less juiceboxes. Despite the fact that she obviously knows, I'm not looking forward to officially "coming clean" with my mother.

I still remember the "talk" she gave me when I was ten years old. You know the one I mean, the dreaded "Kill-Me-Now Sex Talk". Only mine was a million times worse than yours, I promise.

"Frankie, honey, you know that man who came into Mommy's office yesterday? The one who was severely clinically depressed because his wife was cheating on him, and the woman he was cheating on her with was pregnant and had given him chlamydia?"

"Yes, Ma."

"Well, if you have sex, you'll end up just like him. Alone, depressed, and drowning in hospital bills, alimony, and baby shit. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma."

And people wonder why I was (and still am) such a fucked-up kid.

This gets me thinking about sex in general. Not the most pleasant topic for someone like me. I am not a virgin. This is no big news. Although, unlike most kids, I never got the choice whether I wanted to lose it or save it. My virginity was something I was simply forced to give up before I was ready to. It's not something that I lose too many tears over. For the most part I aim to forget.

It's easily said that I have somewhat of an aversion to the act. I mean, I grew up fearing the nights where Owen broke into my room and made me go places no kid should ever have to go. Figuratively speaking, of course, as what we did never left my room. But as a result, I have never experienced sex without pain or cool numbness. I have never experienced sex with love or curiosity or even embarrassed hesitation, like it's supposed to be. Long story short, I have never experienced sex outside of Owen, no pun intended. But a part of me has always wished that that was how it had gone, fumbling and blushing with someone who was special or right for me.

So sue me, I'm a fucking closet romantic.

Gerard has retreated into his artsy world inside his head, so I openly stare at him as he contemplates my angle again. I think about sex. I think about Gerard. I think about sex with Gerard. For some reason, I'm not embarrassed thinking about it so openly (and knowing it would be great). Maybe today we've already been through so much already that it just doesn't matter any more. Our relationship is a weird one--already we've seen each other completely naked and vulnerable multiple times (although all in just one day), yet I know nothing about his friends. We seem to have bypassed embarrassment with that first day that he caught me yakking up Mr. Stokes' sandwich in the school bathroom.

"You're not a virgin," I hear myself say quietly as he sits down with his battered sketchpad. I am not embarrassed, and it's not a question. He oozes experience. It's something I just know.

He looks up with registered guarded interest. He can sense the change too. But like me, he seems to realize that there's nothing left to be embarrassed by. I have taken care of him drunk. He's seen me a number of times at my lowest in the past week or so. Hell, he's even put me at my lowest a time or two.

"No, I'm not," he answers conversationally, finally putting pencil to paper. Then, as an afterthought, he stands again and comes back over to me. "Take off your shirt," he adds, hands moving to the hem.

I do so, still unembarrassed as he helps me toss it aside and runs his thin hands over my bare chest. I try not to squirm as he touches me in that unhindered way Gerard has, that makes me tingle and burn like a match at the same time. Meanwhile I'm wondering how long this will last, this confidence that seems to have stemmed from knowing not only that I mean a lot to him, as he told my mom, but also that he's staying with me tonight. Or maybe it's because he's drawing me in person, and that fucking means something.

A minute passes. Two. I watch the snow against the darkened sky just outside my window. For once I'm not thinking of how fat I must look to him, or what I last ate. Out of body, out of mind.

"Are you?" Gerard suddenly asks, his eyes still on the paper. Unlike me, he is unsure. I do not ooze experience. I may, in fact, ooze immaturity. He glances up and catches my eyes a couple of times, but always goes back to sketching. I watch him watch me and find that I trust him.

"No," I reply, but even I can hear the saddened tone that trails behind that single word.

He nods. His eyes trail down my leg, and I can almost feel a strange tingle there as he draws my jeans, my bare feet. "I was seventeen," he adds.

I try to think back to the first time that Owen went beyond touching. 'Shh, Frankie, it's just me. It'll feel good, I promise.' It didn't feel good. More like someone was tearing me apart. I had trouble walking for a week, but it wasn't like I could've stopped him from doing anything he wanted to. He was always bigger, and I was always scared.

"I was thirteen."

The pencil stops moving for a split second, the only visible sign he shows at being shocked. "Seriously?" he asks, and I nod. He continues drawing by the dim golden light from my desk lamp. "Did you ever regret it? I mean, losing it so early?"

"Yeah," I answer truthfully. I study the shadows thrown across the carpet from his hunched profile. My mother's footsteps come padding down the hall, stop just outside my closed door, then move on. "I didn't mean to lose it. It just sort of happened, you know?"

"It always seems to just sort of happen."

I want to tell him, Not for me. The way it 'just sort of happened' for me is not how it 'just sort of happens' for other people. But of course I do not tell him this.

"Who was it?" is his next question, and one that I was definitely not expecting.

"Just some guy...nobody important," I lie.

Gerard looks up, raising his eyebrows. "Your first was a guy?"

I nod.

"Man, but you were so young."

"I was," I agree, "And for a long time I didn't think I'd ever feel whole again."

The pencil flies across the sketchpad. In a minute he puts it down. "Pansy, you're one fucked-up kid, you know that?"

And somehow I manage to laugh, because that may be the most honest I've ever been with anyone in my entire life.

Another couple of minutes pass in silence. They turn into ten, then twenty. I focus on trying to be a good model and being still. I'm trying so hard I'm shaking, my muscles straining from not moving.

"Look up," Gerard says, and I do. "No, at me." And I do. I look straight into his eyes, which I still can't distinguish from hazel or green right now in these shadowlands, and I try to be so still, but I'm still shaking. It doesn't even occur to me that maybe I'm shaking because of the truth behind what I just revealed to him. Maybe it's because I'm scared that he's learning more each day and I'm just getting worse at hiding it. Maybe it's because I'm really really hungry.

Maybe it's because we're staring at each other with such dead honesty right in this moment that I'm afraid to lose myself. I may not like who I am, but I'm all I've got. To lose what's damaged but left would mean losing myself completely. And that's what frightens me most in this moment as his dusty lips curve into that crooked grin that I love.

"Let's take a break for now," he suggests, quietly standing from his chair. I stay still as he walks over and crawls onto the bed, meeting me at the middle. And maybe later on I would try to deny that it was me who leaned in first, but when our lips met, they were lips that I undoubtedly, inexorably loved.